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Film reviewsi

Hollywood blockbusters, local greats, European movies, Japanese and Korean dramas, animation, art house films, you can find them all here. 

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  • Filmmaker Tsang Tsui-shan set out to show preparations for once-a-decade Taoist festivities in the Hong Kong village of her birth. Then the pandemic intervened
  • With emigrants from the village unable to return from overseas to take part, Winter Chants becomes a melancholic reflection on the meaning of home and family
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We Are Family, Hong Kong comic Eric Tsang’s film about rent-a-families, starts off as a farcical showbiz satire before taking viewers on an emotional roller coaster, and ends as a poignant tear-jerker.

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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.

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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.

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A charismatic Chung Suet-ying stars in coming-of-age comedy The Lyricist Wannabe as a woman who tries – and continually fails – to become a Cantopop songwriter.

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Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya return in Denis Villeneuve’s excellent Dune: Part Two, which features amazing set pieces, stunning cinematography and thunderous, moving music.

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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.

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The Roundup: Punishment, which premiered at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, sees Korean hard man Ma Dong-seok return as a no-nonsense cop who punches his way through a gang of internet scammers.

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Above the Dust follows a 10-year-old boy in China who dreams of owning a water pistol, and who goes on a journey through his grandfather’s memories of the 1950s and his terrible misdeeds at the time.

Shambala, the first Nepalese film selected for the Berlin Film Festival’s main competition, is an unhurried masterpiece about a Nepalese woman searching for her husband in the Himalayas.

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Starring Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan and Paul Dano, Netflix sci-fi Spaceman – which premiered at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival – has its moments, but director Johan Renck struggles to sustain interest.

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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.

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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.

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Korean director Hong Sang-soo returns to the Berlin International Film Festival with another typically opaque drama – in A Traveler’s Needs, Isabelle Huppert plays a mystery woman teaching French in Korea.

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Director Qiu Yang’s Some Rain Must Fall centres on a well-off woman whose family fragments after an accident, in a critique on damaging dysfunctions present in the lives of China’s middle class.

Gael Garcia Bernal plays a widower whose wife is reanimated in the body of another woman (Renate Reinsve). Piero Messina’s film is hackneyed and gets bogged down in jargon, but is visually appealing.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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In Rob N Roll, Lam Ka-tung and Richie Jen play two middle-aged losers who get caught up in the fall-out from an armed robbery led by Aaron Kwok’s former pro wrestler. It’s well acted, but convoluted.

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Despite strong performances by Kingsley Ben-Adir as the reggae star and Lashana Lynch as his wife Rita, Bob Marley: One Love is not as good as it could – and should – be.

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Table for Six 2, the sequel to the Hong Kong Lunar New Year comedy sensation, is a satisfyingly chaotic ensemble comedy with Louis Cheung and Stephy Tang that explores family and romantic relationships.

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Mirror’s Anson Lo, Keung To and Edan Lui star in a by-the-numbers crime thriller about a Tokyo watch heist that entertains with slick visuals and charismatic performances by all but one of the main cast.

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Henry Cavill, Bryce Dallas Howard and Sam Rockwell star in Kingsman director Matthew Vaughn’s Argylle, a slick-looking espionage thriller that is full of often predictable twists.

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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.

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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.

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Directed by Raman Hui and starring the voices of Michelle Yeoh, Henry Golding and Brandon Soo Hoo, The Tiger’s Apprentice is a messy, unfocused animation that cherry-picks from Chinese mythology.

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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.

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The latest instalment in the most inept crime thriller series in Hong Kong cinema in the past 10 years, Crypto Storm, with its young, good-looking cast, is watchable if you forget how farcical its story is.

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