Movies

We hear a great deal these days about a loneliness epidemic, that people feel more disconnected from others than ever before. This happens even though the world has never been more urbanized. If you think of how people in your own family lived five or six generations ago, it likely

After a few major, important segments of the film, Edward Yang now relaxes a bit and gives us some connective tissue and amusement. The segment begins with Yang-Yang in class, all of this fellow students napping at their desks. This is apparently common practice in Taiwanese elementary schools and while

We now return to the beautiful in-car discussion between NJ and his son Yang-Yang that I wrote about in the first essay. This time, I want to take a step back from the content of the discussion and focus on the atmosphere instead. It begins in the hallway of the

We’ve reached the part of “Yi Yi” where one scene after another is memorable and striking, so I should probably put the superlatives aside for a bit — just assume that these are all essential segments of the movie until notified otherwise. NJ returns from that energizing night out — one

We now come to one of the most famous sections in “Yi Yi,” when NJ takes Mr. Ota, the Japanese game developer, out for a night on Taipei. It begins at a restaurant, where NJ tries to sell the company line — that they liked his proposal, but it was fairly

The scene opens in the hallway of the apartment building. The nurse looking after grandmother gets off the elevator and prepares to take out her key. We see Ting-Ting rushing to the door to open it for her — kind, but unnecessary. She has been in Lili’s apartment next door