An Evening of Short Films from Asian American Filmmakers

Bong Joon Ho’s quirky sci-fi comedy, based on Edward Ashton’s novel Mickey7 (2022), showcases a star ensemble and lavish production design. The film follows the exceptional journey of Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattison), naive and malleable, who volunteers to become an “Expendable” stuck in a loop of permanent death and rebirth, a clone designed to help fulfill an ambitious project led by an evil politician and his wife, Kenneth and Ylfa (Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette). Stunning art direction and crisp cinematography elevate an intriguing story marked by Bong’s signature artistry—masterful execution of continuous tonal shifts and genre bending—as he underscores the sociopolitical issues often found in his work.

Director David Fincher’s 2007 thriller excavates a notorious series of real unsolved murders that petrified the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1960s. Jake Gyllenhaal portrays Robert Graysmith, a cartoonist whose amateur investigation into the serial killer, known only as Zodiac, complements the efforts of SFPD inspector Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and San Francisco Chronicle reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.).

Fincher’s dense narrative offers various interpretations of the crimes and Zodiac’s identity, avoiding the cliché channelings typical of crime thrillers. An original poster from the film is on view in the current exhibition Director’s Inspiration: Bong Joon Ho.

The intricate family dynamics of Shakespeare’s King Lear are transposed to 16th-century Japan—a century of social unrest and near-continuous civil wars—in this late-career masterpiece from the 75-year-old filmmaker. After more than a decade of meticulous planning, including gorgeous storyboards painted by the filmmaker himself, Kurosawa’s sweeping psychological epic was made possible due to the financial support of the same adventurous financier who backed Spanish-Mexican filmmaker Luis Buñuel’s final five films. At the time the most expensive movie ever made in Japan, Ran also marks the director’s first and only Best Directing nomination at the Oscars; costume designer Emi Wada won for Best Costume Design; Yoshio Muraki and Shinobu Muraki were nominated for Art Direction; and Takao Saito, Masaharu Ueda, and Asakazu Nakai were nominated for Cinematography.