Film
42
42 is a film that is drenched in history regarding the first black player to play major league baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers—Jackie Robinson, who wore number 42 for the team in 1947, when he integrated the sport. This integration was deliberate, as baseball club owner Branch Rickey, who was a man of great faith [...]
Girl$
Kenneth Bi’s Girl$, now available on Blu-ray and DVD from FUNimation Entertainment, follows four young women as they explore the life of a nanan, or a paid date. Girl$ is an in your face look at the prostitution world in Hong Kong. It tells the story of four girls who are caught up in the exciting yet [...]
Not Suitable For Children
This is the second film I’ve seen Ryan Kwanten in after last year’s Griff The Invisible, and I continue to be impressed at how legitimately good of an actor he is, despite his portrayal of the idiot brother on HBO’s True Blood. Here, Kwanten plays an Australian party animal named Jonah whose life is turned [...]
Dragon (Wu Xia)
I know it will certainly seem like a bunch of hyperbole, but Peter Chan’s Dragon is one of those rare kung fu films that is pretty much perfect. Every fist thrown and every kick launched has meaning behind it and the film manages to blend both character development and plot progression that make something much [...]
Jackie Chan Double Feature: Police Story/Police Story 2
On April 16, 2013, Shout! Factory will release the second of their Jackie Chan Double Features, following January’s double feature of Crime Story (1993) and The Protector (1985). In this sophomore release, Shout! brings the first two installments of Jackie Chan’s Police Story series together on Blu-ray for the first time ever. Whereas, as I [...]
Shadow People
I had a surreal moment at the beginning of my viewing of Shadow People. When we’re first introduced to the Charlie character, he’s hosting his late night radio show and we only hear his voice. He’s talking to a caller, who is asking about a girl he likes on facebook but doesn’t know how to [...]
Room 237
Few films have provoked audiences to a degree of obsessive debate as much as Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror classic The Shining, and in the new documentary Room 237, director Rodney Ascher examines the iconic film and the seemingly infinite possibilities as to its true meaning. With the participation of 5 interviewees including a veteran ABC [...]
The Four
Gordon Chan’s The Four, based off a Wu Xia novel by Wen Ruian, is a convoluted mess of a film, that still manages to entertain through its action and flair. The film focuses on the Divine Constabulary, a department commissioned by the Emperor himself, to handle secret missions and operate in the shadows. Zhuge Zhengwo [...]
Woochi the Demon Slayer
I was amazed by the sheer epic scope of Korean writer-director Dong-Hoon Choi’s 2006 feature, Tazza: The High Rollers, when I covered its DVD release in September of last year. More recently, upon the Blu-ray release of his 2012 picture, The Thieves, I declared that the film “may just be perfect,” going to quite some [...]
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