A film that flaunts its Korean-ness, from the classic tale of a governor’s son who secretly marries a courtesan’s daughter, to the use of pansori (traditional musical storytelling with a singer and drummer), all pegged to the effortless pacing of a master director.
This enjoyable and boisterous sequel to one of Pixar’s high watermarks pits its protagonist against the onset of puberty as the appearance of more emotions creates havoc and a crisis of sense of self.
Reductively thought of as a ‘filmed opera’, Powell and Pressburger’s still underappreciated work of marvellous artifice and performative artistry tells of three tales of a poet who has no luck with the women he falls in love with.
Truffaut’s overlooked sophomore feature, a playful crime-noir, is shot with a rare, improvisational style, about a bit-part piano player who unexpectedly gets embroiled with lowly if persistent gangsters.
Naderi’s early social realist work is raw and boisterous, as a boy is handed an innocuous musical instrument that becomes a tool of power and exploitation towards his gang of village friends.
A delicate and imaginative work as three female voices share the ‘composite’ body of an elderly woman who must confront her traumatic past to liberate herself for one last hurrah at an optimistic future.
A Palestinian resistance fighter falls in love with a girl on the opposite side of the West Bank Wall in this romance drama that operates as a deft, noose-tightening thriller when he is captured by Israeli authorities and forced to become an informant.
Lee Chang-dong’s Cannes Best Screenplay winner teaches us to be at peace with ourselves no matter how dark things might become, as an old lady suffering from the onset of Alzheimer’s turns to poetry writing for psychological comfort.
Arnold’s first feature is post-9/11 cinema that teeters on the edge of the precipice, a brilliant mystery-thriller with dark shades of early Haneke as a CCTV operator chances upon a face that she least expects to see.
A serviceable debut feature that sees Lee Chang-dong attempting a neo-noir that sets up an underworld crime drama of bad decisions and painful consequences, with a touch of rare poignancy.
Eternality Tan 