November 6, 2013
Ip Man: The Final Fight is centred around an ensemble cast of characters including Ip Man’s first students, so we get to see the evolution of Hong Kong in this period through their eyes.
November 28, 2010
Blades of Blood is a Korean wuxia, a sword-fighting martial arts film set in the 16th century, during the Japanese invasion.
December 16, 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 […]
October 17, 2013
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 […]
December 10, 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.