Blog Archives

Motorway (2012)

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Car movies are hot right now. We’ve had more Fast and the Furious films than really ought to exist (believe it or not, the sixth is in production) and Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive won over last year’s Cannes audiences and critics; there’s an undeniable appeal to these stories, whether they’re about gangs of thrill-seeking speedsters or the archetypal getaway driver on a job gone wrong.

The latter in particular is a great fit for the Milkyway Image house style, actually. … (read more)

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I Come with the Rain (2009)

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Vietnamese-French director Tran Ahn Hung’s Cyclo and The Scent of Green Papaya were exercises in style over substance. Atmospheric almost to a fault, both made you forget that great films possess a strong story to support their images. Unsurprisingly his latest, I Come With the Rain, is more of the same. Tran loads up the garden-variety revenge/redemption tale with enough religious imagery to make the Pope proud, mixing it with an audience-baiting (some would say calculated) international cast and … (read more)

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Dragon Tiger Gate (2006)

‘BIF! KA-POW! CRASH!’

This is the comic book aesthetic viewed so fondly in retrospectives of those formative, younger years. Colourful garb and improbable science dominated those moments in the school yard in between those regularly scheduled beatings from the schoolyard bullies.

Such sentimental attachment brings a welling of emotion from within whenever there is a cinematic realisation of scenes previously locked in poses by the constraints of paper and ink — even in adaptations of source material that is otherwise … (read more)

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Jiang Hu (2004)

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There’s a certain amount of cynicism involved with walking into a film like Jiang Hu. There’s the niggling doubt in the back of your mind that, with the recent success of the Infernal Affairs films, Jiang Hu is a quick attempt to cash in on a fashionable trend. I mean you look at the cast and there’s the majority of the core cast of the Infernal Affairs films (which, OK, isn’t all THAT exciting for a very local industry) … (read more)

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