REVIEW: Boogie [2021]

Love will melt the sharpest sword. As writer/director Eddie Huang‘s fortune teller states, when a dragon and a dog come together, they create a snake. That’s what Alfred ‘Boogie’ Chin (Taylor Takahashi) is: temperamental like his father (Perry Yung), culturally respectful like his mother (Pamelyn Chee), and intuitive enough to realize he’s been trapped between them without a voice of his own. Both parents see him as the answer to their financial woes, but Mr. Chin plays the long game while Mrs. Chin seeks a quick payday. Neither negates Boogie’s…

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REVIEW: The Yards [2000]

“Your mother needs you now” After watching the latest entry from director James Gray, We Own the Night, my interest in seeing his previous work waned immensely. Not that I hated the film, it just wasn’t quite to the quality that I had heard his earlier stuff was. Maybe some of that had to do with Mark Wahlberg as a clean cop, for some reason I can’t believe him in roles like that, and it is a shame. However, after viewing The Yards, my opinion has completely turned around. I…

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BNFF08 REVIEW: Sympathetic Details [2008]

“I could be a farmer” Benjamin Busch’s Sympathetic Details showed here at the Buffalo Niagara Film Festival as the “short” film of a double-header bill with a feature length work. It is tough to call this film a short because its 57 minute runtime puts it on the cusp of being more. I don’t think anyone would ever release a movie under an hour, however, so I guess it becomes a short by default. As is, I think Busch did the right thing in not trying to expand on it…

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