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Up in the Air: a story of modern times.

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Employed people in the working world fear unemployment. To be fired is the equivalent of a death sentence. Now imagine that your job is as the executioner of the working world...a corporate downsizing expert. Up in the Air (2009) is a comedy/drama film depicting the story of  Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), whose work involves flying all around the country, giving speeches and help companies fire people. Naturally, a lot of interpersonal and communication skills had been implemented by Ryan to ensure, if not at least attempt to calm the ex-employee down and show them other options that would make them accept their current position more. This film can be viewed in two ways: either it can be viewed as the story of how a corporate downsizer does his job and develop as a person...which shows us an entirely different narrative on how to survive in this progressing modern world. Living in the 21st century is not easy. The world keeps progressing and progressing, and people need ...
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Sybil: There can be only one.

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Would you rather be someone forgettable with no personality or someone with multiple personalities? Trust me when I say that you would be much better should you prefer the former, because the latter is a mental disorder brought usually by trauma. Today's film review will be about Sybil, a two-part three-hour long t.v miniseries from 1976, based on a book of the same name, which depicts the story of Sybil and her dissociative identity disorder. Together, Synil (with her other identities) and Dr. Wilbur (her psychiatrist) must work together to get to the cause of the disorder, unveiling Sybil's own dark and tragic past full of insanity, pain and abuse. Dissociative identity disorder is a mental disorder characterized by having multiple personalities or identities in one bodies and memory loss (Kluff, 1996). Usually the transition of one identity to another will cause memory loss of the previous identity, as if the person has more than two souls in a body or is possessed b...
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Departures: Death is but a gateway.

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Wanna be a professional makeup artist for the dead? Be an encoffiner! In funeral services there is a profession called an encoffiner who prepares the corpse to be put into the coffin. He will clean it, embalm it, and give it makeup to beautify it. While you may have the risk of being socially ostracized due to the fact that your profession involves interacting with dead bodies, the pay is great with flexible working hours!  Today's movie review is on Departures (2008), a Japanese film depicting the story of Daigo the encoffiner and the challenges society and himself had given him that he must face head on, which includes social prejudice and various cognitive dissonances. This film was one I would consider as a masterpiece, and it was the first Japanese film to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign language film in 2009, and had various adaptations which include a manga and a stage play.    The hardest part of life is death, nobody wanted it, yet it's the ul...
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Whiplash: How to not be a teacher.

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As someone who had been a victim of bullying, the film Whiplash (2014) hits a little too close to home for me. Especially the fact that the perpetrator of the bullying behavior in the film is a teacher. As the story progresses, negative emotions such as anger and sadness rise from within me as I relate to the character in terms of being treated badly by a mentor figure. That doesn't mean it's a bad film. In fact, this film's a masterpiece. Today's film review will be about Whiplash (2014), an excellent movie that portrays the tragedy of Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller) the ambitious drummer genius who wanted to be the very best but fell victim to the abusive teaching methods of Terrence Fletcher the psychopathic music teacher (J. K. Simmons). This film won Best Film Editing and Best Sound Mixing at the 87th Academy Awards, and J. K. Simmons won Best Supporting Actor for his magnificent performance at portraying the monstrous character that is Terrence Fletcher. The...
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Still Alice: No matter what her state is.

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Whenever someone asked me: "What do you think the future's gonna be like?" I didn't reply them with predictions on how advanced our technology in the future would be. I didn't reply them with predictions the consists of flying cars or genetically enhanced supers-soldiers. I just reply them: old age, and the disease that follows it, including a chance of me getting Alzheimer's disease, and then the inevitable goal of all life: death.  I know it sounds morbid and depressing, but that's the epiphany I had after watching the film: Still Alice. Still Alice (2014) is a drama film based on a bestselling novel of the same name written by Lisa Genova, which depicts the story of a linguistics professor named Alice and her tragedy caused by early onset Alzheimer's. The film itself was an even bigger tearjerker than the world renowned classic Titanic (1997), for the cause of Alice's misfortune can happen to anyone, including you yourself or your l...
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The Sixth Sense: It's not always a bad thing if you see dead people.

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Remember the "I see dead people" meme? The one that died along with the outdated 2009 memes like the "troll-face" or the "nyan cat"? Well, today's movie review will be about the source of the meme, one of M. Night Shyamalan's most famous works: The Sixth Sense. A supernatural horror film that looked more drama than horror, famous for its surprise twist ending. The plot revolves around Malcolm the child psychologist helping Cole the disturbed and isolated child overcome his problems and paranoia, while subsequently learning more about the world (that ghosts were real) and to realize and accept the fact that it's time for himself to move on, for he is dead and he didn't realize it. In this film we follow the misadventures of child psychologist Malcolm, and in the beginning of the film the audience were greeted with the gruesome scene of Malcolm's murder perpetrated by Vincent Gray, one of Malcolm's former patients whom he fail...
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Forget Paris: For Love

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What is true love? In children's cartoons (particularly the Disney Princess series) the endings were almost always the same: the princess and the prince shared mutual feelings of true love, and after defeating the antagonist, both shared a true love kiss and lived happily ever after. Sadly, that is never the case in real life, and Forget Paris showed it. Forget Paris is a 1995 Romantic comedy film about the love life between Mickey the NBA referee and Ellen the airline employee, along with the challenges they face to keep their relationship together. While this film showed a lot of heartwarming and romantic scenes that suggested their healthy and happy relationship, it also showed the realistic events and challenges that may be faced by couples in real life, which subverted the "happily ever after" logic and created what seems to be a decent realistic portrayal of a romantic relationship and correct relationship maintenance. The expressions of love shown by b...
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