1 post published by mark during September 2025| Optimistic Indie Roleplaying
Ghost Month has started in Taiwan, so it’s a good time to consider the Taiwanese film Marry My Dead Body.The film’s premise is audacious: a macho, homophobic police officer, Wu Ming-han accidentall…| Optimistic Indie Roleplaying
2 posts published by mark during August 2025| Optimistic Indie Roleplaying
Akiria Kurosawa’s The Most Beautiful opens not with an image of beauty, but with a brutal command: “Attack and Destroy the Enemy!” This command is followed by the totalitarian declaration that this is “An Information Bureau Movie for the People,” before the familiar Toho Studios logo even appears on screen. This is the disorienting introduction … Continue reading "Akira Kurosawa’s The Most Beautiful (1944): A Study in Propaganda"| Optimistic Indie Roleplaying
To fully understand the genesis of Hong Kong genre cinema in the 80s and the early 90s, you must first witness a man battling a reanimated corpse with a wooden bench. That scene, in all its boister…| Optimistic Indie Roleplaying
1 post published by mark during July 2025| Optimistic Indie Roleplaying
When Pearl Harbor shattered America’s isolationist fantasies, General George Marshall faced a peculiar dilemma: how to transform farm boys and factory workers into global warriors who underst…| Optimistic Indie Roleplaying
They have built an empire of lies Where the dead beneath are buried twice To better feed the living above And you can keep the teeth of hunger off your own neck Only if you tell the ravening lies y…| Optimistic Indie Roleplaying
What if I told you there’s a film written by James Cameron, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, that critics praised but audiences ignored-leaving it to vanish into the shadows of cinema history? That fil…| Optimistic Indie Roleplaying
Imagine a man running on the edge of a rushing locomotive, staring up at a torrent of water about to crash over him-knowing he’s about to risk his life, not for glory, but for a laugh. This was Bus…| Optimistic Indie Roleplaying
Akira Kurosawa: a name synonymous with cinematic mastery. His debut, Sanshiro Sugata, often heralded as the first glimpse of towering genius. But strip away the reverence, look past the auteurist mythology… What are we really left with? Released during the height of World War II, Sanshiro Sugata charts the familiar arc of a young, impetuous … Continue reading "Kurosawa’s Debut: Genius or Just Practice? Revisiting Sanshiro Sugata (1943)"| Optimistic Indie Roleplaying
Tsui Hark stands as one of Hong Kong cinema’s most formidable auteurs, his finest works deserving placement alongside the masterpieces of John Woo or Wong Kar Wei, yet with a filmography that is far more varied. His latest offering, “Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants,” has reached American screens after amassing an impressive $83 … Continue reading "The Visionary Returns: Tsui Hark’s ‘Legends of the Condor Heroes’ "| Optimistic Indie Roleplaying
Have you ever watched a film festival unfold from your couch? Sundance 2025 made that a reality, offering its entire short film program online. First up, Full Month by Goh Hua. Imagine returning to Singapore after a decade away, stepping back into the intricate dance of family expectations. This film beautifully captures the bittersweet reunion … Continue reading "Singapore to Cuba: A Global Journey Through Sundance Shorts Program 3"| Optimistic Indie Roleplaying
What happens when the end of world isn’t the story… but merely the backdrop? That’s the intriguing premise of Didn’t Die, a new indie film that uses a – yes, I’ll say it – zombie apocalypse as a useful metaphor for pandemic upheavals. The film follows Vinita, a wonderfully snarky Indian-American podcaster. She’s been travelling … Continue reading "Didn’t Die: A Zombie Film That’s Not Really About Zombies"| Optimistic Indie Roleplaying
Flora Lau’s ‘Luz’ is a film that dares to exist in the liminal spaces between fractured relationships, cultural divides, and even the boundaries of reality itself. Lau crafts a diptych, two essentially disparate narratives separated by continents, yet echoing each other in their exploration of family, connection and isolation. On one side, a gangster in … Continue reading "Camgirls, Gangsters, and Artists: The Complex Tapestry of Luz"| Optimistic Indie Roleplaying