i love it when the French do racial politics, it always goes so well

just the right amount of strange and disconcertingly funny for the first 40ish minutes, but never goes deeper into its subject matter or characters. Robinson has obviously perfected the pathetic manchild who constantly violates hetero male norms, but as the movie goes on one wishes it would go stranger, more deranged, more absurd and chaotic.

Me in 2009: I refuse to watch WHITE CHICKS because it has a 14% on Rotten Tomatoes and i only want to have “good” taste
Me in 2018: Film criticism is dominated by straight white male voices that shape, gender, and racialize what “good taste” is, making critical consensus the product of unequal institution, discouraging viewers to develop a critical thought that exists beyond “good” and “bad”, and WHITE CHICKS is one of the most brilliant satires of race and gender in the last fifty years

tragically did not at all care for PAST LIVES. too straightforward for my taste. and Lee and Yoo have good chemistry, but not time bending, fate cracking, reality shattering chemistry. a small but totally meaningful difference, one that the film hinges and ultimately fails on.

both characters are so thin, and so banal and prosaic with their language, that such energy and chemistry is what the film predominantly relies on. But it’s simply not there.

Greta Lee is supposed to be a writer but we ever get a sense of how she relates to language a couple of times?