recognito | Movie Blogging in 2026

Quick, off-the-cuff thoughts on two movies and some television.

Past Lives, dir. Song - I watched two Asian American movies on the plane, Past Lives and The Wedding Banquet remake, and lol this was the one I finished. To touch on The Wedding Banquet remake for a second, I do think it's fun for Joan Chen's career to go from the mom in Saving Face (tagline: It is never too late to fall in love for the first time) to the mom in The Wedding Banquet… okay now that I've said nice things about Joan Chen, I can say pretty confidently that this movie starts not great, gets bad, and steers into unbearable pretty fast…

I was interested in Past Lives in part because the director is married to the dude who wrote Challengers and people were like, "WOW these two are looking for a third so bad!!!" and because I think Greta Lee is really beautiful and fun to watch. The movie's broken up into three acts, each set twelve years apart: the first is set in Korea just before Nora's family leaves Korea for Canada and focuses on Nora's first and last date with Hae Sung; the second act has Nora and Hae Sung reconnecting via Facebook and Skype and falling in love, only to break up when Hae Sung opts to go to China instead of visiting Nora in the US; in the third act, Hae Sung, fresh off a break up, flies to New York City to visit Nora, who is now happily married. Arthur, the husband, is wildly jealous, and Nora is I guess a little irked by Hae Sung trying to reopen something she thought was closed, while Hae Sung is sad, lonely, beautiful, and feels undercooked.

I was pretty into the movie's first half and, by the third act, full on annoyed—I think because the movie takes great pains to reassure us that Nora is NOT going to run off with Hae Sung or even have a little emotional affair, that she's made her choice and is happy with her life, and her husband's jealousy is something to be tolerated because who isn't fascinated by the potential that you could be a totally different person if you had just made one or twenty life defining decisions? "What if we didn't meet at that artist residency and happened to like all the same movies and read all the same books," Arthur asks at one point, and I'm like… who cares. Then you'd be other people. I guess it is a bit of a novelty to see Arthur, a white dude, anxious about cultural differences, but because it changes nothing about Nora's behavior, it ultimately feels like he's wringing his hands over nothing.

As the movie puts it, Hae Sung's flaw as a romantic partner is that he's hung up on the twelve year old Nora who cried a lot and relied on him, but I feel like it'd make more sense for him to be hung up on the twenty-four year old Nora on Skype, not the twelve year old one; it makes sense for him to be hung up on the period of time when he was chatting with a hot girl every day, before he had a mediocre job, before he met his ex-girlfriend, before he came to realize his life does not fulfill the promise it once felt like it had—the "he sees me as a twelve year old girl" is what Nora should tell her husband, but "he sees me as the woman on the computer screen" is what Nora should be telling herself. If this possibility of the more Korean version of her life is so compelling, then why doesn't Nora entertain his advances? The movie loves Nora's current life, where she's married, a successful playwright, and lives in New York City. She'd never leave that—and because of that, the movie reads like it's mollifying her husband instead of exploring the reality of getting all your dreams: America's kind of shit, being a writer means you're surrounded by the most annoying people who are somehow much more successful than you, and being married means you're being changed in ways you may not want to be changed. For the third act to be good, Hae Sung needs to make Nora reconsider the flavor of her life. Losing potential versions of yourself is meaningless when she already was none of those potential selves and has no way of becoming them.

In conclusion, YES, this movie would be greatly improved by a threesome… I think Arthur should've realized he didn't fuck any men and that if he had met Hae Sung in college, he would've fallen in love with him, too… no. Sorry. Uh, I think this movie should've had a threesome that ended with Nora and Arthur realizing that their marriage is fine, but she wishes she had become a concert flautist.

Something's Gotta Give, dir. Meyers - This movie has been out for more than twenty years, and I somehow missed that it starts with an amazing premise: a young woman, Marin, brings her much older boyfriend, Harry (Jack Nicholson), to her mother's Hamptons beach house; her mother, Erica (Diane Keaton), falls in love with the boyfriend. In classic rom com fashion, two hours later, everyone ends up married with their appropriate partner, and the final shot is Harry, Erica, Marin, Marin's new husband (approximately same age as her), and newborn daughter eating dinner together. Okay!

I found this to be a really enjoyable rom com with surprisingly considered treatment of how age affects the standard formula. Flipping through some contemporary reviews, a number of people complain about the "realism" of the plot, which I can only assume is something like, "How can two old people fall in love in one week? How are they constantly bumping into each other? Why would anyone choose creepy Jack Nicholson over beautiful, young Keanu Reeves???"

The obvious physical beauty of young Keanu never feels more apparent when one is confronted by the visage of Jack Nicholson, who gives creepy rich uncle vibes on his best days, but I was surprised by how I accepted this casting. If we take a second to map out the key tropes of this movie and how they play on or respond to the standard questions of a romantic comedy, the movie thinks it's asking two questions: "Is it possible to still be changed by romantic and sexual love after 50?" and "Is it possible to love a woman older than 50?" The second question gets a lot of discussion, but I can't help but feel that Nicholson's creep energy makes the first question the primary one of the film. Erica's story plays out a longed for reawakening, from being discarded and unconsidered to a woman with a banging boyfriend, successful play, and loving family. Harry, on the other hand, undergoes a reversal: he wakes up from his heart attack and into a painful revelation that he's not lived as he should have. The wealthy playboy who can't settle down and needs to really listen to women instead of using them as objects of his pleasure is a standard romantic hero trope so long as he's young. Harry can only be a "real" partner to Erica after he's been humiliated on the stage by the woman he loves, by his health, and by self-reflection.

The stand out moment of the film is when Erica and Harry are crying in bed together after their first time having sex with each other: their capacity for love and sex is not dead, and, wise or stupid, they've fallen in love. Then, just as they turn into bed for the night, Harry tries to excuse himself, and the beautiful moment is dead. The potential to transform is not a guarantee that it will happen. His desire to turn away from that change drives the movie's second half and hints at how easy it is to get stuck and stay stuck.

There's a ton to talk about in the film, and I'll list some things in bullet points:

Fascinatingly slapstick humor, which sees Nicholson freely offering up his 60-something year old body for comedic and slightly grotesque effect (his red-faced, sweaty collapse while getting frisky with Marin is shockingly transformative, and a key beat is Harry wandering about the hospital, inadvertantly exposing his ass to Marin, Erica, and Zoe (Marin's aunt as played by Frances McDormand—the casting for this is stacked) and a montage of Erica crying and writing, complete with obviously fake sobbing ("EUUUHGHAHHHHHUHHHHGHHH") on voice over… there's even the standard "oops!!! I accidentally saw you naked!!!" scene. Hard for me to think of the last time I've seen such a scene in a recently published work.
I was reading through Letterboxd and someone mentioned that they're pretty sure Harry is a riff on Warren Beatty, another infamous playboy… who's a friend of Nicholson and has also played romantic lead for Keaton decades ago… and yeah, lmao, that makes perfect sense
Incredible watching the opening montage of the movie set to Crazy Town's Butterfly… in the fifth grade, I took a dance class where the big dance piece used this song. Looking at the lyrics now, I'm like, okay, who thought this was a good idea, lmao
There's SO MUCH AOL Instant Messager in this movie?! I guess it makes sense, but it was a little funny seeing Keaton and Nicholson chatting with each other on the same app I associate with Neopets guilds
The movie is soooooo Martha Stewart/glossy home improvement… everything in the beach house is whiiiiite white white… I did find myself thinking, "Wow! This is where Meredith Grey went when she had her COVID coma!"

I also watched a few TV shows, some good, some bad:

Platonic, season 1: The standout episode is Sylvia's arc of returning to work after being a stay-at-home mother for like ten years and immediately getting fired. Aside from that, a few funny beats. Actively playing with the audience question of, "Can men and women be platonic friends and nothing more?" to decent effect. A good show to watch on a plane.
Shrinking, seasons 1 and 2: I watched this mostly for Harrison Ford. The kind of TV show where you're like, well it's fine for there to be a distinctive voice or tone, but I'm not liking it… The kind of TV show you'd tell people you've just met that you're watching and enjoying in order to sound like you're a normal guy who's so, so, so normal… but actually, the show is kind of banal, and I don't care for the messaging. Okay, therapists are also messy people… personal problems hard to solve… ughhhhhhhhh come onnnnnnnn give me something gooooood
Siren: Survive the Island - A Korean reality TV show notable for its all female competitors. Six teams, organized by occupation (bodyguards, stunt actors, firefighters, police officers, soldiers, and athletes), play an advanced game of capture the base. The gameplay is pretty good, although the Soldier team has a clear tactical and strategic advantage throughout, the physicality is pretty fun, and it really has that special season 1 spark, where people are still figuring out how much they can push the rules and testing what strategies work and which ones should be discarded. Strong recommend.
Culinary Class Wars, season 2 - Season 1 had one of the best twists and executions of the "run your own restaurant" challenge I've seen in a cooking competition… I really think the food stall challenge was superb, especially with the glutton menu—a great example of a competitor thinking about the total possibilities of the show's setting and constraints instead of playing it safe… anyway, none of the challenges this season were nearly as fun and all my favorite contestants got eliminated pretty early, but it's still a great spectacle.

I'm partway through Friendly Rivalry, the lesbian Korean high school drama (not about hockey), and that's quite a lot of fun, too, but not done with it just yet, and still merrily working my way through Crime Scene Zero, another show I watch for the super entertaining gameplay. Also partway through Of The Devil episode 2.

I originally had my write ups on Shimura's Koi-iji (Love Glutton) series here, too, because I felt like it worked well with the rom com theme of the post, but now that I'm preparing one big Shimura post, I'll leave it off for now… Will also leave my review of Malcolm + Tanith Lee for later, too. The Shimura post is getting bigger and bigger... Please look forward to it!!