[With pan-Nordic thriller The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo screening at SXSW we now re-post our earlier review from the film's appearance in Leeds.]Yes, it comes with baggage. How could it not? In one sense Swedish author Stieg Larsson...

Recent years have seen a wave of films dealing with underground Islamic youth culture. Joining this group is Bahman Ghobadi's No One Knows About Persian Cats. Based on the lives of real people, Persian Cats is an inspiring, heartbreaking journey...

Meredith Danluck's The Ride, the latest production from Vice Films, captures the spectacle of modern bull riding while revealing a slice of small town Americana that is quickly fading away. Bull riding was once the exclusive domain of rodeos. Now, busting...

Together with The Lovely Bones and Gilliam's Imaginarium, Burton's Alice In Wonderland is one of the recent high profile films that submerges itself into an elaborately constructed fantasy world. The tale of Alice in Wonderland isn't exactly original material, but...

"What a title!" Michael Hawley quipped regarding the 1974 film Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang (You Have Been Weighed and Found Wanting), one of the four films featured in the Lino Brocka mini-retrospective that comprises part of the focus on... More >>

The first time I heard of Deadly Prey was when Mack posted a youtube clip of it in these pages. Intrigued I started to snoop around and finally found it on a torrent site, which is the easiest way of...

I first saw Bradley Rust Gray's second feature, THE EXPLODING GIRL last December at Brooklyn Academy of Music's retrospective/showcase for his and filmmaker wife, So Yong Kim's (TREELESS MOUNTAIN) handful of films. THE EXPLODING GIRL ended up in my top...

[Our thanks to Michael Hawley for offering this entry to the Twitch readership.] The 28th San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF) kicks off tomorrow night, March 11 and continues throughout the Bay Area until March 21. I've... More >>

The Disappearance Of Alice Creed is a model of film-making efficiency, a low-budget kidnap thriller as lean as it is tense. The debut feature from director J Blakeson, Alice throws us headlong into the lives of ex-convicts Danny (Martin...

Pascha is the largest brothel in Europe. The business occupies a twelve story building in Cologne, and employs over 200 women. Swedish filmmaker Svante Tidholm spent a few years documenting life at this massive brothel in an attempt to figure...

Anyone old enough to remember the end of the Cold War, has fond memories of the Berlin wall coming down, epitomized by Ronald Reagan's "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" speech. Farewell tells the little known fact of where it...

Remember how this page was once filled with Fantastic Mr Fox reviews. Well, the film finally landed in Belgium. So even if this review seems royally late, for many of us the film is just barely available in the legal...

The world is coming to an end. There are warning sirens, rain of ashes, bomb/missile attacks, news of nuclear explosions in Iran and Moscow. The rumor has it, the US is shooting down any trans-Atlantic planes. Dead bodies pile up...

The second chapter of the film adaptation of Naoki Urasawa's blockbuster sci fi thriller has just hit R1 DVD. Unfortunately, an attempt to juggle too many plots as well as a lead lacking any discernible charisma make The Last Hope...

Ask any smoker - all the best gossip, jokes and stories are told on cigarette breaks. Whether you're an office worker or a high school student, those few minutes when you're forced to head outside, come rain or shine, or... More >>

Ever since the success of "Hero" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", China and Hong Kong have been upping the productions scales of their flagship films little by little. Over a period of 10 years time they've succeeded in producing subsequently...

This weekend I had the opportunity to sit down with Ryoo Seung-Wan, who was being honored with a retrospective of his work at the Korean Film Festival in L.A. One of the most impressive directors working in Korean cinema today,...

As the Academy Awards stretch on to the wee hours, here are three quick recommendations for graphic novels that are cinematic in nature yet are intrinsically literary and artistic, spilling over beyond the printed page. OLYMPUS. Not to minimize the...

An introverted Parisian architect Mathieu goes back to a small town where he grew up, to tend to his dying mother in her final days. There he spots his old fling Maya on the street. So begins this wish fulfillment,...

Somewhere in smalltown Mexico a lowly wrestler named Escargot Man prepares for the biggest fight of his life. Meanwhile, a Japanese man (writer/director Hitoshi Matsumoto) awakes in a strange, featureless room, wearing only a pair of bright yellow and pink... More >>

The film starts with a teenage girl Claire sneaking into the huge decrepit mansion owned by her grandfather, Maurice, at night after partying with some friends. In the morning, Maurice comes into Claire's room and she hides under the bed....

Kurdish Iranian filmmaker, Bahman Ghobadi is known for his downbeat and timely cultural statements. Films such as A Time For Drunken Horses and Turtles Can Fly focused on the voiceless minorities of a blasted region, and garnered many international accolades....

"Art isn't easy / every minor detail is a major decision / have to keep things in scale / have to hold to your vision."--Stephen Sondheim "Vision" is one of those double-edged properties--much like a looking glass--that, at first,... More >>

[Our thanks to Michael Hawley for contributing his preview to the Twitch readership.] Of the five documentaries I previewed on DVD screener for this year's San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF), my favorite is one doc-purists might... More >>

When the dead roam the Earth once more ... the tagline of many a zombie flick out there. Usually a good indication that plenty of growling, lurching and brain eating will ensue in the coming 90 minutes. But some films...

Tim Burton has built a major career for himself with his particular brand of "outsider cinema". This one-time outcast from the Disney Animation Studios is now one of the pre-eminent visual stylists in the world of filmmaking. His success... More >>

When Tim Burton took on Disney's new big screen adaptation of ALICE IN WONDERLAND most people saw it as the natural ascension of an artist whose career and visual aesthetic has been so clearly influenced by the writings of Lewis... More >>

Tsuruta stood at the crib of the Japanese new wave of horror films. About 20 years later things have quieted down a little and the Japanese horror scene has grown more diverse once again. The black-haired ghosts have made room...

(Our thanks to ongoing contributor, Dustin Chang for the following review.)Based on the memoir Neon Angel: The Cherie Currie Story and executive produced by Joan Jett, this all-girl rock band biopic hits all the right notes in all the right...

It makes sense that comedians Tim and Eric are supporting Birdemic: Shock and Terror. The film plays like a long-form version of a sketch from their Adult Swim show. The biggest difference is that the intent behind Birdemic probably wasn't comedic....