Killers (2014)

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Posted on June 18, 2014 by Justin

Indonesian/Japanese co-production Killers screened at the 2014 Sydney Film Festival in the Freak Me Out program, which is exactly the right place for it. Programmer Richard Kuipers said in his intro for the screening that their intention for Freak Me Out is to show films that sit at the extreme ends of genre cinema, from horror spectaculars heaving with gristle and gore to the weirder side of arthouse. He suggested that Killers could be a worthy entry on both fronts, … (read more)

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Overheard 3 (2014)

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Posted on June 9, 2014 by Justin

By way of full disclosure: When Overheard 3 arrived in Australian cinemas and distributor Magnum Films were kind enough to send me a ticket for review, I was worried. I hadn’t seen the first two films, and this is generally a recipe for incomprehensibility as far as the third is concerned. I saw the first installment on iTunes as prep, and then discovered that I needn’t have worried: writer/director duo Alan Mak and Felix Chong have crafted a series of … (read more)

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Dancing in the Room (2013)

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Posted on June 7, 2014 by Justin

This year’s Sydney Film Festival has a track devoted to new films from China across a wide swathe of budgets, genres and styles, and Chinese director Peng Lei’s oddball portrait of the educated urban twenty-something, Dancing in the Room, just might be the cutest of them. It certainly looks to be the only one to include anything quite this adorable:

Huabian (played by Jiang Yuchen) is a young woman who moves to Beijing after completing her studies in search … (read more)

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JFF Encore, July

Posted on June 4, 2014 by Deni

Sydney-siders, rejoice. And also, blow raspberries at the rest of us. Just for you, the Japanese Film Festival is opening the curtains on an encore performance from July 9-13 and the line-up is nothing short of amazing.… (read more)

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This week in cinemas: ‘Overheard 3’ (Hong Kong)

Posted on May 28, 2014 by Justin

Arriving tomorrow May 29 in Aussie cinemas we have the latest installment in this series from writer/director duo Alan Mak and Felix Chong (the team behind the Infernal Affairs trilogy, and more recently The Lost Bladesman and The Silent War.)

Overheard 3 stars the series’ usual trio of HK A-listers Lau Ching-wan, Louis Koo and Daniel Wu, plus Zhou Xin and a supporting cast of familiar Hong Kong faces. As with the previous film, it’s a very loose sequel: … (read more)

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Asian Cinema at the Sydney Film Festival 2014

Posted on May 14, 2014 by Justin

The full program for this year’s Sydney Film Festival has been announced, and as usual there are plenty of morsels available for fans of Asian cinema.

This year in particular there are a couple In Competition (including Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer, in the director’s reputedly hard-won original cut), a program of modern Chinese films, a special presentation of a couple of Studio Ghibli anime classics, and a restored print of Indian auteur Satyajit Ray’s classic Charulata.

All up, there’s … (read more)

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This week in cinemas: ‘Aberdeen’ (Hong Kong)

Posted on May 5, 2014 by Justin

In Australian cinemas this week is a bit of a change of pace from Hong Kong director Edmond Pang Ho-cheung, after 2012’s adult-film industry comedy Vulgaria. His newest film Aberdeen is a quieter family “dramedy” — I still find it hard to type that particular term — focusing on the ups and downs of a typical Hong Kong family.

It’s got a killer cast of HK veterans, starting with Louis Koo, Eric Tsang, Miriam Yeung, Gigi Leung, Ng Man-tat … (read more)

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This week in cinemas: ‘Iceman’ (3D, China/Hong Kong)

Posted on April 27, 2014 by Justin

Donnie Yen aficionados will be happy to find that their latest fix is arriving in Australian cinemas next Thursday, May 1st. Iceman is a remake of minor HK classic The Iceman Cometh (which starred Yuen Biao and Yuen Wah and had some really, really impressive stunt work).

Donnie stars as a Ming Dynasty soldier, frozen in the ice only to be revived in the present day, along with his equally-skilled evil foe (Wang Baoqiang, recently in Personal Tailor). The … (read more)

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