She’s the Boss is Vietnam’s take on the Thai hit, ATM Er Rak Error (2012), which places romance in conflict with various security issues. Subject to the “no fraternization” policy of the bank where they are both employed, office manager Oanh (Miu Le) and junior employee Cuong (Ɖo An) are keeping their relationship secret so as not to…

Sunday Beauty Queen features stories of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) in Hong Kong who gather on their weekly day-off, Sunday, and organize beauty contests as a fund-raising activity for an organization, the Bethune House, which supports the welfare of Filipino Migrant Workers. Captured with cinema verité technique, the lens of filmmaker Baby Ruth Villarama-Gutierrez takes an intimate look…

Dark Side of the Light uses a Citizen Kane (1941)-style structure to explore how an actual murder, which occurred in Shibuya back in 1996, would have been committed. Gaps left by the news reportage are filled not with “fiction”, but with possibilities. The film is narrated through the perspective of Takumi (Takashi Nagayama), who witnessed the incidents leading…

Documentaries supposedly present actualities: the so-called “reality” that is non-fiction. First hand and un-paraphrased, so to speak. In Tsukiji Wonderland, however, director Naotaro Endo tries to illustrate the fantastic from the fish market’s very system and realities. It semes to be fitting that the film’s title compares the world-famous fish market to Carroll’s world beyond the…

The plotline for the Mo Brothers’ (Timo Tjahjanto and Kimo Stamboel) Headshot may sound familiar: a man (Iko Uwais) found on a shore, wounded and unconscious, wakes up in a rural hospital unable to remember anything. His attending physician, Ailin (Chelsea Islan), gives him the name Ishmael. It is only after an incident involving his physician that…

It is not an easy task to be optimistic and think of another local (in case of the Japanese market) follow-up for Godzilla after the success of the Hollywood’s recent attempt to present the giant monster on big screen just two years ago. But the recent Japanese audience reaction towards Godzilla Resurgence seems to break the myth…