|
| 1. |
|
09/11/11 |
Very Good |
 "...bittersweet.... what haunts one most is the outsider's sense of impotence in the face of a fellow human's misfortune..." |
| 2. |
|
10/03/11 |
Poor |
 "A mainland Chinese propaganda vehicle... postulates history in such a scrappy, inaccessible manner that either as entertainment or education, it's a lost cause." |
| 3. |
|
05/17/08 |
Good |
 "...neither strains for unplumbed depths nor all-encompassing breadth... A modest but moving elegy on industrial metamorphosis in China." |
| 4. |
|
01/04/10 |
Moderate |
 "A high-rolling but garish production with untranslatable regional ribald humor... crammed with exotic sight gags and colloquial wordplay..." |
| 5. |
|
05/15/09 |
Very Good |
 "Just a whiff of a story... unfurls as an achingly beautiful meditation on loneliness and longing in the city... it is structurally a little frail and stylistically fey..." |
| 6. |
|
02/12/11 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "The re-launch of Kinji Fukasaku's trendsetting 'Battle Royale' (2000) with 3D effects, which basically make the splatter scenes gorier and stickier." |
| 7. |
|
10/03/08 |
Good |
 "Indonesian director Edwin's play with associated images dazzles and confounds... it invites different interpretations related to blindness and color. Yet for all the complex symbolism and visual brilliance, 'Blind Pig' ultimately is an extended short." |
| 8. |
|
06/11/09 |
Moderate |
 "Amid a prosaic plot strewn with intermittent chases, gun fights and physical combats, only two action set pieces are worth writing home about." |
| 9. |
|
05/17/11 |
Moderate |
 "...a non-linear and generally incomprehensible tale of tribal life, death and rebirth... will certainly leave any audience nonplused... the film has higher aesthetic sensibility than just a cultural curio..." |
| 10. |
|
10/14/10 |
Outstanding |
 "As consciously strident in tone as the various forms of WWII Japanese war propaganda director Koji Wakamatsu deploys satirically... this masterpiece has the blunt force of a tank rolling over naked flesh." |
| 11. |
|
02/06/09 |
Good |
 "The script, strewn with wild improbabilities and soapy melodrama, is beyond ridiculous. However, like Pinkaew's last two films, it carries its own internal logic..." |
| 12. |
|
06/02/09 |
Very Good |
 "Potently cinematic and full of personal stylistic bravura... Where Lu falls short is character development with such A-list actors as Gao Yuanyuan and Liu Ye..." |
| 13. |
|
09/17/12 |
Poor |
 "...cheap and dreadful.... Atmosphere and execution are trite and old-school compared with the pic's J-horror tyke-terror counterparts..." |
| 14. |
|
06/03/12 |
Moderate |
 "...plays it safe.... Hur Jin-ho orchestrates an elaborate ensemble with as much suavity as Valmont employs in his sexual stratagems..." |
| 15. |
|
11/13/08 |
Excellent |
 "A moving celebration of life through showing reverence for death.... thematically respectable, technically hard to fault, artfully scripted to entertain and touch." |
| 16. |
|
05/14/11 |
Very Good |
 "Bursting with light and color, and a torrent of martial arts action both swift and savage... coherently developed and stylishly directed... unabashedly pleasurable..." |
| 17. |
|
07/27/09 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "Yoon Je-kyun wades through familiar waters when providing overlong human dramas as the film's narrative backbone. The payoff finally comes in the last 45 minutes, which whips up a satisfying tempest of visual and special effects..." |
| 18. |
|
05/19/11 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "As a critique of the hypocrisy and inhumanity of bushido it lacks a bitter sting, nor does it search for a new angle to the subject." |
| 19. |
|
05/20/12 |
Excellent |
 "Beguilingly simple, relaxed in its mastery and enhanced by Isabelle Huppert's impeccable poise... plays like the flipside of Hong's Paris-set 'Night and Day.' " |
| 20. |
|
01/07/11 |
Good (Not Great) |
 "...a fistful of hits and misses.... those used to Yip's black humor and his genre-bending quirks may be slightly disappointed with the conventional screenplay..." |
