Blog Archives

Outrage (2010)

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Posted on April 2, 2012 by Justin

The last film I saw from Japanese powerhouse director Takeshi Kitano was his wonderful update of Zatoichi in 2003. Since then, he’s made a trio of more personal films that some have described as his ‘surrealist autobiographical’ trilogy: Takeshis’, Glory to the Filmmaker! and Achilles and the Tortoise. This film marks his return to more commercial territory, the yakuza film, in which scheming mob bosses and ambitious young thugs do battle on the street.

Kitano plays Otomo, a … (read more)

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3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy (2011)

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Posted on December 19, 2011 by Elizabeth Kerr

(Ed: we don’t normally prepend a disclaimer to a review, but we just thought we’d warn you: Liz is pretty frank in this piece, and you should expect explicit discussion of, well, very explicit themes and the occasional spoiler. You are reading about a film titled ‘3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy’, after all!)… (read more)

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Life Without Principle (2011)

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Posted on November 6, 2011 by Justin

Looking through our archives, it seems like almost everyone who’s ever written for Heroic Cinema has sat down at a keyboard to bash out a review of a Johnnie To film at one time or another. Ching Yee compared films from Milkyway Image to comfort food in her review of My Left Eye Sees Ghosts, and she’s right — To’s films have developed a distinctive style and consistently high level of quality over the years, and I always look … (read more)

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Bedevilled (2010)

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Posted on August 26, 2011 by Alan

It is always interesting when folks see a film and call it ‘hard to classify’. Such was some of the pre-buzz I had heard about Jang Chul-soo’s debut film Bedevilled. Of course, not all films present themselves as classifiable genre flicks. But while some do so awkwardly (Cowboys and Aliens, anyone?), others deliberately skirt with and deconstruct genre conventions, and Bedevilled certainly does that. In fact, while the title resonates throughout the plot, it could be seen to … (read more)

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Chanbara Beauty (2008)

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Posted on August 20, 2011 by Alison

The tagline for this one is “Blades, Bikinis, and a Fistful of Zombies”, and I can tell you that these guys believe in truth in advertising. True, there’s only one bikini, worn rather fetchingly under a poncho and hat à la Clint Eastwood, although the bikini-wearer doesn’t have the grimy toughness of Clint, and I have no intention of imagining Clint in a bikini.

There are also only two blades – one wielded by Bikini Girl, and one wielded by … (read more)

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Reign of Assassins (2010)

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Posted on June 30, 2011 by John Snadden

Sometimes the overwhelming success of a particular genre film can have an unfortunate effect on the movies following it. I’m talking here about Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, which has become so popular and awarded since its release in 2000 that it’s now the gold standard for martial arts films. It has allowed lazy film publicists, uninformed film reviewers and the general public to label a new kung fu / martial arts film as simply being not as good, or … (read more)

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Alien vs Ninja (2010)

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Posted on June 14, 2011 by Alison

What sort of Asian film geek could resist a title like Alien Vs Ninja? It would take a better geek than me.

The story is a simple one: a group of ninjas get sent out to investigate a fireball that falls near their village, only to be attacked by a tremendously fast and brutal alien that’s unfazed by their weapons. One by one they fall victim to the beast, eventually killing it only to discover that oops, there’s another … (read more)

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The Chasing World (2008)

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Posted on May 24, 2011 by Justin

The Chasing World was a surprise. I was expecting something more predictable, a day-glo world of gory creature effects and shouting, perhaps something like Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl. What I got was an efficiently-constructed, fun little film which runs somewhat like a mashup of modern Doctor Who, Fukasaku’s Battle Royale and that nightmare where you’re somewhere familiar, running from hundreds of identical masked assailants, and you don’t know why. You know the one.

Our lead character … (read more)

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