SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
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There’s no shortage of fantastical allegories in literature and film, through which children wrestle with life’s trials, and in this regard J.A. Bayona’s follow-up to his 2012 disaster drama The… Read More
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While the Chinese film industry remains on track to become the world’s largest within the next few years, a bona fide crossover hit continues to prove elusive. Read my review Read More
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An insipid Twilight knock-off so lame it frequently slips into unwitting parody, Fallen switches out vampires and werewolves for an assortment of banished angels. Read my review Read More
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In the mid-1970s, Japan’s oldest studio, Nikkatsu, looked to combat dwindling box office returns with a series of softcore “Roman Pornos” (meaning “romantic pornography”) Read my review Read More
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Almost as ubiquitous as stories about provincial country life, or tales of strained relationships between parents and their children, Japanese cinema is awash with the misadventures of struggling young musicians.… Read More
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Following her impressive comeback in 2014’s Pale Moon , once-controversial actress Rie Miyazawa gives a heart-wrenching performance in Her Love Boils Bathwater as a terminally ill matriarch determined to reconcile… Read More
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Epitomising Japan’s “visual kei” glam rock image, X Japan have weathered a series of tragic challenges and endured as one of the most popular heavy metal bands of the last… Read More
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Cinema offers up so many heartwarming rags to riches stories, of ordinary people overcoming the odds to excel at their one true passion, that when presented with a staggering true… Read More
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The covens reopen once again in the increasingly repetitive Underworld saga, dramatising the centuries-old turf war between vampires and Lycans, their werewolf rivals. Read my review Read More
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Ten years after Apocalypto, Mel Gibson returns to directing following a decade of personal crises that threatened to sink his career. Read my review Read More
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The latest offering from Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess tells the true story of a record-breaking armoured car robbery: US$17 million in cash was stolen by the company’s own employees… Read More
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Why would anyone want to watch a film about Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson’s first date? Read my review Read More
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Based on Ben Fountain’s 2012 novel, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk follows a group of Iraq war veterans who return to the US in 2004 for a brief victory tour,… Read More
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Oscar-winning documentarian Morgan Neville (2013’s Twenty Feet from Stardom) teams up with acclaimed cellist Yo-Yo Ma to tell the fascinating and emotionally stirring tale of the Silk Road Ensemble. Read… Read More
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Following the disappointment of his Hollywood debut The Last Stand, director Kim Jee-woon returns home with a riveting espionage thriller that taps into Korea’s recent trend for patriotic Occupation-era period… Read More
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The premise of Jean Dujardin’s latest comedy sounds woefully misjudged. In a remake of the 2013 Argentinean film Corazón de León, the French Oscar winner (for 2011’s The Artist) plays… Read More
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During the Red Army’s defence of the Soviet Union’s western border in 1941, sharpshooter Lyudmila Pavlichenko chalked up 309 confirmed kills – all Nazis. Read my review Read More
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Gavin O’Connor’s The Accountant sees Ben Affleck play an autistic bookkeeper, whose condition proves to be both a gift and a dangerous burden. Slickly executed yet overly ambitious, the film wrestles with… Read More
The James Marsh film review archive 