International: Asia
EXTRANEOUS MATTER Trailer: From VISITORS' Kenichi Ugana, on VOD This Tuesday
One day, a strange thing comes to a woman who is suffering from being in a sexless relationship with her boyfriend.
Berlinale 2024 Review: A TRAVELER'S NEEDS, Hong Sangsoo's Minimalist Odyssey of Connection and Wonder
Hong Sangsoo and Isabelle Huppert reunite to explore themes of existential wanderlust and the complexity of human connections.
SXSW 2024 Review: MONKEY MAN, Dev Patel Is Your New Action Obsession. Get Excited
After sitting in the can for nearly four years, Dev Patel’s directorial debut, Monkey Man, was presented to a rapturous audience at SXSW last night. The film declaring loudly what the man himself was too humble to acknowledge; Dev Patel...
First Look 2024 at Museum of the Moving Image: Preview
The First Look Festival returns to the Museum of the Moving Image this month offering audiences opportunities to see exciting new films of all kinds from all over the world. There are films just out of Sundance, like Haley Elizabeth...
EXHUMA Review: Digs Up Ghoulish Thrills in Spades
In the smash hit Exhuma, four people dig a hole. Things don't turn out well - digging up corpses can do that - so they keep digging themselves in deeper. Unsurprisingly, things go from bad to worse. A rich Korean...
SXSW 2024 Preview: Genre Film Fans, Get Excited About This Dazzling Dozen
It must be spring, because in just a couple of days thousands of tastemakers will descend upon Austin, Texas, for the SXSW Film & TV Festival. Providing a home for everything from big budget Hollywood premieres like The Fall Guy...
Crowdfund This! Takeuchi Tetsuro & Guitar Wolf Want To Make WILD ZERO 2!
There is perhaps no band on Earth that more completely embodies the rock 'n' roll spirit than Japan's Guitar Wolf. The most powerful of power trios has been kicking ass around the world for decades, but for film fans, their...
Rotterdam 2024 Review: 13 BOMBS Brings Fire And Noise
The International Film Festival Rotterdam is know for its slant towards new talent, often featuring low-budget arthouse cinema from all over the world. But the festival sometimes also shows the big-budget blockbusters from countries of which the output almost never...
Rotterdam 2024 Review: LA LUNA, Naughty In The Nicest Way
This year, the International Film Festival Rotterdam started with the fairly inoffensive comedy-drama Head South (reviewed here), and it closed with an equally inoffensive film: M. Raihan Halim's Singaporean small-town comedy La Luna. In it, we see the daily life...
BABY ASSASSINS 2: Watch The New Trailer For Hit Japanese Slacker Action Comedy. Coming Soon from Well Go USA And HI-YAH!
After being suspended from their agency due to a rules violation, two highly skilled teenage assassins are forced to get "real" jobs to make ends meet. But while the elite duo is forbidden from executing targets or enemies under any circumstances, two aspiring rival hitmen decide to eliminate the competition while they're vulnerable--leading to a lightning-fast showdown between trained killers.
FilmSharks Signs Deals For NINE QUEENS 4K, BOOGEYMAN: THE ORIGIN OF THE MYTH, And THE RESTLESS WATERS, SHIVERING LIGHTS
With a couple more days left in this year's EFM our friends at FilmSharks have let us know about more deals they've secured in their time there. Two titles we've spoken about in recent months the other is the return...
THE HEROIC TRIO / EXECUTIONERS 4K Review: Hong Kong Action Symphony in Two Movements
Maggie Cheung, Anita Mui and Michelle Yeoh star; Johnnie To and Ching Siu-tung direct. Now in 4K from the Criterion Collection.
HOUSE OF NINJAS Review: Shinobi Stealth Success
Kento Kaku, Yosuke Eguchi, Tae Kimura, Kengo Kora, Aju Makita, and Nobuko Miyamoto star in Dave Boyle's Japanese-language action series.
Criterion in May 2024: Ousmane Sembène, ANATOMY OF A FALL, GIRLFIGHT, Ozu Goes Blu, PEEPING TOM in 4K
The Criterion Collection follows an auteur-based diet of cinema, offering a wondrous variety of films from all over the world to sate your appetite. Case in point, consider what May 2024 will bring from the home video label. (All verbiage...
COBWEB Exclusive Clip: Kim Jee-woon's "Genre-Defying Drama" Out Now
In the 1970s, Director Kim is obsessed by the desire to re-shoot the ending of his completed film Cobweb, but chaos and turmoil grip the set with interference from the censorship authorities, and the complaints of actors and producers who can't understand the re-written ending. Will Kim be able to find a way through this chaos to fulfill his artistic ambitions and complete his masterpiece?
Rotterdam 2024 Review: BLUE GIANT Hits All Notes
The Japanese anime director Tachikawa Yuzuru isn't quite a household name yet, despite having directed the stylish Death Parade series and the totally (and tonally) bonkers series Mob Psycho 100. But his film adaptation of Ishizuka Shinichi's famous manga Blue...
Rotterdam 2024 Review: KISS WAGON Proves That Liking A Movie Isn't All Black And White
Kiss Wagon, by director Midhun Murali is an epic, 3 hour shadow play animation, that is at the same time both minimalist and maximalist. It is also, somehow, undercooked and overbaked, too convoluted and holding the viewers hand too much;...
Rotterdam 2024 Review: TENEMENT, A Haunted House With A Weak Foundation
Tenement proves that a good ghost story can't get by on visuals alone. This Cambodian genre film by Inrasothythep Neth and Sokyou Chea deserves some praise because it is the rare horror effort out of that country. But when...
Rotterdam 2024 Review: HUNGRY GHOST DINER Offers A Feast For The Eyes And Soul
Bonnie is the sole employee of a food truck, having fallen in love with cooking after a slightly magical-realist experience she had as a child. When she meets up with her estranged uncle, lines between life and death, dream...
RIVER Exclusive Clip: Streaming on AsianCrush February 16th
Cineverse's AsianCrush will be releasing River, the latest from Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes' Junta Yamaguchi, on AsianCrush starting one two weeks from today, February 16th. Seeing as both of Yamaguchi's movies have been big favorites of mine I'm pleased to...