A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Monday, February 16, 2026

Happyend (Neo Sora, 2024)

Yukito Hadaka and Hayata Kurihara in Happyend

Cast: Hayata Kurihara, Yukito Hadaka, Yuta Hayashi, Shina Peng, Arazi, Kilala Inori, Pushim, Ayumu Nakajima, Makiko Watanabe, Shiro Sano. Screenplay: Neo Sora. Cinematography: Bill Kirstein. Production design: Norifumi Ataka. Film editing: Albert Tholen. Music: Lia Ouyang Rusli. 

Disaffected students at a Tokyo school pull a prank on their principal that gets labeled (as things often do these days) "terrorism" in Neo Sora's debut feature, Happyend. The consequence is that the principal (Shiro Sano) installs a radical new surveillance system that causes still more turmoil at the school. Sora's look into the near future resonates with our anxious present, touching on such issues as authoritarianism, racism, and invasive technology. The touch is light, however, thanks to an engaging young cast and a plot that never turns as grim as it might. 

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