Subversively clever and delightfully raunchy, Adele Lim’s directorial debut follows a transracial adoptee who goes to China to find her birth mother.
Author Archives: Nina Li Coomes
Posted inArts & Culture
APIDA Arts Festival provides a smorgasbord of cultural options
Scanning the three-day offerings of the APIDA Arts Festival, held May 5-7, one of the first things I notice is the array of ages, ethnicities, and mediums on display. Veteran of the Chicago music scene and filmmaker Tatsu Aoki is present on Saturday morning at the Goodman Theatre for Tea and Talk, where visitors can […]
Posted inFilm
Review: Return to Seoul
Heady, searing, strident, and poignant, this film follows Freddie (Park Ji-min), a French Korean adoptee who finds herself unexpectedly in Seoul. Is she there to find her adoptive family? Does Freddie want a reunion, confrontational, saccharine, or otherwise?
Posted inArts & Culture
An invitation to listen to survivors
“It’s an invitation,” says Aaron Hughes, cocurator of “Remaking the Exceptional: Tea, Torture, and Reparations,” an exhibition currently on display at the DePaul Art Museum. Marking the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, the exhibit examines the similarities between survivors of torture at the U.S. military prison with survivors of […]
Posted inFilm
Timelines overlap, worlds warp, and dreams become reality
This month, Chicago filmgoers are lucky enough to experience not one but four genre-defining anime classics on the silver screen as part of Anime Auteurs, a series put on by Facets.
Posted inFilm
New directors in a new year
CJFC’s New Year’s Screening asks an American audience to consider the frailty and necessity of art in a mire of human difficulty and loneliness.
Posted inFilm
Eternals is a surprisingly genuine success
I went into Eternals, Marvel’s latest offering, fully expecting Ethnic Foods Aisle Feeling. What I found instead was genuine, delightful character development nestled inside of a complex and challenging narrative.
Posted inFilm
Wife of a Spy
Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa beautifully and methodically renders the story of a married couple plunged into uncertainty in the days leading up to World War II. With a slow-burn plot, the film marries historical drama with psychological tension, highlighted by intensely focused performances from Yû Aoi, who plays a wife slowly suspecting her husband of being […]
Posted inFilm
CJFC brings indie Japanese films to the midwest
The Chicago Japan Film Collective highlights the country’s lesser-known cinematic works.
Posted inFilm
How a theater survives a pandemic (or two)
Rogers Park’s New 400 Theater pulled out all the stops to not only survive the past year but come out the other side even better.
Posted inBest of Chicago
Placing World of Wonders on hold at the Chicago Public Library website
A book borrower discovers a new way to enjoy the library
Posted inFilm
Raya and the Last Dragon’s representation dilemma
Even with Asian-American talent on and off the screen, the film reflects back a myth of monolith.
