When it received a banning from the British Board of Film Classification nearly a year ago, Grotesque effectively earned its fifteen minutes of fame. It took me half that long into the film to let out my first exasperated sigh. … Continue Reading
In the mid 2000s, with The Great Yokai War and Zebraman, director Takashi Miike was able to prove that he could handle material quite different in tone from films in his past. Neither of these films was perfect, but they did show that Miike could be as adept (and sometimes inept) with all-ages fantasy settings as with pulpy yakuza tales and transgressive fare that he had become to be known for. However, much like many of Miike’s earlier movies, The Great Yokai War and Zebraman both suffered from less than ideal budgets which summarily dulled the visual spectacle of their respective fantasy worlds.
What a difference a yen makes.
Horror documentaries are a curious animal. Considering horror is a genre that generally turns consistent profits, the fact it is also one of the few genres that is documented so often usually results in documentaries turning either into fan-service chest pounding (“Look at us! We’re really cool”) or pleading justification to the mainstream (“Look at us! We’re cool, really”). Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue, directed by long-time TV editor Andrew Monument, manages to be a little of both. … Continue Reading
Here in the United States, we kind of take hip hop for granted. Being that it was one of the musical genres that was created here in harsh environments when there was a dire need for voices to spring to action, we as a people tend to forget that sometimes. The boogie down Bronx, straight outta Compton, rural Saitama Prefecture… wait a second, the suburbs are harsh?
The cast of Battle League Horumo training for battle
Movies and video games, almost from the latter’s birth, have shared a conflicted history together. In fact with the increased use of computer graphics as special effects in movies (i.e. CGI) and the current debate over the ‘humanization’ of games via graphics and narrative, it seems that, from this point, the two may forever be intertwined. Forays of one of these two media into the other have typically met with disastrous results, the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie and the 1982 Atari 2600 game based on E.T. being two reviled examples. Outside of cross-licensing, the two media have also had a more subtle influence on each other: epic battle scenes from films such as Zack Snyder’s 2006 epic 300 have a distinct video game feel while James Cameron’s 1986 sci-fi action masterpiece Aliens has launched an army of virtual space marine protagonists into the video game world. With Battle League Horumo we have another such movie that has some distinct influence from video games, not taking any space creature, Italian plumber, or Persian warrior as its source of influence. Instead, the film’s story is influenced more closely by games such as Pokemon and Digimon in which players train monsters and pit them against each other. … Continue Reading
Bruce Leung and Li Haitao are badass. Seriously.
Gallants (2010), a Hong Kong martial arts film that presents itself as a comedy homage to the martial arts classics of the 60s and 70s, is your typical underdog film with a brassy sense of humor (think The Bad News Bears or Dodgeball). Shot with natural lighting and low-budget sensibilities, this movie feels like many of the American indy films of the mid-90s. Rather than take away from the film, the lack of budget is charming and grants Gallants a sense of candor that instills legitimacy in its memorable characters. … Continue Reading
Jackie Chan returns to where he never should have left.
Little Big Soldier is old school Jackie Chan returning to the screen to charm the memory of seeing The Tuxedo out of your mind. Former commercial director Ding Sheng (who also directed 2008′s Underdog Knight) brings a film 20 years in the making to the screen. Set during the waring states period Jackie Chan stars as an unnamed conscripted farmer in the Liang army who survives battles by playing dead (complete with fake blood and a prop arrow) who finds a wounded Wei General (a very charismatic Chinese-American pop heartthrob Wang Lee-hom) after a brutal battle between Liang and Wei that kills everyone except for this odd duo. What follows is a buddy comedy/road movie that reaffirmed my love of Jackie Chan. … Continue Reading
story of Lilly
Sophie’s Revenge (2009), directed by Yimeng Jin, is on its most basic level a romantic comedy. All of the general romantic comedy tropes are there: an awkward protagonist just out of a serious relationship, a newfound friendship that turns into a budding romance, and comedic play on the divide between intention and perception. It’s a movie built upon the bones of the tried-and-true Hollywood romantic comedy formula, but if Hollywood is the skeleton, Asian culture is the breath of life that makes Sophie’s Revenge worth seeing.
I am at a loss for words...
A romantic comedy filled with random boners, bestiality porn videos and man-child problems the likes we might know of but never dare talk out loud about, Boys on the Run does so with such a sneering visage that we’re never too sure which way the movie is going to turn to next. We have what appears to be a typical ‘boy has constant hard-on, boy meets girl, boy likes girl, boy gets girl, boy messes up relationship with girl, boy fights to get girl back, boy has other heel boy who wants girl as well, boy and heel boy have ultimate battle’ type of movie. Oh, did I say typical? I meant the complete opposite actually.
Simon Yam...looking badass.
For all of those who are pissed off about the upcoming feature film adaptation of ‘The Last Airbender’ not casting Asians in the roles of the main characters (myself included), fear not because there’s a film that has the action, adventure, elemental fighters, special effects and is grown up as well. The Pang Brothers’ ‘The Storm Warriors’ is a spiritual sequel/remake/retelling of a film that came out 12 years ago in Hong Kong that singlehandedly saved film making there called ‘The Storm Riders’. Based on a comic book and directed by ‘Infernal Affairs’ director Andrew Lau, it was the closest thing we could ever imagine to Chinese martial arts gods on screen with all their special powers in display.
Well, that is until ‘The Storm Warriors’ came out.
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