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Citizen Dog
Thailand, 2005, 101 min.
Funny and original, this boasts the same eye-poppingly garish color scheme as the director's Tears of the Black Tiger. With musical numbers, talking teddy bears, zombie motorcycle riders and severed fingers, it's a surreal, absurdist fantasy/fable about a country boy's adventures in Bangkok. ... more
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Gimme Kudos
China, 2005, 101 min.
With strong dialogue and subtle performances, this ironic comedy of manners follows Gu, who desperately seeks public kudos for his supposed act of heroism. The film gently peels the mask from modern China, revealing the firm grip of bureaucratic and social traditions despite the advances of the last... more
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Grain in Ear
China, 2005, 110 min.
Cui Ji is an ethnic Korean living in China and a single mother struggling to bring up her young son. The story of her cruel betrayal by society and by men marries a cold social realism with a perfectly mastered aesthetic. Best Film, Pusan Film Festival.... more
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The Hidden Blade
Japan, 2005, 133 min.
Following on The Twilight Samurai, the second part of director Yamada's trilogy is another gorgeously shot mid-19th century period piece, this one concerning a low-level samurai — who has never drawn his sword in anger — forced to put down a rebellion. Visually sweeping, rich in plot and char... more
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Kamataki
Canada, 2005, 111 min.
Claude Gagnon's deceptively simple story about a young, depressed Canadian who is sent to visit his uncle in Japan, is sublimely riveting, complex and erotic. The uncle is a master potter, and the depiction of the Kamataki process of marathon firing is exhilarating! Best Director, Montreal Film Fest... more
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Lady Vengeance
South Korea, 2005, 113 min.
Flamboyant Korean director Park Chan-wook's latest (part three in the "vengeance trilogy" that includes Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Old Boy) follows a woman who, wrongly imprisoned for murder for 13 years, seeks redress in the most violently spectacular of ways. A stunningly cinemat... more
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Perhaps Love
Hong Kong, 2005, 108 min.
Featuring top Asian actors such as Hong Kong's Heavenly King Jacky Cheung, South Korean Ji Jin-hee, Taiwanese-Japanese Takeshi Kaneshiro and Chinese Zhou Xun, the musical Perhaps Love offers a love triangle set in Shanghai's film world, bursting with musical styles, exquisite set design and r... more
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The Promise / aka Master Of The Crimson Armor
China, 2005, 98 min.
Chen Kaige, one of China's most acclaimed filmmakers, tries his hand at the kind of digitally-enhanced fantasy established by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). A valiant slave falls in love with a beautiful princess and epic chaos ensues.... more
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Season of the Horse
China, 2005, 106 min.
Mongolia's traditional ways of life are under fire thanks to a combination of economics, shortsighted thinking from Chinese bureaucrats and global warming. Ning Cai's beautifully shot and powerfully affecting debut uses the simple story of one nomadic herder's troubles to demonstrate the problems an... more
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Shanghai Dreams
China, 2005, 122 min.
Acclaimed Chinese filmmaker Wang Xiaoshaui (Beijing Bicycle) offers this bittersweet melodrama concerning a Shanghai family that has been relocated to the provincial Guizhou region, where father and daughter are destined for conflict when her social desires compete with his dreams to return t... more
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Stolen Life
China, 2005, 91 min.
When Yan-ni starts college she hopes to embark on a new life. Once at school, she meets Muyu and falls in love with him. She doesn't reallize that Muyu began an intricate deception that will lead to the loss of her child and the future she believes in. Best Film, Tribeca Film Festival.... more
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Three Times
Taiwan, 2005, 121 min.
Director Hou Hsiao-hsien was voted the world's most important filmmaker of the 1990s by Film Comment and Three Times marks a return to the interlocking narratives spanning Taiwanese history that won him worldwide acclaim. It focuses on the relationship between two lovers (played by the same a... more
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The Tin Mine
Thailand, 2005, 116 min.
A bio-pic of sorts of Thai national hero Archin Panjabhan who was expelled from university in 1949 and forced to work in a tin mine in backwoods Thailand. Out of his years in that rain-soaked, alcohol-drenched town came more than 140 autobiographical stories that catapulted him to the front ranks of... more
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Welcome to Dongmakgol
South Korea, 2005, 134 min.
During the Korean Civil War of 1950, a handful of northern and southern Korean soldiers and one American find themselves taking refuge in Dongmakgol, a tiny village history has passed by. This dryly-scripted dramedy finds the various warring factions slowly seduced by the peasant's laid-back lifesty... more
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