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Chained To My Bully Stepbrother (AI Vertical BL Drama)

By Golu
This is the second vertical AI BL drama I've sat through, and honestly I went in knowing better. I had it on while I was doing cardio at the gym, and what struck me was just how much the plot echoed the last one I watched. Same step brother romance angle, same mystery girlfriend showing up near the end, same extra guy pining after one of the leads. Genuinely the only thing going for it was the runtime, the whole thing wrapped up in forty five minutes flat.  The setup kicks off with Finn moving schools because his mom just married into money. He finds out his new step brother Aiden goes to the same place, and he's warned to keep his distance from him. Their first run in at school is rocky, just like you'd expect, but there's this odd pull between them neither can shake off. Finn keeps telling himself not to read into it because Aiden's straight and openly homophobic. Things shift when some kids start bullying Finn and the student council president, Ryan, steps in to ...
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Somewhere I Have Never Traveled (Mandarin)

By Golu
Somewhere I Have Never Travelled is a deceptive little film. As a slice of life in rural Taiwan it promises many things overly familiar to anyone who's seen more than a handful of films from the country over the past five years or so. It is wrong to classify this film under gay themed, since it is just that one of the 2 characters happens to be gay and is dealing with it. There is nothing much more than that to this.

Ah-Guei is a fifteen-year-old girl who comes from a family of misfits -- her father is intellectually challenged and cleans streets for a living, while her grandfather is a neighborhood character known for his short temper. While Ah-Guei seems like a happy and well-adjusted girl on the surface, she was born color-blind and cannot see red or green, a seemingly minor disability but one that sets her apart from her classmates. Ah-Guei's most trusted confidante is her twenty-year-old cousin Ah-Xian, who dreams of traveling the world and owns a large collection of maps and books on exotic locales. But Ah-Xian has his own secret -- he's gay, and has never been able to find another man with whom he can have a happy relationship. Ah-Guei and Ah-Xian both share a dream of going away to a place where they won't seem like outsiders, but while Ah-Xian's desire is to move to New York City, Ah-Guei imagines a fantasy world where the colors she cannot see do not exist.

The performances although decent, fail to lift the movie to a different height. There are moments in the film which are empty, pointless. They are visually enchanting but really do not add much to the film. I bet there ar abetter Taiwanese films. The movie’s more comedic sections are fun and, even if slightly contrived, work well in the film's context. I am not too sure what was the intention of the director behind this film.

Lack of any real reason to keep watching means it can't really be recommended. (4/10)
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