The Hot Spot (Netflix)
Catherine Choi: Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No—it’s my coworker! The Netflix series The Hot Spot flips every alien story trope on its head. Unlike the mysterious, authoritarian, and even downright menacing aliens portrayed so often in Japanese media, Takahashi is a bespectacled, middle-aged man who works at a rural tourist hotel—a character more in place at the local supermarket than in a UFO. Problems start to pop up for him in his once peaceful life when his coworker Kiyomi discovers his secret identity. Kiyomi, the heavyweight behind the curtain of the hotel and a single mom, quickly sees through Takahashi’s docile personality, and ropes him into attending her middle school reunion. She even strikes a shrewd deal letting him use the hotel’s hot spring behind the owner’s back in exchange for letting her make use of his alien superpowers. Takahashi may be an alien, but that makes Kiyomi the ultimate alien tamer.

At the same time, Takahashi doesn’t lack the kind of superpowers that viewers expect an alien to have. Even in a serene hot spring town in Yamanashi Prefecture, complete with majestic Mt. Fuji in the background, tensions bubble under the surface like a volcano on the brink.  When Takahashi confronts a group of thugs in the second episode, he leaps onto a roof against the backdrop of an impossibly massive full moon and sends a volleyball flying as if it were a fantastic celestial body. It’s scenes like these that transform the everyday humdrum into extraordinary spectacles. Screenwriter Bakarhythm, who previously demonstrated his knack for blending the simplicity of everyday life with fantasy in his earlier series Rebooting, once again sets the screen alive with the same marriage of ideas.

No matter what impressive superpowers the protagonist summons, Kiyomi and her friends remain unfazed. Even when Takahashi reveals that his alien anatomy gives him an arched back and sensitive teeth when it comes to cold food, the only response he gets is a nonchalant, “Seems like a hunchback to me … There are people with backs rounder than this.” This kind of humorous acceptance in the face of the unfamiliar, rather than responding in terror, may very well represent the kind of coexistence we need to better exercise in today’s world. Slow down to a relaxed pace, sit back, and enjoy this unique story of heartfelt hospitality as it unfolds in a small town at the foot of Mt. Fuji—like you would a hot spring on a cold winter night.

The Brutalist
Bae Dongmi (CINE21 reporter): As if by a matter of habit, the words “I had no expectation” slip again and again past the lips of László Tóth (Adrian Brody), a brilliant architect who studied at the renowned Bauhaus school of design. László is a Jewish refugee who flees Nazi persecution in Hungary and ends up in the United States, where he holds no great expectations about the new land he’s come to. Struggling to survive, László ends up living in his cousin’s closet, which he finds satisfactory, telling his relative, “I had no expectation.” Despite his eye for aesthetics and talent for architecture, László can’t escape performing menial labor at construction sites until, one day, an unexpected opportunity comes to him via a wealthy American by the name of Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce). The nouveau riche Harrison, bored with collecting wines, turns his attention to architecture and hires László to design a cultural center dedicated to his late mother. For the first time in ages, László feels passion stirring inside him. All he has to do now is design an iconic, breathtaking building that will satisfy Harrison—or, to be more accurate about his aims, himself. But it won’t be easy. As seen in the way László frequently mutters about having “no expectation,” The Brutalist doesn’t cast the American Dream in an optimistic light at any point. As the project progresses, László grows increasingly frazzled. He falls back into abusing drugs, has trouble with his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), and clashes with the exploitative and condescending Harrison, who seems to see money as a justification for anything.

The title of The Brutalist is an allusion to the brutalist architectural style, one defined by rough and unyielding concrete designs. This trend, which rose in popularity after World War II, mirrors the wild and willful protagonist’s perseverance against Nazism in Europe and racism in America in his quest to build an enduring artistic legacy for himself. László’s belief lies in art that stands the test of time—especially architecture. At a robust 215 minutes, the film is a deep dive into the touching story of his life, bringing László so close to viewers that he almost feels real. Astonishingly, though, the character isn’t even based on a real-life figure—he is solely an invention of the movie. The intimate close-ups and the solemn but modern score inject a swelling sense of power, but it’s the depth and gravity of Adrian Brody’s performance that make the artist onscreen feel so incredibly vivid. Brody, who in days of yesteryear already became the youngest actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, seems poised to add another Oscar to his collection with his role in The Brutalist.
When the lights come up and the audience leaves the theater, Brody’s ill-tempered yet delicate portrayal of László leaves us grappling with difficult questions. Can art remain beautiful even in the face of suffering? Is that even enough? Perhaps the closest expression of what it means to be human is in the dream to create something everlasting like art even in times of hardship. This film lingers with its audience—in more ways than one—and doesn’t let go.

Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show
Kim Doheon (music critic): Ah, the Super Bowl—the game that decides the true champions of football, America’s national sport. The 59th annual Super Bowl, held on February 9, had a halftime show that stayed dialed up to 11 the whole time. Standing on a square reminiscent of a button on a PlayStation controller, Samuel L. Jackson—dressed as Uncle Sam—declares, “This is the Great American Game!” Enter Kendrick Lamar, the protagonist here to answer his country’s call—the same uproarious talk-of-the-music-town superstar who dominated the rap game last year, conquering the Billboard charts and sweeping the Grammys with his diss tracks—atop a Buick GNX. Referencing Gil Scott-Heron’s declaration that the revolution will not be televised, he tells us the wrong person has been chosen for the right time. “Too loud, too reckless, too ghetto,” sneers Uncle Sam, to which Kendrick, flanked by dancers clad in American red, white, and blue, responds with hits “HUMBLE.” and “DNA.” from his album DAMN. America is visibly bitter. To “euphoria,” a six-minute diss track, Uncle Sam says, “I see you brought your homeboys with you,” shooting the performer daggers. Only when Kendrick and SZA perform their most mainstream, crowd-pleasing music is America’s Uncle Sam finally moved: “Don’t mess this up!”

But who’s messing the game up? At the do-or-die final football game in a nation built on relentless expansion, Kendrick stands up at the peak of his rap game, unwilling to back down. “They tried to rig the game, but you can’t fake influence,” he raps as he launches into “Not Like Us,” sticking true to the red-hot intensity of the sport as he spits rhymes with ease like the rap gladiator he is. It’s a hit diss track the likes of which have never before been seen, transcending just musical meaning and touching on exclusionary views of nationalism and ethnicity. As one YouTube comment with 300,000 likes put it: “This is the longest funeral I’ve ever seen.” And Uncle Sam’s face twists and contorts. Kendrick gives the most American ending to the most beloved of American games on the most American stage, playing by rules America never bargained on. With the whole world sucked into the survival-of-the-fittest frenzy, Kendrick’s personal rap game brought in 133.5 million viewers and made this Super Bowl game the most-watched in the event’s history.