Asian

The life of Tao, and those close to her, is explored in three different time periods: 1999, 2014, and 2025. Read More »

Misaki Yoshida (Hiromi Nagasaku) runs a roasting coffee shop in Tokyo. She lives alone. In order to find her father, who was separated from her when she was a child, Misaki goes back to her hometown in Noto Peninsula. Misako opens a coffee shop there. Eriko Yamazaki (Nozomi Sasaki) is a single mother and works at a cabaret. Misaki is her new neighbor. While hanging around with Eriko and her children, Misaki slowly changes … Read More »

Quote:
An outrageous collection of surreal, short attention span non-sequiturs largely revolving around Guitar Brother, his randy older sibling, and the pair’s portly Caucasian brother.Read More »

Review from the Criterion website :
A spectacle of magnificent proportions, Kon Ichikawa’s Tokyo Olympiad ranks among the greatest documents of sport ever committed to film. Utilizing glorious widescreen cinematography, Ichikawa examines the beauty and rich drama on display at the 1964 Summer Games in Tokyo, creating a catalogue of extraordinary observations that range from the expansive to the intimate. The glory, despair, passion, and suffering of Olympic competition are rendered with lyricism and technical mastery, culminating in an inspiring testament to the beauty of the human body and the strength of the human spirit.Read More »

Jae-Young is an amateur prostitute who sleeps with men while her best friend Yeo-Jin “manages” her, fixing dates, taking care of the money and making sure the coast is clear. When Jae-Young falls in love with one of those man she suppresses her feelings towards him in respect of her friend who’s jealous. One Day Yeo-Jin fails in doing her job overlooking police officers looking for under-aged prostitutes. In order to not get caught Jae-Young jumps out of a window almost killing herself. On her deathbed, she wishes to see the man again whom she fell in love with and turned away from. But the man only agrees if Yeo-Jin sleeps with him. She does but as they arrive in the hospital Jae-Young is already dead. Trying to understand her best friend, Yeo-Jin tracks down every man she slept with and does the same. As her father learns about this he gets on revenge with fatal consequences…Read More »

Synopsis:
In Japan in 1701, Asano, the daimyo of Ako, assaulted Kira (Rie Miyazawa), an official of the Shogunate, in Edo Castle, for which offense he was ordered to commit suicide. The following year, one of Asano’s former retainers, Kuranosuke Oishi (Ken Takakura), gathers a group of his lord’s other followers and with them plots to take vengeance on Kira, whom he holds responsible for Asano’s death.Read More »

Synopsis
Ben’s wife wants some attention. Ben’s boss wants some dedication. Ben’s father wants some grandchildren. And Ben just wants a minute to sort it all out in Wayne Wang’s gentle comedy, “Eat a Bowl of Tea.” In New York’s Chinatown of the late 1940s, young Ben Loy (Russel Wong), fresh out of the service, has his whole life spread out before him — including a job, an apartment, and a marriage arranged by his father (Victor Wong) to the beautiful Mei Oi (Cora Miao). But as eager as the couple is to see what America has to offer them, that’s how eager the whole of Chinatown seems to see some first-generation U.S. offspring. And when Ben’s celebrated young marriage threatens to crumble in the face of this pressure, it’s up to him to separate his dreams from his father’s, and to find a future for himself and his wife in their new adopted homeland. Directed by Wayne Wang, “Eat a Bowl of Tea” is a charming, warm-hearted film based on the classic underground novel by Louis Chu. (from DVD jacket.)Read More »

Quote:
Two sexually energized young women who live in a high-rise apartment building happen one day to spy from their window a mother and son making love in the apartment across from theirs. They decide to stage a rescue attempt to free him and in the process one of the young women ends up falling in love with the son despite having a boyfriend and enjoying sex with her female companion. Of course, the mother they are warring against has her own plans when she feels her privacy invaded. [imdb]Read More »

Koreyoshi Kurahara’s ingeniously plotted, pocket-sized noir concerns the intertwining fates of a desperate bank manager, blackmailed for book-cooking, and his resentful but timid underling, passed over for a promotion. Elegantly stripped-down and carefully paced, Intimidation (Aru kyouhaku) is a moody early film from one of the Japanese New Wave’s preeminent stylists.Read More »