Dear My Life

Header illustration for the film review essay of 20th Century Girl (2022). Illustration created for editorial movie review purposes. 💭 Short Personal Reflection Watching 20th Century Girl (2022), I found myself not only following Bo-ra's story — but returning to my own. She moved through her youth with urgency and brightness, chasing love, making choices, living loudly. And for a brief moment, I wondered why my own teenage years had felt so much quieter. But as I sat with that thought, something shifted. My youth was not empty. It simply spoke a different language. Where her world was filled with pagers, video rentals, and restless movement, mine was shaped by smaller, quieter moments: sharing lunch in a classroom, longing for films I was not allowed to see, sitting in a theater for the first time, watching something unfold on a stage. And maybe that is what this film ultimately offers — not just nostalgia for someone else's youth, but a way back to our own. 🎥 Film Overvi...

  Header illustration for the film review essay of Like Father, Like Son (2013). Illustration created for editorial movie review purposes. 💭 Short Personal Reflection Like Father, Like Son (2013) made me think that becoming a parent is, in some ways, the beginning of a second life. A life heavier than the one I carried alone. A life that sometimes asks me to set parts of myself aside. This film poses one of the most unforgiving questions along that path: what would you do if the child you had raised for six years was not your biological child? Faced with that impossible crossroads, I found myself holding my breath — lost between two immense currents, unable to move. And long after the film ended, I was still standing there, asking a question the film refuses to answer for me. 🎥 Film Overview Director Hirokazu Kore-eda Release September 28, 2013 (Japan); World Premiere May 18, 2013 (Cannes Film Festival) Runtime 120 minutes Cast Masaharu Fukuyama (Ryota ...

  Header illustration for the film review essay of When Morning Comes, I Feel Empty Illustration created for editorial movie review purposes. 💭 Short Personal Reflection When Morning Comes, I Feel Empty (2022) confused me at first. Nothing seemed to happen. The screen filled with dry, repetitive routines — days that passed without incident, without change. But as I slowly came to understand the protagonist's circumstances, I realized that this "nothing happening" was not empty at all. It was a silence — heavy, suffocating, and deeply human. There was a time in my own life like that. A time when waking up felt like something to fear, when the arrival of morning itself felt unwelcome. And then I understood: this film is not about emptiness. It is about surviving it, quietly, one hollow morning at a time. 🎥 Film Overview Director Yuho Ishibashi (石橋夕帆) Release May 12, 2022 (OAFF); December 2023 (theatrical, Japan) Runtime 76 minutes Cast Erika Kar...

  Header illustration for the film review essay of Lady Bird (2017). Illustration created for editorial movie review purposes. 💭 Short Personal Reflection Lady Bird (2017) left me with the strange feeling of watching two people reach for the same hand in entirely different languages. Love that is too close, too intense, too daily — somehow becomes the hardest to name. A mother's worry arrives as criticism. A daughter's longing arrives as rejection. And yet, in the film's final, quiet moment — a phone call, a name said out loud — something settles. They were never speaking different things at all. Only the translation was clumsy. Perhaps we can only begin to understand the love that shaped us after we've moved far enough away to finally see its shape. 🎥 Film Overview Director Greta Gerwig Release November 3, 2017 (United States) Runtime 94 minutes Cast Saoirse Ronan (Lady Bird McPherson), Laurie Metcalf (Marion McPherson), Tracy Letts (Larry ...

  Header illustration for the film review essay of The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012). Illustration created for editorial movie review purposes. 💭 Short Personal Reflection Watching The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012), directed by Stephen Chbosky, I kept returning not to Charlie's story — but to my own. To the years I spent raising my second daughter through a storm I didn't fully understand. The closed door. The shortened answers. The eyes that slowly looked somewhere else. I was so busy holding up the world's measuring stick that I forgot to simply stand beside her. And watching Charlie finally feel — truly feel — that he is not alone, I understood something I should have known much sooner: that being someone's person matters more than being right. 🎥 Film Overview Director Stephen Chbosky Release September 21, 2012 (United States) Runtime 103 minutes Cast Logan Lerman (Charlie), Emma Watson (Sam), Ezra Miller (Patrick), Joan Cusack (...