REVIEWS
In the place where life, death, and everything in between coexist, Resident Playbook (2025) takes us back to the Yulje Hospital universe in the form of young blood.
With enough driving force to keep you latched onto every medical malady, though, you’d assume The Pitt is another stock series full of shock value cases and genius treatment plans. Instead, The Pitt is a jarringly intimate look at the inside of a Pittsburgh trauma center that is understaffed and underfunded—with all the ideological weight these settings and circumstances must bear.
Noémie Merlant’s The Balconettes is a femme-powered comedy/thriller/drama that met some of my hopes and expectations, fell short of others, and surpassed my imagination, leaving me in awe at times and horror in others.
Directed by Courtney Stevens and co-written by Stevens and star Callie Hernandez, Invention fascinatingly blurs the line between documentary, surrealism, and melodrama. Hernandez plays “Carrie” Hernandez, a semi-fictionalized version of herself in a semi-fictionalized portrayal of her emotional journey after the passing of her estranged father.
INTERVIEWS
In today’s ever-regressing landscape, Andrew Ahn’s 2025 multi-layered reimagining of The Wedding Banquet is sure to become a fruitful place for vivid responses and discourse. At a roundtable discussion alongside other vibrant AAPI journalists, 0613focus had the opportunity to hear directly from the cast of The Wedding Banquet prior to its official theatrical release on the experiences and themes embedded within their performances.
We spoke to director, writer, and stop-motion artist Lucy Davidson about her experiences watching her film come to fruition, the value of comedy in emotional storytelling, and the influence of personal preferences on creating and developing artistic styles.
A Lien (2023) is a 15-minute short film directed by brothers Sam and David Cutler-Kreutz, highlighting the burdensome process of obtaining U.S. citizenship. We spoke with Filmmaker David Cutler-Kreutz about the complexities in the U.S. immigration system, challenges during production, and the future plans of the filmmaking duo.
Carmen Emmi’s feature-film debut, Plainclothes, follows Lucas (Tom Blyth), a talented young police officer in the 1990s who works undercover to entrap and arrest gay men. The complication? Lucas is secretly gay himself, and his carefully concealed world begins to unravel when he falls in love with one of his targets.
ESSAYS
“Not just a green flag, but a whole green forest” became a popular phrase throughout the Asian drama fandom space in 2023, alluding to the likeable personality of the characters in the Chinese drama Hidden Love (2023). Of course, my curiosity was piqued and I had to see why everyone was watching this show. During my first watch of Hidden Love, I had no idea that its sequel, The First Frost (2025), was in the making, or that I’d love that sequel so much that I’d rush straight back into a rewatch.
Oh Ae-sun is a regular girl with hopes and dreams, but her story is emotional and profound. Through her, the series empathizes with women’s stories and puts them to the forefront, spotlighting earnest messages on our struggles, relationships, and joys.
Beyond its technical merits, many of which remain competitive almost a century later, Gone with the Wind falls flat as a romance film. The four-hour runtime dilutes the main storyline of Scarlett and Rhett's love with unnecessary scenes.
One of the most intriguing things about Min Yoongi’s discography has always been his thorough exploration of different concepts of identity. Both his songs as SUGA of BTS and his robust solo career as Agust D are full of reflections that hit with a gut-punching earnestness. And out of all of his forays into the topic, the 2023 Agust D D-Day concert tour was the most revelatory into his views on art and its relation to the self.