International: Asia
Ji.hlava 2024 Interview: Tsai Ming-liang on Hand-Sculpted Cinema, Breaking the Industry Norms and New Films
The Taiwanese master of slow cinema discuses VR works, the intersection of theatre, performance art and cinema, and upcoming works.
GHOST CAT ANZU Review: Jaws Will Drop
To the sounds of cicadas during a Tokyo summer, 11-year-old Karin and her father Tetsuya leave the city by train to visit a countryside temple where the caretaker is the grandfather she has never met. It is a grand old...
ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT Review: A Major Work of Contemporary Indian Cinema
Payal Kapadia's soul-stirring docudrama, A Night of Knowing Nothing, delicately weaved together India's national politics, student protest movement, cinema, and its nostalgia in 2021. Her follow-up narrative film, All We Imagine as Light, proves that she is one of the...
OVERLORD: THE SACRED KINGDOM Review: High Fantasy, Invasion and War
Directed by Naoyuki Itō and animated by Madhouse, Overlord: The Sacred Kingdom is a continuation of season four of Overlord, the anime. The actual plot of the film has almost nothing to do with the series. You can watch it...
THE TROPHY BRIDE Review: Crazy Rich and Poor Asians
Uyen An stars in a broad comedy, directed by Vu Ngoc Dang, a box office hit in its native Vietnam.
100 YARDS Review: Martial Arts Masterpiece
Jacky Heung and Andy On star, Xu Haofeng directs.
Now Streaming: Horror in November Includes CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS, BLACK CAB, RITA, and More Terror
Horror fans, don't be blue! Just because the Halloween season concluded yesterday, there are still plenty of frightening flicks that await your discovery and/or revisitation. Our favorite horror-focused streamer, Shudder, announced their slate for the Fall and Holiday seasons last...
Lausanne 2024 Review: MAKAMISA: PHANTASM OF REVENGE Confronts the Ghosts of Colonial Power through Subversive Silent Cinema
Filipino provocateur Khavn de la Cruz reimagines colonial-era Philippines through a fractured cinematic lens, blending experimental visuals with silent cinema aesthetics to unravel a surreal and haunting exploration of history, violence, and national trauma.
Lausanne 2024 Interview: MAKAMISA: PHANTASM OF REVENGE Director Khavn de la Cruz on Punk-Surrealism and Total Cinema
In the interview with Screen Anarchy, Khavn de la Cruz—a boundary-pushing Filipino filmmaker known for his avant-garde approach—opens up about his latest cinematic venture, Makamisa: Phantasm of Revenge. Screened at the Lausanne Underground Film Festival, whre the film won the...
DEMON POND 4K Review: Kabuki Is Better With Fish People
Masahiro Shinoda's 1979 folk-horror apocalypse enters the Criterion Collection.
Busan 2024 Review: THE KILLERS, Lee Myung-se Masterminds Gleefully Cinematic Hemingway and Noir-Inspired Anthology
Some 17 years ago, viewers were both maddened and mesmerized by the tactile fever dream that was M, a cornucopia of sound and motion that is, for the moment, Lee Myung-se's last feature-length testament to the cinema medium he so...
Montreal Nouveau 2024 Review: SCHIRKOA: IN LIES WE TRUST, Anonymous Dystopia to Queer Utopia
Authoritarian dystopian futures, as imagined by writers, artists, and filmmakers, often have familiar tropes, usually about the neutralization of individuality, the importance of conformity, and how it eventually becomes impossible to keep the brightness and individuality of the human spirit...
Hawaii 2024 Review: Hard Justice in BALOTA
It seems like election conflicts are the norm right now, or perhaps it’s always been this way, and we just notice it more in the age of constant social media and news. Kip Oebanda’s (Abandoned, Liway) latest film, Balota, addresses...
Hawaii 2024 Review: Kurosawa's CLOUD Baffles
I saw Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s (Pulse, Cure) latest film, Cloud, at the 44th annual Hawaii International Film Festival, and man, am I perplexed. I love Pulse (Kairo) and I wanted to love Cloud, but I can’t even figure out what the...
Making Waves Montreal 2024: Mini Hong Kong Fest Features ROB N ROLL And ALL SHALL BE WELL
A weekend of Hong Kong cinema is coming soon to Montreal, during the weekend of October 24th through 26th, at Making Waves Montreal. Presented by the Hong Kong International Film Festival Society, in collaboration with Chicago Asian Pop-Up Cinema, sponsored...
BAD GENIUS Review: How to Win Fake Friends and Influence Wrong People
Since we live in a time when every single film ever produced should be remade at least once, it’s fair to expect a new reimagining of some intellectual property come out every other few week or so. Some of those,...
Hawaii 2024 Review: SISTER MIDNIGHT Has a Punk Rock Flavor
Sister Midnight from Karan Kandhari (Bye Bye Miss Goodnight) is a hard film to review and classify, but I’m going to try after seeing the film at the 44th annual Hawaii International Film Festival. Funded in part by the British...
Friday One Sheet: MICKEY 17
Who needs credit blocks anymore? The new poster for Bong Joon Ho's science fiction cloning comedy Mickey 17 sees Robert Pattinson framed in ochre and rust. The numbers 1 through 16 are cleverly hiding in plain sight, anchored by the...
Hawaii 2024 Review: DEAD TALENTS SOCIETY Is a Ghostly Good Time
Having played TIFF and Fantastic Fest, Dead Talents Society is the latest from director John Hsu, and I’ve just seen his rad Taiwanese ghost horror comedy at Hawaii International Film Festival. Hsu’s last feature was the great 2019 period horror...
