Review
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Set in Japanese-occupied Hong Kong towards the end of World War II, Against All Odds sees the attempted rescue of an American pilot intersecting with an assassination plot to eliminate… Read More
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Anchored by an astonishing central performance from Ryo Yoshizawa and a fastidious devotion to the traditional art of kabuki theatre, Lee Sang-il’s sumptuous saga Kokuho emerges as the finest Japanese… Read More
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In Last Samurai Standing, 292 fighters from across the land assemble for a merciless showdown to the death in the late 19th century, at the dawn of Japan’s transformative Meiji… Read More
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Mary Shelley’s gothic classic may well be a lifelong passion project for visionary filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, but in this episode Steve & James do a deep dive on why… Read More
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Elle Fanning plays a bisected android who teams up with a deadly yautja predator to survive a hostile planet in Dan Trachtenberg’s latest reimagining of the science fiction action franchise,… Read More
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Yorgos Lanthimos takes on the challenge of remaking the 2003 South Korean cult classic “Save the Green Planet” this time with Emma Stone playing the corporate CEO and Jesse Plemons… Read More
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Guilt proves to be a powerful trigger for a retired bomb disposal expert in the Taiwanese action thriller 96 Minutes, when his past mistakes prove every bit as deadly as… Read More
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Is A House of Dynamite Kathryn Bigelow’s next masterpiece, or does it fall short? With Rebecca Ferguson and Idris Elba delivering gripping performances, the film promises tension and drama—but does… Read More
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A former Las Vegas magician and a young bride-to-be form an unlikely crime-fighting duo in Black Showman, a murder mystery adapted from Keigo Higashino’s bestselling novel by director Ryo Tanaka,… Read More
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The Grabber is back in the sequel to 2021’s The Black Phone. Cast and crew all return, but as the tone shifts further towards the supernatural, does it forget to… Read More
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A brand new animated fantasy feature from first-time director Tommy Ng Kai Chung, does Another World usher in a new era for Hong Kong animation, or does it struggle to… Read More
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Visually striking yet narratively incoherent, Juno Mak’s ambitiously staged yet lethargically paced Hong Kong crime saga Sons of the Neon Night finally arrives on home shores, more than a decade… Read More
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Inspired by real stories from Tokyo’s LGBTQ+ community, Anshul Chauhan’s Tiger follows a young man as he navigates the Japanese capital’s underground queer scene, while also struggling to reconcile his… Read More
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Better known for directing feel-good crowd pleasers like The Waterboys and Swing Girls, Japanese director Shinobu Yaguchi proves he is equally adept at delivering genuine scares with the riotously entertaining… Read More
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Noisy neighbours are an all-too-common scourge of Asia’s overcrowded cities, but what do you do when their intimate nocturnal antics become too loud to ignore? For the protagonists of Ha… Read More
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Drowning in ambition but narratively adrift, Kim Byung-woo’s latest high-concept blockbuster opens with an apartment complex being consumed by a giant tsunami before morphing into a science-fiction thriller that defies… Read More
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After losing his job of 25 years, an increasingly frustrated family man is driven to the brink in his efforts to protect his comfortable life in Park Chan-wook’s outrageous black… Read More
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Good News is the new film from Byun Sung-hyun, director of The Merciless and Kill Boksoon, and opens with the caption: “Inspired by true events, but all characters and events… Read More
The James Marsh film review archive 