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| "The Handsome Suit" ("The Handsome Suit" Film Partners photo) |
A porky bachelor transforms into a dashing model after donning a magic outfit in this film, a fantasy-burlesque that sends up the modeling world and our beauty-obsessed society.
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An out-of-work cellist finds a new lease of life as a corpse cosmetician when he develops professional pride and respect for the dead in this heartwarming and humorous film. (November 14, 2008)
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Quite unlike the usual Marathi cinema with its raunchy dance numbers and double-meaning dialogues, this film is a sedate look at a remote village in the western Indian state of Maharashtra. (November 14, 2008)
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The film, which will endear to arthouse fans and probably play at many festivals, traces the wretched plight of 70 employees of an electricity firm thrown out with notice. (November 14, 2008)
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Thin on plot, the movie still grips us with its penetrating characterizations and superbly slick editing. (November 07, 2008)
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Master director Girish Kasaravalli uses the 1999 Kargil War between India and Pakistan as a backdrop in this film, analyzing how a small peace-loving fishing community in the southern coastal State of Karnataka loses its inter-religious harmony. (November 07, 2008)
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The concept of two lovers communicating across different temporal spheres, a popular subject in Korean romances in the early 2000s, may be enjoying a second wave in recent Japanese cinema. "Tokyo Girl" concocts a romance-fantasy in which two young Tokyoites living 86 years apart connect through a mobile phone. (October 08, 2008)
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Pan Jianlin's documentary "Who Killed Our Children" could have been a discomforting voice of dissent that exposes the widespread problem of shoddy construction in China. But Pan's filmmaking approach is impressionistic, guerrilla-style, unsupported by hard data and journalistic procedures. (October 08, 2008)
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From the moment "Rough Cut" begins, it's clear that Korean movie bad-boy Kim Ki-duk's fingerprints are all over it. Based on a screenplay by Kim, the story turns on many of his favorite themes and issues. Unlike Kim, first-time director Jang Hun has a more populist eye and has crafted a mainstream -- meaning linear -- drama. (October 08, 2008)
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The death of a high school student brings the skeletons out of the closet in Baek Seung-bin's circular feature debut, which weaves together a complex story about death and isolation and the power of both of those to define us. (October 08, 2008)
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Set in a small Iranian village, the characters in Panahbarkhoda Rezaee's film go through their days on autopilot and in near silence, patiently waiting for something to happen. The images create a mesmerizing tone that result in a film that's more curious than compelling. (October 08, 2008)
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The first feature by director Cheng Hsiao-Tse focuses less on the dynamic among a love triangle as it does on the two young women as they navigate the pitfalls of oncoming adulthood. (October 08, 2008)
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Prolific and surreal filmmaker Raoul Ruiz takes on genre filmmaking with this classical haunted-house tale that pivots on the ghosts of the past literally haunting the present. (October 08, 2008)
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Before there was J- or K-horror, Asian cinema had established a strong tradition of the romantic, desexualized weepy, usually colored by youthful nostalgia or tragedy -- preferably both. Kim Jeong-kwon's film is a solid if unspectacular entry into the burgeoning genre (October 07, 2008)
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"Fiksi," which means "fiction" in Indonesian, gingerly explores and blurs the borders between reality and fiction through a mentally disturbed woman's involvement with a writer who wants to turn real-life stories happening in his residential block into a novel. (October 07, 2008)
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China's independent filmmakers have a penchant for depicting the young and restless as taciturn, prone to fights and wallowing in stupefied elan. This 150-minute film from Yang Jin, about an angry young man living under the stigma of being adopted, is overlong and lacks the vigor associated with youth. (October 07, 2008)
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The fragmentation of knowledge is at the heart of Sohn Young Sung's film, a pseudo-mystery with multiple layers that unfurls minute by minute. (October 07, 2008)
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Topics from social awkwardness to forced nutrition are among the subjects discussed by a man and the various acquaintances that drop by to sit on his couch during a vacation in a story so utterly devoid of pleasure or meaning it defies comparison. (October 07, 2008)
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Setting his story in fictional Sajjanpur, steeped in illiteracy and without contemporary communications, Shyam Benegal weaves a comic satire that may disappoint diehard Benegal arthouse addicts accustomed to his impassioned critique of the social order. (October 06, 2008)
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Director Tadashi Mori was privileged (or resourceful) enough to nuzzle right up to his subjects as he shuttles between a Japanese zoo and a Chinese reserve to show a few things we want to know about pandas. (October 06, 2008)
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An obtuse and cowardly film about that most tired of subjects -- identity -- Roh Gyeong-tae's film says nothing really new about personal self-awareness or self-determination and grows wearying at an astonishing pace. (October 06, 2008)
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A pair of half-sisters travels together to search for their long-lost father, but before finding him, they have to get reacquainted with each other. Boo Ji Young's film takes the dog-eared formula of the odd couple on a road trip, and bends it out of recognition with a twist that would give many viewers a double take. (October 06, 2008)
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Substitute the more Western concept of demonic possession for ghosts and you'll get a vaguely Asian version of "Rosemary's Baby," which is exactly how "The Pot" begins. (October 06, 2008)
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Unconvincing performances, characters devoid of empathy and a heavily contrived plot overwhelm some of Sohn Soopum's more pointed observations about Korean marriage beliefs, assimilation, identity and superstition. (October 06, 2008)
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Without wallowing in sentimentality or judging any of her characters, Kim So-yong has drawn a mature portrait of an elementary school girl old before her time and a loss of childhood that rings true on every level. (October 05, 2008)
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Yu Lik Wai's overblown crime story tells of an aging Chinese godfather to a crime syndicate in Sao Paolo, Brazil, with a mystical connection to the Amazon jungle. It's like watching Don Corleone morph into Col. Kurtz. (October 05, 2008)
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Slow moving and marred by nondescript performances, Chinese filmmaker Pan Jianlin's film describes the terrible state of affairs that afflicts the poor when dealing with faceless institutions. (October 05, 2008)
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In Koji Hagiuda's "Child by Children," an 11-year-old is knocked up by her classmate and gives birth with the help of fellow sixth graders. (October 05, 2008)
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Lee Yoon-ki's film is a road movie that keeps halting in search of parking space -- a debt-collecting trip that brings together old flames whose love is put on indefinite slow-burn. (October 05, 2008)
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Esteemed director Junji Sakamoto's action thriller harks back to the political preoccupations of "KT" in its indictment of the usual dirty triptych of state leaders, conglomerates and yakuza. (October 05, 2008)
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Mixing the stranger-in-a-strange-land motif with the restless anxiety of middle age, writer-director Jeon Soo-il crafts a soporific story of connection and disconnection that stutters to its conclusion. (October 05, 2008)
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A change of scene from gritty Philippine festival films set in slums, "100" is low budget but slickly produced with a yuppie setting; its themes of family, friendship and memento mori can connect with audiences anywhere. With a cast unknown abroad, though, international exposure is tricky. (October 04, 2008)
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With a formula that worked for "Casablanca" and a budget exceeding $8.1 million for CG re-creations of Japanese colonial architecture in Seoul, how can Jung Ji-woo's film go wrong? Yet, go wrong it did. (October 04, 2008)
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A poised yet internally turbulent film of almost religious purity and compassion, "Naked of Defenses" devotes its entire time to one central figure, a female Lazarus who rises from spiritual death by connecting with the woman she hates and envies. (October 04, 2008)
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The effects of the devastating and defining tsunami that hit Southeast Asia in 2004 are at the heart of this willfully opaque drama by first-time director Rajesh Shera. Focusing on an elderly schoolteacher who lost most of his class to the catastrophe, Shera's intentions are honorable, but his execution makes for difficult viewing. (October 04, 2008)
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There's very little meat in this dull and talky classroom drama about a pet pig. (October 04, 2008)
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Move over Glenn Close. Directed with the batty humor of Almodovar's early gems, this character-driven comedy exposes the fine line between female bonding and female rivalry. (October 04, 2008)
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Part female coming-of-age experience and part road movie, Zhang Yuan's "Dada's Dance" is less a film than an adagio that owes its romantic Latino atmosphere a lovely score by Italian composer Andrea Guerra ("Hotel Rwanda," "The Pursuit of Happyness"). (October 03, 2008)
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A convincing mock-documentary style lifts "Lake Mungo" beyond spooky supernatural mystery into the realms of emotional truth-telling. (October 03, 2008)
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Director O Nathaporn draws on his theater experience to devise an impressive crossover of cinema and stage through a play-within-a-film. (October 03, 2008)
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Edwin's debut feature is a personal interpretation of the experience of being Indonesian Chinese, and is out-of-this-world. (October 03, 2008)
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Like the humble, family dishes it celebrates, story, style and human relationships are simple and gentle on the palate. (October 03, 2008)
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Costing not just a few dollars more than Serge Leone's spaghetti Westerns, Korean genre-twisting auteur Kim Ji-woon's $17 million homage to Leone's tour de force "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" is a make-or-break venture that, given the precarious status of the Korean film business at the moment, could influence prospects of Korean mega-bucks film investments. (October 02, 2008)
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A work of old-fashioned, wholesome goodness celebrating virtue in adversity, this film has a broad reach for general family viewers and humanitarian-themed festivals. Japan is a high-potential market, where anything condemning nuclear weapons can find a sympathetic audience. (October 02, 2008)
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Director Kim Yoo-jin tries to combine the historical war epic with swashbuckling martial arts and conventional romance in a catch-all commercial blend. As satisfactory domestic boxoffice attests, the film succeeds as a vehicle in rousing national pride. (October 02, 2008)
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Hirokazu Kore-eda's film unfolds almost in real time as three generations gather for a weekend. The course of the day is so uneventful and the narration so deceptively simple that it feels as cozy as flipping through a family album. Only discerning cinephiles could tell it is the result of a flawless script. (October 02, 2008)
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The indictment of corruption in Jerrold Tarog and Ruel Antipuesto's film is not specific to Philippine provincial politics but applies to all political systems. It speaks to an intellectual audience, and its global perspective makes it a worthy festival choice. (October 02, 2008)
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Double parking evolves into a pert metaphor for Taipei's urban chaos and the obstacle-strewn nature of life in "Parking," a neat concept film by Chung Mong-Hong. Using a man's Kafkaesque attempts to get his car out as the narrative link, Chung devises a chain of bizarre encounters and confrontations that are by turns amusing and disquieting. (October 02, 2008)
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Multifaceted director Isshin Inudo has a knack for making quirky characters come alive ("Josie and the Tiger"), highlighting the local color of a place ("Bizan") and telling a story in the traditional, feel-good way. "Gu Gu the Cat" mingles all these elements in an amiable modern fairytale set in Tokyo's trendy Kichijoji area, about a manga-artist's bond with her cats and her dappled circle of apprentice-admirers. (October 02, 2008)
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The horror master of the "Tetsuo" series already has a collectivist fanbase that laps up whatever he makes, but this work has the emotional depth to move beyond such circles to a more mainstream market. (October 01, 2008)
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Charting the highs and lows of a 10-year marriage is a film subject as prosaic as a TV ad for life insurance, but in the hands of Ryosuke Hashiguchi ("Hush"), it is nothing short of transcendent. (October 01, 2008)
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