Directed by Kevin Kwan, Crazy Rich Asians flaunts the extravagant lives of Asian elites and the ongoing battle between heritage and cultural assimilation. Set in Singapore, the comedy centers around Asian aristocracy and Asian-American ideals. Lead heroine and NYU economics professor Rachel Chu (portrayed by Constance Wu) finds herself caught in the midst of an all-out Asian socialite war because she is unwittingly dating “Asia’s … Continue reading Crazy Rich Asians
“We are a wandering people, even now that we have a dwelling place; as human beings, we are never fully at home; ultimately nothing belongs to us, we are always on the move. And for that very reason, everything we have we share, and we belong to one another.” —Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger Cardinal Ratzinger writes the above words in a reflection on Holy Thursday, capturing … Continue reading On Space and Grace
One evening this last summer, I went to an ice cream shop in St. Paul. I went with a good, longtime friend with a long list of things to talk about. We got our ice cream, then sat down outside to enjoy the evening. My summer leading up to this point, however, had not been so peaceful. I had been working a monotonous delivery job … Continue reading Something in Nothing: My Summer of Silence
This summer, I spent extensive periods of time in the car with my sisters who have recently developed an affinity for pop country music. For the most part, I was able to sit and bob my head along while my sisters sang. By the end of the summer I even found myself singing along to a few of them myself. As we drove through the … Continue reading Beauty is Hard to Trust: Reflections on the Movements of the Heart
When I stepped into The Blossom Shop in downtown Hillsdale, I had no idea that I was entering a war zone in the global economy. It hardly seemed like embattled territory. I learned that tulips are a dollar a stem. They’re shy in the cold, but once you take them from the refrigerator and set them on your kitchen table, they’ll open right up. They … Continue reading The Flower Industry
How far do the bonds of love go? What makes a monster? What makes a man? These are some questions that Guilleromo Del Toro’s sprawling fantasy-fairytale The Shape of Water seeks to ponder. Aside from being a visual treat, the film is an emotive, layered social commentary on the nature of man that will pull on the heartstrings. If Del Toro is a master of … Continue reading The Shape of Water
Within the first two minutes of this film, director Kogonada knocks you off your feet with his commitment to symmetry. The visual symmetry in each shot mirrors a dramatic parallelism drawn between the lives of two people struggling to break free from the past. Casey is a recent high school grad and architecture enthusiast who has forgone going to college in order to take care … Continue reading Columbus
Lady Bird simply sings. It is a triumph—an era-defining coming of age story in the same vein as The Graduate, The Breakfast Club, and The Garden State—that is sure to have a similar impact on those who grew up in the early 2000s. While being wholly novel and refreshing in its approach, Greta Gerwig’s coming-of-age debut seems so well-known, so personal, and so honest that … Continue reading Lady Bird
All work stops at The Washington Post when everyone feels the whole building lurch and groan. The press is running. Steven Spielberg’s The Post recounts the story of The Washington Post, at that point a small, family owned newspaper, crashing onto the public scene as the editors attempt to publish classified White House documents on the Vietnam War. The paper owner, Katherine Graham (Meryl Streep), … Continue reading The Post
This past July on a warm summer afternoon, I attended a family friends’ poetry night—a classy little shindig with hors d’oeuvres, heels, sophisticated people, and, of course, poetry. A few months later, one of these poems unexpectedly resurfaced in a conversation with a friend. It was a poem entitled “A Fair World Tho’ a Fallen” by Christina Georgina Rossetti: You tell me that the world … Continue reading The World Is Fair, in Spite of the Old Fall
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