Aarcflick

Everyone knows the noir genre, right? A tough detective or police officer pursues a dangerous criminal. Usually, a femme fatale gets involved in this cat-and-mouse game. The unexpected twists hit you like a punch to the stomach. The visuals reflect the intensity of the narrative with dark shadows and silhouettes, while the music makes you nervous and tense at the same time. The lesser-known genre is the more relaxed noir. The clichés are practically the same, but everything seems to be coated in cough syrup.  There's an air of laziness, almost bordering on boredom. Films in this category have more jokes than their more serious counterparts, but some offer plot twists that can compete with horror films. I'm referring to titles like "The Good Boys," "Junior Detective," "Inherent Vice," "The Big Lebowski," "The Long Goodbye," "The Desert of the Silver Lake," and perhaps "I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore...

The revenge horror/thriller is a fascinating subgenre, and in Tomb Watcher, director Vathanyu Ingkawiwat attempts to explore it with a dose of soap opera drama. The first few minutes of the film will convince you that Lunthom and Cheev were passionately in love. One assumes that perhaps it's the kind of passionate romance that borders on obsession. Perhaps if one dies, the other would rather live with their corpse than let them go. But little by little, the layers are peeled back, and the cracks in their relationship are finally revealed. The plot isn't unique; after all, it is a love triangle! But the narrative structure successfully creates intrigue. We gradually get to know the characters better, and the overall story is revealed bit by bit, which helps keep the interest alive. When Cheev and Lunthom first crossed paths, they were immediately drawn to each other. He was an artist and she was a businesswoman, and although their lives were very different, love united them. The...

At first glance, and also in reality, American student Amanda Knox, wrongly convicted of the murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher, spent a long time with her soul crushed in the labyrinthine trap set by the Italian police. So, naturally, one wonders why her lawyers and family were unable to strengthen their case for so long. One also wonders how such a systematic operation to destroy Amanda's image in the public eye could have gone on for so long without even being questioned.  In the clearly random twists and turns of the fourth episode of The Twisted History of Amanda Knox, these are the things one understands, along with the fickle nature of the trouble in which the protagonist found herself. Everything about the movements of the investigations and the trial that changed Amanda Knox's life for the worse was frustratingly random in every way. But that's how it seemed to Amanda at the time. In reality, what she was experiencing was masterfully planned. And people were d...

Disney’s long-awaited K-drama Twelve is finally here, and I have to admit I’m genuinely disappointed that the first thing we see in a show about the 12 zodiac signs, aside from a charming introduction, is how Taesan, the tiger of the zodiac, is a loan shark. What do you mean, that’s the easiest way to catch bad guys? Of all the professions, yuck! Twelve begins with a flashback and narration about how 12 angels, empowered by the 12 animals of the earth and holding the light of God, came to Earth to ward off the darkness, slowly diminishing the darkness of evil and bringing in the light of God, until the light won.  The darkness released evil spirits, but the angels managed to defeat them; eventually, the absolute power of the angels and the power of evil were sealed in the “Hellmouth,” the source of evil, and the angels now live in human form on Earth, among other humans. Episode 1 basically focuses on showing us what Taesan and the rest of the angels are up to now, and what they'll...

Directed by Tran Thanh, "The Four Rogues" tells the story of a couple who face certain problems in their relationship and ultimately decide to separate. I felt that the message the filmmaker wanted to convey could have been conveyed much more effectively if the elements of parody hadn't been incorporated into the script. I understand that they want the film to be entertaining and funny, but if that means diluting the impact it could have had, I don't see the point. So, let's find out what happened between the couple and if they ever managed to get back together. It didn't take me long to understand why Quoc Anh decided to separate from his partner, Quynh Anh. Quoc Anh worked at a bank; he was doing well. He had a lot of work almost every day and didn't have a good work-life balance. Quynh Anh was a housewife and, at some point, lost her identity. Her entire life revolved around her partner's desires. There was a scene in the film where Quoc Anh asked Q...

In the late 1980s and 1990s, the garage rock scene that flourished in the 1960s saw a resurgence. A group of young people getting together to form a rock band and practicing in their parents' garage was a big thing. Pop music was also in the spotlight, and we witnessed the rise to fame of boy bands like the Backstreet Boys in the late 1990s and the Jonas Brothers in the mid-2000s. By the 2010s, the world witnessed the rise of a new wave of boy bands like One Direction and Big Time Rush, and with it came K-pop band craze, especially BTS.  As digital presence and social media took over teen lives, garage band culture began to fade, but the good news is that it's resurfacing, and the bands are quite iconic. True Blood now has 2.5 million followers on Instagram. Their fans adore them for their talent and also for the nostalgia they evoke. Amazon Prime's new series, The Runarounds, captures this recent resurgence of garage rock bands. Similar shows have been produced before, suc...

 I know for a fact that as soon as you saw the trailer for Love Untangled, flashbacks to the 20th-century girl wars came flooding back to you. I understand your feeling, but I'm happy to inform you that you won't cry at the end of this Netflix film; instead, you might laugh out loud throughout the entire film. Love Untangled is a film set in 1998, where a curly-haired girl named Se-Ri falls in love with a classmate and decides to confess her love to him. However, before she can do so, an exchange student from Seoul appears and changes things. Se-Ri gets involved with a new boy, Yoon-Seok, after he almost drowned in the sea off Busan, and she saves his life. Who will she end up with? Will Se-Ri's curly hair be an obstacle even as an adult? Find out in this Love Untangled review. The film is a two-hour romantic comedy set in a high school. If you've seen any Korean high school dramas or movies, you probably already know exactly how things end in Love Untangled. It might b...

It's difficult to quantify the significance of Hurricane Katrina: the combination of a historic natural disaster and a cold, systemic indifference to its impoverished African American victims makes it perhaps the most significant event in 21st-century African American history. It's no surprise, then, that more than one major documentary series has been made to commemorate the 20 years since wind, water, and unconscionable racism devastated New Orleans, nor that the leading cinematic auteurs of two consecutive generations, Spike Lee and Ryan Coogler, have executive produced theirs. But watching Katrina: Come Hell and High Water, one wishes Lee and Coogler had spoken on the phone to make sure they weren't duplicating themselves too much. The new three-part episode—Lee's arriving on Netflix during the week of the anniversary—has a slightly muted impact due to the preexistence of Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time, Coogler's series that premiered on Disney+ and Nation...