June 9, 2013

Graceland (Ron Morales, 2012)

Graceland is a dark and dirty moral tale of desperation and revenge, denouncing corruption. Yet, it isn’t sophisticated enough to deal with the subject.
March 11, 2013

Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack (Takayuki Hirao, 2012)

Adapted from Junji Ito's manga, Gyo tells the story of a modern-day Japan attacked by poisonous fish with mechanical legs, converting the population into organic masses excreting putrid gas, as they make their way inland.
September 28, 2010

Flowers of Shanghaï (Hsiao-Hsien Hou, 1998)

Hou Hsiao Hsien’s depiction of life in Flowers of ShanghaÏ explores the inherent contradictions in the era’s Chinese society.
March 22, 2010

City of God (Fernando Meirelles, 2002)

A reviewer compared City of God to Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990) and many parallels could be made between the two. As they both fall into the genre of gangster films, they depict violence in a raw, uninhibited way, in a realist fashion. City of God, with its documentary-style aesthetic—camera shakes, voice-over narration, etc., uses that realism to emphasize its story’s […]
April 19, 2010

The Bourne Ultimatum (Paul Greengrass, 2007)

In the Bourne Ultimatum, Jason Bourne, a secret agent recovering from amnesia, decides to dismantle the spy agency responsible for his condition.