Blog Archives

I Come with the Rain (2009)

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Posted on December 2, 2009 by Elizabeth Kerr

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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The Warrior and the Wolf (Lang Zai Ji) (2009)

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Posted on December 2, 2009 by Elizabeth Kerr

Wolves have a storied place in mythology and folklore ranging from reverence to revulsion. Wolves tend to be venerated in Native American cultures – but it’s just a tendency. Romulus and Remus were wolves and they founded Rome. We’ve all been warned to ‘beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing’, and we know how poor Red Riding Hood fared. And, uh, hello … werewolves? Based on a story by Akutagawa-winner Inoue Yasushi, The Warrior and the Wolf is a three-part meditation … (read more)

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Kanikosen (2009)

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Posted on December 2, 2009 by Elizabeth Kerr

Given the current socio-economic climate in Japan and the industry’s ability to push a film from conception to release much quicker than their Hollywood counterparts, it’s no shock to discover that proletarian writer Kobayashi Takiji’s pre-Second World War agitprop novel has gained some new traction. Kanikosen – literally The Crab Cannery Boat – is the best-known work by the writer who died in police custody, and the story’s fundamental anti-capitalist diatribe has an eerie relevancy that’s difficult not to empathise … (read more)

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This Charming Girl (2004)

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Posted on December 2, 2009 by James

Quite an assured debut that deservedly attracted plenty of attention for the director and star.

Kim Ji-soo received universal plaudits for her portrayal of a quiet postal worker dealing with the a pair of traumatic events in her past, one revealed early on (the death of her mother) and the other withheld until much later. The revelation of this second trauma is ultimately a letdown – unfortunately predictable given the intensity of the character study and the audacity of the … (read more)

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Still Walking (2008)

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Posted on December 2, 2009 by James

Koreeda must be among the gentlest of modern filmmakers and Still Walking the almost perfect inverse to the so-called extremism driving populist interest in Asian cinema.

Why gentle? Koreeda takes a melodramatic premise here (concerned with the devastation that a tragic death wrecks upon surviving family members and one person connected with the incident), pads his story with bitter males and eccentric females, fiddles with a basic array of conflicts (young vs old, husband vs wife, city vs country, life … (read more)

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Jump (Tiu Cheut Heui) (2009)

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Posted on December 2, 2009 by Elizabeth Kerr

Before continuing, I’ll admit bias here: I’m a sucker for dancing movies. Yes, they’re schmaltzy and formulaic, but they’re also fun. When Antonio Banderas finally shook his booty in Take the Lead … aah. It was one of those moments of fleeting euphoria that only comes at the movies. Cheesy? Hell, yeah! Bring it.

So it was with an open mind I sat down for the long-delayed Jump, the latest by budding schlockmeister Stephen Fung (Enter the Phoenix… (read more)

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Mobile Suit Gundam 00 (2008)

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Posted on November 21, 2009 by Deni

I’m yet to work out whether this is a good thing – on one hand, there’s a long, respected convention in art reflecting life; but on the other, if life is made superficial in order to be represented through art, is it really a good thing? Watching the opening episodes of Gundam 00, it’s not like you can miss the commentary on the state of the world after all, so it’s not like the show is shying away from … (read more)

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The Founding of a Republic (Jain Guo da Ye) (2009)

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Posted on October 18, 2009 by Deni

There’s always a level of alienation involved with being a non-Asian watching Asian cinema. I don’t mean to say being Asian automatically endows one with an in-depth knowledge of several thousand years of one’s own history any more than being a White European means you can, say, speak in detail about the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain in the migration period of 500AD. It’s just a fact; there are always going to be things that a person from one culture has … (read more)

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