I’m sure it’s not as if Japan is cranking out all the cool SF that we don’t get in the US, but man, Samurai Commando 1549 is completely the cool SF that we don’t get in the states. The premise: the Japanese Self-Defense Force invents time travel by accident, the guys they sent back start changing history, and another group has to go back and fix the problem before history (and modern Japan) are destroyed. Aw yeah. ...

OK, so, you are probably thinking the same thing I was thinking, which is to say, “Ha ha ha, a horror movie about mutant cows. That’ll be a hoot. Possibly laden with mordant Irish wit.” Do not be fooled like I was. Holy shit. Take the mutant cows very fucking seriously indeed. It turns out, who’d have known, that when you film on a ramshackle failing Irish farm with a limited cast, and you get the classic horror tropes of disease and nature gone Gigeresque wrong and slow-mounting tension right, and you threaten the world because one stupid genetic researcher forgets that science will mess you up something fierce, and you do all that stuff? Yeah, that is pretty visceral stuff right there and it is indeed capable of scaring the crap out of you and no, the mutant cows are NOT FUNNY. ...

Yah, so, J-horror, long black hair as a signifier of angry spirits, everyday object as a carrier of the horror… Red shoes, actually. Except these were more fuchsia. And yes, the idea is to evoke Hans Christian Andersen, but it didn’t work out very well. Lots of ballet, but no horrific mandate to dance forever, more’s the pity. The twist, as seems to be obligatory in Korean J-horror influenced movies, has to do with family dynamics. Sadly, the director didn’t manage to overlap the ghost story and the family horror story at all, which meant that the last twenty minutes of the movie felt like an overdone coda: “Ah, you’ve resolved the ghosts? Now we will show you the real ending, because the dramatic tension we just built up and resolved was only the beginning!” ...

OK, so the whole theory about unpleasant people trapped in an unpleasant situation making for bad movies? It needs a revision. Wilderness taught me that it’s all about seeing ‘em get their comeuppance — which means, actually, that it’s all about having characters who you’re invested in, whether you like ‘em or not. The reformatory lads of Wilderness were pretty much the latter, so there’s a lot of joy to be had from seeing them stuck on an island with something dark and terrible stalking them. Said joy was aided and abetted by excellent acting on everyone’s part. ...

Meh, Junk. I’d had high hopes, but it turned out to be royally dull. Reporter gets stuck in a bad place, which is pretty clearly a metaphor for something cause it’s completely stupid for her to be stuck there, and encounters people, including someone who may or may not be a serial killer. Speeches ensue. At no point is our heroine proactive. Nobody’s really proactive, in fact. There’s a vague attempt at pretending there’s a coverup. Russia decays. Etc. ...

Awwww! Train Man! Awwwwwww! OK, that was the sweetest little romantic comedy ever. Sort of like a Douglas Coupland novel without the reflexive defensive snarkiness, or like Megatokyo without the self-loathing. As S. pointed out, the characters were all treated with respect, even our adorable otaku (who should be played by Jason Schwartzman in the inevitable remake). It’s a nice love story that doesn’t depend on coincidence or amusing accident to move it along. ...

So you see a big budget Korean blockbuster like (say) Vampire Cop Ricky, and you get… I liked Independence Day, but it didn’t stick with me. This was about the same. South Korea, from my limited experience, has less of a national character when it comes to film than Japan or Hong Kong; the technique and acting is on a par with and deeply influenced by Hollywood film, without the minimalism and immediacy of so much Japanese film or the visceral propulsion I associate with Hong Kong cinema. I know Korean cinema is not a new institution, but it feels to me like they’re still finding their way, at least as far as mainstream big budget stuff goes. ...

I didn’t know anything about Ultraman before seeing these four episodes. What I know now: there are five members of Team DASH, and they fight giant monsters, kinda like Kaiju Big Battel. Team DASH is a special group within the UDF. Giant monsters tend to ravage a specific area of Tokyo which is a cut below the classic Toho models. Officer Kaito can turn into Ultraman Max, who is exceedingly tall and who kicks butt on almost everyone. He only gets to stick around for three minutes, though. And, um, that’s pretty much it. ...

Shinobi is state of the art Japanese high budget historical romantic dramatic action. The story is not Romeo and Juliet with throwing stars, as tempting as it is to use that line. (So tempting I used it anyway.) However, it is fated lovers and there were throwing stars, so that’s all good. There’s a minimalist plot which, for much of the movie, looked like it was going to leave me hanging in terms of story satisfaction. I’d been sort of middling satisfied as the various ninjas, each with their own unique fighting style — excellent fight choreography — battled and struggled and died. But then the final confrontation turns out to not be the two lovers; rather, their story transmutes into the driving engine for something which is in the end more important. And that rocked. ...

I gotta stop seeing Thai movies unless they get really good reviews. Hell was kinda Saving Private Tootsie in, well, Hell. Lots of wandering around, no dramatic tension, and I didn’t really care if any of the characters made it back to the mortal world. Also I knew they would, because the big demon boss said “Let them out once they learn their lesson,” except he couched it in terms of karmic debt. ...