After Yang (2021)

[Drunk Monk]

After Yang

Existential, brooding, low key, ponderous sci-fi. Yang is a Chinese culture bot brother of a young Chinese girl Colin adopted.

It’s dark. Not like creepy dark. Increase the brightness of your monitor dark. After Yang malfunctions and stops, Colin tries to get him repaired and gets his memory banks which he can watch with vr glasses. It creates this odd play where lines and scenes are repeated from different angles. Kinda surreal. 

There’s some intriguing theoretical and philosophical postulation, some intriguing sci-fi concepts, and some cool style, but this is a quiet film, a slow burn moody art house film with a droning sonorous soundtrack. 

And then it just ends. I hate when existential films do that. If I wanted to see that, I’d just look around at life. I want resolution in my movies, or at least a good sword fight.

Didn’t work for me. Not D00M recommended but maybe the sci-fi cf writers might see something I missed. I was semi-engaged in this but that ending was a bit of a dealbreaker.

Watched at my mom’s who has HBO on her xfinity.

[Greg]

Did you use my patented "Slow Burn" in your review? Might have to send a letter to the lawyers.

I've seen this floating around. I've been iffy about it. Now, I'm not.

[Drunk Monk]

Mind you, my mood might have affected my review. Some of the mortality, tea, and Chinese issues were fascinating and the atmosphere it sets is unique. There are definitely some strong qualities here. But I wasn’t in the proper mindset for it perhaps.