Kazuya Shiraishi’s Dare to Stop Us is something of a biopic on late Japanese filmmaker Koji Wakamatsu, who, with films such as The Embryo Hunts in Secret and Go, Go, Second Time Virgin in the late 1960s, and Ecstasy of the Angels, in 1972, combined…
Ma opens with patient dolly shots gliding over a green canopy and through the lush foliage of a forest, eventually coming to rest on the center-framed image of a young boy working at something unseen. The camera cuts to show his concentrated efforts at…
Twenty years ago, police inspectors Tam (Patrick Tam) and Fong (Jade Leung), along with a squad of elite Hong Kong police special forces, are involved in a violent shootout with gun-runners in Macao. Fast forward to present day. Tam and Fong are returning to…
Defying categorization in nearly every conceivable sense, Japanese director Sabu’s Mr. Long may initially suggest itself as an actioner, if one were to look at its poster or read descriptions of its premise. Long (Chang Chen), a silent assassin for the Taiwanese mob, fails a…
The 18th annual New York Asian Film Festival ended on Sunday, and we’ve prepared one dispatch from the festival this year, with some notable titles: the fest’s opening selection, Candyman director Bernard Rose’s Samurai Marathon; the latest from Tibetan filmmaker Pema Tseden, Jinpa; a comeback of sorts…
Shockingly similar to both Les Intouchables and its Americanized remake The Upside, Oliver Siu Kuen Chan’s Still Human is an empathetic social-realist drama with a welcome sense of humor. It is also numbingly familiar, rife with cliches, and it contains one of the worst…
There’s something to be said for good, old fashioned stories, told simply and told well. Furie isn’t breaking any molds; it covers well trod ground, the tale of a mother going after her missing child (outside of a tournament set up maybe, one of the…
