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Karmalink (Cambodia, 2021)
Karmalink attempts to bridge science fiction speculation and religious beliefs. It presents the rather weird idea that there will be a time when science will be used to validate religious spiritual dogma, like karma, in the pursuit of “spiritual” knowledge. This speculative imagination makes us observe how such marriage between science and religion may affect how…
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Ip Man: The Awakening (China, 2022)
In recent memory, Wing Chun master, Ip Man, may have already surpassed the mythical status of his student turned famous screen actor Bruce Lee. Adding to this mythification is Li Xijie and Zhang Zhulin’s Ip Man: The Awakening, set in the period that all the other Ip Man films have skipped – the master’s brief stay…
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Funky Forest: The First Contact (Japan, 2006) & The Warped Forest (Japan, 2011)
Third Window Films’ Blu-ray release of Funky Forest: The First Contact and The Warped Forest is a cause for celebration for fans of Japanese cult cinema. For a very long time, Funky Forest was only available on DVD, which did not do justice to the experience of watching the film, considering that its running time of 150 minutes challenges the limits…
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The House of the Lost on the Cape (Japan, 2021) [JFTFP 2022]
On March 3, 2011, the Oshika Peninsula of the Tohoku Region in Japan became the site of one of the most devastating earthquakes in recent history, what is now referred to as the Great East Japan Earthquake. The region was hit by a 9.0 magnitude undersea earthquake which later resulted in a tsunami. Add to…
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Gensan Punch (Philippines/Japan, 2021)
Let me cut to the chase, Gensan Punch is Brillante Mendoza’s best work to date. It seems that years of practicing an interrogative approach to realism has honed Mendoza’s style and lead him towards the moment to shoot a boxing match. And the best thing about this movie is that it does not pretend to be anything…
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Wonderful Paradise (Japan, 2020) [JAPAN CUTS 2021]
It’s safe to say that Masashi Yamamoto’s Wonderful Paradise is a nod to the surrealist Luis Bunuel’s eccentricities, especially in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972). If one is looking for weird, then this film delivers. It is even reminiscent of the attempts of the Katsuhito Ishii-led Grasshoppa clique with their fusion of CGI, tokusatsu and deadpan in Funky…
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The Blue Danube (Japan, 2020) [JAPAN CUTS 2021]
The first thing one will notice with The Blue Danube is the deadpan expression from its actors. But this isn’t the deadpan one can usually see from American indie: Akira Ikeda directed the film in this tone and in the most unapologetically theatrical sense. Due to its theatricality, the film presents a weird liveliness in that it…
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Barbarian Invasion (Malaysia, 2021) [NYAFF 2021]
Malaysian filmmaker Tan Chui Mui’s comeback after a decade, Barbarian Invasion brings about considerable departure from her 2010 feature, Year Without a Summer. As a first departure, Tan offers a genre work, a clear break from her past arthouse-inclined works. As a second departure, Barbarian Invasion does not just align with the current trend of female-fronted genre films in Southeast…
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The Witches of the Orient (France/Japan, 2021)
Julien Faraut follows up his 2018 tennis documentary In the Realm of Perfection with another film on unique sports personalities. This time, he focuses on the Japanese National Volleyball team who were dubbed “the Witches of the Orient”: magical players that achieved a record winning streak en route to an Olympic Gold at the Tokyo Olympiad in…
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Sun Children (Iran, 2020) [SDAFF Spring Showcase 2021]
Sun Children attempts to make a whole statement on the vulnerability of children to be exploited. Writer-director Majid Majidi considers this in a very nuanced sense: to expose how this exploitation is not in anyway sourced from evil people, but rather from a whole complex of situations that force children to take things on their own…