Blog Archives

Arrietty, the most recent release from Studio Ghibli, is released in cinemas nation-wide on the 12th of Jan, 2012.

Recently, Studio Ghibli seems to have turned to more non-Japanese inspiration for their particular and delightful brand of animated features – Howl’s Moving Castle was based on books by British author Diana Wynne Jones and Tales from Earthsea was of course drawn from the series by American author Ursula Le Guin. In both cases, Ghibli saw in these stories something that … (read more)

A little while ago I reviewed Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team for this very site. In that review, I expressed my concern that jumping into the Gundam franchise in the wrong way was likely to drive someone into a Lovecraftian madness.
Continue reading →

You get what you pay for and in cinematic terms the currency, as everyone should know, is genre. If you go to see a big budget action movie, you should probably expect a big budget action movie and all that entails, and you really shouldn’t complain if you get it. In my opinion, it’s important to be clear on this concept; that way you don’t end up sitting behind me in the cinema making annoying pseudo-intellectual comments about a) the … (read more)

Leave it to Japanese auteur Iwai Shunji to find a way around the ongoing moony-eyed romantic vampire craze as it’s defined by Twilight. Simply titled Vampire, the vampirism of Iwai’s English-language debut exists in its own world as it were, one that’s rooted in reality more than the fantasy tropes of stakes through the heart, aversion to garlic and turning into the undead if bitten — and of course sparkling! Vampire hinges on a 28-year-old high school biology … (read more)

13 Assassins begins with a man committing seppuku. He preformed this act to bring attention to Lord Naritsugu a somewhat vile and sadistic man. This will not be the only bloody death before this tale ends. Continue reading →

The tagline for this one is “Blades, Bikinis, and a Fistful of Zombies”, and I can tell you that these guys believe in truth in advertising. True, there’s only one bikini, worn rather fetchingly under a poncho and hat à la Clint Eastwood, although the bikini-wearer doesn’t have the grimy toughness of Clint, and I have no intention of imagining Clint in a bikini.

There are also only two blades – one wielded by Bikini Girl, and one wielded by … (read more)

What sort of Asian film geek could resist a title like Alien Vs Ninja? It would take a better geek than me.

The story is a simple one: a group of ninjas get sent out to investigate a fireball that falls near their village, only to be attacked by a tremendously fast and brutal alien that’s unfazed by their weapons. One by one they fall victim to the beast, eventually killing it only to discover that oops, there’s another … (read more)

The Chasing World was a surprise. I was expecting something more predictable, a day-glo world of gory creature effects and shouting, perhaps something like Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl. What I got was an efficiently-constructed, fun little film which runs somewhat like a mashup of modern Doctor Who, Fukasaku’s Battle Royale and that nightmare where you’re somewhere familiar, running from hundreds of identical masked assailants, and you don’t know why. You know the one.

Our lead character … (read more)