Around 2010 I travelled to Hong Kong where – among other things – I watched a fantastic live performance at the music venue Hidden Agenda. Getting there for a tourist was an ominous experience: an MTR ride to Kowloon, and … Continue reading REVIEW: The Way We Keep Dancing (2020)
In a small South Korean town alongside the demilitarized zone, an entire local economy of bars, clubs and brothels has built up around the ever-present American soldiers. Sang-kook (Kim Dan-yool) works dutifully in his father’s photography studio, taking ID pictures … Continue reading REVIEW: America Town (2017)
It is a given that, as time moves on, history remembers the best films and – to a lesser extent – the worst, but that the average or ordinary ones are gradually sidelined and forgotten by audiences at large. John … Continue reading REVIEW: Medicine Man (1992)
An extended family gathers for an eight-year-old’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-themed birthday party. This is not some outer suburb of an American city, however: this is 1993 Belgrade, a post-Yugoslavia world of breakaway republics, civil strife and runaway inflation. Celts is … Continue reading MIFF REVIEW: Celts (2021)
Mikio Naruse is one of the key early directors of Japanese cinema, having made his directorial debut with Mr and Mrs Swordplay in 1930 (a silent film, now sadly lost) and continuing to direct through to his death in 1969. While other … Continue reading REVIEW: Ginza Cosmetics (1951)
Narrative cinema is a broad medium with seemingly endless potential for disrupting common tropes, experimenting with form, and subverting audience expectations. That said, the further a filmmaker strays from the accepted mainstream the more challenging their work will become for … Continue reading REVIEW: A Korean in Paris (2015)
What could have been a noisy melodrama is instead a thoughtful, warm, and pleasant slice of life in Paz Fábrega’s Aurora – the third narrative feature from the talented Costa-Rican filmmaker. Professional architect and part-time art teacher Luisa (Rebecca Woodbridge) finds … Continue reading MIFF REVIEW: Aurora (2021)
A promising foundation and strong performances suggest a great independent film in A Brixton Tale, but subsequent developments wind up making this London-set drama wobble on its axis a little. It is a deep shame, because all of the ingredients for … Continue reading REVIEW: A Brixton Tale (2021)
A chance meeting leads to a day of romance in this odd, modest little drama from Taiwan. Broadly akin to an Asian remake of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995), director Lin Yu-hsien adds an unusual level of metatextuality to its simple … Continue reading REVIEW: Su Mi Ma Sen, Love (2009)
An impulsive act of rebellion leads to a religious crisis in Teona Strugar Mitevska’s timely and compact drama God Exists, Her Name is Petrunya. Produced in North Macedonia in 2019, it boldly tackles the heavy influence of religion in that country … Continue reading REVIEW: God Exists, Her Name is Petrunya (2019)
