Two films today at the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival, both competed in Cannes. However, I started the day idiotically breathing in some dust and set off my allergies, so I went to the cinema hopped up on allergy medicine, which doesn’t make me a good audience for a film like:

Uncle Boonmee Recalls His Past Lives (2010, Thailand, Director: Apichatpong Weerasethakul): I managed to wake up for the last hour of the film, and it was a hypnotic trip into the jungles of Thailand. A slow fantasy film filled with stunning images, there are moments in that film that I will not forget soon, though it’s surely not everyone’s cup of tea. Looking to sit through it again if I have the chance.

Outrage (2010, Japan, Director: Takeshi Kitano): Kitano does commercial gangster cinema with a violent, bad-ass films about bad people killing each other until there’s no one left. Lots of yelling (you may not know Japanese, but you will know “yaroooo” means something bad in it), finger-cutting, stabbings, and shootings. It’s also darkly comedic, Kitano-style. The exposition-only storytelling style is a little alienating at points, but the badass-ery totally makes up for it. Nothing particularly meaningful (I can see why Kitano thinks it’s imperfect as well), but serviceable genre stuff for fans hankering for some Kitano-style gangsta-ing.

Will be condensing the weekday movies for a later entry in the week as we get into the second half of the HKAFF. I miss it already.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010 at 12:44 am and is filed under festivals, review, Hong Kong. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.