Reviews »
Way of the Gun (2000) Movie Review
Christopher McQuarrie’s Way of the Gun is a hard movie to take. Not hard because it’s a bad movie — in the sense that “bad” movies are unwatchable — but because its subject matter...
Read More »Legend of Speed (1999) Movie Review
As the saying goes, it is a stupid man who keeps coming back for more punishment from the same source. I am that stupid man, since Legend of Speed is the second movie directed...
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The Duel (2000) Movie Review
I don’t give out 1-star ratings often (and in fact, I can count all the movies I have given 1-star ratings to on one hand), because I usually reserve them for special occasions. Andrew...
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Last Witness (2001) Movie Review
Chang-ho Bae’s “Last Witness” is a Crime Drama that deals with the Korean War (1950 — 53), a favorite subject of many South Korean films. I can only guess that the North Koreans favor...
Read More »Jason X (2002) Movie Review
Jason X is actually the 10th installment in the Friday the 13th series, which garnered mass appeal in the “˜80s with its heavy themes of teenage sex, bloodletting, teenage sex, more bloodletting, and even...
Read More »Kate and Leopold (2001) Movie Review
It’s no secret that I review films that fall into the Romance category with great leniency. I never expect too much except to be entertained. No deep thinking required here, please. Romance films, for...
Read More »First Shot (1993) Movie Review
Back in the “˜80s and “˜90s, you could walk into a Hong Kong video store and walk out with a dozen movies like David Lam’s First Shot. You could go back the very next...
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Dog Soldiers (2002) Movie Review
The new British Werewolves Attack film Dog Soldiers is most interesting for fans of American horror films who have ever entertained this thought: “Gee, I wonder how other countries would approach these [insert film...
Read More »Reign of Fire (2002) Movie Review
Movies like “Reign of Fire” allow me to separate my fanboy side from my movie critic side. As I always like to mention, all I ask from my movies is that, if they have...
Read More »Grosse Pointe Blank (1997) Movie Review
Nobody knows “a good thing” when they see it more than Hollywood. Which is why when a filmmaker strikes on a particularly interesting subject (i.e. a killer asteroid threatens all life on Earth) there...
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Sakuya: The Demon Slayer (2002) Movie Review
I’m not sure how the movie Sakuya: The Demon Slayer came to be, but judging from what I saw, the film certainly looks like an adaptation of either a comic book or an anime,...
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Night of the Living Dead (1968) Movie Review
George Romero’s 1968 Night of the Living Dead (or NOTLD) is the barometer by which all Zombies Attack films are measured. Is it because NOTLD is the best Zombies Attack film ever made? God,...
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Cure (1997) Movie Review
The most surprisingly thing about Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure is just how average it is. The film is a crime drama, and like dozens of other Japanese crime dramas I’ve seen in the past, Cure...
Read More »True Lies (1994) Movie Review
Director James Cameron (Titanic) has made a lot of movies, many of them blockbusters, but the only film under his belt that could reasonably be called a comedy is 1994′s True Lies, starring his...
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Kairo (aka Pulse, 2001) Movie Review
Especially for a Japanese film, there’s a fine line between becoming another in a long line of Slow Bore Horror films and just being a Horror film. Luckily for my faith in Japanese cinema,...
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Shark Skin Man & Peach Hip Girl (1998) Movie Review
Japanese Yakuza films are old hat, and I am dangerously close to becoming overdosed on them. Writer/director Katsuhito Ishii’s strangely titled Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl (or SSMAPHG) is much closer to...
Read More »High Risk (aka Meltdown, 1995) Movie Review
Many Hong Kong filmmakers and filmgoers are addicted to what I like to call Absurdist Hong Kong — a subgenre of Hong Kong-produced action/comedy films that seems to describe 2 out of every 3...
Read More »How High (2001) Movie Review
How High stars rappers Method Man and Redman as Silas and Jamal, two black potheads in the Projects. Silas is a would-be chemist whose apartment is a makeshift greenhouse with — what else? —...
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Audition (1999) Movie Review
I’ve been hearing filmmaker Takashi Miike’s name for a while now. The man is apparently the biggest thing to come out of Japan since the samurai, and his other movie, Ichi the Killer, is...
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The Lover (1991) Movie Review
Jean-Jacques Annaud’s The Lover is based on a novel by Marguerite Duras, supposedly a semi-autobiography about her early teen years in French-colonized Vietnam, where she met a rich (and much older) Chinaman (Hong Kong...
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