Blog Archives

The Raid (2011)

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Posted on March 2, 2012 by Justin

The Raid opens nationwide on the 22nd of March. Check Madman’s site for more details.

Director Gareth Evans and newly-minted action star Iko Uwais have followed up their 2009 martial arts flick Merantau with this hard-edged action film, and Madman have been good enough to bring it to cinemas nationwide! The last big action movie I remember them doing a cinema release for in Australia was Ong Bak, a logical point of comparison for this one — both come … (read more)

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Let The Bullets Fly (2010)

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Posted on February 26, 2012 by John Snadden

This 2010 China-Hong Kong co-production finally makes it to Australia on DVD, which is surprising considering it was China’s highest grossing film for that year, a title it still holds despite tough opposition from the recent Christmas releases of Zhang Yimou’s wartime drama The Flowers of War and Tsui Hark’s 3D fest Flying Swords of Dragon Gate.

Let The Bullets Fly’s distribution history outside China was also worrying: it couldn’t find a distributor in Australia on its release … (read more)

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Moss (2010)

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Posted on February 23, 2012 by Deni

From the outset, Moss, by director Kang Woo-Suk (Public Enemy, Silmido), wasn’t quite what I expected. I expected long, and yes, it was that, clocking in at 2 hours and 43 minutes from opening to closing credits. Not that I was wishing it was over half way through, of course, but a run time of 163 minutes is something that you want to know about before you buy a ticket, generally speaking.

I expected a suspense … (read more)

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Punch (2011)

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Posted on February 21, 2012 by Elizabeth Kerr
A high school kid with a temper grows up fast when he’s forced to deal with his handicapped uncle and father and runaway foreign mother. With help from a tough-love spouting teacher he channels his rage into kickboxing and finally into a more assured sense of self.
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The Sorcerer and the White Snake (2011)

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Posted on February 8, 2012 by Justin

Remaking Hong Kong cinema’s greatest hits seems to have been all the rage lately. Last year we had Wilson Yip’s swing at remaking A Chinese Ghost Story and Tsui Hark’s second go at King Hu’s classic Dragon Inn. To be fair, Tsui’s Flying Swords of Dragon Gate ended up as more a sequel to New Dragon Gate Inn than a remake, and it was considerably more fun than I was expecting — I’ll write it up when I get … (read more)

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Arrietty (2010)

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Posted on December 22, 2011 by Deni

Arrietty, the most recent release from Studio Ghibli, is released in cinemas nation-wide on the 12th of Jan, 2012.

Recently, Studio Ghibli seems to have turned to more non-Japanese inspiration for their particular and delightful brand of animated features – Howl’s Moving Castle was based on books by British author Diana Wynne Jones and Tales from Earthsea was of course drawn from the series by American author Ursula Le Guin. In both cases, Ghibli saw in these stories something that … (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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Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam Collection One (1985)

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Posted on November 23, 2011 by Tom
A little while ago I reviewed Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team for this very site. In that review, I expressed my concern that jumping into the Gundam franchise in the wrong way was likely to drive someone into a Lovecraftian madness.
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