Departures (2008, Takita Yôjirô)
Departures suffers for its DV photography. Suffers. Hamada Takeshi cannot figure out how to light for the video and, as a result, the film never looks good. Maybe if director Takita were somehow taking...
View ArticleMiss Hokusai (2015, Hara Keiichi)
Miss Hokusai is the story of real person Katsushika Ōi. Well, stories of real person Katsushika Ōi. The anime is an episodic memoir mostly about Ōi (voiced by Anne Watanabe) and her younger sister,...
View ArticleEscape from Mogadishu (2021, Ryoo Seung-wan)
Escape from Mogadishu is almost incalculably problematic. I can't do the math, and I'm sure there's a bunch I don't even see, but it's a doozy. It's a South Korean "inspired by a true story" about the...
View ArticleSeobok (2021, Lee Yong-ju)
The first act of Seobok is an espionage thriller (or the first act of one), the second act is a buddy action road picture, the third act is a Sturm und Drang superhero movie. Well, superhuman movie, at...
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The Desert of the Tartars (1976, Valerio Zurlini)
The Desert of the Tartars is a warless war epic. Set at a remote desert fort, a young officer (Jacques Perrin) discovers army life isn’t what he was expecting. The film opens with Perrin leaving home,...
View ArticleSpiritwalker (2020, Yoon Jae-geun)
I was expecting Spiritwalker’s MacGuffin to disappoint, but I wasn’t expecting it to completely derail the film. Spiritwalker is a high-concept action thriller about an amnesiac, Yoon Kye-sang, who...
View ArticleTangerines (2013, Zaza Urushadze)
Tangerines has such a profoundly straightforward plot and limited cast I expected it to be a stage adaptation. It’s not; writer and director Urushadze just knows how to perturb character development...
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El Topo (1970, Alejandro Jodorowsky)
El Topo means “The Mole.” There’s some opening text explaining it, but it’s not until the film's second half where the title really makes sense. There are some earlier nods—the nameless protagonist...
View ArticleThe Witch: Part 2. The Other One (2022, Park Hoon-jung)
The Witch: Part 2. The Other One starts with a flashback to the very late nineties or very early aughts—someone’s still got a cassette walkman, but MP3 players do exist. Now, The Other One is a sequel,...
View ArticlePersona (1966, Ingmar Bergman)
Persona begins with a series of unrelated, sometimes startling, sometimes disturbing images. It’s leader on the film reel, and it establishes the film’s narrative distance. We’re not just removed from...
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Trafic (1971, Jacques Tati)
For the first hour, Trafic has a lot of gems. The film opens with a car manufacturing plant with a lot of nice, precise composition and editing, and director Tati maintains an interest in the goings-on...
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Parade (1974, Jacques Tati)
Parade somehow loses the plot after intermission. Given the plot is just a night at the circus, usually showcasing director Tati’s pantomiming, it shouldn’t be possible to lose such a thing. But Parade...
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The Swordsman (2020, Choi Jae-hoon)
Many years ago, Val Kilmer talked about how the original Tombstone director got replaced and one of that guy’s crimes was making the actors wear accurate textiles, which doesn’t matter on film. You can...
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The Famous Sword Bijomaru (1945, Mizoguchi Kenji)
The Famous Sword Bijomaru is a tragedy. Well, at its best, it’s a tragedy. The film—which runs sixty-five minutes and has zero subplots, very few close-ups, and no establishing shots or sequences—opens...
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Hard Boiled (1992, John Woo)
The first act of Hard Boiled is fantastic. Between Woo’s glossy, smooth jazz but with bite tone and Chow Yun-Fat’s glorious lead performance; it’s all like butter. There’s a big, intricate shootout...
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Space Sweepers (2021, Jo Sung-hee)
Space Sweepers is a special effects spectacular. Director Jo keeps up the pace during the CGI space battles, but always takes the time to be excited at how the scene plays. The film’s set in a...
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The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972, Luis Buñuel)
Buñuel arranges The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie as a series of vignettes. Occasionally there will be a surreal bridging device—the cast walking in search of a meal on a highway in the...
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Deliver Us from Evil (2020, Hong Won-Chan)
The evil in Deliver Us from Evil is specifically Lee Jung-jae’s sadistic villain but generally the entire world of the film, which features drug kingpins, child kidnapping, government assassins turned...
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Hansan: Rising Dragon (2022, Kim Han-min)
About half of Hansan is a naval battle. The second half. The first half is a combination history lesson, period espionage and turgid war thriller, and naval warfare theory symposium. The film’s about...
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Emergency Declaration (2021, Han Jae-rim)
Emergency Declaration is a disaster movie made like a horror movie. It’s not just any disaster movie, either; it’s Airport meets Airplane but with bioterrorism. The bioterrorism doesn’t have to do with...
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Throne of Blood (1957, Kurosawa Akira)
Co-producer, co-writer, director, and editor Kurosawa loves himself some Macbeth. Throne of Blood is Macbeth in feudal Japan, with Mifune Toshiro and Yamada Isuzu as the doomed couple. Kurosawa and his...
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Project Wolf Hunting (2022, Kim Hong-sun)
Watching Project Wolf Hunting (sadly not a Good Will Hunting reference), I kept wondering if the human body holds as much blood as the film suggests. It’s violent to the extremis, with every mutilated...
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I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK (2006, Park Chan-wook)
I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK gets some points for not wrapping things up with a neat little bow, but they do little to offset the film’s more significant issues. Cyborg’s got a lead performance problem...
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Amélie (2001, Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
I’m hesitant to call Amélie whimsical, though it’s the closest adjective. The film’s kind of a French New Wave-inspired fairy tale, except instead of being about magic magic, it’s about the magic of...
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Death Smiles on a Murderer (1973, Joe D’Amato)
Until Death Smiles on a Murderer gets so inane it’s exasperating, at least the music (by Berto Pisano) isn’t terrible, and the editing (Piera Bruni and Gianfranco Simoncelli) is excellent. I don’t...
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Chaw (2009, Shin Jeong-won)
Chaw tells the familiar tale of a man-eating wild boar and the brave villagers who confront it. The boar’s descended from the mutant boors the Japanese created when they invaded Korea. These...
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Gangnam Zombie (2023, Lee Soo-sung)
For a micro-budget horror movie, Gangnam Zombie isn’t unsuccessful, but it also isn’t much of a success. The setting is decent—locked in a trendy office building on Christmas Eve, except Zombie doesn’t...
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Good Bye, Lenin! (2003, Wolfgang Becker)
Somewhere near the end of the second act, Good Bye Lenin! starts having some narration problems. At first they seem like a little bit too lazy writing or, given Lenin has five screenwriters, a too many...
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The Childe (2023, Park Hoon-jung)
For the first half or so, The Childe ostensibly has three lead characters. The protagonist is Kang Tae-ju; he’s a half-Korean, half-Filipino illegitimate son of a Korean rich guy. Life has sucked,...
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Dr. Cheon and the Lost Talisman (2023, Kim Seong-sik)
Until the third act, when it suddenly becomes clear the film never really had anywhere to go (at least not in this installment), Dr. Cheon is mostly delightful. Even the listless ending isn’t not...
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The Moon (2023, Kim Yong-hwa)
The Moon runs about two hours, but it’s got enough story for eight. About the only way to tell all the story it’s got overflowing would be a miniseries remake. And even then, you could probably toss on...
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One-Percent Warrior (2023, Yamaguchi Yudai)
The One-Percent in One-Percent Warrior’s title does not refer to the super-rich, but rather when someone transcends in their film-related martial arts excellence. The majority of the film is just a...
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