Jackson Yee

Resurrection

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Moody shot of Jackson Yee almost enveloped in shadow

Absolutely one for the buffs, Resurrection is Bi Gan’s love letter and farewell to cinema. It’s dead is the overall message, but didn’t we have a lot of good times while it was here? A five-part compendium, each chunk different in terms of tone, look and genre, it’s a remarkable technical achievement, if nothing else. I’m saying “if nothing else” because I’m not convinced the non-buffs are going to walk away with much. Bi starts off with an intertitle card. It introduces the first section and also acts as an overall summation of the movie’s theme. In a world where dreaming has been eliminated, it says, there are still those “deliriants” who continue … Read more

Better Days

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Bei and Nian on a motorbike

Better Days is a Chinese film about love, bullying, suicide, rape and murder… but mostly love. Adapted from a Young Adult novel (by Xi Jiuyue), it uses the relationship between a prim high school girl and a thug from the wrong side of the tracks as its skeleton key to access other, more off-limits areas of social import. Don’t worry if you’re only interested in the love story, though, because that’s what Better Days is mostly interested in too, in spite of its protestations. Which start early on with the suicide of a pupil who throws herself from several floors up into the internal courtyard below at the school where Chen Nian (Zhou … Read more