Conducted under the Reagan epoch and featuring the blunt-force temperament of an exploitation film, Tony Garnett's Handgun is polemic take-down of the systemic nature of sexism and an american culture at large which reinforces such oppression. Going into this film I was expecting it to a be a lower-tier version of Abel Ferrara's Ms. 45, a film that uses exploitation cinema to speak to underlying injustices in American culture.  While Handgun lacks the stylistic precision of Ms. 45,  this film remains a nice complementary piece of cinema given its disparate local, taking places in the south, a near agrarian spatial environment in Texas rather than the hustle-and-bustle of the big city in which Ms. 45 is set.  I say they would be an effective double-feature, in that both films feature the hyper-reality/flair of exploitation cinema while their disparate settings provide a nice remainder that these injustices are not unique to a particular social strata or geographic local, but one that systematically built it.  

​An introspective character study about emotional and personal growth. Exhibits the tyranny of complacency and comfort, how it often can suppress personal growth with the film doing so through the lens of a complicated relationship. Spatial nature of connection is personified in its central protagonist, an individual whose forced into self-reflection when she is confronted with the reality that her ex-boyfriend may have found someone else, thrusting this woman further out o his life. One could certainly suggest that Love and Goodbye and Hawaii is conservative in its diametrical exhibition of the heterosexual relationship, showing little room or any more complex examinations related to love, sex, and companionship, but it's a mature work that traverses the 'coming of age' ethos with unique effect

A mature work which never divulges into melodrama or any forced sense of sentimentality, When The Tenth Month Comes employs a tranquil mysticism, one that is confrontational towards the subtle nature in which the possessive qualities of man can circumvent the natural meaning of love.  Honest and heartfelt, the film obfuscates these simplistic associations we often place on this emotion, managing some how to be ethereal in its evocations on existential reflections of death, grief, and deception, doing so with a quiet grace and impressionist fortitude that is revelatory

Employing one of the most singular constructions to one of the most frequently analyzed topics in cinema - grief, loneliness, despondence - Tobias Nole's Alloys is a brazen piece of cinema that deserves a look.  Early on the film is a rather typically well-constructed "art" film, crafting a grief infused mileu which is palatable through use of static and sterile photography that evokes the fractured psyche of its main protagonist - a man dealing with the death of his father. What transpires from there, and I won't go into details here, is where the film's boldness becomes wholly alluring, as the filmmakers craft a film about therapy and self worth in a way that I've never seen before, exhibiting how the intrinsic autonomy of perception makes the relationship between ontology and existentialism homogeneous. That is to say, self/being and our relationship to such forces as life and death are intertwined, with therapy - emotional communication - being the engine which drives altruism and self worth

The general fears of femininity as it relates the predatory nature of man is evoked and weaponized into a thoroughly enjoyable, stylish thriller.  A wild roller coaster ride of female empowerment on steroids crafted with loads of panache!

​Displacement and violence haunt a young Chow Yun Fat in Ann Hui's The Story of Woo Viet, a film following a Vietnamese Refugee who in an attempt to immigrate to the US, gets caught up in a crime syndicate in order to pay his way. This has got to be one of the best performances of Chow Yun Fat's career, as Hui gives him a lot to work with, being a man whose steely presence, nothing-to-lose demeanor, and quiet sense of unequivocal strength speak to a character who has suffered through hell, seen tremendous horror and violence in his past, and must continue down this road of degradation placed in front of him in search for peace and in a sense, a new home and identity.  A refugee, much of the circumstances this man finds himself in stems from his lack of identity his inability to transcend due to this abstraction we define as the nation state, with Hui using the edifice of an action film to tell a nuanced, empathetic tale which implicitly suggests how displacement reinforces a perpetual state of violence. I watched this more due to Ann Hui, and was shocked with how much action the film has; Those who watch due to Chow Yun-fat, will probably be surprised how stoic and reflective it is.