Maggie Lee

True to Ohashi original manga, Iwaisawa’s illustrations are geometric, employing abstract backgrounds and bright, dominant colors. Faces, reduced to a few stark, scrawly lines, heighten the comical effect of the characters’ poker-faced dialogue, without compromising the richness of their expressions.

Adapting Mizuki Tsujimura’s novel of the same name helps impose more of a narrative framework than is typically found in Kawase’s oeuvre, although the film’s mix of genres — from marital drama to teen romance to social commentary — don’t gel.

The unflaggingly perky caper has no down time, so one can’t help wishing for more the laid-back gamesmanship and boyish banter of the older renditions.

Ireland conveys subtle differences between paranoia and white-knuckled fear with an appealing fragility, while Oliver-Touchstone invites sympathy and disquiet with just a few twitches of her wrinkles. However, the glaring absence of any background to the main characters’ lives and relationships gives the cast less to work with than they deserve.

Guan’s direction may be less radical or propulsive than Nolan’s, but it too plunges audiences into both the intimacy and magnitude of brutal war spectacle while immersing them in a stunningly mounted period canvas.

Bringing two of Singapore and Japan’s most popular dishes (bak kut teh and ramen) together in a film about cultural and culinary fusion, Singaporean auteur Eric Khoo’s “Ramen Teh” is cinematically more comfort food than haute cuisine.

This ballad of sad losers mixed with satire on parochial politics is convulsively funny yet uncompromisingly bleak, bridging art with entertainment.

French helmer-lenser Emmanuel Gras’ camera embraces the subject’s every move with such rapt intimacy and cinematic poetry it’s easy to forget this is not a fictional drama.

This well-crafted work deserves to be seen for its thorough account of intricate workings of secret service and political skullduggery.

On the level of pure popcorn entertainment, there’s not a thing one can fault the 3D megabuster for.

At once tightly controlled and simmering with righteous fury, it’s gorgeously lensed, atmospherically scored and moves inexorably toward a gratifying payoff.

At once charming and heart-wrenching, this exquisitely performed film will steal the hearts of both art-house and mainstream audiences.

Plunging viewers into an extended dream sequence in the name of abstract motifs such as memory, time, and space, the film is a lush plotless mood-piece swimming in artsy references and ostentatious technical exercises, with a star (Tang Wei, “Lust, Caution”) as decoration.

Hamaguchi extols his source for a compelling representation of love as a mystic experience. However, what gets transferred to the screen becomes more like banal indecision.

The work has its intellectually ponderous moments but is ultimately saved by Jia’s muse and wife, Zhao Tao, who surpasses herself in a role of mesmerizing complexity.

The sequel’s worst enemy is its lead actor Wang Baoqiang, who dials up his bumbling, bragging and vulgar persona Tang Ren to intolerable levels.

Hong Kong action-director Dante Lam’s Operation Red Sea is war propaganda that comes off as antiwar, a patriotic film so carried away by its own visceral, pulverizing violence that patriotism almost becomes an afterthought.

With Monkey, the film”s most potent protagonist, sidelined for much of the film, the action feels truncated.

Efficiently directed by Leo Zhang, the film features all the zesty fights, slick effects and goofy slapstick one expects from a Jackie Chan family movie, while glossy production values, a snappy beat and composer Peng Fei’s deafening score mimic that of a Hollywood movie, though the film’s corny cyberpunk pastiche appeals exclusively to kids.

Directed by Jang Joon-hwan with a combination of humanistic ardor and intelligent insight comparable to the measured procedural mode of “Spotlight,” this is a compelling depiction of how brave individuals from all walks of life mobilized a whole nation to bring a recalcitrant dictator and his henchmen to their knees.

Bloated with visual effects, martial artists combat and amorous shenanigans, the one thing missing in The Thousand Faces of Dunjia is a comedic touch, which might have made this elaborate blockbuster more appealing.

Feng employs traditional craftsmanship to draw a sweeping historical canvas with profound human upheavals that mirror virtues and flaws of the Chinese people, without ever losing sight of the personal experiences that he dramatizes with such acute sensuality.

Artfully subverting the spirit of such soulful, diaphanous romances as “Love Letter” and “Hana and Alice” from earlier in his own career, Iwai exposes the desperation and deceit involved in the search for love.

Channeling “La femme Nikita,” “Kill Bill,” Nikkatsu’s ’70s female exploitation films and a gazillion Hong Kong martial arts heroines, The Villainess nonetheless succeeds in being one-of-a-kind for its delirious action choreography and overall narrative dementia.

While the film clearly taps into the national zeitgeist, buoyed by a sweeping show of people’s power that ousted the president, international audiences should also appreciate the actors’ feisty turns.

By highlighting the value of artists and intellectuals, and the importance of protecting them, [Hui] imbues the authentic historical episode with timely universal relevance.

Shot in a meticulous yet unmannered style, the film provides the veteran cast with an ideal framework to mount masterful performances.

Playing frequently like an absurdist political satire with only flashes of violence, this low-tension, drawn-out work won’t gratify the chills or adrenaline rushes fanboys crave, but the ending strikes a romantic chord so pure that all but the most jaded cynics will be moved.