Shackled (Belenggu)
Upi’s first foray into psychological horror sticks to a well-trodden path, but has enough twists and turns to keep viewers interested.
Review by Richard Badley
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Drug War
Johnnie To has crafted something bleak yet compelling, and proves he can do mainstream crime tales just as well as edgier ones.
Review by Richard Badley
Sparrow
Sparrow is all about lightness of touch and easy charm.
Review by Richard Badley
The Detective
Oxide Pang takes on a more adult, complex genre in this downbeat tale of a lonely gumshoe on the trail of a missing girl through the sweaty streets of Bangkok’s Chinatown.
Review by Richard Badley
Brother
Kitano’s first and only (to date) film shot outside Japan, Brother is an intriguing attempt at transporting his hard-boiled yakuza persona into an American setting.
Review by Richard Badley
Phobia
A quartet of ghost stories from Thailand that vary in stylistic tricks and genre clichés, Phobia is a mixed bag.
Review by Richard Badley
Vengeance
Vengeance marks a return to what To does best - stripped down gangster stories with a hard-boiled edge and slickly executed stand-offs.
Review by Richard Badley
SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO
The basic plot is Sergio Leone’s Fistful of Dollars (1964), Miike making a point of reclaiming Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961) for Japan: a lone nameless Gunman (Hideaki Ito) drifts into town in the middle of a war between two clans.
Review by Richard Badley
THE PRESIDENT’S LAST BANG
‘When the film was distributed in Korea it caused massive controversy, similar to the effects of a bomb within the Korean community. It was because the central figure in this movie was untouchable’, said writer/director Im Sang-soo.
Review by Richard Badley
LOVE AND HONOUR
Following The Twilight Samurai (2002) and The Hidden Blade (2004), director Yôji Yamada has capped his masterful samurai trilogy with another rich and involving study of day-to-day life in feudal Japan.
Review by Richard Badley