MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
Film round-up: August 1, 2024
Adolescent boyhood, castaway, a Japanese masterpiece, and the limitless power of imagination: the Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Didi, Kensuke’s Kingdom, My Neighbour Totoro, and Harold and the Purple Crayon
Didi; Harold and the Purple Crayon; My Neighbour Totoro
[IMDb] 
New releases from Christina Alden and Alex Patterson, Odette Michell, Clementine Lovell
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
RON JACOBS welcomes a timely homage to one of the IWW and CPUSA’s most effective orators
Didi (15)
Directed by Sean Wang
★★★★
SET in 2008 during the last month of summer this hilarious yet raw and biting coming-of age tale captures the irreverence and vulnerability of adolescent boyhood as it follows the life of a 13-year-old Taiwanese-American youngster.
Loosely inspired by his own teenage years and shot in his hometown of Fremont, writer-director Sean Wang’s impressive debut feature is charming and moving.
It portrays the spikey sibling relationship to a tee as Chris (Izaac Wang), “Didi” to his mother, bickers and fights bitterly with his older sister Vivian (Shirley Chen) who finds him extremely annoying, and is fed up with how he steals her hoodies and T-shirts.
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