Reviews

“We refuse to leave, because we don't give up. Even if some try to erase us.”

I'm so happy to finally be able to see this movie after waiting for it since it was announced!! It's the second film submitted by Thailand to be nominated at Oscar's Best International film that I've seen, and I'm baffled that they didn't make it all the way (the first one being "How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies"). Thailand, to me, is a cinematic goldmine that is yet to be discovered by the world. Having a director whose debut film is THIS can only be a sign of a national cinema that is expanding exponentially.

With images, music, acting, and production that strongly recall Yorgos Lanthimos's incredible Poor Things (2023), A Useful Ghost is a plea, a social protest that manifests in a strange world where ghosts are part of everyday life and the Thai spoken by its protagonists sounds monotonous. It depicts a world in crisis, but one that explodes in shapes and colors.

Davikah's character, whose performance shines as expected, is the "living" image of a group of people who have not been brought to justice, but are rejected, marginalized, and discriminated against. We are shown a story where ghosts have no rights and are seen as objects that move, speak, and, as a form of protest, torment the living.

I must say that what I expected from this film was an explicit critique of one of the most direct consequences of capitalism: environmental pollution. It shows how ever-increasing industrial production and urbanization continue to rapidly gain ground, crushing culture, art, and human lives, especially the most vulnerable ones. And in a way, it is that, but this film also turned out to be a call to memory; this fiction, where ghosts appear and linger as long as someone remembers them, speaks directly to the viewer (through the eyes of the nameless ladyboy protagonist) to reveal the horrors of oblivion. Memory, a historical debt owed by the government to their people, is a right for families who lose their loved ones at the hands of negligence.

A Useful Ghost, as its name suggests, unveils the underlying objectification and exploitation of communities at the base of a still-present social pyramid (workers, women, queer people, people of color), who fall into oblivion until they become useful to those at the top. It represents, in its rawest essence, the contradiction experienced by those below the powerful, in order to exercise their right to exist.

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Pretty Crazy is a fun, comedic take on demon possession. For me, it’s one of those movies you just enjoy watching nothing too heavy, but still with a nice emotional sprinkle. The casting is good, and while the plot isn’t complicated, that actually works in its favor. This is the kind of movie I’d watch on a chill day when I don’t want to commit too much energy.

*Plot *
The story follows Jung Seon-ji, a shy and polite young woman who carries a family curse. Every night at exactly 2 a.m., a demon takes over her body for a few hours. She switches from quiet and reserved to loud, colorful, and angry. Her father has been managing this curse for years, acting as the demon’s bodyguard going out with it and making sure to fulfill whatever the demon demands.
Things change when her father injures himself and can’t continue anymore. He asks their neighbor who accidentally finds out about the family secret to take over as the demon’s chaperone. That’s when things start to shift, especially after the neighbor decides he wants to do more than just supervise the demon and actually tries to help Seon-ji by finding a way to remove it from her body.


Overall, I found Pretty Crazy to be a really nice, easy watch. It’s not meant to be deep or complex, but it’s charming, funny, and surprisingly warm, perfect for when you want something enjoyable without any heavy emotional commitment.

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In the confessional

What you say in the confessional stays there because we believe that God forgives and erases sin. I liked that the makers of this movie used the confessional to deepen the story, showing how much remains hidden and how, ultimately, only God knows everything and can therefore be the final judge. The premise of a priest carrying an unresolved burden was very interesting, but I think the story could have done more to reveal the motives of the other characters. They did quite well in using Catholic elements and setting them against beliefs in the occult.

I appreciate the movie’s attempt to create an unsettling atmosphere through both sound and visuals, and it succeeds most of the time, but it does not reach the level of Exhuma, even though they share the same genre. The acting is decent, but it is not the movie’s strongest asset. Still, I took away many interesting ideas from the film, and I can recommend it for its reflection on mercy, justice, and the limits of human knowledge.

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"I once crossed the desert in tears and despair. I am now about to cross it with love."

*a sad, sweet and simple story*

QUOTES:
"I will always be with you."
"Love is said to be, always something that we don't know its depth, until the time for farewell comes."
"I wanted to make our love, the best love in the world."
"It's not farewell, until we have each other in our hearts."

"everybody has a desert of their own to cross. I met a small oasis, on my way to cross the desert. abundant blue water. across the oasis which is full of abundance. I know the way to cross that desert now.
I once crossed the desert in tears and despair. I am now about to cross it with love."

like I wrote in the headline, it is a simple story about a married couple's happy life being disrupted when the husband finds out he has a brain tumor and then how he slowly passes away. before He died he wrote letters to comfort his wife. He encouraged her to keep on living and pursuing her dreams.

it is a bittersweet movie, but it's worth watching, plus there is the 90s charm of it, reminding us of simpler times. the couple live a quiet life in the countryside, which I admired.

I'd recommend watching it for yourself, on a rainy day.

oh and it does have a hopeful ending :)

as for music, the song "stand by me" played at parts and it fit well. and there is a nice violin and piano soundtrack.

(and the make-up department did a good job making park shin yang look sickly)

in a nutshell, what I really like is how she decided to live instead of giving up after he passed away. She loves him and always will, but he would have wanted her to be happy.

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It never rains on this mountain

Favouring quiet contemplation over combat, Raining in the Mountain unfolds like a moving scroll of exquisite paintings with mist drifting through mountain paths, rain tapping on tiled roofs, and robes gliding down corridors. From the opening moments, Hu signals that this will not be a tale driven by conquest or glory, but by impermanence, restraint and moral testing; its plot functioning less as a narrative engine than as philosophical scaffolding, the play-by-play almost akin to that of a heist film. It is a film of movement; action is deliberately muted, even anti-climactic. Fights dissolve into evasions; pursuits end in stillness. What matters is not who wins, but who renounces. In this sense, the film feels closer to a Zen parable than a traditional wuxia film, using genre expectations only to strip them away. Visually, the film is spectacular; Hu's command of space is incredible, with doorways framing moral choices, corridors becoming channels of fate, and the mountain itself seems to breathe alongside the characters. His editing creates a meditative tempo. Every gesture, glance, and footstep carries weight, as if the film itself were practising mindfulness. It may never rain on this mountain, but ultimately, for all its sedate visual beauty, Raining in the Mountain finds its deepest drama not in violence, but in the choice to let go.

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Melancholic. Beautiful. Bittersweet

I know It is a sad movie and yet I found it is one beautiful movie. Melancholy that we experience with loss of the true love, makes us know the depth of that love. That melancholy hits you like the saddest note of the violin. It leaves you feeling empty long after, because you know such love and such youth will never come back. What remains is the memories. Moments they die, yet in the memories they remain alive.
What also was touching was how male lead avoided going to her home because he could not come to terms with her death. He wanted to experience her life and not come face to face with her death because in his memory she was more alive than anyone he met. Love is not about possessing but about knowing and experiencing even if without the one whom you truly love. Thank you for such warmth that was lighted by this movie even though it makes you traverse through tunnel of darkness and into the cold snowy place.

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Rude Guy

My problem is more about the story, I think the casting for the roles are good, Fumi Nikaido who played the Wolf Girl really suited her. Kento Yamazaki is a great actor but it was insteresting how he played this role, it was good but I wasn't expecting the role to be so rude. That brings me to my main problem. The Black Prince is so goddamn rude! I know the story was that but it just makes me so mad how she stays with her even tho he's a jerk. ALSO you can see the wolf girl really having a hard time with her feelings, trying to figure out if what she feels is real. But the black Prince literally shows use NOTHING??? He says one line about his feelings and called it a day, The movie felt a little rush. For example, the wolf girl suddenly decides that she likes him. Yeah there are some part where I see the closeness but the producers just kinda push her into liking him. I cried watching this not because of the love but because I felt so bad for the girl having to deal with a awful guy like him. I think they would have been better separated

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I really wish I had watched this movie before seeing its Chinese adaptation, because this version carries so much more depth and cinematic power.

Plot
100 Yen Love tells the story of Ichiko, a young woman who is unmotivated, unkempt, and stuck in a cycle of sleeping all day, playing video games, and buying her meals from a 100-yen store. She lives without direction, almost invisible in her own life. After a huge fight with her younger sister, Ichiko storms out of the house with all her belongings crammed into two large bags and is forced to start over.
To survive, she takes a part-time job at a 100-yen store, where she meets a strange regular customer everyone calls “Banana Man” because of the absurd amount of bananas he buys. After a series of painful and uncomfortable experiences—and after starting a relationship with him—Ichiko slowly begins to change. What starts as survival eventually turns into something unexpected: she finds her way into boxing, and with it, a path toward transformation.

Sakura Ando is one of those actresses you don’t come across often. After seeing her in Shoplifters, I knew I would always look for her name when choosing a movie. Shee is raw, unfiltered, and incredibly honest. As Ichiko, she gives us a journey to transformation that feels real, authentic and not just cinematic.
When Ichiko joins the boxing gym, nothing changes right away. Her head is still lowered, her shoulders slouched, and she looks completely out of place among the boxers. For a long time, there is no visible progress. And that’s exactly what makes this performance so powerful. The change doesn’t arrive through a dramatic montage but it arrives quietly. Only during her first real match do we finally see how much Ichiko has grown. Just because we don’t see obvious change doesn’t mean nothing is happening. I’d honestly say Ichiko’s transformation is one of the most powerful portrayals of a female character’s growth I’ve seen in cinema in a long time.

One of the reasons boxing becomes so important to Ichiko is respect. In boxing, opponents fight fiercely, but at the end of the match, they embrace. There is sportsmanship. When Ichiko sees this, she is clearly fascinated. For a woman who has been psychologically and sexually abused, discarded, and punished for not fitting social expectations, that final hug may represent something she has never truly had: acknowledgment. Respect. Being seen. In that sense, 100 Yen Love isn’t just about Ichiko’s journey toward self-respect but it becomes our own. And by the time the movie ends, you realize just how deep and quietly powerful this story truly is.

At the same time, the film is also brutally honest about the raw reality of being a woman in a closed, patriarchal society. At every stage of the movie, Ichiko is treated poorly, by her family, by society, and by men. When she experiences sexual assault, she doesn’t react dramatically; she simply moves on, almost as if she already knows nothing will be done. What makes this even heavier is that the world around her doesn’t even know what she has endured. We carry this knowledge with us throughout the entire movie a secret only we know about Ichiko and maybe that’s what makes her journey feel so personal and deeply sentimental.

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When Words Fall Silent, Dance Speaks

10Dance is one of those rare films that feels less like something you simply watch and more like something you experience. I am genuinely astonished by how beautifully this movie was made, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart. Everything about it is executed with such care and intention, from the cinematography to the acting, from the music to the chemistry, from the tension to the yearning, to absolutely everything in between. It is easily the best thing I’ve seen in a good while, and I am more than happy to have rated it a 9, a number I don’t give lightly these days. Modern entertainment often forgets how to truly entertain, but this film had my full attention for the entire two hours, never once letting go. What made this experience even more special for me was the mention and representation of Cuba. Being born there, it genuinely moved me to see it acknowledged so naturally and respectfully, adding a deeply personal layer to an already powerful film. The elegance of 10Dance is undeniable. It is sophisticated, graceful, and breathtakingly beautiful. Every dance scene felt like poetry in motion, like swans gliding across water or flowers swaying gently in the breeze. Even without words, the dances spoke volumes.
The acting was phenomenal. I felt everything. The chemistry between the leads was intense yet restrained, built almost entirely on silent yearning. Even without overt physicality, the desire between them was loud, conveyed through lingering eye contact, subtle expressions, and, of course, dance itself. Their connection felt raw and genuine, and the tension was exquisite.
And the cinematography, truly outstanding. I haven’t seen lighting and shot composition this good in quite some time. Every scene felt intentional, almost painterly, as if each frame could stand on its own as a work of art. Visually, this film is a feast.
The only reason I didn’t give it a 9.5 or a perfect 10 is the ending. I wanted more. I wanted to see what came next, to explore their future, their relationship, and how love would coexist with their careers. It left me craving a sequel, or even an entire series, just to stay in their world a little longer. Still, that longing almost feels intentional, fitting for a story built on yearning.
At its core, 10Dance is more art piece than conventional film. Some viewers criticize its quiet nature or its lack of dialogue, claiming the dances exist to cover what isn’t said. But that is precisely the point. In this story, words are secondary. Dance is the language. It is how these characters communicate, connect, and reveal themselves. If you can’t understand that, then perhaps this film simply isn’t for you. But I understood it, and I loved it. This movie is a true masterpiece, and it reminds me of "You Make Me Dance", though elevated to an entirely different level. I recommend both wholeheartedly. There isn’t much else to say, because when I say this film is pure gold, I truly mean it. Go watch it.

Overall 9/10

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a movie made for a specific audience

this movie is truly for specific audiences and i was one of those.

to start off, the use of perspectives for the storytelling was in my opinion, a masterful use which allowed for the audience to see and almost experience the sweetness yet harsh reality of the characters and the world they have to live in - starting with the youngest, the one who's the most inexperienced and the last perspective being of the oldest with the most experience in that world.

the cinematography was so beautiful yet horrific in specific scenes. the scene of takuya all alone on his couch after what happened to him was grim and terrifying. although cinema has portrayed scenes arguably much more graphic and brutal, takuya and his state alongside the use of the back-shots to emphasise an eerie and unsettling feeling before the reveal which then was brutal and grotesque was truly something else. aid that, the fact that he was all alone for a while in that state, unconcious and bleeding out.

the acting was extraordinary, truly phenomenal. i was especially impressed by takumi's acting as takuya. his character was truly complex and there were so many layers which were peeled back gradually, the scene of takuya screaming in the back of the car after realising he could no longer see was splendid - his scream was both silent and loud, impactful in so many ways. mamoru's character being left all alone was so heartbreaking and bittersweet, although, realistic considering the gravity of the situation.

that then comes to the pacing and the ending itself. i personally think the pacing was perfect for the story as they also utilised different perspectives of three different characters, i feel it worked very well. the ending might not be what people wanted, they definitely wanted takuya and mamoru to be back together, the movie however is not made to create that sense of optimism and hope that they'd end up together again. it's truly bittersweet to see the contrast of mamoru all on his own compared to takuya with kajitani eating mackerel - parallel to when he'd first made it for mamoru.

"i wish mamoru could taste this."

AND I COULDN'T BREATH.

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A gripping zombie thriller with tight writing and relatable characters!

I had low expectations but I actually enjoyed this quite a lot.

What I liked the most was that the film focused on what matters, and didn't stray into unnecessary and unrealistic sideplots. Too many Zombie movies and series put focus on the military, or a cure, or different groups and villains that the zombie outbreak has caused. #Alive just focused on two well acted (Yoo Ah-in and Park Shin-Hye) characters who try to work together to survive from the apartment complex they are trapped in. The duo was interesting to follow and I liked how their friendship develops throughout the film!


The movie has a few short action sequences but mostly the film is slow-paced and has a very thrilling and intense atmosphere as food and water are running out and the zombies (which act and look scary in the movie, points for that!) are getting closer and closer.



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#Alive is an entertaining and thrilling zombie film that truly focuses on the main characters, two normal people and their survival in a relatable and realistic situation. The film doesn't have anything special or particularly memorable story-wise but it is a worthwhile watch for all zombie fans!


Sidenote: 2020 was a shockingly great time to release the film. Focusing on just two characters stuck in their apartments perfectly portrays the terror and uncertainty of the early Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

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Check your expectations at the door

I feel like I need to check my expectations at the door with the Kerberos films, because Stray Dog has now made it two for two in terms of what the saga promises being vastly different to what it delivers. A voyage of self-discovery and an almost complete inverse of the claustrophobic and highly contained surrealist tone of The Red Spectacles, this film is instead slow, meticulous, delicate and at times insanely beautiful, almost as if Mamoru Oshii is attempting to channel the works of Takeshi Kitano. Scenes breathe, conversations feel incidental, and the camera observes rather than dramatises. It offers brief glimpses and hints to the wider armour-clad world of this tantalising dystopian universe, never fully delivering like its earlier companion piece. Instead, we get a slice of life holiday road trip, cosy and melancholic, usually encompassing a silent exploration of local scenery and Kenji Kawai's wonderfully relaxing musical score, in an attempt to find meaning in downtime. Oshii's direction is remarkably relaxed, the cinematography filled with bustling moments in dense urban environments, a dedicated segment in the portrait of a life. However, the tone frequently shifts between slapstick comedy and over-the-top gags, which ultimately makes the serious moments harder to realise, especially the incredible final act shootout, which felt so rewarding to see, bookending a long stretch of near-idleness. I need more of that in the next films because I don't think I could take being blue balled like this for a third time. While there are definitely elements to Stray Dog I liked, being so quiet, strange and disarmingly casual, it all feels in service of a saga that squanders its awesome setting. Here's hoping Jin-Roh delivers...

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What is the purpose of this movie ?

I didn't play the game but I liked the concept.

While watching the movie, I understood the plot but I kept asking myself: what is the purpose of this movie ? I understood that it is about a man trying to escape from a labyrinth but what else is it about?

One scene changed everything: when the main character sees himself in a dream with his child. I think this movie is not only about a labyrinth; it is also about becaming a parent.

In the first scene, we see a mother with her baby having trouble on a train. Later we see a boy in the Labyrinth who runs away from his mother.

The Walking Man meets the boy and decides to leave the labyrinth with him but he never listens to the boy and he choose to take a "Shortcut". For me, this is a very significative scene. They are no Shortcut to becoming a good dad.

At the beginning of the movie, the main character learns he is going to become a father. He encounters many anomalies that cry like babies. Especially the babies in the locker scene, which reminded me of old news stories where Womem who couldn’t get abortions left their babies in a coin locker. For me the anomalies are the representations of the fear of becoming a parents and the idea that he may have wanted to abort because he didn’t know whether he would be a good father or not.
Step by step, he progresses through the labyrinth and becomes more confident, just like when you become a parent. At first you don't really know what to do, but little by little, you learn. He meets the boy, and after choosing to move forward together, he starts listening to him. Like a parent and a child, they help each other. He guides the boy and the boy also helps him. Together, they manage to get out.

The labyrinth represents the road to becoming a good parent: it is not easy. You can make mistakes, but you can’t give up, because nobody knows the right path from the beginning.

At the end, however, the meaning of the movie becomes darker, because the main character seems to be trapped in a loop again again...

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