It is striking how the qualities of the quintessential American film have completely disappeared in our current landscape. Every single emotional beat in Lilo & Stitch is accompanied by a slight orchestral tune. A step with some brass and string instruments. A stare with some horns. The emotionalization of everything via the score is something so traditional to the American film. What happened to that? This not to say that American films today are scoreless, but the instrumentation has defeintely been…

The first half hour of Past Lives is cute as fuck. We watch a young and adorable romance sprout, wither, and find its way back to some sunlight when Nora and Hae Song cross paths again through the internet.

But then Past Lives takes a detour and starts to unravel some of the (post) colonial horrors of romance. Global capital moves north and westward forcing workers of the south and east to leave their homelands in pursuit of a "better…