March 11, 2013

Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale (Te-sheng Wei, 2011)

Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale is an epic tale about the indigenous people of Taiwan before the encroachment of the Japanese.
March 11, 2013

Fists of The White Lotus (Lieh Lo, 1980)

After Executioners from Shaolin, Fists of the White Lotus confronts our heroes with Pai-Mei’s brother hell-bent on exacting revenge for Pai-Mei’s death.
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 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 […]
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 […]