Asian films

Hey, I found this thread! I watched a Wong Kar-wai film, Chungking Express. The splitting of the film was odd, but not off-putting, so I genuinely enjoyed this film. The other Kar-wai film I've watched is In the Mood for Love which is one of my favourite films of all time. I want to watch more Chinese films in the vein of Kar-wai, so if anyone has any suggestions, let me know!

I also watched a good Korean film, Memories of Murder.

So I just found this Ramayana anime, an Indian-Japanese collaboration from 1992. If you're interested in mythology-based animations from the '90s, there's also the 1999 Chinese Journey to the West series, though I haven't been able to find it in English.

Lately I watched a 2017 Chinese film, the English title of which might be The Looming Storm says imdb [1]. While not exactly a remake of Memories of Murder, several things are very similar: it is a sort of thriller about crimes that happened about 15 years before and happens in an ugly countryside.

I thought it was good, maybe I didn't start a work page because I wasn't sure about the English title (however police hasn't ruled out the theory of Grop lazyness).

Edited by gropcbf on Mar 5th 2019 at 11:18:49 AM

I'm dying to see In the Mood for Love. I've had it recommended to me multiple times and I hope I get a chance to watch it soon.

I will try and check out On Happiness Road. I was wondering if you had seen Only Yesterday. It's a Studio Ghibli movie and reminds me a lot of the description you supplied.

I've watched plenty of Ghibli movies, though that Only Yesterday isn't one of them, although I suppose there is indeed a similarity in premises.

I'll also recommend two more Hong Kong movies:

- All About Ah Long (1989): Did you know Chow Yun-fat also had dramatic roles? Here he plays a single dad who's a construction worker and moonlights as a professional bike racer, and he and his 10-year old son get their lives upended when the mother shows up again after having been separated since the boy's birth. A lot of emotion, and a good look at 80s HK.

- Unbeatable (2013): A former boxing champion now deeply in debt helps to train a young man to enter an MMA competition, while renting a home with a young girl whose mom is mentally unstable due to past tragedies. Great action in the ring and character interaction.

On a side note, I don't know if I'm the only one but I find it refreshing to sometimes come to this thread to take a break from all the superheroes and explosions that get a lot of focus on the rest of the forums.

Edited by Alycus on Mar 4th 2019 at 9:33:36 AM

As someone who is uninterested in superhero films (except for the occasional deconstruction), I understand. I will try to find Unbeatable (doesn't seem easy).

Edited by gropcbf on Mar 4th 2019 at 9:32:17 PM

Yes, glad to have found a community of similarly film-minded people.

I don't know if there's a thread for Bollywood/Hindi-language film, but I've been meaning to watch some Satyajit Ray. Anyone have suggestions?

Thank you in advance!

(I know nothing about Indian films).

I watched The Battleship Island [1]. It is a very moving South Korean film about Koreans being very harshly mistreated by the Japanese during ww2. Extremely violent (although some of the violence happens offscreen).

Features The Ecstacy of Gold by Ennio Morricone.

Edited by gropcbf on Mar 6th 2019 at 10:52:17 AM

The other day I watched Long Day's Journey into Night [1], a Chinese film (unrelated to Long Day's Journey Into Night). This is quite Le Film Artistique, what with its long shots taken from weird angles. The audience here in France is quite divided, and people seem to rate it either 5/5 making super long posts saying how it feels like a dream, or 1/5 saying it is the most boring and pretentious thing they have ever watched.

I didn't hate it, and in fact I thought it tried some original things. The most obvious one being that the first half is 2D and the second one is 3D: at the beginning of the film a black and white screen told us that the film is 2D, but when the protagonist goes into a cinema and puts on his glasses, we should do the same.

However I was very confused and I don't feel like starting a work page.

I also watched Ash Is Purest White, an other Chinese film from 2018. It is in fact a Franco-Chinese production, with many French names credited as technical staff members. That was good, and I should start the work page soonish.

By the way there is this Youtube channel named Korean Classic Film that seems to be a legal way of watching many Korean films for free, the latest of which being from the 1990s.

Edit: I said earlier that I knew nothing about Indian films. Now I can say that I have seen one Indian film, Ugly. The work page already exists and I will see later if I have something to add (I suppose something could be said about Crapsack World, Double Standard and Police Are Useless for instance).

Edited by gropcbf on Apr 4th 2019 at 9:35:00 PM

A few more Hong Kong films to recommend:

A Simple Life (桃姐), 2012. A woman who has worked as a servant for the wealthy Leung family for over 50 years has fallen ill, and the family's heir who was raised by her now takes care of her in return. Slow but sincere and moving drama.

Kung Fu Jungle (一个人的武林), 2014. A martial arts master (Donnie Yen) is imprisoned for manslaughter after accidentally killing a man. A few years later, the police need his help to track down a serial killer who has murdered other martial artists in brutal fights with their own techniques. Excellent martial arts action in a modern setting.

Edited by Alycus on May 18th 2019 at 8:33:43 AM

I watched Parasite. Not a flawless film, but a very good one indeed. And apparently the first Korean film to get the Palme d'Or.

Edit: They made more than 1000000 tickets in France, which is impressive for a foreign film with no dubs. Nice tweet.

Btw, I was considering where to put it in the Korean Movies index (and I just added Okja there in the action films). Does it really make sense to split films by genre in a films index? It may be unhelpful to classify dark comedies as comedies for instance, and the point of an index is mostly to, hem, index things.

Edited by gropcbf on Jul 10th 2019 at 7:10:36 PM

…Okay, are there theaters showing this one in France? Because I kinda wanna see this…

And yeah, I'll probably see Parasite on Monday. That'll be my first Bong Joon-ho film I think…?

Edited by Lyendith on Jun 9th 2019 at 2:41:48 PM

There are screenings around my place, but this is apparently due to some Chinese cinema festival going on. The official French release hasn't been announced yet.

…Back from Parasite. Man this was good. Not sure about the end though… I kinda wish the film had kept its goofy tone the whole way through. The first half of the film had me die with laughter a good dozen times, and even after they found the underground bunker it was still darkly funny. But then the whole final act after the storm is just… bleak. It went from Black Comedy social satire to just plain drama, and I found that a bit jarring.

Still, this was only the second time in my life I've heard the theater burst into applause when the credits rolled. The first time was Harry Potter 18 years ago.

Trailer for upcoming Kazakh movie Tomyris.

Edited by eagleoftheninth on Jul 22nd 2019 at 5:16:16 AM

Aaand the movie adaptation of the Indonesian comic series Gundala just got its full-length trailer (turn on the captions for English subtitles).

Started the trope page for Wet Season.

I watched Parasite recently and can definitely say it deserves the accolades it's received.

Parasite is my favorite movie of the year, edging out The Irishman.

Made a thread for Parasite, but then I remembered this one existed.

But that said, I would like to go into some spoiler-y discussion so if people want to talk about it they can go there...

Currently the biggest Korean movie still in theater is The Man Standing Next, a historical/political noir and semi-fictionalized account of President Park's assassiation by his right-hand man Director Kim of Korean Central Intelligence Agency.

Even for those who don't have much knowledge of modern Korean history, it's a pretty solid thriller in itself. Interestingly, the director allegedly was partially inspired by Joker's narrative, particularly the main character gunning down a person he formerly shipped.

Edited by dRoy on Feb 9th 2020 at 11:04:53 PM

Back from Ip Man 4, which got a late French release for some reason (I’m pretty sure the first 3 didn’t?) I went in pretty much blind − not knowing that "Ip Man" was an actual Chinese name, or that the guy had actually existed for that matter.

It was a bit of a mixed bag, honestly. While the action was spectacular and Ip is likeable enough as a character, the film is about as subtle as a sledgehammer with its nationalism and caricatural Racist White Guy(tm) villains (granted, there were probably no shortage of those in the US during segregation). I guess using a Japanese martial art makes them doubly evil?

The scene with Bruce Lee kicking ass was, well, cool, but unnecessarily long and felt gratuitous.

I later read that the film had been boycotted by Hong Kong protesters for the director and main actor’s pro-Beijing views, and I was not that surprised honestly.

PS: Apparently the real Ip Man died in 1972 at the age of 79, and the film is set in 1964… which means the guy wiping the floor with thugs and karatekas in this movie is supposed to be 71? >.>

Sounds interesting.

Edited by Lyendith on Jul 23rd 2020 at 4:01:37 PM

So I went to see Peninsula, the sequel to Train to Busan which had a limited run in my town. It’s… certainly a different film, more akin to Mad Max than to its predecessor, and it’s functional overall. I just found it inferior to TTB in almost every way.

I don’t know, the directing effects and emotional beats felt a lot more heavy-handed and didn’t work as well, in my opinion. I still had fun watching it, but it didn’t punch me in the guts like the original did.

Lulu Wang, of The Farewell fame, made a short film title Nian, about the Chinese New Year legend:

Oh, I will try to see that ! (If I don't forget, it is lateish here)