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MEMORIES TO CHOKE ON, DRINKS TO WASH THEM DOWN (Leung Ming-kai, Kate Reilly 2019)
This is an odd collection of shorts - three fiction, one documentary - with a Hong Kong setting and a wealth of opportunities not quite seized.
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KIM JI-YOUNG: BORN 1982 / 82년생 김지영 (Kim Do-young 2019)
Movie version of the controversial Korean #MeToo bestseller shows the systematic misogyny and paternalism that permeate even upper class South Korean life, a secret the high living standard can't conceal. The differently structured film is sometimes hard to follow, but still makes essential points for those concerned wit this issue.
Last edited by Chris Knipp; 09-06-2020 at 11:46 AM.
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RÒM (Tran Thanh Huy 2019)
Very kinetic in the streets of Ho Chi Min City, two teenage slumdogs sell lottery tickets and promote lucky numbers and get beat by their slum customers when they lose and a nice tip if they win. Diagonals. Constant motion.
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DEAR LONELINESS 致親愛的孤獨者 (Lien Chien-hung, Sunny Yu, Liao Che-yi 2019)
Three excellent shorts by young Taiwanese directors, each of which involves a young female who is probably lonely - but the penetrating narratives are better than such sentimental framing.
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LUCKY CHAN-SIL / 찬실이는 복도 많지 (Kim Cho-hee 2019)
Film by a former Hong Sang-soo producer about a woman who loses her job when her director dies - in a drunken wrap party like a Hong scene. Becomes a sweet study of a Korean professional woman's life crisis. I might have enjoyed it more had I not been asked to see meta- and satirical complexities and cross-references I couldn't find.
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DANCING MARY ダンシング・マリ (Sabu 2019)
A wild genre mashup by a gonzo Japanese director, about a complicated government shopping mall project requiring demolition of a haunted Showa-era dance hall building. Shows that before a remodel, an exorcism is sometimes needed. Romance, mafia, martial arts, ballet, horror. Fun moments that are none of those categories. Some have seen the early Kiyoshi Kurosawa in this film and Sabu acted in the latter's 2001 Pulse.
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FORBIDDEN DREAM 천문: 하늘에 묻는다 (Hur Jin-ho 2019)
A colorful Korean historical costume drama about the extremely important 15th century Korean scientist-inventor-engineer Jang Yeong-sil (Choi Min-sik) and King Sejong the Great (Han Suk-kiu), a liberal and forward-looking leaderwho nurtured his talents. Excellent film even if the plotline gets a bit muddled toward the end. Excellent rapport between Cho and Han, who are two of the country's best actors.
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Victim(s)) 加害者，被害人 (Layla Zhuqing Ji 2020)
This debut feature by young Chinese director Layla Zhuqing Ji, shot in Malaysia apparently both to avoid mainland censorship and to save money, deals with bullying leading to murder and focuses on a boy and girl and their mothers. It's ambitious, but all over the place in tone, often like a horror movie or a comedy. Some gratuitous extended bullying scenes are very hard to watch. The plot is more complicated than it needs to be. It actually makes Naito Eisuke's Forgiven Children 許された子どもたち (also in the NYAFF this year) look like a great movie.
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IWeirDo 怪胎 ( Liao Ming-yi 2020)
A lovely and charming rom-com from Taiwan about 2 obsessive OCDers shot with iPhones. See it!
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WILD SPARROW 野雀之詩 (Shih Li 2019)
A pretty, wayward young woman becomes responsible for her young son when he comes to Taipei City from the remote countryside for school, and trouble comes. A beautiful picture with some fine acting and images that doesn't quite integrate its disparate story elements.
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SOUL / ROH (Emir Ezwan 2019)
A very low budget and very quiet Malaysian horror film (with wonderful music and cinematography but a rather slow pace) whose elemental and Islamic themes I'd have understood and appreciated better if I'd read the learned review in the Malay Mail before I watched it.
Last edited by Chris Knipp; 09-12-2020 at 03:15 PM.
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Last edited by Chris Knipp; 09-15-2020 at 09:31 PM.
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MY PRINCE EDWARD 金都 (Norris Wong 2019)
A sham marriage and a coming real marriage that might be sham; a boorish and childish and momma's boy Hong Kong boyfriend; a Mainlander who's hipper and more progressive - these provide material for this feisty, fun low budget comedy from Hong Kong about a young woman who must make decisions and take steps. Norris Wong is a screenwriter making her directorial debut, and a highly successful one.
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HEAVY CRAVING 大餓 (Hsieh Pei-ju 2019)
A generally good-natured, and sometimes surreal, first feature from Taiwan about acceptance of being an overweight person and other kinds of outsider. Familiar material, but much warned and enlivened by lead actress Tsai Jia-yin.
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Highlights of the 2020 New York Asian Film Festival
NIKKI HSIEH AND AUSTIN LIN IN IWEIRDO
The last film I saw was the greatest delight: Liao Ming-ye's stylized, charming rom-com about an obsessive-compulsive couple, IWeirDo. Cuttingly staged and acted, elegantly and colorfully styled, this is a picture that might appeal to any audience willing to read subtitles. "A meditation on fatal attraction syndrome and the duplicitous delusions of 'normality'"? Okay: but it's a hilarious, cute comedy with a really winning cast.
Yoon Dan-bi's Moving On is maybe the most seriously artistic film of the lot, a beautiful, tranquil piece from Korea inspired by Ozu. It quietly follows a father and his two young kids when they go to live with his aging, widowed father, and an aunt with problems of her own comes to stay too. Minute, patient observation triumphs here.
This year's NYAFF contained only a couple of really important films, but from what I saw, plenty of watchable ones. The showcased Odagiri Joe They Say Nothing Stays the Same us sweeping, beautiful Meiji period film that's beautiful but a little too long and rather anticlimactic. Odagiri is a prolific, popular figure in Japan: maybe a good reception for this will lead to more and even better to come from him.
Several issue pictures stood out. Naito Eisuke 's Forgiven Children looks at bullying in Japan highlighting the negative aftereffects on the bully and his family. The thing is, it's a good movie no matter what it's about, as didn't seem to me true in the Chinese debut Layla Zhuqing Ji's Victim(s), a cacophony of scattershot themes, scenes, and genres that undercut its basic anti-bullying message. Kim Do-young's Kim Ji-young: Born 1982, a portrait of a life that illustrates the misogyny still rampant in Korea. This isn't as bad a movie as Victim(s), it's just confusing and not great. Yet it's a must-see for South Korea-watchers, being a controversial movie from an influential bestseller. It is a good-looking film.
There were a number of fun genre movies. Most fun was a debut called Beasts Clawing at Staws from Korean Kim Yong-hoon. A festival blurb-writer who favored elevator-pitch phrases this year called it Pulp Fiction meets No Country for Old Men. It's also a bit of Treasure of the Sierra Madre, being built on the classic theme of a pot of money causing a bunch of people to betray each other in rapid order. It maybe doesn't finish as well as it starts off, but I can't forget the glee it evoked with its first minutes. Sometimes whetting the appetite is enough.
It's hard to single out more. Most of my selections were watchable but I might single out My Prince Edward 金都 (Norris Wong 2019), from Hong Kong (with an important Mainland character) for its unique contemporary picture of two Chinas and a uniquely unflattering but amusing man-child character played by stage actor Chu Pak-hong. Asian film is a very wide category (even excusing India, for example) an here included distinctive work from Malaysia and Vietnam. Le's hope the pandemic gets under control and this cinematic cornucopia keeps on flowing.
Last edited by Chris Knipp; 09-20-2020 at 01:15 PM.
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