EasternKicks

Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit explores choice and responsibility in an emotionally detached workplace drama… Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit’s latest feature, Human Resource, opens with an arresting 1-minute freeze-frame of an ultrasound image. The looming dread as I wait for something to happen shall soon be felt throughout the movie.

A young woman heads to Taiwan after mysterious posts appear on a dead friend’s social media account in this J-horror throwback… Writer director Kenichi Ugana heads back to the early 2000s for his latest offering The Curse, which as its rather familiar-sounding title might suggest is very much an effort to recapture the magic of the post-Ring wave of East Asian ghost cinema.

An origin story that forgets its origins, but finds its own voice in the ruins of war… Saigon, 1974. The war is closing in, the city is a pressure cooker of desperation and opportunism, and a young Mark (Chow Yun-fat) arrives to bring his uncle and cousin back to Hong Kong. Along the way he falls into the orbit of Ying-Kit (Anita Mui), a mysterious and fearsome gang leader.

Lily Ho and Betty Pei Ti star in Chor Yuen’s erotic wuxia masterpiece… Director Chor Yuen’s filmmaking is poetic and elevated but never boring. His films are like resplendent paintings in motion, with heavy, dreamlike atmosphere, grounded by thrills and engaging storylines. There is also a brutality in the worlds he builds, especially in swordplay movies where passion and the cycle of grudges birth carnage (severed limbs are a recurring theme).

Learn to breathe and live on your own terms when love suffocates you in this Johnnie To romantic melodrama… Best known for defining Hong Kong’s post-handover action and crime cinema, Johnnie To never limits himself to one genre. Despite being widely revered amongst local fans, To’s romantic films do not seem to receive as much love outside of Hong Kong, perhaps because they don’t always translate well for an overseas audience.

Leon Lê once again paints a picture postcard of 80s Vietnam, but without the bite of Song Lang… “But … I didn’t like the end.” For his second feature, actor turned writer/director/producer Leon Lê once again steps back into the 1980s Vietnam that he portrayed so well in 2018’s Song Lang, reuniting with that film’s star Liên Bỉnh Phát.

Yeon Sang-ho’s triumphant return to the zombie genre is a claustrophobic high-concept, action packed nightmare that redefines the genre… Colony is Yeon Sang-ho’s fourth zombie film after the tripartite Seoul Station (2016), Train to Busan (2016) and Peninsula (2020) and arguably his most ambitious.

Two Japanese urban legends clash after being summoned by bullied schoolgirls in this 2012 mashup… In finest schlock tradition Hikiko-san vs. Kokkuri-san takes the supernatural villains from two early 2000s J-horror franchises based on urban legends and pits them against each other.

Keeping up with a legacy — more violence, less coherence, but a sequel that earns its own kind of honour… Being born in the shadow of a landmark film is never easy. A Better Tomorrow II had the misfortune of following one of the most influential action movies ever made in Hong Kong. The sequel feels the pressure and the fatigue that many sequels do: forced, uneven, and at times ridiculous.

A timely child-welfare drama that asks who pays the price when society outsources its conscience… Inside the Home of Happiness, Tsai Renxing (Fandy Fan), an idealistic social worker several years in his job, is trying to investigate the case of a poisoned dog, to prevent a teenager from turning violent, to fend off a father who keeps coming for his daughter, and to keep up with the red tape.