Blog Archives

Il Mare (2000)

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Posted on November 25, 2005 by Alison

Il Mare is the sort of soft, gentle romance that you should watch on a rainy day: it’ll pass the long melancholy hours easily, and make you feel warm and fuzzy instead of bored and grumpy.

It’s a rare example of the “time travel postal romance” genre, although don’t let that put you off. Although this sounds like a classic chick flick, and could be considered that way, I know many blokes who confess to enjoying this one enormously, and … (read more)

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Friend (2001)

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Posted on November 25, 2005 by Ching Yee

Greetings from the Sydney Asia Pacific Film Festival 2002! Although still in its infancy, this baby has a firm grasp on the rattle and is seriously rocking the joint! A few changes this year – a new venue [the Dendy Cinemas] showing Short Soup short films before the main feature and the tear-and-you’re-there rating cards are just some of the new additions to this year’s festival.

On the film front, Mark’s reports should have whetted your appetite, if not I’m … (read more)

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Bungee Jumping of Their Own (2001)

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Posted on November 25, 2005 by James

Featuring an inventive endless-love story that transgresses time and death in order to explore various individual resistances and social restrictions that affect gay relationships, this is either a successfully emotive queer movie with unusually straight overtones, or a somewhat fleeting and dissatisfying attempt to capture gestures and images of homosexual love, or both these coded types at once.

Maybe I’m a sucker for surface narration in this particular film, because the moments near the end struck a literal chord as … (read more)

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The Big Swindle (2004)

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Posted on November 25, 2005 by Alan

The Big Swindle certainly owes a lot to The Usual Suspects. I am not the first reviewer to recognise that and it is pretty darn obvious — there is a team of dangerous men, hints that not all is as it seems and much of the plot is revealed by its participants in flashbacks. And there is a real Keyser Soze moment around half-way through. Nuff said.

But the film also owes a good deal to the great heist … (read more)

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Bichunmoo (2000)

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Posted on November 25, 2005 by Alison

Bichunmoo is a sweeping, historical tragedy, with ferocious whirling swordplay and lavish scenery. The hawk-faced hero, with flowing hair and brooding eyes, grows up thinking he’s from a low-class family, but discovers he’s the son of a Korean noble. The heroine, exceptional in a land where all the women are lovely, is the daughter of a Mongol general, and betrothed to a Han noble.

The story of their love, and the forces that conspire against them, is compelling. There’s the … (read more)

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Bet on My Disco (2000)

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Posted on November 25, 2005 by Jonathan

Bet on My Disco is a movie of simple pleasures, but it doesn’t entirely do the film justice to reduce it to the (simple!) level of the plot summary above. There are plenty of laughs in Disco, but it’s not an out-and-out comedy; instead, director Kim Dong-Won has made a film that is, bizarrely, almost as much a realist drama as it is a dance pic.

Lee Jung-jin (as our hero, Hae-juk) mixes a broad — and very physical … (read more)

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Ardour (2001)

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Posted on November 25, 2005 by Alison

Ardour is a steamy tale of love, betrayal, sex, more love, and more betrayal. From Korea, this film tells the tale of a happily-married woman who is confronted by her husband’s young mistress, who gives her a right cosh on the head. The couple retire to a small town, the husband all contrite, the wife prone to constant pain from the healing wound.

There she meets a local doctor, who suggests they embark on a physical affair in which neither … (read more)

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3-Iron (2004)

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Posted on November 25, 2005 by Russell

While 2004 seemed an obvious indicator that the artistic output of Kim Ki-Duk was gathering momentum, it cannot be claimed that he is moving in a straight line. It is well-known that The Coast Guard was rushed into production (apparently because of the film-maker’s own restlessness and perhaps a desire to meet the 2002 Pusan International Film Festival’s opening night deadline) when weather conditions forced a rescheduling of the shoot of Spring summer, Autumn, Winter …and Spring. So anyone … (read more)

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