Director: Christopher Makoto Yogi
Premiere: Jan. 29th 1:00 p.m.
Life, no matter how solitary the path we choose, is inevitably a grand catastrophe of collaboration. I Was a Simple Man follows Masao (
Steve Iwamoto and, in his younger years,
Tim Chiou) as he nears death in his lifelong home of Hawai‘i. As he hurdles toward his inevitable close, Masao’s life of exile (both self- and community-imposed) opens up into a florid portrait of his complicated personhood. Everything he could’ve known has changed beyond recognition, and the proceeding film balls up nearly a century’s worth of gratitude, regret, resentment and wonder into a visual poem that makes one man’s death the nexus for an exploration about what it means to be a father, a husband and a man in a land whose definition slips through your fingers day by day.
Steve Iwamoto and Constance Wu in I Was a Simple Man
A healing haunting.
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Christopher Makato Yogi s second feature is a gentle reflection on memory and death, featuring Constance Wu as the ghost of a woman who returns to comfort her Japanese Hawaiian husband near the end of his life.
In the opening scene of Christopher Makoto Yogi s lyrical family drama,
I Was a Simple Man, the elderly protagonist looks out over densely built-up Honolulu and recalls when there was just beautiful green where concrete towers now cluster. That sense of a spiritual connection to nature, cultural foundations and people long departed, even to the characters younger selves, permeates this delicate, time-shifting study of a solitary man s rueful end-of-life introspection. Dying isn t simple, is it? asks the ghost of his wife, who died young, leaving him with sorrow and anger. But it s a transition that ultimately brings peace in this modest work of lingering beauty.
Catch these Sundance Film Festival selections from Jan 28 to Feb 2.
By
Gwendolyn Knapp
1/27/2021 at 1:16pm
Moonstruck Drive-In is located at Midway s upcoming East River development, 100 Bringhurst St.
Attention, movie buffs. The Sundance Satellite Film Festival touches down at the Moonstruck Drive-In, January 28âFebruary 2. Because this year s famed Sundance Film Festival, which happens every January in Park City, Utah, had to be canceled, the organizers rolled out satellite film festivals in 20 cities around the country (along with going largely virtual as well), so we re lucky to be in that number.
In Houston Sundance has partnered with Houston Cinema Arts Festival, bringing six screenings to the drive-in, along with a screening at the DeLUXE Theater and a couple of virtual offerings. The screenings are going for $30 per carload, or, if you have a cool $120, throw it down for a festival pass, which includes everyone in your car for all the fil
Together
Together starring Ed Helms
are among 72 features selected for 2021 Sundance Film Festival, which runs online and in select US arthouse venues from January 28-February 3.
The line-up, announced on Tuesday (December 15), includes
One For The Road, Thai filmmaker Baz Poonpiriya’s follow-up to
Bad Genius; Edgar Wright’s music documentary
The Sparks Brothers
Land; Ben Wheatley’s virus horror
In The Earth; The Roots drummer Questlove’s documentary
Summer Of Soul; and Kevin Macdonald’s Special Screenings selection
Life In A Day 2020.
A features roster representing 29 countries and 38 first-time feature filmmakers includes three films from Cannes Label 2020:
Pascual Sisto’s