Feature Essays
10 archive highlights among the Disney+ launch
With the Walt Disney company launching its own international film and television streaming service Disney+ within two months, one of the big questions was with ...
REVIEW: Shadow (2018)
A rival kingdom has captured Pei's city Jingzhou. While the cowardly Pei king (Zheng Kai) vaccilates, his commander Ziyu (Deng Chao) urges immediate action. Ignoring the king's wishes, Ziyu negotiates a duel with enemy General Yang (Hu Jun) - the winner of which will claim Jingzhou for their own nation. Ziyu, however, is not himself, ...
REVIEW: Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards! (1963)
In the 1950s and 1960s the Japanese film studio Nikkatsu managed to find itself a profitable niche with a string of pulp action flicks, boasting energetic jazz scores, police and private detectives, yakuza and other mobsters, and a lot of shootouts, punch-ups and chases. Rather than spend money hiring movie stars, Nikkatsu made stars of ...
REVIEW: Balloon (2018)
East Germany, 1979. Two families, the Strelzyks and the Wetzels, conspire to secretly build a hot air balloon and use it to cross the border into the West. When they barely survive their first attempt, they must race against time to construct and launch a second balloon before the Stasi track them down. There is ...
REVIEW: The End of Summer (1961)
For international audiences it is generally thought that Akira Kurosawa is Japan's greatest-ever film director. In Japan, however, the overwhelming consensus gives that honour to Yasujiro Ozu. Between 1927 and his death in 1962 Ozu directed numerous comedies and dramas, each of which seemed to perfectly capture the changing landscape of Japanese domestic life. His ...
REVIEW: Brave Father Online: Our Story of Final Fantasy XIV (2019)
Akio (Kentaro Sakaguchi) is a junior advertising executive who holds an obsession for the online videogame Final Fantasy XIV. When his father Akira (Kotaro Yoshida) - an aloof figure with whom Akio has always struggled to relate - suddenly ups and quits his senior management job, Akio is desperate to find out why. When he ...
REVIEW: Zombieland: Double Tap (2019)
It is a decade after we last saw the pseudonymous zombie outbreak survivor Colombus (Jesse Eisenberg) and his travelling companions. Man-child Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) is busy appointing himself President of the United States. Columbus and Wichita (Emma Stone) are settling uncomfortably into a long-term relationship. Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), now a young adult, is craving ...
REVIEW: JK Rock (2019)
Brooding former pop star Jyo Kaieda (Shodai Fukuyama) has abandoned his dreams of musical success in favour of studying for a law degree. Chance, however, leads him into reluctantly coaching three high schoolers in learning to play musical instruments and forming their own band. When his former band partner returns from America, however, Kaieda is ...
