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- Godzilla Minus One (2023)
- Midnight (2021)
- Magnificent Warriors (1987)
- Odd Couple (1979)
- Three (2016)
- Dreadnaught (1981)
- Decision to Leave (2022)
- Once Upon a Time in China & America (1997)
- Bad Guy
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- A Korean Odyssey
- Special Delivery (2022)
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Godzilla Minus One (2023)
It’s been a big final month of 2023 for overseas fans of Asian cinema, with some all-stars bringing their game to cinemas. John Woo returns to American movies again with Silent Night. Hayao Miyazaki simply returns, with The Boy and the Heron. And with a name even more well known than those cinema legends, the kaiju king, the monarch of monsters, returns yet again. Godzilla is back.
For context, this reviewer dipped into the Godzilla back catalogue for … (read more)
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Bubble (2022)
Spoiler warning: this film gives away the ending of The Little Mermaid. Not the Disney film, but the rather different ending of the Hans Christian Andersen version of the story. The reason for said spoiling is because — among the heady cosmological concepts, post-apocalyptic parkour races, teenage anime angst and energetic music — the dramatic question at the heart of all this hullabaloo is how far Bubble will adhere to, or diverge from, The Little Mermaid’s fate as Andersen told … (read more)
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Mirai (2018)
This movie’s central character is not the title character. It’s a lad aged about four named Kun (Moka Kamishiraishi). While it is his journey and growth in maturity the film chiefly follows, his whole family also has to adapt and change and it’s all thanks to their newest member, baby Mirai.
The features from director Mamoru Hosoda and team have been consistently good and occasionally great, and with Mirai Studio Chizu has created a film both for all ages and … (read more)
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Blood of Wolves (2018)
You only have to do a little digging to come to the understanding that the origins and history of the yakuza aren’t necessarily written in stone. Sources conflict about how they began – as ronin or samurai family retainers, or special police formed to fight organised crime – but most sources can agree that regardless of where they started, their main characteristics involved crime, violence, and their own specific set of codes and rules.
Blood of Wolves maintains this essence … (read more)
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Shoplifters (2018)
Imagine, if you will, a movie where nothing much happens. Now, imagine being captivated by it. Now imagine going away feeling like you just witnessed some of the best, most wonderful cinema you’ve seen in a while. A long while. That feeling? That’s the Kore-eda effect.
Okay, fine, it’s not like Hirokazu Kore-eda is the only director who has the deftness and sensitivity to take the mundane and make it watchable without going over the edge into sentimentality and melodrama, … (read more)
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The Third Murder (2017)
You can call Hirokazu Kore-eda a lot of things: pretentious, navel-gazing, somnolent, repetitive, poetical and astute is just a handful. “Genre master” is most definitely not among them. Regardless of this minor hurdle, Kore-eda dips his toes into Lumet territory for his latest, The Third Murder. Even if you can conjure a marriage between Kore-eda’s signature deliberate, piercing, languid aesthetic and the conventional beats demanded of a murder mystery you wouldn’t be able to entirely capture the essence of … (read more)
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The Crimes That Bind (2018)
(Ed: some might consider the following review to have some small spoilers. If you’re worried about that, go and catch it at the Japanese Film Festival and then come back and read our review!)
The mundane routine of actual police work has never been something that takes front and centre stage on our screens. From the days of the gumshoe detective, to the Lethal Weapons, to Miami Vice and NYPDCSINCIS, being a detective and hunting killers is exciting, dangerous, … (read more)
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Your Name (2016)
Stunning skyscapes. The beauty in everyday things and moments. Close ups of mobile phones. The contrast between light and shade. Separation, longing, regret. Yep, it’s a Makoto Shinkai movie.
Your Name concerns the growing relationship between high schoolers Mitsuha (Mone Kamishiraishi), a girl from a lakeside township and Taki (Ryunosuke Kamiki), a boy from bustling Tokyo. The catch is, they have never met. Each has what they first believe is a dream, walking a mile in the other’s shoes — … (read more)
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