Director : Tsui Hark
Cast : Leon Lai Ming, Charlie Yeung Choi Nei, Lu Yi, Sun Honglei, Kim So-Yeon, Donnie Yen, Wang Xueqi, Zhang Jingchu, Zhou Qunda, Dai Li-Wu, Huang Peng

Synopsis
Adapted from renowned writer Liang Yu-shen’s timeless classic, Seven Swords tells the story of seven unlikely heroes gathered together to save a village from the massacre of a general that is seeking a fortune through killing. In the early 1600’s, the Manchurians have assumed sovereignty and established the Ching Dynasty. A highly oppressive reign thus began. To fight against the brutality of the new government and save the innocent, seven unlikely heroes gathered together and became the Seven Swords. Each sword carries its own character - The Transience Sword, The Dragon Sword, The Heaven’s Fall Sword, The Unlearn Sword, The Deity Sword, TheCelestial Beam Sword and The Star Chasers Sword.

Review
Well, finally Seven Swords hit the Asian cinemas. Adapted from renowned writer Liang Yu Shen’s novels, it tells a story of seven unlikely heroes gathered to save a village from the massacre of a deadly, barbarian cult armies. They are seeking fortune from killing the innocents to collect prize money from the government. Basically, Seven Swords follows the “Seven Swordsmen Leaves Mountain Heaven” novel where 5 swordsmen are summoned from Mount Heaven to save the innocent people. Each and every of them carry an unique sword which has it own capability and usage. There are The Unlearnt, The Dragon, The Transience, The Deity, The Heaven’s Fall, The Celestial Beam, and The Star-Chasers. Another 2 swordsmen came from the village itself and joined as a group to become the Seven Swords.

Continue reading

Share This

Director : Tanit Jitnukul
Cast :  Voravit Kawepand, Jaran Ngamdee and Sririwat Chevasud

Synopsis
Sema, the son of a swordsmith, has just come back home from a sword fighting training institute. With his strong sword skills, he’s made a sword trainer in the household of Khun Ram. There, he met beautiful Rerai, daughter of Khun Ram and they felt for each other. Unfortunately, she’s already been engaged to Moo Khan against her own will. However, Sema and his company are mistakenly recognized as rebels and they had to flee a guerrilla band. Then he heard that Burmese had been rallying a large war, he rushed to the war scene and he couldn’t stand the sight of Thai soldiers being slaughtered. He then chopped off the head of Burmese General. Sema finally gained back his reputation, but he still had to fight for his own love.

Review
by Edward Tang

“Sema” is one of those films you pick up because of the box art. Noting that it reads on the cover “An epic action adventure from Thailand”, I was intrigued for sure. Then obviously recalling that I just had seen Ong-Bak a week earlier, I was eager to check this bad boy out. What Sema delivers is more or less a watered down epic that doesn’t deliver in the action department. Everything is just very basic, down to the story and the acting. See dumb kid, he wants to be a soldier, he becomes a soldier, he has a boner for the hot chick, they become friends, mean bastard army dude gets angry because he has a boner as well, and then from there things are sketchy. Basically the editing was so bad, I didn’t know what the f*ck was happening most of the time, but I still felt that they would deliver on the action side. I’m afraid it didn’t hit up once.

Continue reading

Share This

Director : Michael Chuah
Cast : Sze-sen Wong, Amber Chia, Alvin Wong, Vick Teo

Synopsis
Seed of Darkness weaves a spooky tale of the life of a single mother by choice who decides to undergo the “in-vitro fertilization process” in Singapore to have a child of her own. 7 years later, she moves into a new apartment and her child begins to behave oddly, much to the bafflement of her young mother. Her fear begins to mount when she finds her child frequently talking to herself and insist that she can see her non-existent father.

Continue reading

Share This

Director / Writer : Jang Jun-Hwan
Cast : Shin Ha-Kyun, Paek Yun-Sik, Hwang Jeong-Min, Lee Jae-Young, Lee Joo-Hyun

Synopsis
Byung-Gu explains to his girlfriend Sooni that aliens live on planet earth and are responsible for all the problems on the planet. Byung concludes that the wealthy and successful businessman Kang Man-Shik is a top alien and so he and Sooni kidnap the man in the hope that he will allow them to speak to the Alien Prince of Andromeda. When Man-Shik responds with confusion at his being kidnapped and doesn’t tell them what they want to hear, Byung-Gu is already prepared. To save the planet he will torture the truth out of the man…

Review
by Martin Cleary

For some reason I thought that Save The Green Planet was a ‘crazy’ comedy. The film’s colourful posters and adverts all depict Shin Ha-Kyun smiling like a moron. Even looking at the dvd case I was still expecting something possibly Stephen Chow-like. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Green Planet is partly a comedy – and yes, it has some brilliantly funny scenes – but it’s also quite nasty. Think Reservoir Dogs meets Men In Black and that’s still only part-way to describing this amazing film from South Korea.

Continue reading

Share This

aka Makai tenshô

Director : Hideyuki Hirayama.
Cast : Koichi Sato, Yosuke Kubozuka, Kumiko Aso, Tetta Sugimoto, Tomoko Kurotani.

Synopsis
37,000 peasants perished in the Shimabara Revolt; among them, the leader of that uprising, Shiro Amakusa. More than a decade later, Amakusa rises from the dead hell-bent on revenge. Resurrecting a ghastly army of living dead master swordsmen by way of an occult art called “Makai Tensho”(demonic transmigration), he sets his sights on overthrowing the Shoganate. Standing in their way Legendary Samurai Jubei Yagyu, who will have to fight the reincarnation of his own father before the fierce final confrontation with Shiro Amakusa himself!

Review
by Edward Tang

Samurai films can be done a few ways, the correct way as seen in every Kurosawa film, and this way, a horror samurai film that really never gets there. In watching this, I lost track of what was happening and why it was happening, because the story jumped around from this to that. I’m a fairly patient person, but seeing random images and things that just don’t make sense gets irritating. This film isn’t ugly and the action scenes are decent enough to keep you ready for something more, but unfortunately, that “more” never comes. I did some research for this review and came up with a film with the same title that starred Sonny Chiba. Reading up on it even more, it is somewhat of a “cult film”. I must check that one out, because this one was very disappointing.

Continue reading

Share This

Director : HIroyuki Nakano
Cast :  Morio Kazama, Mitsuru Fukikoshi, Tomoyasu Hotei, Tamaki Ogawa, Mari Natsuki and Taketoshi Naito.

Synopsis
Feudal lord Kanzen Inukai receives a precious sword from the Shogun, but it is stolen by the samurai Kazamatsuri. Kanzen’s young son, Heishiro, insists on retrieving the sword himself to protect the family from the shame of losing such a precious gift.

Review
by Edward Tang

“Samurai Fiction” is basically just an older samurai film touched up with new aged music and ideas. I did have a good time during this film, but didn’t really see anything special that could grab me. I must admit that parts of it seemed to tickle the boring fancy but could be passed on because it was a nice refreshing way to look at the genre in motion. The direction was sound, from all of the black and white shots, to the beautiful country side and for the interesting shots including how when someone would die, they’d cut to a red screen. The fights in this film were probably the weakest, because they just really never amounted to anything, it was a bunch of quick movements and they’d be done. But on the other hand, there are basically no shots of blood which makes for a much cleaner film that just has to be enjoyed, rather than looked upon with harsh eyes.

Continue reading

Share This

Director : Shigehiro Ozawa
Cast :  Sonny Chiba, Claude Gannyon, Yoko Ichiji, Masashi Ishibashi, Masataka Suzuki, Ko Tanaka and Zulu Yachi.

Synopsis :
Takuma “Terry” Tsurugi returns. In this sequel, he sets out to bust up a phony charity put together by the Yukuza.

Review
by Edward Tang

Sonny Chiba STILL rules. Right after re-watching the Street Fighter and enjoying myself, I figured that what the hell. I’ll go and get the other three street fighter flicks and hopefully enjoy myself. So far, so good. In fact, I actually thought that this one was a worthless piece of crap because of all the negatives I’ve heard about how this one doesn’t live up to it’s predecessor. But looking at Street Fighter today, it had lost most of its luster because of the more graphic violence and better choreographed scenes of action anyways. Return of the Street Fighter is very much a good sequel, because it goes back to what the first one touched on, Sonny Chiba destroying as many people in his way. Being the mark that I am, when Junjo returned from the dead, I was cheering myself. (Junjo was in the first one and got his throat ripped out and had artificial vocal cords, yeah I said it). But you get the amount of fighting that is necessary to make a film in this genre watchable. There have been martial arts films that have completely tried to make a story, rather than give the action, please no. Sure the story will seem beat to death, the characters are generic, the bad guys are their typical “ruthless” self. But of course you still can get a knuckle to the back of the head, which knocks a guys eyes out.

Continue reading

Share This

Director : Hiroyuki Nakano
Cast :  Masanobu Ando, Megumi Okina, Kumiko Aso, Jun Murakami, Naoto Takenaka, Fimiya Fujii and Shuuhei Mainoumi.

Synopsis
Aka Kage, Aoi Kage and Asuka are trio of ninjas sent to perform dangerous secret missions for their master. Although Aka and Aoi are both in love with Asuka, the friendship built from their years of training together prevents any jealousies from forming. When Asuka is killed during a mission, however, the heartbroken Aka and Aoi both go their separate ways before returning to avenge their friend’s death.

Review
by Edward Tang

Well, I guess I should start out by saying that this is a corny flick that truly never takes us anywhere special or unique. So in what aspects can this film be saved from being a horrible piece of shit that everyone should stay away from. The story? I’m afraid the story is choppy and full of holes, as we skip from scene to scene, not really getting anywhere, and ending up in a cliche-ridden shithouse with no sink.

Continue reading

Share This