Michael Sun

It’s drizzling when an Aimee Mann song plays in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Broker. You know the one: ‘Wise Up’, the scabrous number that soundtracks a famous sequence in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia (1999), whose central cast – united by various machinations of fate – sing along in some kind of deranged processional, each character downcast and seeking salvation in Mann’s lyrics. None appears; the track literally ends with the words ‘give up’. ... (read more)