Last seen ASIAN movie

[neverending]

Sounds great- I'd love to see this.

[psycho d]

Graveyard of Honor (2002). This incredible tango of violence opens with a beautifully poetic sense of devastation that is then backed by one of the best opening scenes ever. Those looking for the corny artistry that is the hallmark of Miike might be thrown for a loop with Graveyard of Honor, for this is one of his grittiest offerings ever. Unlike Ichi and his other flicks, the violence portrayed here is merely brutal and realistic, offering little comic relief.

The protagonist is one of the most unlikable characters to have ever found his way into film, so much so that any affections for him come through those unfortunates in the story that have been relegated to care about him. The thing that is most compelling about the antihero is that he is true to himself. Though we see him as a monster, his acts are that of a feral, viciously antisocial, and rather obtuse animal. Our difficulty in judging him comes with our association of him as human, but he is more a simple beast in search of carnal satisfaction. Like a wolf, keep him fed and he'll heel, but miss a meal and he''ll bite your hand off, no time for questions.

Of course, this is a creature that will never fare well in the real world, even if that world is littered with sociopaths in training, mainly because these students will all contain a remembrance of what it means to be a civilized human. As such, this movie is about an accidental career elevation and the doom that must come to fruition. Adding drugs, misplaced honor, misogyny, and revenge only adds to the fun of the convoluted spiral that our central character almost challenges to come his way. This guy truly sees himself in the mirror. This ugly truth is fully unearthed during the shootout scene, which might be the one comical moments here, more because the scene ends out of the pragmatics of sociopathy.

The acting was solid in every instance. The lead character is disturbing only because we come to believe the confliction of one that lacks empathy but understands the violent necessity of honor through revenge. His forced wife transcends into her role perfectly; submit to the beast or suffer. The irony of the honor that the beast's allies must cling onto is revealed in their faces, for they see the fatalistic nature that this honor will manifest.

The score was a slow, snazzy jazz piece that helped infuse the dreadful imagery with an underlying sense of culture. Sound, or rather a lack of it, is also used with devastating effect. Some scenes are almost too painful to speak of, and so the sound bows out as if doing so will somehow help. But even sound becomes helpless in the wake of this cruel maniac.

What Miike has created here is another example of this great director's scope. Though difficult to watch, for those of us that look for the nastiest methods by which to be moved by cinema, Graveyard of Honor will indeed be a moving presentation, moving us right up to the brink.
d

[newb]

Watching Tokyo Gore Police


what the hell is in that Sake ?



loving it

[psycho d]

Mother (2009). Mother comes into existence with a scene whose photography was spectacular and subconsciously informative, only to have that notion shattered with a seeming unnecessary absurdity that is a joy to experience none the less. It then moves right into the heart of the story whose focus is on a mother's love and the extremes that she will travel to protect her son. To be honest, this is not a great sales pitch, but since this is from the director of Memories of Murder and The Host, we know that this will be no slip shod drama.

The story itself is rather uncomplicated, which is a nice deviation from the typically convoluted South Korean fare that leaves us outsiders scratching our heads as if digging for head lice. This is not to imply that there are no twists and turns because there are. But they make immediate sense, even for an unconventional murder mystery driven by the fanaticism of an overprotective mother with a skeleton or two of her own.

The acting was simply incredible. Lead Hye-ja Kim drags us along in her quirky and chunky capacity as a maternal sleuth, leaving a path of unlikely victims in her wake. Surprisingly, through one of her blunders, she comes upon some unlikely advice that actually points her in the right direction. But even at this point we are unsure as to the intents of this advice, unfriendly as it should seem to be. The denouement was a foreseeable surprise that captures us totally off-guard, but our unlikely heroine still has a shenanigan or two up her sleeve. The end was was a dark shade of morality offset by love, and the end finally makes use of some seemingly unrelated information.

And while this movie is driven by the titular character, the slight roles of the secondary characters feel far from peripheral. These smaller roles are handled with the same intense significance of Mother dearest, making this movie all the meatier.

The direction was simply captivating. Each scene composed to build imaginary dams of emotion that were released with the genius of psychological artistry. The photography seemed simple and effectively portrayed the characters by their current emotion and predicament. The score was typical South Korean musical sophistry, both pleasant and implicative.

That last scene was one of unimaginable brilliance, not only tying up the beginning's loose threads, but serving as an undulating portrayal of emotional transcendence, where we finally feel the meaning of releasing the heaviness of the heart. Merci.
d

[ChronoGrl]

Robogeisha (2009)

Ok, not gonna lie, but I was pretty disappointed with this one. I'm not sure if it's because I had hyped myself up about it or if I've seen enough Japanese splatterpunk that I am immune to its quixotic exsanquination, but Robogeisha just didn't do it for me. Sure, they managed to find different ways for women to shoot bullets or protrude guns, but nothing that I haven't already seen before in Tokyo Gore Police or Machine Girl, two films who were significantly more enjoyable.

Quite frankly, I found it boring and derivative. And I shut it off around the time that a building turned into a giant robot.

*YAWN*

2/5.

[roshiq]

Dream Home (2010)

A pretty brutal tale of struggle for a seaside view apartment where the story evolves with a nice blend of social commentary & extreme gore.

>>: B+

Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000)

A very beautiful dark comedy from Bong Joon-Ho...the director of internationally acclaimed Korean masterpieces like Memories of Murder, The Host and Mother.

>>: A-

[roshiq]

I Saw the Devil (2010)

This is one BLOODY-Ferocious revenge thriller! After finding out his girlfriend has been brutally murdered by a sadistic killer, NSI agent Soo-Hyun takes the matters into his own hand and soon enough able to tracks down the psychopath culprit Kyung-chul who mercilessly likes to kill his young female victims with a dose of sexual assault. Soo-Hyun also takes an oath for his dead gf to give her killer ‘10000 times more pain’ and eventually he tries that through his own macabre catch-and-release game. He finds Kyung-chul & beats him up pretty badly, but instead of killing him, he leaves him alive. He wants to stalk his prey, and exact his revenge slowly and increasingly more painfully. Soo-Hyun takes the vengeance into a new level of gruesomeness where the line between ‘good & evil’ or ‘crime & punishment’ becomes blurred…where both of them explores & shows their darker & meaner side to each other and finally confronts the Devil on earth within them.

This kind of hard-boiled revenge thriller today we can only find in Korea. But in compare to Park Chan-wook’s Vengeance trilogy or Korea's rising genre of Serial killer films (like Memories of Murder, Mother & The Chaser) ISTD doesn’t come with the same level of ‘Sympathy’ dilemma or emotional content that leaves you with a devastating or mind blowing experience. But it’s a pure and nearly over the top gore & action pack revenge thriller that surely has the capacity to satisfy its original audience. One sequence involving a brutal double murder in a running cab where the camera swoops around the scene in a circle is simply magnificent to watch. So don’t take it as just another grotesque revenge thriller…there’s plenty of eye catching moments you’ll find in Kim Ji-woon’s (the director of The Quiet Family, A Tale of 2 Sisters, A Bittersweet Life and The Good, the Bad, the Weird) I SAW THE DEVIL.

>>: A-

Our Town (2007)

The film is set in a small, unnamed Korean town and the story surrounds here this time with two killers…an original & a copycat. Since the identities of the killers are never in any doubt, the mystery comes in form of the motives behind and the messages intended by the murders and the link between the three men (the killer, copycat & the detective). And as the story progress in a three way game of cat and mouse, with some twists & turns it comes to question who the original killer here is actually? Though it’s not up to the level of some recent Korean masterpiece Serial Killer flicks and the flashbacks may turn out to be bit confusing for some viewers but I still liked it pretty much.

>>: B+

[zwoti]

The legend of the fist: return of chen zhen

[Dream]

I just watched Creepy Hide and Seek.

Scared me quite abit, very enjoyable.

[roshiq]

Die a Violent Death (2010)

A very mediocre Thai anthology.

>>: C