Almost Buddhist - 戲‧論

  ★★★★☆ It’s easy to summarize the film based on a true story in just one sentence: a single father (James Norton) dying of some cancer is looking for a new family to adopt his son (Daniel Lamont) who is still too little to know what adopt is and death means. But it’s not easy at all to take the mood and weight of the situation. Just imagine you were the father, how were you supposed to put up with losing your own life as well as your beloved son? ‘Nowhere Special’ nevertheless, keeps away from being a melodramatic, tear-jerking film like you might’ve expected despite its great potential to be one. In fact, the story’s being told in a rather humble realistic tone. Emotional, heart-wrenching scenes are rare if you count those ‘story time before bed’ and the ‘meaning of death’ explained by the father to his son over a dead beetle found under the tree and a picture book about the extinction of the dinosaurs, as something emotional and heartbreaking! Most of the runtime is spent on i...

  ★★★★☆ Now there aren’t many films that would arouse my interest to want to check out. And even if some would, I couldn’t get to finish watching them after all, due to the bad taste in my mouth, or my growing impatience during coronavirus lockdown that seems to be never ending, or the stupidity they were somehow able to make me feel. ‘John and the Hole’ is gladly, not one of them! I’m not saying this coming-of-age story is something I’ve never seen before. In fact, the story’s nothing so off the wall here. A seemingly worry-free adolescent boy facing monotony and confusion is about to do something to break his everyday routine; to kill his boredom and feel excited; to make himself significant and get the attention he thinks he deserves; to try to find answers to the questions that have been troubling him maybe. Whatever the reasons, that something he’s going to do still sounds a bit weird and difficult to comprehend from an adult’s point of view, though I’ve seen similar stories...