January media log: Movies

Went through a ~cinephile~ period in January in the sense that I saw many movies and found most, if not all, good. Most, if not all, were also gen, which may have raised the enjoyment level for me. Faith in movies restored...????

🇺🇸 Zootopia 2 (2025)
This was just okay, a bit timely for Snake Year. I may be getting too old for this. Favorite scene was the part with the walruses and their feedback loop of "hey bub" (because it reminded me of my friends).

🇨🇳 Her Story | 好東西 (2024) dir. Shao Yihui
Wrote about it here.

🇹🇼 Left-Handed Girl | 左撇子女孩 (2025) dir. Shih-Ching Tsou
I really liked this! This was widely praised in international film circles last year, but I was worried it'd be too slow and that the appeal was in its Asian-/foreign-ness. The pace is very fragmented at the beginning, leaning heavily on slice-of-life, and then, halfway through it connects. The characterization really shone in the buildup of moments, I love I-Ann so much!

Notes: There's a weird scene with the immigrant character that draws more attention to itself when it goes nowhere. And I-Ann's boss + the boss's wife are written with a jarringly heavy hand. But in spite of that, this movie made me feel things. Also it was shot with an iPhone, which was interesting.

CW (spoilers)

Brief animal death (meerkat jumping to its death), terminal illness (brief scene with the biodad), abortion

🇨🇳 Legend of Hei 2 (2025)
Enjoyed this SO much more 1) as a rewatch, 2) on the big screen. Not only was I forced to focus, I could also see the narrative structure more clearly and see the plot through the correct PoV (Luye's). Everything makes so much more sense if you take this as a road trip movie for Xiao Hei and a character study of Luye who's lost so much and loves so much, both of them meeting halfway through Wuxian—but still not really seeing eye to eye. I love them so much!!!

🇹🇼🇯🇵 18x2 Beyond Youthful Days | 青春 18X2 (2024) dir. Fujii Michihito
daisydiversions has been suggesting this movie for groupwatch for a while and I've been so lukewarm about it, but I ended up loving this one too. 😂 First of all, it was shot really well. The lighting was beautiful and reminded me so much of film cameras and even scenes with dim lighting did not look too dark. The two timelines (past and present) were easily distinguishable by the color grading and styling.

I actually enjoyed this more than Cape No. 7 which was also about a cross-cultural "romance" because it's not actually a cross-cultural romance. Instead it's about youth and meeting people who show you a path out of yourself. Rather than being a destination, love is part of the journey to becoming who you could be. Honestly a 5/5 movie for me, I'm sorry I doubted you lol.

PS. One of my journal notes says "Certainly it's hard not to notice how men have the privilege of being adventurous (sic)". XD It also helped that I've been to a couple of the places featured in the movie and could sort of anticipate what the characters were gonna do—Kamakura for Slam Dunk, Jiufen/Shifen for the lanterns.

🇨🇳 Resurrection | 狂野時代 (2025) dir. Bi Gan
Definitely a movie to see in the theater... It actually made me appreciate the theater sound system, the sound chapter had SO many things going on.

This is a love letter to cinema nested in a science fiction story about endangered dreamers. The dreamer dreams in movies. Each is a different style and genre, and each represents a significant period in Chinese history as well as one of the five senses: a silent movie about opium (sight), crime/noir about musical madness (sound), a folk tale about a former monk and the Spirit of Bitterness (taste), a con adventure about a thief and a little orphan girl (smell), and a doomsday romance (touch).

I can't say that I loved this movie as I don't really care about the ~spirit of cinema~, but it accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do, which means it's objectively good. I liked the SFF bits and the little fragments of aesthetic satisfaction. My favorite is segment the father-daughter con for being very cohesive and tropey.

CW: drugs, violence, torture


🇯🇵 Love Letter (1995) dir. Iwai Shunji
An epistolary movie about grief, memory, and coincidences of similarities. When Watanabe Hiroko's fiancé Itsuki Fujii dies in a hiking accident, she writes him a letter and mails it to his hometown. The letter is received by a woman whose name is also Itsuki Fujii (and looks exactly like Watanabe Hiroko). Doesn't that sound like the plot of a GL story riffing on the soulmates trope? XD

Watched this because it was referenced in 青春18X2. It's a really nice play on memory where you only know boy!Itsuki through how the other characters remember him. And it's pretty moving because he is remembered and he is so, so loved. I've been having a lot of anxious thoughts about, among other things, the flimsiness of my own existence, and this movie touches on it for a bit. There's this one scene where a white curtain billows in the wind, and boy!Itsuki disappears behind it—probably as a reminder of his death? But that's pretty much how I have been feeling so I was like "wow, rude."

As most of the movie takes place in the snow and I know nothing about snow, I had the privilege of having daisydiversions and superborb fact-check snow-related scenes and ruin the fantasy. XD I was so impressed by girl!Itsuki skating down a slope with her school shoes too...