Reviews

dont miss this gem!

I am writing about this after watching it for the second time. It is so lovely, carefully crafted, well directed and written.
There is a quiet authenticity about the acting and pacing that will sweep you in like the sea, that is such a metaphor throughout. Grief, love, loss, sex, confusion, friendship, it's all here. And everyone is easy on the eyes in the way that real people are. The kind of people you fall in love with, not the filmic fictions.
When I think about the seminal BL series that go beyond the earlier ones we all love and know, like Bad Buddies, SOTUS, etc there are 4 that come to mind who have taken the genre farther in the last few years. This is one of them.
KinnPorche blew it up, Last Twilight opened it up to different realities and handicaps that weren't supernatural and with grace, Moonlight Chicken featured one of the great famous pairings that was unafraid to show them aging and inclusively welcomed a new young pair of future superstars, while telling a story about the real Thailand, and this series which is unfraid to be quiet, painful and so real. I urge you to watch it. You won't forget it.

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Damn!

An authentic celebration of culture, a light, so warm and gentle and raw and so so infatuated beaming right behind the curtains of an art form that transcend times and genders. This was a love declaration, pure and simple. This was pride and study of humans and hard work. An absolute ovation for the actors, an Oryo that took my breath and made my heart miss a few beats, a Ryusei that broke my soul. Truly stunning cinematography, iconic traditional scores, beautiful theatrical pieces that made me so curious and eager for more. Perfect movie, imho, it has everything I loved.

Beautiful, just beautiful.

I highly recommand.

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A decent netflix thai action flick that could've accomplished more

As a fan of Baifern - when a new netflix action movie starring her comes out, it's a must-watch for me!

Having said that though, I think while the movie holds pretty well on its own, I don't think I can give it anymore than a 7.5/10. The cast is generally likable and interesting enough, and the action scenes (especially the beginning) are great. It kinda falls off towards the middle and the end though where it's just just gunfights with endless generic goons which tends to respawn automatically just to continue the movie. I think the inconsistency in the number of generic goons really took me away from the story quite a fair bit, because you see maybe 12 of them come in, but the fights seem to show like 50 of them.

Another thing is the hitmen "villians". They're pretty two dimensional and honestly doesn't add much to the movie, Toni's the most interesting of the lot but it doesn't seem like he's exceptionally skilled or anything, just that he is ruthless and has a lot of money to throw around to hire more assassins and goons.

Still, it is what it is, if you're a fan of action movies, thai movies or Baifern, it's still quite a solid watch and an entertaining evening.

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Incredible Acting!!

This movie is pretty good, the acting in specific ... Wow, it was amazing, these actors were shining on my screen, if it wasn't for bad storytelling i would rate this higher.

The scene of the bully's death was terrible, i couldn't be convinced by that. How could she be prepared to bully and kill the protagonist and soon after beg for mercy , in the same circumstances. And her death was terrible, that was an accident, i would prefer if it were intentional , but that's not what was shown. That death being accidental made all the following scenes lose meaning(from the viewer's point of view).Although the bond between the main characters was incredible in the end, that was just an annoying situation to show that. I also felt a lack of scenes at the end, it ended abruptly.

Regarding the good traits, there were a bunch, especially the feeling of injustice that kindles rage and anguish, making you feel really disgusted and hateful toward bullying , the feeling of : "i'm fighting for a good life, but someone somewhere is fighting to survive". And amidst all that sorrow and discomfort, both victims of an unpleasant world become a shelter for each other and find a bit of happiness, a light, among all the darkness.

That's a good movie, i would recommend

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Watch the drama

Coming-of-age Asian movies will always fill me with a warm, fuzzy feeling, but I really do prefer the drama version of this story purely because of the runtime.

The chemistry between the leads is decent in certain scenes, but I didn't really feel the longing or the slow build that the story requires, and the characters don't have as much depth as I wish. The plot also feels somewhat nonsensical, like we're skipping through scenes.

This movie does what most Asian coming-of-age dramas do — which is introduce a final act conflict and separation — and while it's necessary for the male lead's arc, the resolution still feels pretty rushed.

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"Meeting someone is never a coincidence"

Dead End Run was a bizarre art house film. Disturbing, with dizzying shaky camera work, and yet also intriguing. Three different protagonists in three different stories, running for their lives, find themselves in curious dead ends.

Last Song
This was the strangest and my least favorite as it lapsed into a “zombie” song and dance. Surreal. 6.5

Shadows
Two hit men find themselves at a dead end and what appeared to be an existential crisis for both. Unhinged bordering on comical. 7.0

Fly
A criminal is cornered on a rooftop holding a silent girl hostage. Both are at different kinds of dead ends. 8.0

I was not a fan of the nausea inducing shaky cam, especially when it was sped up and combined with other special effects. I could appreciate it, but did not enjoy it. The music also sounded like it came straight out of the 1970s. Much like the camera work, you’ll either love it or hate it.

The moon and mist played a strong role in the first two fantastical stories while the sun made an appearance in the third one. Pay attention to the jewelry shown in the initial hallucinogenic run with psychedelic effects and colors flowing like a kaleidoscope on a bad mushroom trip. They show up later. Honestly, much of the film had the look of someone who had partaken of something that led to a distortion of time and space. The runners were in amazing shape. One ran through the night, day, and night again. I’m sure it had some higher meaning my literal brain could not discern. All three couples ended up in similar positions for different reasons.

Dead End Run is one those films where the beauty/meaning is in the eye of the beholder. It’s not a film I could say I truly liked, but I did find it interesting and worth a watch just to once again experience director Ishii Gakuryu’s creativity and imagination.

6 May 2026

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Absolute garbage

After watching this gigantic piece of shit, here’s my opinion:

Where to even start? Let’s talk about the story:
The film throws us into a war, then a “Godzilla” appears and kills almost everyone except our protagonist. Then comes a sequence where Godzilla wrecks everything, and he kills it. Honestly, the story is absolute garbage. Having watched every Godzilla from the 1998 one to the latest, I’ve never seen a story with zero soul or even any sense. In all those films, I’ve never seen Godzilla attack humans like this just because he’s bored (that’s the impression I get). In the other movies, there’s always a reason — the fish or the Titans (monsters like him). Here, it just makes no sense at all!

Now let’s talk about Godzilla’s design:
What the hell is this shit?!
First, his size. All Godzillas are gigantic. This one barely clears a 5-story building. Did he not get enough soup growing up or what’s the problem?
Let’s talk about the way he moves. Does he have a ballet stuck up his ass? He moves like an NPC???
What’s with that head!? He’s smiling like a mongoloid??
At the end, the sea monster dies because he didn’t do his decompression stages. What the fuck is this nonsense????? The guy is the boss of the seas but if he goes too deep and comes back up, he dies??????????

Now let’s talk about the absurd scenes:

“Godzilla” fires a beam that creates a nuclear explosion and generates a shockwave that sends thousands of pieces of wall flying. The woman gets caught in it, BUT thanks to the power of the magic of friendship, she survives with just a broken arm.
The scene where he kills Godzilla is absolutely sad and grotesque. He kills a sea monster by drowning it.

Why make a film in black and white and then one in color?

Honestly, I love Godzilla. This shitty thing is not Godzilla. It’s a pale copy!

If you’ve got time to waste, then go ahead and watch it!

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"You can see the world anyway you like"

Daughter does in eight minutes what longer films fail to do in two hours. Ostensibly an advertisement for the iPhone 11Pro, it was far more than that. Phones played no part except for the fact that it was supposedly shot with an iPhone. Theodore Melfi directed the film and Lawrence Sher was the cinematographer, both Academy Award Nominees.

Zhou Xun plays a mother estranged from her own mother. She drives a taxi and takes her daughter to work with her for which she is often criticized. The little girl, Dou Dou, entertains herself with a homemade telescope, viewing the world with a few accessories from the window of the cab. Not everyone complains about sharing the backseat with Dou Dou offering themselves up as temporary surrogate “parents.” New Year’s Eve and a desire for dumplings and to share dumplings offers a chance for healing.

Zhou Xun gave a wonderfully complex performance in this short film/commercial as the daughter who refused to fit into the mold her mother made for her and also as the mother of her own daughter. The little girl was adorable which helped seal the deal. “Daughter” had a compelling ending that made this old Butterfly tear up. Definitely worth 8 minutes, especially for daughters who both need their mothers and their own identities separate from them.

5 May 2026

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The basic idea isn't bad: two sisters living in a cursed family environment. The story follows their attempt to change their destiny: the younger sister gets trapped in a destructive path (drugs), while the older sister remains burdened by the weight of paying off the family's accumulated debts.

The Problem: Execution
The issue lies entirely in the execution, and several factors contributed to this:

1. Narrative Style:
I didn't like the storytelling method. The frequent use of flashbacks was inconsistent and confusing. The sequence of events didn't flow well, especially when the film shifted to the past using the "small screen," which completely ruined the rhythm of the story.

2. Logical Gaps:
There were many crucial details that should have been included but were ignored, such as:
Tian Tian’s struggles in raising the child.
How did she get pregnant in the first place?
Where was the child when the three men were looking for her?

3. Misplaced Focus on Unnecessary Details:
The film focused on things that didn't serve the core plot, like:
Over-elaborating on Fang Di’s suffering as a stuntwoman.
Repeating scenes that added nothing to the narrative.
Meanwhile, they neglected the actual events—like the downfall of the family and the father's addiction—which would have strengthened the story and made it more impactful.

4. The Ending:
The ending was absolute nonsense and completely incomprehensible. Did Tian Tian die or not? Was the final scene meant to show that she finally achieved freedom, or that she became an actress like she wanted? It was totally unclear.

5. Wasted Talent:
The acting was actually brilliant, but it was completely wasted due to poor directing and the inability to tell the story effectively.

Conclusion:
The story was good and had the potential to be much better if not for the poor direction. They simply didn't know how to tell it.

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Yet another "psychological thriller"

I'm afraid I expected too much for better or for worse. The synopsis was interesting enough to reel me in, and so I went in with higher expectations than I probably should have.

I wasn’t utterly disappointed, to my relief, though, I must say the movie was nothing groundbreaking.

I have a personal beef with someone who labels a show psychological when it doesn’t have the content to back it up. That’s exactly what I felt while watching this. It’s not a psychological drama; it’s just a drama. But a decent one.

When it comes to the acting, it was fine overall, but inconsistent at times. I can’t say I hated the FL’s performance, but I definitely wasn’t impressed. I could, unfortunately, tell when she was acting. In the scene where the ml reveals the mystery behind her daughter’s change in behaviour, she didn’t seem fully in her zone. The reaction felt underwhelming, to be euphemistic. To be blunt, the scene felt poorly acted. Another instance is in the final scene, where she has a long back and forth with the detective; it felt unnatural and a little awkward to watch. As for the ml, his performance was consistent throughout. His role wasn’t particularly demanding, but he handled microexpressions well and did a solid job overall.

As for the story, the concept is intriguing, but this is my issue with screenplays with intriguing storylines: they often fail to execute it. A serial killer wanting a one on one interview with a journalist? What a compelling start! But did the movie sustain the intrigue throughout? Arguably, no. It ends up following the same thriller tropes of a benevolent psychopath. I'm afraid writers aren’t audacious enough to fully commit to portraying a true psychopath as a protagonist. Then again, you can argue that this isn’t that kind of story. Fair enough. Not everything needs to reinvent the wheel.

I have criticised the movie enough that my review is starting to feel biased. Can’t have that, can we? On the bright side, the cinematography was one of the film’s strongest aspects. There was enough interesting camera work to keep me engaged, and the use of multiple TVs to create tension was handled smoothly. It did a lot of the heavy lifting in otherwise dull scenes.
The consistent pacing was another good aspect of the movie, but that’s also its downside. For a psychological thriller that you claim to be, I didn’t feel that rush of adrenaline in the climax. Or can it be called a climax? The experience ended up feeling somewhat anticlimactic.

By the end, though, I didn’t feel like I had wasted my time. It’s a solid project, and I would still recommend watching it, especially if you don’t have any other psychological thrillers lined up. Just lower your expectations a bit, and you should be good to go.

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