From Bruce Lee’s golden get-up in Game of Death to the nightmarish long hair and white nightdress worn by antagonist Sadako in Japanese horror Ring, we look at 10 iconic looks from Asian cinema.
Spring 2024 is all about safe bets from franchises – think new Kung Fu Panda, Godzilla and Planet of the Apes movies. There are original films too, such as If and supernatural horror mystery The Watchers.
Netflix drama 3 Body Problem, from the makers of the Game of Thrones series, is an adaptation of Chinese writer Liu Cixin’s sci-fi masterpiece, and depicts the fight against an alien invasion of Earth.
Netflix movie Damsel, directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, is an action-packed fantasy in which Millie Bobby Brown – of Stranger Things and Enola Holmes – takes on a fire-breathing dragon.
The movie prequel to the popular Japanese anime series, The Birth of Kitaro: Mystery of GeGeGe is extremely violent and dark, but is a profound and rewarding watch for more mature viewers.
Netflix drama My Name is Loh Kiwan follows a North Korean defector – played by heartthrob Song Joong-ki – who is seeking asylum in Belgium fall in with a woman embroiled in the city’s criminal underworld.
This new adaptation of James Clavell’s novel Shogun on Disney+ sees Hiroyuki Sanada perfectly cast as a 17th-century lord, but it is Cosmo Jarvis as the flawed, sympathetic anti-hero who truly shines.
Avatar: The Last Airbender, an eight-episode adventure on Netflix, is a faithful adaptation of the original animated series that follows the legendary Avatar (Gordon Cormier) on a mission to save the world.
The best picture winner at the 2023 Golden Horse Awards, Stonewalling tells a stripped-down, non-judgemental tale of a young, pregnant Chinese woman who seems to have everything against her.
Jonathan Glazer’s historical drama The Zone of Interest is a profound, deeply unsettling masterpiece that highlights the horror of the Holocaust through the eyes of a camp commandant and his family.
From a bombastic Japanese thriller about a gang of ageing thieves to an uproarious John Woo action comedy starring Chow Yun-fat, here are five of our favourite Asian heist films.
A woman discovers she has died. As she searches for her son she begins a bizarre existence with a group of fellow lost souls yet to find peace, who parade through the streets seeking loved ones.
The Japanese remake of Taiwanese romantic fantasy My Missing Valentine attempts to address some of the original film’s deeply problematic issues in its story about consent – but fails.
Amazon Prime’s first locally produced Australian feature film, Five Blind Dates is a mishmash of genre stereotypes, and lacks the sparkle of humour and romance expected in a successful romcom.
Taiwanese sex comedy Let’s Talk About Chu, starring Chan Tzu-hsuan, takes a fun and heartfelt look at romance. The show’s frank approach to sexuality is to be applauded, and the characters feel real.
Migration comes from the makers of the Minions and Despicable Me films and The Super Mario Bros Movie, but this story about a family of ducks who fly south for the winter can’t match them for laughs.
Edward Yang’s 1994 comedy A Confucian Confusion follows a group of men and women trying to navigate rapid changes in Taiwanese society, and exposes collective insecurities that are as raw as ever.
Ma Dong-seok leads this Netflix drama as Nam San, a hunter looking for his kidnapped surrogate daughter in an apocalyptic wasteland, in a film filled with violence and B-movie clichés.
Written and directed by prolific manga artist Mari Okada, Netflix’s Maboroshi is a Japanese fantasy anime in which an environmental disaster traps a small-town community in a bizarre time freeze.
Korean sci-fi fantasy Alienoid’s sequel, Alienoid: Return to the Future, is thrilling enough, but without a clear definition of its mythology the film is little more than a jumble of ideas.
What was Netflix thinking? Kevin Hart is horribly miscast, Jean Reno and Sam Worthington are going through the motions, nothing is made of the gorgeous European locations and the script is sluggish.
The star of two Cannes 2023 winners, one of them also garlanded at the Golden Globes, Sandra Hüller is about to be immortalised in the pantheon of cinematic greats. We look at her best films to date.
Director Chen Zhuo’s remake of 2018 Spanish-language film The Invisible Guest adds a needless twist that turns a locked-room murder mystery into a cascade of incomprehensible drivel.
Netflix Japanese drama Bad Lands, with Sakura Ando as a small-time grifter, recalls Hirokazu Koreeda’s Shoplifters with its social commentary on Japan’s underclass, but falls back on genre thrills.
Michelle Yeoh plays the mother to Bruce, an aspiring comedian, and, Charles, an enforcer for their father, a triad boss in Taiwan. When Charles joins his mother and sibling in the US, violence ensues.
Nicolas Cage puts in a classic, nuanced performance as a mild-mannered biology professor who becomes famous when he starts appearing in people’s dreams in this fantasy-horror-comedy.
Our 12 best Asian films from 2023 include a cyberpunk detective story, the 37th Godzilla feature film, a Korean disaster movie, a Tony Leung Chiu-wai-led spy thriller and basketball anime Slam Dunk.
The story of how survivors of a Uruguayan plane crash stayed alive by eating the corpses of fellow passengers has been told before, but J.A. Bayona finds both thrills and profundity in this retelling.
From Migration and the sequels to Kung Fu Panda, Ghostbusters and Dune, to a Bob Marley biopic and a tale of the American Samoan World Cup soccer team, these are the most anticipated films this winter.
There’s shades of Wizard of Oz and Mary Poppins in Paddington director Paul King’s delightful musical fantasy Wonka, the story of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory wacky chocolatier.