Tag: films

• my september google search history, voilà

  Today, for entirely no reason, I would like to do an exposé on my Google Search history for the month of September. I’m eliminating searches in which I’m specifically seeking a website, product, or calculations (e.g. currency conversion, weather forecasts). Everything else will be as they are.

  September 1

  spinning lady illusion
  fusiform face gyrus hemisphere
  寻寻觅觅
  wing on life condo owned by
  canadiens
  naypidaw

  September 2

  Where to throw keyboard singapore

  September 3

  Upper back ache sleeping pillow

  September 4

  Did Jones Town increase or decrease kool aid sales
  fish that cleans teeth

  September 6

  creatine side effects
  skip hire

  September 7

  cold brew ratio
  (-_-) meaning
  can i use coarse grind for moka pot
  best time to do hatha yoga

  September 8

  Matthew Modine
  Vietnam history
  Bojan Trivic
  allergic to bok choy

  September 10

  yb chang boob job

  September 11

  animal sounds in different places

  September 12

  you better wreck yourself
  check yourself before you wreck yourself tv show
  returning soldier
  recent gender ratio births
  martin lavoo

  September 13

  lavender tea confinement safe
  chrysanthemum tea confinement safe
  Sentosa fireworks

  September 14

  lymphatic face drain massage
  can i keep stewed apples
  microbes amoeba

  September 15

  why do flowers smell good
  angle of repose
  tiffany plate
  third space

  September 16

  how is uveitis diagnosed

  September 17

  Microsoft swiftkey Chinese is bad

  September 18

  frozen characters

  September 19

  cabbage nutrition
  worcestersiresauce
  flowers of the moon
  old movie spiral

  September 20

  shrillness of the nights
  still of the night film
  fuck word etymology history
  shui or shei
  barnaby song
  like a barnaby song

  September 21

  singapore limpopo
  like a barnaby song
  alexandria herring
  balance ton quoi

  September 22

  milony polish
  nine tailed fox
  baking soda scratch glass
  kapusniak
  go set
  gender differences in time conception
  are men more interested in history

  September 23

  akira kurosawa films
  stray dog
  pickle party
  craving ginger
  tennis balls where to buys
  signs of green tea liver failure
  why do enlightened beings have long earlobes

  September 24, 2025

  curiosity, etymology, films, google, google search, google search history, history, musings, random, singapore

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• Movie Review: Leave the World Behind

  

  It was an extraordinarily rainy day and night in the usually sunny Singapore, a perfect time for a chilling horror film. We settled on the thriller Leave the World Behind. Boy I was not ready for the ride I had unwittingly strapped into.

  Some context: I have consumed my fair share of Thai, Korean, Japanese, and American classic horror, with little trepidation. I’ve watched the supposed scariest of scary — The Exorcist — and LAUGHED because its iconic scene was so comical.

  This film genuinely scared me silly.

  [mild spoilers here] And in the absence of ghosts / spirits / demons, the supernatural, jump scares, gore, or even a classic antagonist to appear on screen.

  So why was I shaking in my seat? Because everything that transpired in the film was eerily likely to happen in our reality, and every day our reality seems to inch forward towards theirs.

  The horror films that have hit hardest with me are always ones about cults, because cults exist and the horrorific acts they commit very real. That is why Rosemary’s Baby, Midsommar, and the likes, were masterpieces in my books. Yet even they, hinged on the possible, have a measure of gore and explicit assaults by baddies.

  In LTWB, the core events started and are happening off-screen. In this contained, still somewhat safe, perimeter, you are watching aftershocks: leaving you to imagine the full extent of horror and the impending fate of our protagonists. Think Bird Box or the Quiet Place, but more removed, and on the other end of the disaster (before, not after).

  You watch the city crumble in a distance and part of the anguish is sitting at the knife-edge between hope, and the growing realization that the inevitable is heading towards you. (Or, maybe it won’t?)

  [Mild spoilers] The scene in which an oil tank approaches the shore, first indifference, then ignorance, then the dawning realization of danger — perfectly sums up the family’s (and their individual) reaction to what’s happening.

  Leave the World Behind had excellent pacing. For the first half of the film, tension is pulled to just the right taut. The parallel escalation to a climax, drawn by each groups’ adventures, was exquisite.

  It built up sufficient clues, yet left enough ambiguity in the first third, leaving room for many possibilities; resolving them patiently and neatly as the story unfolds, without contrivity. You have to pick up the links yourself, it never hits you in the face.

  I love also that characters and their narratives were kept consistent. An possible apocalypse is no time for 180° change in character, but aspects of their personalities that are latent in everyday life may manifest — they did, and did so believably!

  The camera works, sound design, and directorial choices were – i’m running out of positive descriptors – par excellence. I appreciated that the director brought back the ‘horror score against silence’, ‘slow zoom-ins for a suspense’. It was incredibly well done, standing out as a stylistic enhancement, when it could easily have been jarring if done wrong.

  Other directorial highlights are the strange phenomenon of animals, jets, ships — these large-scale abnormalities reminded me of the best and creepiest parts of NOPE.

  Most of all, LTWB had a certain restraint that many new movies lack, in a time where blockbusters are prone too BIG, DRAMATIC moments to top predecessors.

  This restraint lent a rawness and realness to the characters and their responses to the world, and is why it was terrifying.

  Besides that, I loved Ethan Hawke in this film. Never knew he was such a funny guy. He plays his role as naive professor well and every micro expression and action was spot on. I couldn’t help liking his character immensely, he makes me laugh, even when unintended, every time he’s in the scene!

  January 11, 2025

  films, horror films, leave the world behind, midsommar, movie review, netflix, NOPE, rosemary’s baby

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