Michael Sun

Some tropes in the film business are entirely divorced from the contents of any given film. One of these, oft-repeated, concerns the bright young débutante who is lavished with praise. In this narrative, the first-time director emerges from the soil in full bloom. They have made a competent movie, perhaps even a good one – though certainly not the epochal effort the adulation would have you bel ... (read more)

It’s drizzling when an Aimee Mann song plays in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Broker. You know the one: ‘Wise Up’, the scabrous number that soundtracks a famous sequence in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia (1999), whose central cast – united by various machinations of fate – sing along in some kind of deranged processional, each character downcast and seeking salvation in Mann’s lyrics. None ... (read more)