Hi Score Girl was originally a manga comic and was adapted into an anime show and released by Netflix in 2018, to the extreme happiness of many anime watchers, praising the show for ‘saving’ the season of anime. Having never watched an anime tv show before, I was unable to compare Hi Score Girl against any expectations or stereotypes while watching which was advantageous in terms of keeping an open mind and reacting honestly. However, it must also be taken into account that I haven’t watched anime before because I didn’t think I would like it, and those preconceptions most definitely stayed with me at least throughout the first episode of the show. In the interest of reacting honestly, I will begin by saying my apologies to lovers of the show, as it seemed to me to be utterly disjointed. Therefore, my autoethnographic response in this blog will…

Cake is a 2018 film from Pakistan that has managed to capture an international audience- rare for Pakistani cinema– with the combination of excellent actors; directorial vision and a plotline that tells a truly memorable story of the Jamali family while casting a reflection on various elements of modern Pakistan. This film touches on gender roles, family, religious minorities and izzat– a person’s honour- in a way that feels natural for the progression of the film while still managing to make an insightful point on everything that it explores.

I have not travelled to any ‘Middle Eastern’ (such a varying, all-encompassing, colonial term) countries and I don’t know a whole lot of people with that heritage so all that I have learned about countries like Pakistan is their wars. That’s why I’ve really been enjoying watching movies that come from other cultures besides America because for one thing…

Furie is a 2019 Vietnamese film that stars Ngo Thanh Van- also known as Veronica Ngo, who has a career in Western media as well- and is directed by Le-Van Kiet, a Vietnamese-American who studied film at UCLA, USA. At first I was wondering why my responses and reactions to our previous film; Love for Sale, had been so much stronger than to Furie but after looking into the film and the people involved, I understand why I was simply content to watch this film, because it is so familiar to what I am used to. The combination of Ngo and Le-Van as well as being a Netflix film, results in Furie having a decidedly Western influence throughout the whole movie. That’s not to say I didn’t have strong reactions or moments of confusion while watching the movie though, and there are definite differences that my Western brain…

The film Love for Sale was released in 2018 and has been followed up by a sequel starring the female lead, Arini, which is 1000% going on my watch list because surprisingly, I genuinely enjoyed this film. I say ‘surprisingly’, because at the beginning of this movie I was not a fan. I’ll be honest, I was expecting it to end with Richard and Arini together solely because I believed that Indonesian cinema would be years behind Hollywood cinema in terms of feminism. Strike one against my stereotypes.

However, instead I was rewarded with the acknowledgement in the film and in online reviews that yeah, Arini is too perfect for main character Richard, and instead of reverting to his old ways when she leaves, he actually proves to have grown as a person.

In order to properly analyse my own personal experience of watching this movie, there are a few…