Film Review: Black Mirror Series Seven (Part 2/3)

This next episode, the rather pretentiously titled Bête Noire, deals with gaslighting. Tech? Well, there's plenty. Maybe even too much.

The Premise

Maria starts to question her reality when ex-schoolmate, Verity, joins her company Ditta (which had a brief mention in the previous episode; fun fact!). She soon finds out that reality is being manipulated with the intention of driving her to suicide.

The Characters

Sienna Kelley is Maria Skinner. She delivers one hell of a portrayal of an argumentative control freak who always needs to be right, the not-so-reformed bully who instinctively reverts to form once the conditions present themselves. It's sometimes subtle, but Kelley pulls it off. It helps that the argumentative control freak personality is absolutely a thing, and I know more than a few people like that.

Rosy McEwen is Verity Greene. It's also a compelling performance from her, perhaps even more so considering the rather unbelievable premise. She's a victim of bullying who finds near limitless power but decides to spend it tormenting her former bullies. I find this thoroughly unrelatable because in her shoes, I'd be busy exploring so many possibilities and cementing my position. Despite this, McEwen manages to elicit sympathy.

Ben Baily Smith as Gabe, the boss. I found his portrayal as a laid-back hill boss, utterly watchable. Gabe bikes to work and comes off as chummy and sensitive, and tries to be reasonable and tolerant. Which can be tough if you have a pushy mofo like Maria as a subordinate. Just saying!

Michael Workéyè plays Kae, Maria's boyfriend. He's nice and goofy, and really quite the emotionally available guy. Another guy who tries to be reasonable with Maria and puts up with her bullshit. I'm starting to see a pattern!

Ben Ashenden as Nick, from the Graphics department. Comes across as enthusiastically friendly where Verity's concerned. Perhaps even over-friendly. Later on, he pushes Maria's buttons in very annoying ways. Overall, a rather immature character, but the actor looked like he had fun.

Elena Sanz as Camille, focus group tester. She reminded me a little of Gemma from M3GAN. Thought she'd have a bigger role here, but it was not to be.

Hannah Griffiths as Luisa. There's this running gag where people constantly steal her almond milk from the fridge. It druves her nuts, and ties into the story.

Amber Grappy as Yudy, the kitchen head. She always has this confused look. I don't know if that's by design.

Ravi Aujla has a brief appearance as Ditta. Good-looking distinguished silver fox guy. Not really interesting otherwise.

The Mood

The episode is bright and colorful, and the closeup visuals of chocolate and confections sure add to the artistry. Later on, this does not change, though the mood takes a turn for the sinister, which somehow gets worse considering everything is so visually... cheerful. In effect, the entire episode looks very polished visually.

What I liked

The storyline concept was pretty creative, even if it strained credulity at times. The themes of bullying, gaslighting and arrested development are pretty relevant and dare I say, timeless.

I like the visuals where they tell us what day of the week it is. It's just so artistic.

The actual gaslighting was pretty good! It started off subtle, with this foreshadowing shot that it was Barney's rather than Bernies... also, there are apparently two versions of this episode being aired, with this as a gag!

... to something like this, removing nut allergies from existence! And using Google to reinforce it, is just too precious!

What I didn't

Of all the titles they could've gone with that would have actually made sense, "Bête Noire" doesn't exactly stand out as a solid choice.

Unlikeable characters. Both the protagonist and the antagonist are anything but likeable, and that's even before the reveal at the end that Maria was Verity's bully. Maria is pushy and argumentative. Verity comes off as a tragic victim of bullying who's unable to move past the trauma and as such is in a state of arrested development. No main character comes even close to being sympathetic here.

Unbelievable tech. I mean... something as limitless as the tech that Verity is using, basically runs on what looks like a mini server farm? I suppose it's marginally more believable than that little "quamputer" we saw in Joan Is Awful.

The scene where Verity alters reality so that Maria has always spoken "Chinese". Honestly, if she's "always spoken Chinese", she should speak it a lot better than the garbage gibberish that came out of Maria's mouth. Badly-spoken Mandarin has always been a pet peeve of mine in Hollywood. Couldn't they have used Japanese, or Korean? Something arguably less easy to get wrong? Geez!

The year I finally achieved that JLPT certification

Some say "better late than never". I got a huge dose of that this year as I obtained my Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) N5 Certificate.

Why was this overdue? Well, you see, because I actually began on this journey at the tender age of 15. I was a Polytechnic student at the time, and this was a supplementary module. At first, things went well. Having received education in Chinese, learning the basic sounds of Japanese was a breeze. Learning the Hiragana and Katakana writing systems wasn't much of a stretch as well; in fact it was significantly easier than reading and writing Chinese characters. Until we got to Kanji, which essentially was Chinese characters.

Ugh, more Chinese.

At which point I lost all interest.

Also, at this time, I had begun an obsession with writing code, and building stuff. Japanese was a pretty language, but it just didn't fit into my world the same way C++, SQL or even QBasic, did.

And the rest, as they say, is history. Even after graduation, not only did I neglect whatever little Japanese I had learned, the next few decades were a disastrous collection of bad career choices, even worse lifestyle choices, and sobering life lessons.

COVID-19 and Clubhouse

Fast-forward to 2021. COVID-19 had the world in its loathsome grip and I, like many others, sought human interaction online. That was when I discovered the Clubhouse app. Through it, I encountered numerous communities, not all of which spoke English, Mandarin, or even Cantonese.

A few of these were Japanese speakers. And some were even offering Japanese lessons. I dove right in, relearning all the basics I had forgotten. Many times, I would simply listen in, try to make sense of the conversation, and Google words that came up. Then I started engaging, hesitantly, in the conversations. I even participated in Mandarin-Japanese exchanges!

Little cultural exchanges.

It was slow going. I wrote an app to facilitate relearning Hiragana and Katakana. I practiced writing every day, religiously. But there was this feeling that I could do more.

That was when someone suggested that I take the JLPT. And from that day forth, I took things up a notch.

Training in earnest

My next step was to install Duolingo on my phone. For the next few years, I faithfully partook of the exercises daily. At the same time, I went onto YouTube to search for JLPT Listening exercises. I didn't really have a sense of how far I had progressed; I just knew I needed to keep going. I've never been brilliant; but what I am good at is being consistent.

One year later, I downloaded the Migii app, and paid the subscription fees for accessing sample JLPT exam questions. With Duolingo, the returns were diminishing. I needed to train a different set of linguistic muscles - the kind used for passing the exam. Duolingo had brought me to a certain point where I could read the Japanese exam questions without too much difficulty... now I had to practice answering them.

The next milestone was hit another year later when, while watching a Japanese TV show, with English subtitles, I noticed something odd. Almost constantly, the subtitles would read "It's OK". Even though "It's OK" was a perfectly reasonable thing to say in the context of the current point of the story, it was a pretty poor translation.

Phrase	Literal Meaning	English Translation
daijobu	It's OK.	"It's OK."
dou itashimashite	You're welcome.	"It's OK."
shinpai suna	Don't worry.	"It's OK."
anshin shite	Relax.	"It's OK."
ki ni shinai de	Pay it no mind.	"It's OK."

At this point, I found myself thinking - wow, these translators are so goddamn lazy! They just use "It's OK" for everything!

And my next thought was - hey, if I know this much, shouldn't I be taking the JLPT already?!

The JLPT Test Voucher

That was when I registered for the JLPT on the Japanese Cultural Society of Singapore website. and paid a hundred Singapore dollars for the privilege. A month later, the JLPT test voucher arrived in the mail. The train was in motion; there was no going back.

Meanwhile, I continued training religiously. With Listening practice, especially. Online chatter had it that the recordings would be played only once, so I trained myself similarly, by not rewinding and replaying.

The JLPT N5 Exam

It was July when the day arrived. I head for the Singapore Management Institute where the exam was held, and stood in line with what looked like mostly Burmese folks. Interesting.

The invigilator who took charge of the exam room I had been assigned to, seemed to be Japanese going by the way she spoke English.

Shading answers with a pencil.

The proceedings were charmingly old-school. We were given question and answer sheets. It was all multiple-choice, and the correct answer had to be shaded with a pencil for feeding into a scanning machine. Despite my numerous certificates, I hadn't done this since... 2015? This was because my last couple certifications were earned from doing the coursework and presentations, rather than standardized tests.

The toughest moment in the exam came from the Choukai, which was the Listening portion. Despite my best efforts, my concentration slipped at various points. It was with considerable relief that I handed in my question and answer sheets, and headed off.

In August, I logged on to the JLPT portal to check my results. I had passed, and my results were more than decent. I actually scored higher on Listening than other sections!

The real value of all this

Last September, I got my actual physical certification through the mail. It was a foregone conclusion by that time, but I still felt that little thrill of pride. Job well done, bro, I told my reflection. Not such a big deal in the larger picture, but we've got to celebrate our wins even if they're small. Especially if said win took thirty-three friggin' years to achieve.

My results.

The JLPT N5 Certification isn't going to change my life. As far as professional cred goes, it's barely a blip. Achieving the JLPT N5 Certification probably puts me on par with the average Japanese toddler where the language is concerned. As for the value of understanding multiple languages? That's not much of a flex. This is Southeast Asia; just about everyone and their dog is multilingual.

No; at my age, the act of learning is arguably more important than what's being learned. It helps stave off dementia.

The real value is knowing and affirming, that with sufficient motivation and putting in the time and effort, I can learn pretty much whatever I choose to learn. And that is powerful stuff. In an age where things are constantly and rapidly evolving, the ability to learn shit has become vital - not just in the tech industry, but for life itself.

In hindsight, I should have realized this. How did I learn ASP? PHP? Ruby? VueJS? D3? All by picking up a book, watching videos, visiting websites, and constant practice. Most of the time, it really is that simple. The methods vary, but at the end of the day, it's about the willingness to put in the hours.

The linguistic journey continues!

I do want to see if I can achieve the next rung, the JLPT N4 Certification. Again, I'm not really sure why. Just for the hell of it, I guess. It's not like I plan to visit Japan. It's not like I realistically have anything to prove to anyone.

On the other hand, Korean does seem pretty interesting.

Decisions, decisions...

Ganbarimashoo!
T___T

Film Review: Target

Just two weeks prior, I had the utmost pleasure of watching South Korea's tech crime thriller, Target. Now, I say "tech crime thriller", but in all honesty, there's a healthy number of horror elements in the movie. 

Target is a gripping tale of an online commercial transaction gone wrong. Security is compromised, privacy is invaded, and threats to life are carried out as things escalate. This film is actually based on a number of real-life police cases, and hits uncomfortably close to home if you're a frequent user of second-hand online dealing apps.

Warning - blood, violence and spoilers!

Not neccessarily in that particular order.

The Premise

Soo-Hyun buys a second-hand washing machine online through an app, and finds herself the victim of a fraudulent purchase. Outraged, she tracks down the cheat and engages in a war of words, after which she begins to experience breaches of her privacy at the hands of the cheat, now turned online stalker. As threats to her life and safety ramp up, the police get involved and this cumulates in a brutal showdown.

The Characters

Shin Hye-Sun plays the role of protagonist Jang Soo-Hyun, your run-of-the-mill office worker. I can't say enough good things about her performance. Her character was believable and sympathetic, not distractingly beautiful and conveyed a compelling combination of both spunk and fragility. Shin portrayed the increasing paranoia and the psychological breakdown of her character like a pro.

Im Sung-jae as the unnamed killer. With his bulky frame and murderous glare, he cuts a chilling figure when we, the audience, finally see his face.

Kim Sung-Kyun plays experienced and short-fused Detective Joo with jaded weariness. It's a character whose gruff exterior hides an empathetic core, and Kim really sinks his teeth into it. It's nice to see one of the male leads in a Korean movie that doesn't have to be prettier than the actresses to keep you invested in the outcome.

Kang Tae-Oh as Detective Na. Earnest, sympathetic and enthusiastic, Kang did a pretty good job portraying a competent but less experienced detective trying his best.

Lee Joo-young as Soo-Hyun's buddy Oh Dal-Ja. I liked her in the role, but I'm not sure it was all that necessary. She just didn't have that much to do. She was pretty funny, though!

Lim Chul-Soo as Soo-Hyun's boss. Goofy wannabe Romeo to Soo-Hyun, who's a lot less charming than he probably thinks he is, Lim had the thankless task of trying to play a rather unlikeable character who did not have much to offer the plot except act as a red herring and later get killed off.

Geum Sae-Rok has a small but significant role as one of the killer's former victims, showing the audience that Soo-Hyun isn't overreacting. Geum's fear was almost palpable through the screen.

The Mood

The movie begins somewhat light-heartedly, with colorful screencaps superimposed over the footage to show what users are buying and selling. There's a little bit of comedy thrown in here and there, but the first clue you get that this isn't a rom-com, is when the first victim gets murdered.

As things develop and Soo-Hyun starts getting stalked, it starts getting increasingly creepy. Disquieting doesn't even begin to describe it.

Car chase scenes and brutal fistfights, though, round things out with plenty of tension in the final quarter of the movie.

What I liked

No one does movie violence like the Koreans. No one! The shaky cam car chases, the visceral feel of life-or-death fisticuffs, the sound of knifeblades entering flesh. If it's violence you seek, you can't go wrong with Korean.

The acting in there was top-notch. By my abysmally low standards, anyway. I gasped, I cringed. I cheered. Emotionally, this movie had me by the balls.

The fact that this movie deals with the dangers of online commerce, and its realistic take on police protection, is a huge plus.

Those guys that the killers send over to pester Joo-Hyun are suitably creepy. It did feel corny at first, but the execution was sublime. From the telltale bleep of Joo-Hyun's door being opened by a total stranger who thinks he's there to answer a booty call... the premise doesn't sound scary when I say it, but it's really something you'd need to watch for yourself.

I really love all the detective work thrown in by Joo-Hyun and, well, the detectives.

What I didn't

Why did the killer attack Detective Joo first instead of just running off? That made no goddamn sense.

The killer was just a tad too Terminator-like in his sheer determination to fuck everyone up. Like, how much punishment should a man take before he finally just fucking dies? That ruined believability for me.

And why wasn't the trap better laid? Why did it had to come down to a fight to the death? Seriously, this felt sloppy AF.

Conclusion

For all its flaws, and believe me, there are plenty, Target is one helluva ride from start to finish. It's a cautionary tale of trusting online strangers with your money and information, and the many ways systems like these can be abused. And then this is taken up several notches. You don't have to be a techie to enjoy this one - if you just like a good old serial killer movie, this does just fine.

My Rating

8 / 10

Are you sold on this movie yet?
T____T