April 20, 2010

Dream (Kim Ki-duk, 2008)

Kim Ki-duk has shown he's an art-house auteur to contend with. Here, he adopts an esoteric premise, developing it as a meditation on love and passion.
March 4, 2011

The Clone Returns Home (Kanji Nakajima, 2008)

Although the premise seems ripe for the movie becoming a welcome addition to the minimalist cerebral sci-fi genre, The Clone Returns Home disappoints.
December 10, 2010

Boys on the Run (Daisuke Muira, 2010)

In Boys on the Run, Tanishi, a toy representative, spends his evenings engaging in phone sex with strangers and masturbating to hard-core porn.
October 17, 2013

Shield of Straw (Takashi Miike, 2013) | Lesson of the Evil (Takashi Miike, 2012)

Shield of Straw My first film at Fantasia in 2013 was Takashi Miike’s Shield of Straw, one of the director’s contribution to the festival. Miike is a known workhorse, directing sometimes three films per year, in a myriad of genres and styles. Yet, there seems to be a connecting thread through his films, which feels harder to ascertain for me […]
September 21, 2011

The Unjust (Seung-wan Ryoo, 2010)

The most interesting feature of The Unjust is its main actor and star, Jeong-min Hwang. I discovered him in Private Detective (2009) at Fantasia.