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.
December 5, 2010

The Housemaid (Ki-young Kim, 1960; Sang-soo Im, 2010)

The Housemaid (Ki-young Kim, 1960) is one of the oldest films known to have survived South Korea’s evolution from Third-World country to G20 powerhouse. The print shown at Fantasia this year was restored by Martin Scorsese’s World film Restoration Foundation in tandem with the South Korean government and follows The Housemaid (Sang-soo Im, 2010) remake’s stellar performance this year at […]
July 29, 2011

My Fantasia 2011: Selling out

A few weeks before the 2011 Fantasia Film Festival, the programmers released a tentative list of noteworthy films to be screened at the festival. Before then, I’m a little underwhelmed about the festival this year, enthralled in activities out and about in the city. Montreal in the summer is something to experience; it’s frustrating really, choosing between all the happenings […]
December 16, 2013

The Lady Assassin (Quang Dung Nguyen, 2013)

The Lady Assassin, a martial arts blockbuster, is my first Vietnamese film. A light Sunday night screening at this year’s Fantasia Festival, it was attended by a notable number of people from Montreal’s Vietnamese community. Billed as a Vietnamese wu xia, in the film, a princess sold in marriage is taken in by a team of high-flying, ass—kicking, thieving assassins […]
September 29, 2011

Ip Man: The Legend is Born (Herman Yau, 2010)

Unimpressed by Ip Man: The Legend is Born trailer, the film didn’t make it into my preliminary list of ten films for the Fantasia Festival therefore, mere hours before the showing, cutting it close to showtime, I quickly decide on a secondary list of ten films for the festival, bringing my total up to twenty films so far. Once I […]