James Marsh

The Way We Dance

Very much cut from the same cloth as the Step Up series, Adam Wong’s Hong Kong dance comedy sees plucky young wannabe Fleur (Cherry Ngan in what will surely prove… Read More
Lesson of the Evil

Prolific Japanese director Miike Takashi returns to his exploitation roots with this darkly comic story of a murderous high school teacher, who takes dead aim at his own students. Read More
Le beau Serge

Claude Chabrol launches the Nouvelle Vague with this sombre tale of a young man from the city returning to the village where he grew up and attempting to rebuild his… Read More
The Man Who Knew Too Much

I had seen Alfred Hitchcock’s 1956 American remake before, starring James Stewart and Doris Day, but this was my first time seeing his original British production. Leslie Banks and Edna… Read More
Jurassic Park

What better way to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of one of the best summer blockbusters of…umm…the last 20 years, than by re-releasing it on the big screen for a whole… Read More
Jackie Brown

I recently discovered that my girlfriend hadn’t seen any Quentin Tarantino films (with the exception of Pulp Fiction, which I’m pretty sure everyone of our generation has seen) and so… Read More
Bad Film

Ambition conquers aesthetics in Sono Sion’s epic Tokyo Gagaga experiment from 1995, which is only now seeing the light of day. 160mins of gang fights & gay love shot of… Read More
Nobody’s Child

Newly restored by the HK Film Archive, this 1960 adaptation of Hector Malot’s novel Without Family, stars a young Josephine Siao Fong Fong as a young girl in search of… Read More
The Incredibles

It’s not just the superhero angle that makes Brad Bird’s Oscar-winning Pixar hit of 2004 so eminently re-watchable, it’s just a damn well written and animated film. From the character… Read More
The Act of Killing

Joshua Oppenheimer’s chilling, surreal and at times very funny documentary tracks down some of Indonesia’s most notorious death squad leaders, who are only too happy to recount and even act… Read More
Heaven’s Gate

Another of the grand restored classics to play at this year’s HKIFF was the fully restored 216-minute version of Michael Cimino’s calamitous Western. This was not the first time I… Read More
Blancanieves

Director Pablo Berger re-locates the Brothers Grimm classic Snow White in the world of Spanish bullfighters, while also harking back to Silent Cinema. Read More
REVIEW: Blancanieves

The great thing about attending a large international film festival like HKIFF is the element of discovery. There is always plenty of variety on offer, much of which even someone… Read More
Something In The Air

The latest from Olivier Assayas follows a group of teenage activists immediately after the famous May 1968 riots in Paris, as they must contend with politics, school, friendship, romance and… Read More
After the Curfew

I’m a sucker for restored classics at a film festival. What better way to catch up on an unearthed masterpiece from yesteryear than in a boffed up print on the… Read More
On The Waterfront

A true masterpiece of American Cinema, accompanied by one of the greatest screen performances of all time, Marlon Brando would never be better than he is here, as boxer turned… Read More
G.I. Joe: Retaliation

The first G.I. Joe film proved a shamelessly enjoyable piece of throwaway action nonsense, in large part thanks to the playful team dynamic and the fact nobody was expecting anything… Read More
No

I first became aware of Chilean director Pablo Larrain and his regular leading man Alfredo Castro from their startling 2008 collaboration, Tony Manero. I was less enamoured, but no less… Read More