Inkoo Kang

HBO's Doll & Em Takes on Women's Spontaneous Friendship Combustion

Inkoo Kang
Why can't women stay friends? That's a trick question, of course, but also one that British actresses Emily Mortimer and Dolly Wells — lifelong pals in real life — attempt to answer earnestly and honestly in their new HBO cringe comedy, Doll & Em. In the six-episode series, Mortimer and......

Why the Cesar Chavez Movie Fails

Inkoo Kang
Chicano labor leader Cesar Chavez now can join Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela in the pantheon of heroes whose world-altering achievements are dutifully recounted in timid, lifeless films any substitute can pop into the school DVD player when the regular history teacher is out with the flu. With Cesar Chavez,......

Three Reasons Why HBO's Looking Is the Perfect Show for Women

Inkoo Kang
(Spoiler alert: The following piece discusses up to the Feb. 16 episode of Looking.) HBO's Looking has had a tough time winning over its intended fans. Upon its premiere, Gawker's Rich Juzwiak yawningly summed up the political achievement of creator Michael Lannan's wonderful half-hour dramedy about three homosexual men in......
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The Trouble with The Wind Rises

Inkoo Kang
In today’s era of global box offices, few studio films are made for just one country, especially by a director of Hayao Miyazaki’s international stature. But the beloved animator’s latest and last work, The Wind Rises, is a film whose meaning and power vary so greatly in different cultural and......

Aziz Ansari: Dudes, the Number of Dick Pics You Send Is Startling

Inkoo Kang
"Imagine if marriage didn't exist, and you're a guy and you ask someone to get married," proposes comedian Aziz Ansari in his new Netflix stand-up special, Buried Alive, which premieres Nov. 1. “‘Hey, so we've been hanging out all the time, spending a lot of time together. I want to......
Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo in Through the Never

Metallica: Through the Never's Weird Provocation of White Aggrievement

Inkoo Kang
In their experimental new film, Metallica endeavor to translate the anger and pain in their music into a visual medium. Directed by Nimród Antalis, Metallica Through the Neveris the band's second big-screen effort, the first being the 2004 behind-the-scenes documentary Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. That debut, created by filmmakers...

On FX's The Bridge, Serial Killers Are a First-World Problem

Inkoo Kang
Mild spoilers up to The Bridge's ninth episode below. Artisanal murders are all the rage these days. On Showtime's Dexter, NBC's Hannibal, and Fox's The Following, small-batch, labor-intensive, sold-with-a-story slaughters have become TV's equivalent of the Cronut. Handsome, intelligent, and mannered as court eunuchs, serial killers have become the new......
Credit: © 2013 Lionsgate

Orange Is the New Black's Radical Critique of American Prisons

Inkoo Kang
All manner of spoilers below. Nearly anyone with a grievance against America's dysfunctional prison system can find a scene to illustrate their protest in the first season of Orange Is the New Black, Netflix's women-behind-bars dramedy. Admittedly, the wonkiest or most disheartening issues, like prison privatization or endemic sexual assault,......