NYAFF, week 1.

The New York Asian Film Festival opens Friday and runs through July 6. "Subway Cinema's seventh annual extravaganza of demented pop curiosities both highbrow and low- returns with its largest lineup and juiciest cherry pickings yet," writes Aaron Hillis in the Voice. Takashi Miike's Sukiyaki Western Django, "one of the several Japanese titles to dominate this year's schedule, will be co-presented with the Japan Society's concurrent 'Japan Cuts' fest - and easily the finest of NYAFF's offerings exist within the programming overlap."

Updated through 6/24.

The L Magazine's Mark Asch offers seven capsule reviews.

Earlier: The Brooklyn Rail's big overview.

Updates, 6/19: "What makes the festival so terrific is that they provide a full movie-going package," writes Simon Abrams in the New Press. "While soulless disappointments like Iron Man and Indiana Jones continue to rake in box office booty, festival spokesman Grady Hendrix tirelessly cracks the audience up with breathless pre-show introductions and prize giveaways. They bring a personal touch to a wide array of films and make scuttling indoors on a sunny day a no-brainer."

"The most exciting film festival each year in New York is neither the prestigious New York Film Festival nor the Tribeca behemoth that explodes every May." You know the festival Daniel Kasman is thinking of in the Auteurs' Notebook. "A heady and potent hodgepodge of genre schlock, genre purity, blockbuster mainstream, art-house eccentricity, and flat out unclassifiable insanity (see last year's Funky Forest), one will rarely see such an invigorating mixture of contemporary cinema playing in New York at any other time."

At Cinema Strikes Back: Reviews and 3 out of 4 stars each for Mad Detective and Sukiyaki Western Django.

Twitch's Todd Brown on Sad Vacation: "With character and thematic links to Eureka, his breakthrough dramatic film, director Shinji Aoyama along with a stellar cast of Japan's best (Tadanobu Asano, Jo Odagiri, Aoi Miyazaki) here crafts a quiet, inward reflection of people living in the aftermath of extreme loss."

"[O]ne of the very best festivals in the world," declares Peter Martin, introducing a gallery at Cinematical.

Updates, 6/20: "Across the metropolitan galaxy of cinematic obsession, in a city that unspools a new film festival every week, there is nothing quite as giddily in love with the mad, marvelous insanity of movies as the New York Asian Film Festival," writes Nicolas Rapold, introducing his overview in the New York Sun. "It's not an excuse for a night out. It's more like a state of being, a way to live, a tao."

"Opening night kicks off with the world premiere of Then Summer Came, the Joe Odagiri/Yoshio Harada father-son marriage comedy directed by Japan's most respected playwright, Ryo Iwamatsu," note Marcy Dermansky and Jürgen Fauth.

"[T]he selection suggests an ongoing crisis in the region's cinema." Steve Erickson explains in his overview for Gay City News.

The Butcher boils "horror conventions down to a raw, wet core, and [uses] the agility of video to furiously rub the audience's face in it," writes Rodney at Twitch, where Todd Brown calls Adrift in Tokyo "a meandering, quirky and surprisingly beautiful piece of work that perfectly balances humor and emotion. Flawlessly written and shot by a man who seems to have figured out exactly what sort of film maker he is and where his strengths lie, Adrift In Tokyo makes it very clear that Miki Satoshi is no longer simply that goofy TV director mucking about on the big screen but that he has become one of the strongest voices in Japanese film. Yes, it's really that good."

"Generally, I'm inclined to be pretty forgiving of any movie that features zombies, and girls in bikinis, and girls in bikinis with swords fighting zombies, but Chanbara Beauty just didn't grab me," writes David Austin at Cinema Strikes Back.

Updates, 6/21: "Like Philippe Garrel's Regular Lovers (2005), another epically sad post-68 portrait, United Red Army opens on a note of exhilaration before lingering on the painful hangover after the thwarted revolutionary moment," writes Dennis Lim in a profile of Koji Wakamatsu for the New York Times.

At Twitch:

• Ardvark on Kala: "[W]hat a pleasant surprise it is to find a genre movie from Indonesia which I can wholeheartedly recommend to... well, to everyone who would like a damn good mainstream movie!"

• "Call Johnnie To's Sparrow proof positive that the acclaimed director can do pretty much whatever he sets his mind to," writes Todd Brown.

• And: Johnny Nguyen's The Rebel "is a quality piece of work that bears none of the weaknesses that would label it a vanity project."

Updates, 6/22: "From the same team that created The Machine Girl, Tokyo Gore Police is quite likely the most aptly titled film ever made," writes Todd Brown at Twitch. "The thing is positively saturated with blood, massive sprays of the stuff filling frame after frame of the film." But: "While Machine Girl plays out largely tongue in cheek, Tokyo Gore Police takes its world very seriously. There is no nodding and winking here, instead director Yoshihiro Nishimura sets out to create a sort of alternate future where these events, bizarre as they may be, actually make some sort of sense. The end result is a sort of nightmare fugue, a swirling hallucination that just plunges farther and farther into depravity as it proceeds."

"Yudai Yamaguchi's latest film, Tamami: The Baby's Curse or Akanbo Shojo belongs to the rarefied subgenre of monster baby films, for which, luckily, I have a soft spot," writes David Austin at Cinema Strikes Back. "Akanbo Shojo successfully mixes the gross-out oddity of imports like Devil Fetus with the more emotional horror of Larry Cohen's It's Alive, while adding a strand of jealous rivalry from sibling-based horror films like Basket Case (probably the most direct influence after It's Alive) and the Shaw's Siamese Twins. It's no masterpiece but it is pretty damn fun all the same."

Updates, 6/23: "Perhaps the highest compliment that can be paid to Feng Xiaogang's The Assembly, a film built around Communist Chinese military campaigns of the 40s and 50s, is that he has created a film that completely and utterly transcends politics," writes Todd Brown at Twitch. "Technically astounding, with battle sequences orchestrated by the team behind Korean hit Taegukgi - sequences that match or beat anything ever put on screen by big budget Hollywood, Saving Private Ryan included - the heart of the film never gets lost in the spectacle, the soul of the piece anchored in an astounding central performance from Zhang Hanyou."

Also: "Fine, Totally Fine is something quite different from the brightly colored hyper-kinetic cult flicks that we know [comic Yoshiyoshi] Arakawa from, something far more subtle and unique."

And also at Twitch, Simon Abrams talks with Ryo Iwamatsu about his film, Then Summer Came.

Daniel Kasman in the Auteurs' Notebook on Strawberry Shortcakes: "Believe it or not, the film often actually seems like a Japanese version of Sex in the City, only with significantly less handholding. But more importantly than that, director Yazaki Hitoshi and screenwriter Inukai Kyoko refuse to let their characters sink to the void of dejection that hovers so close beneath the surface of the American show and rears its head much more honestly in Strawberry Shortcakes."

Also, Sad Vacation: "Each change in style is as much a change in narrative, and possibly in character, and Aoyama seems to birth a new film at every moment - and it is a thrilling sensation."

Update, 6/24: "And the hot streak continues for Johnnie To," writes Todd Brown, reviewing Mad Detective at Twitch. "While the latest from the prolific action auteur lacks the blistering intensity of the Election films and the extreme high style of Exiled it reunites him with a pair of favored collaborators - screenwriter and co-director Wai Ka Fai and star Lau Ching Wan - and the result is an entertaining, surprising piece of work anchored by a powerhouse performance from Lau." More from Daniel Kasman in the Auteurs' Notebook.

Posted by dwhudson at June 18, 2008 3:50 PM