#detective rosemary vick

[manysubitles]

Genre: Action, Drama, Mystery, Thriller

Cast: John Cho, Debra Messing, Joseph Lee

In San Jose, California, David Kim looks through old photographs and videos of his daughter Margot and his late wife Pamela, who died from lymphoma nearly two years earlier, after which David and Margot became distant. One night, Margot goes to a friend's house for her study-group. The next morning, David is unable to reach Margot but assumes she has risen early to go to school. Later, he calls Margot's piano instructor, but is informed that Margot had canceled her lessons six months ago. David discovers that Margot had been pocketing the money for the lessons, before suddenly transferring $2,500 to a deleted Venmo account. Realizing that Margot is missing, David calls the police, and the case is assigned to Detective Rosemary Vick, who asks for information about Margot's personality and friendships. David manages to access Margot's Facebook and speaks to her contacts only to discover that Margot has not had close friends since Pamela's death.

[funkymbtifiction]

Searching: David Kim [ISTJ]

OFFICIAL TYPING by: ENTP Mod. (Warning: SPOILERS GALORE!)

Functional Order: Si-Te-Fi-Ne

Functional Perceiving Axis:

Introverted Sensing (Si) / Extroverted Intuition (Ne)

David Kim is a guy who pretty much is comfortable in his job and lives with the memories of his deceased wife Pam, and their family that once was. When his daughter Margot goes missing, he looks to reliable things in order to help him reach his daughter. Rather than make up some crazy theory about Margot, he makes logical conclusions based on prior knowledge of his daughter's schedule and behaviour ("It is a Friday, therefore she will be at piano class") before placing the call to 911. He is good at creating profiles and chronological timelines for every single one of his daughter's 289 social media contacts. No detail misses his eye. He combs through everything carefully. He is heartbroken when he sees her livestreams, which leads to his realization "I didn't know my daughter". He has implicit faith in the system, and works well alongside the assigned police detective. His intuition is fairly low; but he trusts the feeling that his daughter is alive, and has NOT run away. He emphatically asserts that he KNOWS his daughter. He jumps to conclusions, making erroneous connections after seeing the text messages between Margot and his brother Peter. However, his intuition also leads him to sense that something is amiss, even after the confession which leads to the case being closed. There is a great example in the movie where his Si works in tandem with Ne, identifying an obscure contact and matching it against a stock photo online; thus he realizes that his daughter was being catfished, could still be alive and gets the case re-opened for further investigation.

Functional Judging Axis:

Extroverted Thinking (Te) / Introverted Feeling (Fi)

David is a take charge kind of guy from the get go. He throws himself into the investigation, checking up public databases for statistics related to Missing Persons, the Silicon Valley P.D.'s closure rate etc. He organizes his external environment into a task force to help him locate his daughter, along with the help of law enforcement. He thinks clearly and makes decisions objectively. At the same time, he is out of touch with his own emotions, as well as that of his daughter Margot's. Peter reminds David that as the adult and parent, David has to approach Margot to talk about her feelings regarding her mom's passing and not expect it to happen the other way around. He is not good at articulating emotions. He chooses to literally remove traces of things which make him emotionally uncomfortable. Such as deleting a picture or video file of his deceased wife because he can't bear to look at it. On Pam's birthday, he goes up to his daughter's room but finds it hard to talk with her. Instead he makes a comment about watching The Voice together, which is his way of reaching out to her and seeking her company. When he gets the call regarding the confession and possibly Margo's death, his unexpressed emotions take a huge toll on him. He curls up into a ball and starts weeping uncontrollably. Other displays of emotion by him include punching an insolent classmate of hers at the movies for making disrespectful remarks about his daughter on social media; and taking out his frustration on his brother, very nearly strangling him rather than express his anger. He doesn't bring it up with well intentioned friends of Pam, leading him to eventually shut off everyone including his own daughter. This leads to a communication breakdown to the point where she lies to him for months about continuing piano class. He is completely clueless to everything till her disappearance shakes up his life.

Hogwarts House: Gryffindor

David shows a lot of qualities such as valour, resourcefulness and unconventional thinking but what ultimately defines him is how he stands, unwavering. When his wife is diagnosed with cancer, he takes it upon himself to create workout schedules to pro-actively beat it. When his wife passes on, he is loyal to her memories and works hard towards his commitment to raising Margot well. When Margot goes missing, he works tirelessly and patiently sifting through every bit of evidence that could possibly lead him to her. In his life, he values hard work. He places emphasis on Margot practising regularly in order to become an accomplished player. He is steadfast and patient. His determination to find his daughter pushes this gentle guy over the edge, causing him to behave recklessly, which gets him pulled off the investigation. But all this is coming from a place of fear and frustration over failed attempts to locate his missing daughter.

Enneagram: 6w5 (so/sp)

David is a good husband and father. He works well to provide for the family, ensures that his daughter's needs are met. Ordinarily he is shown to fuss around his daughter but like a true Six, his courage comes into play in times of crisis. He keeps it together and is able to efficiently assist the detectives. When he disintegrates to 3 under stress, he over works himself and gets into aggressive "get shit done" mode. He exhibits an implicit trust in the law enforcement (social 6 adherence and reliance on systems to make them feel secure), yet he prefers to conduct independent investigations on his own including background checks of detectives assigned (due to the 5 wing). The 6 sense of scanning for logical inconsistency pays off well when he realizes the cop has dishonest intentions. It is because of his wing that David is able to easily compartmentalize his emotions and go on with life when his wife passes. However, it also means that he works alone to find his daughter without confiding in anybody.

Other Quick Profiles:

Detective Rosemary Vick is an ESFJ because she operated out of emotional motives, worked off of her previous knowledge as a law enforcement officer to keep David off the scent of the true whereabouts of Margot. She focuses on affirming him in an emotional manner, relaying incidents about her own son in order to build a rapport with, and comfort David.

Margot Kim is an IxFP. An introverted girl at school, she requires time to privately process the grief of her mom's death. She doesn't talk about it with anybody except some select people she trusts deeply. She is hurt by her father shutting her out, leading to some pretty extreme measures to cope with her emotions such as cutting school to smoke weed, sending enormous sums to a person she barely knows who preys on her vulnerability. (too little information to discern her perceiving function axis) <- sounds rather like ISFP. - INFP Mod.

[thisguyatthemovies]

It’s an online life

Movies that unfold entirely on computer and phone screens: The future of cinema? Or short-lived gimmickry?

Time will tell, but the answer probably is somewhere in between.

Producer/director Timur Bekmambetov is a firm believer in the small screen -- and we’re not talking TVs here. So much so that the Russian-born filmmaker’s studio, Bazelevs, has developed Screenlife, technology that Bekmambetov plans to use to produce a steady stream of computer-screen movies.

“Searching” is one of them. And while the #StarringJohnCho film is proving to be at least a minor hit with audiences and a big hit with critics, whether it is worthy of “groundbreaker” status remains to be seen.

“Searching,” at its heart a missing person thriller, unfolds entirely on computer and cellphone screens and offers a dizzying array of Google searches, YouTube videos, webcams, texts, video chats and social media posts.

It is, in short, how many people live in 2018.

But does that make for a good movie? And is the new approach to storytelling enough?

Cho, in a breakout starring role, plays David Kim, a man who thinks he has been a good father even after his wife dies of cancer (which plays out early in the movie in a series of home videos and photos), leaving him as the only parent to their teenage daughter, Margot (Michelle La).

When Margot goes missing after a late-night study session, David learns that not only has he been distant but that he doesn’t really know who his daughter is.

Enter the internet. After his daughter’s disappearance, David begins a frantic search through her videos, social media friends lists and online banking activity (he’s able to easily hack into his daughter’s accounts, which should scare all of us). He even sets up a spread sheet to list anyone who had contact with his daughter before she went missing and what they were doing at the time.

He soon has help. Detective Rosemary Vick (Debra Messing) is assigned to Margot’s case and proves to be a calming influence for David as she takes charge of the investigation but allows him to be more involved than maybe he should be.

So far, so good. “Searching” is tense as David scrambles for nuggets of information. We watch him mostly through webcams, and we see him age before our eyes as a sense of panic and then confusion set in. His daughter’s mostly online life begins to be revealed, and the father can’t believe what he is learning.

And then the movie takes a turn for the worse.

Perhaps the novelty of watching events unfold online wears thin partway through “Searching.” Until we get used to this type of movie, there’s something unsettling about watching people using a computer or cellphone. It seems like an invasion of privacy (if there is such a thing), even if we are invited.

Also, as the investigation kicks into gear, perspective changes. The early parts of the movie are almost entirely from David’s viewpoint (and phone and computer). But then “Searching” becomes inundated with online TV news reports, and the sensationalism quickly amps up. When Margot is presumed dead, we are subjected to the worst of humanity online – those who barely knew Margot claiming to be her best friend, those who are quick to blame and accuse the father, a stream of maudlin online condolences. Even the likable David takes a nasty turn, becoming the subject of a viral video that shows him assaulting someone he thinks is involved in his daughter’s disappearance.

“Searching” doesn’t preach to us about the downside of a life led online and how we don’t really know those we interact with away from the real world. But it does not need to. It’s all right there in front of us. We can make our own judgements.

Eventually “Searching” completely jumps the tracks, becoming part soap opera, part mediocre “CSI” episode. Not to give everything away, but the final third devolves into a series of implausible and yet cliched twists and red herrings. And the ending is as corny as it is predictable.

That’s too bad, because director Aneesh Chaganty (who co-wrote with Sev Ohanian) was on to something here. Cho, La and Messing give standout performances. The film is an interesting and tense watch, at least until the story goes awry.

And there it is: Story. Still, even these days, the lifeblood of any movie. It’s where “Searching,” sadly, comes up just short.

The bottom line is this: No matter how a movie’s story is presented, it needs to be a good story. Being visually dazzling or, in the case of “Searching,” innovative can cover up only so much. The story is what stays with moviegoers. And that will always be the case.

[adamwatchesmovies]

Searching (2018)

Searching grabs you and doesn’t let go. Its central mystery makes for so many possible suspects and developments by the time it's over you’ll be struggling to catch your breath.

When Margot (Michelle La) isn’t home after school one Friday afternoon, her father, David (John Cho) dismisses it at first. When he notices three late-night missed calls from her phone, he calls the police. Detective Rosemary Vick (Debra Messing) assures the concerned parent he can help by digging into his daughter’s personal life. He discovers that he may not have known her very well at all.

Told from the viewpoint of various laptops and mobile screens (in a fashion similar to the Unfriended films), Searching is compelling the whole way through. Like you, David is stuck on the sidelines, unable to directly participate in the search. Instead, he scratches together theories and info from Facebook messages, posts his daughter was tagged in, her friendslists, followers, and subscriptions. I once heard a critic say he hates seeing films that feature Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook, Facetime, etc. because they immediately date the story. I say when they’re used this well, they make a genre feel wholly new and topical. What do the people who only see you face-to-face know compared to those we bare our souls to over the web? You couldn’t have made “Searching” in the 80’s. There just wouldn’t have been any way to do what David does. The viewpoint makes you feel like an active participant as you follow one little detail after another to what you hope is an answer. Unfortunately, many lead towards dead ends but it’s never obvious that they do. At least three or four times, I had to restrain myself to stop from screaming “GUILTY!” at a character on-screen. It’s a good thing I did as ultimately, I was wrong every time.

Never relying on its gimmick, Searching features top-notch writing. Every revelation, whether legitimate or ultimately leading in the wrong direction fits tightly together. Every action is logical and even when David does something you wouldn't have… you understand why thanks to the ample character development he’s given via the way he types a message, hesitates and then deletes it, approaches the investigation or reacts to the shocking reveals by flipping over the many rocks of social media. John Cho, more often than not acting solo in front of the camera is remarkable.

By the time the end credits roll, you’ll be moping your forehead. Searching feels less like a movie and more like an escape room, where you’ve got a time limit, a bunch of clues to figure out, and a prize you want more than anything – a solution to what exactly happened to Margo – waiting for you at the end. (Theatrical version on the big screen, September 2, 2018)

[ericvick]

Updated Boston news: Sean Ellis On Telling His Story Of Wrongful Conviction In Netflix’s ‘Trial 4’

A new Netflix docu-sequence explores the situation of Sean Ellis, a Black man from Boston who spent 22 a long time in jail for a murder of a Boston police detective that he often preserved he did not do — and whose conviction was ultimately overturned in 2015 by a judge who dominated he experienced not acquired a reasonable demo. Ellis joined ‘Greater Boston’ to go over, together with his protection legal professional Rosemary Scapicchio and filmmaker Remy Burkel. resource

This content does not belong to Eric Vick. This written content belongs to UCx_SjDi4CS5ALkWCS9ffldQ.

[mrmichaelchadler]

30 Minutes on: "Searching"

"Searching" is one of the best films of 2018, and a major leap forward for both the thriller genre and the presence of Asian-Americans in movies. John Cho ("Star Trek," "Columbus") stars as David Kim, a father trying to locate his daughter Margot (Michelle La), who disappeared on a Friday night when she was supposed to be at piano practice. You've seen this kind of movie before, but it's the combination of cultural specificity and storytelling skill that sets it apart. (Note: There are going to be spoilers in this piece, so if you haven't already seen the movie, you should do so and finish this later.)

The totality of "Searching" is presented as if it were drawn from the contents of desktop computers and iPhones—juxtaposing, for instance, two sides of a FaceTime call with phone logs, satellite maps, open windows playing YouTube videos, etc. Other films have tried to tell a story this way ("Unfriended" is one example, though it's nowhere near as clever as this movie, or as knowledgable about the tech it shows us). But none have done as fine a job of integrating the emotional and narrative content of a story with all the visual and sonic bells and whistles, so that it all plays as a seamless whole and feels organic and true to how we live life at this specific moment.

Consider the prologue, which takes us through the death of David's wife and Margot's mother Pamela (Sara Sohn) from cancer. It's a little masterpiece of narrative compression that deserves favorable comparison with the opening of Pixar's "Up," not just because of its ability to elicit tears, but because it compresses a feature film's worth of emotional power into a few fleet minutes without making you feel as if the movie had rushed you through anything important. I can't think of another recent film that showed how our emotions are intertwined with the boringly ordinary digital tasks we perform all day, every day. Notice, for instance, how David moves videos that will have enormous nostalgic value later into specific folders to make them easier to find (which immediately communicate how important they are to him, and how important that will be to the movie). Also impressive is the way the film treats the simple act of scheduling events (like Pamela coming home from the hospital) as indicators of the family's fears and dreams, and devices for generating empathy as well as suspense (every time David moves the homecoming date, we can feel our stomachs tighten up a bit more, anticipating the worst). 

As directed by Aneesh Chaganty and cowritten by Chaganty and Sev Ohanian, "Searching" makes a statement about how life is lived now, and how movies are lagging behind in rarely depicting that life, all without seeming to make a statement. Everything shown in the movie is something we see everyday on a laptop or phone or iPad screen, but seeing it blown up to feature film dimensions (I recommend seeing this film in a theater if at all possible) puts the data in a new context, makes us appreciate textures we'd otherwise take for granted, and finds poetry and mystery in what we'd ordinarily think of as a technical limitation (as when Chaganty zooms or crops into a wide shot of people who are pictured from head to toe, and the fuzzy borders of their heads and bodies becomes painterly). It's analogous to the way David pores through all the available information he has in order to find clues and answers, only to keep running up against the limitations of what facts alone can tell him. This happens when your trying to solve a mystery involving someone you now. Sometimes you get a piece of data that feels relevant and useful, but there are still limits to what it can reveal.

I love the way the film alternates guiding the eye and letting you look where you want. A lot of the time when David is anxiously talking to the detective on the case, Rosemary Vick (Debra Messing), or his brother Peter (Joseph Lee), or to the various teenaged classmates and acquaintances who knew his daughter far less well than he thought, we have to decide where onscreen to look. The movie always takes care to guide you when it's crucial to see a particular thing at a particular moment, but a lot of the time you find yourself looking somewhere other than wherever David is looking; when he's having a video chat with Rosemary, you might be looking at a window full of folders and wondering if the answers that would crack the the case are contained in one that the hero hasn't dug through yet. There's also a subtle undercurrent of social satire in the images that minor characters post of themselves (like the shot of the bad boy Derek exhaling clouds of pot smoke) as well as the late sequence where characters who barely knew Margot and couldn't be bothered to get to know her during the darkest period of her life suddenly pretend that they were all her best friend and are devastated by her disappearance. (The bleakly comedic TBS series "Search Party" is also very good about satirizing the performative grief of social media users.)

Equally notable is the way "Searching" lets its main family be culturally specific without the movie becoming a meditation on what it means to be Korean-American, to the exclusion of all else. This is not to dismiss films that are specifically about that (there should be many more of them than there currently are), but to point out one of the unfortunate pitfalls of casting genre films with predominantly nonwhite casts: even if the movie isn't meant as a referendum on the state of a particular culture, ethnicity or race, it gets read that way by a predominately white American audience or critical establishment, often inappropriately. "Searching" hits a sweet spot between being a film with Korean-Americans in lead roles, and caring very deeply about them as Korean-Americans rather that presenting them as "raceless," while functioning as very effective thriller most of the time. 

Many plot elements, from the way that Margot and her mother bonded over piano to the way Peter calls up David for help with a "kimchi gumbo" recipe, will strike specific emotional notes for Korean and Korean-American viewers. But these are always adjacent to the main function of a scene, which is to flesh out the characters and drive the plot forward. Notice, for instance, how the piano stuff pays off at the end, with a revelation of why Margot stopped going to the lessons after her mother's death, and how the discussion of the kimchi recipe pays off what had originally seemed like a purely comedic beat: David disapprovingly noticing Peter's marijuana buds in a jar sitting in plain view on the counter. 

"Searching" is also a formally playful film that's constantly thinking about how to make all the media it shows us feel organic and not too fussed over, while also constantly trying to come up with ways to arrange the material that will make it more traditionally "cinematic." One of my favorite examples is the scene where David goes over to Peter's apartment to confront him, surreptitiously planting tiny cameras in three locations to record incriminating information. One of the angles lets us see David through the open front door of Peter's apartment, checking the feed of all three hidden cameras on a laptop in his car—a deep focus composition worthy of Orson Welles or John Frankenheimer. As the brothers move through various rooms, the director slides from one window to the next, tracking their motions in a way that's elegant and exciting, and that feels as he's "panning" through a single set with a film camera on a tripod, even though he's moving across boxes on a flat computer screen. When the brothers struggle, one of the cameras falls from its original position and lands on the floor pointing up. When David sits on a chair in that shot, the low, ominous angle is as close to a classic film noir shot as "Searching" has given us. It's wonderfully correct for that moment in the story, and delightful for how it manages to be extremely showy while acting as if that's just where the camera happened to fall. 

There are even moments where the movie captures the intellectual and emotional sensation of being online when you're stressed out. The movie watches the cursor move across the screen, pause over two option buttons, and then wait before deciding whether to stay online or log off, open this folder as opposed to that one, or zoom in on an image that we thought we'd already studied and absorbed. The many scenes of the film that follow along as David tries to gain access to important information by fishing through his late wife's accounts do double duty as plot exposition and character development, filling in pieces of the mystery of Margot's private life while showing us how disconnected David was from all that. (His wife obviously ran the domestic sphere.) 

It's rare to see a commercial film that's this suspenseful and emotionally involving but that also feels electrifyingly new. This one pulled me in from frame one and never let go, and delivered all the satisfactions I wanted from a mystery-suspense film while also giving me lots to think about, purely through its decision of how to tell the story. I have no idea how well this movie is going to hold up in twenty or even five years; given the rapid pace of technological change, it seems possible that at lot of the software and devices presented here will seem quaint. But it's still fun to see moviemakers treating everyday rituals that so many films ignore as being integral to its story, and thinking about how the most intimate aspects of life have become digitized and made virtual, and what that means for the species.

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[webseries99]

Searching

After his 16-year-old daughter goes missing, a desperate father breaks into her laptop to look for clues to find her. After David Kim (John Cho)’s 16-year-old daughter goes missing, a local investigation is opened and a detective is assigned to the case. But 37 hours later and without a single lead, David decides to search the one place no one has looked yet, where all secrets are kept today: his daughter’s laptop. In a hyper-modern thriller told via the technology devices we use every day to communicate, David must trace his daughter’s digital footprints before she disappears forever. Director Aneesh Chaganty’s laptop thriller follows the the everyday life of the family through home videos and video chat footage. Their seemingly idyllic family life is usurped when Margot (Michelle La) disappears mysteriously. Her father David (John Cho) enlists the help of a dedicated detective (Debra Messing), and they venture down an unnerving internet rabbit hole in a desperate effort to find her. In San Jose, California, David Kim looks through old photographs and videos of his daughter Margot and his late wife Pamela, who died from lymphoma nearly two years earlier, after which David and Margot became distant. One night, Margot goes to a friend’s house for her study-group. The next morning, David is unable to reach Margot but assumes she has risen early to go to school. Later, he calls Margot’s piano instructor, but is informed that Margot had canceled her lessons six months ago. David discovers that Margot had been pocketing the money for the lessons, before suddenly transferring $2,500 to a deleted Venmo account. Realizing that Margot is missing, David calls the police, and the case is assigned to Detective Rosemary Vick, who asks for information about Margot’s personality and friendships. David manages to access Margot’s Facebook and speaks to her contacts only to discover that Margot has not had close friends since Pamela’s death.

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[douxetsale]

"Research" (2018)

Film Technical Specifications

Direction: Aneesh Chaganty

Production: Timur Bekmambetov, Sev Ohanian, Natalie Qasabian & Adam Sidman

Written by Aneesh Chaganty & Sev Ohanian

Starring: John Cho (David Kim), Debra Messing (Det. Rosemary Vick)

Distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing

Release date: August 24, 2018 (United States)

Running time: 102 minutes

Country: United States

Language: English

My Review

"Research" is mostly a thriller based on an online/internet theme. The main idea of this movie is that basically everything can be done from a computer and/or a smartphone. From the beginning to the end of the movie, all the scenes are seen through a computer screen, by films and pieces of films and photos. 

The story revolves around the Kim family - David (dad), Pam (mom) and Margot (daughter) - most around David and Margot, after they discover Pam has a disease that kills her. Father and daughter have to figure out how life is without the mother figure, but the most interesting thing about this movie is that everything is done online: by messaging, facetime call, online call and things like that. It would be such a simple movie (since that budget wasn't too much and didn't need to), but the script was amazing. 

The thriller begins when Margot, the daughter, is given missing by David and he calls the police to report her daughter missing and a detective is addressed to take care of the case. David is always suspicious about everything, that's why, when the detective Rosemary Vick calls him to tells she was addressed to the case, he tries to find information about her online, Googling about her career and life. And that's how the whole movie goes. David doesn't know much about her daughter’s life anymore, but he knows how to find things online and to deal with technology. The things that capture the attention of the viewers is that David is always suspicious and always looking for things. Even though he never paid much attention to his daughter before, after the incident, he starts to pay attention at the small details in pictures, videos and even on usernames of friends that talk to her on social media. 

Props to Aneesh Chaganty and Sev Ohanian, that were able to develop a great script that makes you full concentrated on every scene and details. And, even though you paid attention to as most detail as you could, the plot twist at the end will still surprise you.

Personal score:

🎫🎫🎫🎫🎫🎫🎫🎫🎫

[519magazine]

We are always Searching! Movie Review: Searching

In the midst of perfection, we tend to lie to ourselves, believing that life will always be a smooth straight road. When heartache shows up, it can be a short-term visitor or a long-term tenant that fills your heart with a daily dose of grief. The movie “Searching” is an intense thriller that has the starting elements of predictability. John Cho plays the role of a workaholic yet grief-stricken father, David Kim, who is trying to deal with the passing of his wife and feeling overwhelmed with raising a teenage daughter, Margot on his own.  Of course, Margot (played by Michelle La) is lost in her own identity, as most 16-year-olds are, but puts on the facade that everything is just fine. As text messages start getting unanswered and no one knows the whereabouts of Margot, David decides to report his daughter missing, and with the help of detective Rosemary Vick, (played by Debra Messing – note she is unlike the beloved “Grace” from the nostalgic tv show Will & Grace!) that’s where the story really begins. As a parent, when your teen doesn’t return your text message after the third attempt, there is always a nagging feeling at the back of your mind that something is wrong. Sometimes you can brush it off and be reassured that they are probably out with friends or absently once again forgot to charge their phone. The last thing any parent wants to face is that their child is in danger, especially an abduction. The layers of the film get deeper as the time goes by. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the screen as the film just grabs you and you feel the emotional wounds that harbour the father. As soon as you piece together the puzzle, you will realize that your assumptions are wrong and you’re back to figuring out the mystery. Very well-paced and just terrific acting. I will add in that the movie did an impressive job on capturing the social media commentary that often occurs when breaking news stories like topics of kidnapping and abduction come into the public eye. A delicate battle of logic versus emotional appeal that is truly culturally-relevant. Overall, I would highly recommend checking this movie out. Sometimes when you are searching for answers, you only find half of what lies beneath the actual truth.  Read the full article

[thegloober]

30 Minutes on: “Searching”

by Matt Zoller Seitz

September 16, 2018   |  

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“Searching” is one of the best films of 2018, and a major leap forward for both the thriller genre and the presence of Asian-Americans in movies. John Cho (“Star Trek,” “Columbus“) stars as David Kim, a father trying to locate his daughter Margot (Michelle La), who disappeared on a Friday night when she was supposed to be at piano practice. You’ve seen this kind of movie before, but it’s the combination of cultural specificity and storytelling skill that sets it apart. (Note: There are going to be spoilers in this piece, so if you haven’t already seen the movie, you should do so and finish this later.)

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The totality of “Searching” is presented as if it were drawn from the contents of desktop computers and iPhones—juxtaposing, for instance, two sides of a FaceTime call with phone logs, satellite maps, open windows playing YouTube videos, etc. Other films have tried to tell a story this way (“Unfriended” is one example, though it’s nowhere near as clever as this movie, or as knowledgable about the tech it shows us). But none have done as fine a job of integrating the emotional and narrative content of a story with all the visual and sonic bells and whistles, so that it all plays as a seamless whole and feels organic and true to how we live now.

Consider the prologue, which takes us through the death of David’s wife and Margot’s mother Pamela (Sara Sohn) from cancer. It’s a little masterpiece of narrative compression that deserves favorable comparison with the opening of Pixar’s “Up,” not just because of its ability to elicit tears, but because it compresses a feature film’s worth of emotional power into a few fleet minutes without making you feel as if the movie had rushed you through anything important. I can’t think of another recent sequence that better shows how our emotions are intertwined with the boringly ordinary digital tasks we perform all day, every day. Notice, for instance, how David moves videos that will have enormous nostalgic value later into specific folders to make them easier to find (which immediately communicate how important they are to him, and how important that will be to the movie). Also impressive is the way the film treats the simple act of scheduling events (like Pamela coming home from the hospital) as indicators of the family’s fears and dreams, and devices for generating empathy as well as suspense (every time David moves the homecoming date, we can feel our stomachs tighten up a bit more, anticipating the worst). 

As directed by Aneesh Chaganty and cowritten by Chaganty and Sev Ohanian, “Searching” makes a statement about how life is lived, and how movies are lagging behind in rarely depicting that life, all without seeming to make a statement. Everything shown in the movie is something we see everyday on a laptop or phone or iPad screen, but seeing it blown up to feature film dimensions (I recommend seeing “Searching” in a theater if possible) puts the data in a new context, makes us appreciate textures we’d otherwise take for granted, and finds poetry and mystery in what we’d ordinarily think of as a technical limitations (when Chaganty zooms or crops into a wide shot of people who are pictured from head to toe, and the fuzzy borders of their heads and bodies becomes painterly). It’s analogous to the way David pores through all the available information he has in order to find clues and answers, only to keep running up against the limitations of what facts alone can tell him. This happens whenever you’re trying to solve a mystery involving someone you know. Sometimes you get a piece of data that feels relevant and useful, but there are still limits to what it can tell you.

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I love the way the movie alternates guiding the eye and letting you look where you want. A lot of the time when David is anxiously talking to the detective on the case, Rosemary Vick (Debra Messing), to his brother Peter (Joseph Lee), or to the various teenaged classmates and acquaintances who knew his daughter far less well than he thought, we have to decide where onscreen to look. The movie always takes care to guide you when it’s crucial to see a particular thing at a particular moment; but a lot of the time you find yourself looking somewhere other than wherever David is looking; when he’s having a video chat with Rosemary, you might be looking at a window full of folders, and wondering if the answers that would crack the the case are contained in one that the hero hasn’t dug through yet. There’s also a subtle undercurrent of social satire in the images that minor characters post of themselves (like the shot of the bad boy Derek exhaling clouds of pot smoke) as well as the late sequence where characters who barely knew Margot and couldn’t be bothered to get to know her during the darkest period of her life suddenly pretend that they were all her best friend and are devastated by her disappearance. (The bleakly comedic TBS series “Search Party” is also very good about satirizing the performative grief of social media users.)

Equally notable is the way “Searching” lets its main family be culturally specific without the movie becoming a meditation on what it means to be Korean-American, to the exclusion of all else. This is not to dismiss films that are specifically about that (there should be many more of them than there currently are), but to point out one of the unfortunate pitfalls of casting genre films with predominantly nonwhite casts: even if the movie isn’t meant as a referendum on the state of a particular culture, ethnicity or race, it gets read that way by a predominately white American audiences and critics, often inappropriately. “Searching” hits a sweet spot between being a film with Korean-Americans in lead roles and caring very deeply about them as Korean-Americans rather that presenting them as “raceless,” while functioning as very effective thriller from start to finish.

Many plot elements, from the way that Margot and her mother bonded over piano to the way Peter calls up David for help with a “kimchi gumbo” recipe, will strike specific emotional notes for Korean and Korean-American viewers. But these are always adjacent to the main function of a scene, which is to flesh out the characters and drive the plot forward. Notice, for instance, how the piano stuff pays off at the end, with a revelation of why Margot stopped going to the lessons after her mother’s death, and how the discussion of the kimchi recipe pays off what had originally seemed like a purely comedic beat: David disapprovingly noticing Peter’s marijuana buds in a jar sitting in plain view on the counter. 

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“Searching” is a formally playful film that’s constantly thinking about how to make all the media it shows us feel organic and not too fussed over, while also constantly trying to come up with ways to arrange the material that will make it more traditionally “cinematic.” One of my favorite examples is the scene where David goes over to Peter’s apartment to confront him, surreptitiously planting tiny cameras in three locations to record incriminating information. One of the angles lets us see David through the open front door of Peter’s apartment, checking the feed of all three hidden cameras on a laptop in his car—a deep focus composition worthy of Orson Welles or John Frankenheimer. As the brothers move through various rooms, the director slides from one window to the next, tracking their motions in a way that’s elegant and exciting, and that feels as he’s “panning” through a single set with a film camera on a tripod, even though he’s moving across boxes on a flat computer screen. When the brothers struggle, one of the cameras falls from its original position and lands on the floor pointing up. When David sits on a chair in that shot, the low, ominous angle is as close to a classic film noir image as “Searching” has given us. It’s wonderfully correct for that moment in the story, and delightful for how it manages to be extremely showy while acting as if that’s just where the camera happened to fall. 

There are even moments where the movie captures the intellectual and emotional sensation of being online when you’re stressed out. The movie watches the cursor move across the screen, pause over two option buttons, and then wait before deciding whether to stay online or log off, open this folder as opposed to that one, or zoom in on an image that we thought David had already studied and absorbed. The many scenes that follow along as David tries to gain access to important information by fishing through his late wife’s accounts do double duty as plot exposition and character development, filling in pieces of the mystery of Margot’s private life while showing us how disconnected David was from all of that. (His wife obviously ran the domestic sphere.) 

It’s rare to see a commercial film that’s this suspenseful and emotionally involving but that also feels electrifyingly new. This one pulled me in from frame one and never let go, and delivered all the satisfactions I wanted from a mystery-suspense film while also giving me lots to think about, purely through its decision of how to tell the story. I have no idea how well “Searching” is going to hold up in twenty or even five years; given the rapid pace of technological change, it seems possible that at lot of the software and devices presented here will seem quaint. But it’s still fun to see moviemakers treating everyday rituals that so many films ignore as being integral to its story, and thinking about how the most intimate aspects of life have become digitized and made virtual, and what that means for the species.

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[brotherhood-of-okay-reviews-blog]

Cayle's Movie Review: "Searching"

Searching follows David Kim (John Cho) as he struggles to maintain a relationship with his 16-year-old daughter Margot (Michelle La) after his wife’s death. After Margot fails to come home from a study group, he initiates a search for his daughter’s whereabouts with the help of Detective Rosemary Vick (Debra Messing).

What’s notable about this film is its concept is that it takes place from the perspective of multiple computer screens. Although Searching was produced by the same production company that made the Unfriended movies, I felt that the former had a better execution. This was evident in the first ten minutes of the movie as it shows the happy home life of the Kim family before the death of the mother.

Another great thing about this movie is its writing. The movie presents itself as a mystery from the point of view of Margot’s father as he tries to unravel the whereabouts of his daughter by tracing her Internet history right up to her disappearance. There are some interesting twists and turns throughout the duration of the movie.

While the Unfriended movies were cautionary tales disguised as horror movies, I felt that Searching had some interesting social commentary. During one scene of the movie, for example, a lot of Margot’s classmates were pretending to be her friend to get attention from the news outlets even they barely hung out with her in real life. I haven’t seen a movie make that kind of statement since 2009’s World’s Greatest Dad (and Gone Girl to a certain extent).

As for the cast, John Cho pretty much carries this movie. While he is better known as Harold from the Harold and Kumar movies, I felt this movie showed his real talents as an actor. However, Debra Messing manages to have the best performance of the entire movie.

My main problem with this movie is its uneven pacing at certain points of the movie. I felt this element dragged the movie down. I may be nitpicking here, but I had a problem with its third act. I won’t spoil the movie, but It has to do with the whereabouts of Margot Kim. I know I am supposed to suspend to my disbelief but for a movie that is grounded, this was slightly disappointing.

Overall, Searching is a film that manages to live up to its concept. If only we could do the same to Hardcore Henry.

SCORE: 9/10

[jillmckenzie1]

Through the Looking Glass

If you’re reading this, you’re online. It’s physically impossible to read what I’ve written without having some kind of device like a smartphone or laptop, electricity to power your expensive doodad, and an online connection. What does the online experience give us? The power of connection. You can check your college roommate’s status on Facebook, look at your boyfriend’s hiking video on Snapchat, or tweet mean things at the President and his Large Adult Sons.*

Are we really connected, though? By 1995, the internet became totally commercialized, and virtually all of us established some kind of online presence. I joined Facebook a bunch of years back. Nearly everyone I’m friends with is someone I legitimately care about and have or had some kind of relationship with in the real world. But the online world changes how I perceive those relationships.

Here’s an example. My buddy Crow died of an illness a couple years back. We weren’t particularly close, but he was a good guy with a laugh that could fill a room. In the aftermath of his death and memorial service, I saw comments from people I didn’t know talking about aspects of his life I was totally unfamiliar with. Did I really know him? I thought I did, but now I’m not so sure.**

The only thing I am sure of is that we have literally no idea how these enormous technological leaps forward are affecting our mental health, brain chemistry, and relationships. For better or for worse, this is how we live now. It only makes sense that films will comment on this curious lifestyle, and the new film Searching has much to say, and says it well.

Let’s get the gimmick out of the way now — the film is shot in the “Screenlife” style, in which the story is told from the perspective of screens, messages, and images on various computers. We’re introduced to the Kim family, and in an efficient montage that gives Up a run for its money, we meet David (John Cho), his wife Pamela (Sara Sohn), and their daughter Margot. We learn about the family’s dynamic, the love between them, Margot’s piano aptitude, and the lymphoma that eventually takes Pamela’s life.

Fast forward a few years and teenaged Margot (Michelle La) has a loving but distant relationship with David. Communication is a priority between these two, or at least it’s supposed to be. Margot heads off to a friend’s house to study. She doesn’t come home. David isn’t particularly worried. He probably should be, considering the unanswered phone calls and FaceTime video calls from her that we see on David’s screen as he sleeps.

Still, David is good about not jumping to conclusions, which we see with written and hastily deleted texts. He reaches out to his stoner brother Peter (Joseph Lee) for help, but gets no useful information. Margot’s friends aren’t much help either, and as David reaches out to more of them, he becomes more convinced that his daughter has a life that’s hidden from him.

As David learns more, his dread grows. He contacts the police, and sympathetic cop Detective Rosemary Vick (Debra Messing), launches her own investigation. From there, David and Margot’s private digital lives become alarmingly public. Commenters on message boards start accusing David of masterminding the disappearance, and he gets into a scuffle with an obnoxious high school student — which naturally shows up on YouTube.

I must admit, I wasn’t fully onboard for this one, based on the previews. Still, I figured John Cho deserved some love, and at a relatively brisk one hour and 42 minutes, I figured that worst-case scenario, my irritation would be brief. It’s so nice being wrong, because Searching is a very strong film with a gimmick that’s surprisingly well-executed.

Think of this film as a three-legged stool, and in order to be stable, all three legs need to be both strong and complementary. The first leg is director Aneesh Chaganty, in yet another case this year of a gifted filmmaker who’s blown minds with a strong debut feature. While sticking to his central Screenlife conceit, he still effectively uses old-school film language like zooms, pans, and time jumps in order to switch between iPhones, laptops, closed-circuit TV footage, social media, and far more. Chaganty has an innate understanding of pacing and tension, and as the characters learn more, he gradually cranks up the tension while keeping things grounded.

The second leg is the script written by Chaganty and Sev Ohanian. While other filmmakers would aim for cheap thrills, like the gimmicky Phone Booth, Chaganty and Ohanian never forget about characterization and genuine emotion. They don’t just focus on the search for Margot. They also focus on her hidden online life, and the hidden identity that she maintained. In the third act, the story does veer perilously close to what you’d expect with your standard cheesy thriller. Despite that, the story and the structure of the script worked quite a bit longer than I thought it would.

The third leg is a strong performance from John Cho as David. He’s in the vast majority of the film in either a close-up or medium shot, which means the emotion of his performance is always directly in front of us. To pull off something like that, you need a lead that can handle a vast range of emotions well, and Cho pulls it off admirably. This is the kind of acting that doesn’t get enough love, the performance of a normal person behaving in natural and relatable ways. Cho’s David reacts in much the same way most of us would in a situation like this. It’s appalling to me that Cho isn’t a gigantic star by now.

On the flip side? As Detective Vick, Debra Messing’s performance feels oddly flat. That surprised me, as Messing has been working steadily for years and turning in reliably solid performances. As Vick, the role needs someone who can take big emotions, compress them, and display them in quiet and subtle ways. I’m not sure what the problem was, but Messing isn’t getting it done here. I wonder what a Cate Blanchett or Fairuza Balk would have done with this role?

Searching does a number of things very well. It tells a story using a very new method of screen storytelling, and anchors the film with a clever script and an outstanding John Cho. If you’re looking for smart and creative entertainment that legitimately has something to say about how we’re living our lives, this movie is not to be missed.

  *Not that I would ever do such a thing.

**Facebook also has a delightful habit of reminding me about his birthday, and reminding me about various pets that have died. Thanks loads, Mark Zuckerberg!

from Blog https://ondenver.com/through-the-looking-glass/

[cineboricua]

Reseña: Searching

Searching: Una de las mejores películas de suspenso

Información: Género: Misterio y Suspenso Duración: 101 Min. Director: Aneesh Chaganty Guion: Aneesh Chaganty y Sev Ohanian

La nueva película de Sony Pictures “Searching” nos trae la historia después de que la hija de 16 años de David Kim desaparece y se abre una investigación local en la cual se asigna un detective al caso. Pero 37 horas más tarde y sin una sola pista, David decide buscar el único lugar que nadie ha buscado todavía, donde se guardan todos los secretos hoy en día: la computadora portátil de su hija.

Puedo decir que es una de las mejores películas de suspenso y misterio que he visto. A pesar de que el comienzo es un poco lento el mismo te hace sentir afecto por cada uno de los personajes. El guion esta bien estructurado y el uso de la tecnología como base principal del este fue genial. Cuando piensas que ya culmino la investigación aparecen más secretos ocultos y todo lo que pensabas saber no era cierto. La actuación de John Cho como David Kim y Debra Messing como la Detective Rosemary Vick son excelentes en todo el sentido de la palabra.

Searching es una de las mejores de este año sin duda alguna. Se las recomiendo al 100% y sin pensarlo dos veces. La película se esta exhibiendo ahora mismo en los cines de Caribbean Cinemas.

Estrellas: ★★★★ (4.5) - Daneishaliz Cintrón (Cine Boricua)

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[celebritywotnot]

Debra Messing Grabs a Coffee To Go Wearing Her Blue ACLU Ribbon🎗️

Debra Messing was spotted at the Sundance Film Festival wearing stripes and wearing an ACLU blue ribbon in support of the movement. The 49-year-old actress was in Park City, Utah promoting her new film Search (2018) where she plays Detective Rosemary Vick. Debra also decided to join the debate over the feud between Jane Fonda […] More

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