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Reviews
Dangal (2016)
Daughters fulfillment of fathers dream
This entire movie was driven from a father who doesn't know the difference between determination and the act of being stubborn.
At one point in time, his daughters were exhausted and just wanted to resume living like girls. They were then pointed to another extreme where it's possible to be married off at a young age. From that moment, they cut their hair really short, and realized they loved wrestling.
Then we have all of the scenes where Geeta annihilates her male competition. After becoming the master of her region, even Geeta believes she has fulfilled her wrestling duty. Nope, she needs to pick up where her father left off... international competition.
I was actually happy when Geeta entered the institute to train with a team for international competition. I really think she liked being there as she met other girls who are basically in her situation. That's where she learned she can actually relax and have a personality once in a while.
However I hate how they made the coach a villain. It didn't make any sense. I thought it was dumb how she was allowed to disobey the coach, while using all of the amenities in the institute. And if you have a coach and a father shouting contradicting instructions during a match, wouldn't it cause confusion? Why bother attending the institute if her father is the better coach? In real life, she would have been kicked off the team.
East Side Sushi (2014)
I wanna be a sushi chef.
While I understand life can be tough running a fruit stand and having to work other jobs to make ends meet. After the main character, Juana, gets robbed, and then realized she gets mistreated by her boss while working at a gym. Then Japanese restaurant took her in with no prior knowledge of Japanese cuisine. After one reluctant bite of sushi, she quickly evolved to loving it on the level where she is determined to make it herself! She then brings an entire platter home.
When eating at an ethnic restaurant, I would say it goes a little bit further than the ability to make the food. There are certain prejudices involved to maintain the desired image of the restaurant. Asians of one nationality can get away with counterfeiting the experience posing as another nationality. Most non-Asians would not be able to see the difference. But having someone outside of the ethnicity involved in making the food would take away from the cultural experience. It would almost feel like ordering fries at a Japanese restaurant.
While the owner of the restaurant was supposed to be viewed as a villain, I did agree with his perspective. It is his restaurant. But Juana kept moving along with her "anyone can do what you do" attitude. She had no regard for her environment, she felt entitled to a promotion because she's tired of being hidden in the back.
I think a better ending would have been her starting her own fusion restaurant. Even her father encouraged her to add Latin flavors into her own customized sushi. The way she jammed her chopsticks in the rice, showed she lacked cultural awareness. Though it was a petty reason to lose a competition. Runner up in Sushi Master would have definitely been a great chance to open her own restaurant, or go to a place that is open to non-Asians in the sushi bar.
Japanese culture has more strict etiquette guidelines. But this is America, any poor character with heart deserves to be a sushi chef.
Amateur (2018)
Good subject, bad execution.
This movie had all of the right ingredients for a powerful message, but failed to stick together in time for the final product.
This kid had severe Dyscalculia, where he depends on blocks in incrementing sizes to correlate numbers with it's context. Even worse, he is at the level where he needs someone to interpret the scoreboard for him. There are references to athletes like Kobe or Lebron who made it to the pros without focusing on academics. Those two players did not make it to the top as dumb jocks. They have athleticism AND intelligence.
So this 8th grade kid comes out of nowhere and attends a school with competitive sports program, and even makes his way into a starting spot within a day of joining. Somehow this team improves because of him and they are in the spotlight, and even receive upgrades to their equipment.
Then there is his father whose hopes of being a professional athlete got derailed and suffers long term affects of a concussion. The kid is somehow convinced his dreams to be a professional athlete will come true, and that his father was destined to suffer his own fate. If this was not delusional, the father pushes his child to enter this student-athlete system and out smart it.
While all of this is happening, this kid got a look under the hood of this student-athlete process, records a conversation and posts it on social media, and that's the end of his journey. After all that, the moral of the story is, schools use student-athletes, and these said students get nothing in return.
There is no development of character! If a boy wants to be a professional basketball player, wouldn't it be helpful to at the very least be able to read the scoreboard? This movie implies it's okay to ignore academics if it is considered acceptable.
It is sad how kids get baited into becoming a student-athlete, but this case has a living example of what it's like to be one and not succeed. How can they now learn from this?