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.
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 […]
December 30, 2011

Underwater Love (Shinji Imaoka, 2011)

Underwater Love serves instead as an odd artistic work on sexuality, the film medium, and the way we’ve been conditioned to respond to it.
November 26, 2010

Sell Out! (Joon Han Yeo, 2008)

The only showing of the Singapore film, Sell Out, is, oddly enough, sold out. It’s my first Singaporean film, a musical sporting a peculiar premise, so I’m excited about it. A young Singaporean engineer, working for a multinational conglomerate, designs a terrific new product (a tofu processor) but discovers that his invention (and any kind of innovation) isn’t welcomed at […]
November 26, 2010

Brass Knuckle Boys (Kankuro Kudo, 2008)

Brass Knuckle Boys is a Japanese comedy about an old Japanese punk-rock music band from the ’70s and ’80s looking to extend their 15 minutes of fame.