Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey A pretty standard rock documentary, Ramona Diaz’s look at Filipino cover band singer Arnel Pineda’s unlikely rise to become the lead singer of the established rock band Journey hits all the standard inspirational movie beats, and somewhat unwittingly paints the band itself in a less than flattering light. Overcoming poverty […]
How to Use Guys with Secret Tips Despite a set-up that would lend itself very easily to descending into rom-com clichés, Lee Won-suk’s quirky and offbeat female empowerment story offers a hearty amount of laughs and only a modicum of sickly sweet sentiment when necessary. Labelled by her own co-workers as unremarkable, dense, and defective, […]
Tales from the Dark Part 1 (Centerpiece Presentation) A delightfully old school anthology of creepy ghost stories, the first installment of Tales from the Dark (both of which were released in China earlier this year) consists of three consistently spooky and amusing shorts about characters all trying to profit off the deaths and misfortunes of […]
The 17th annual Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival kicks off this week, and Dork Shelf is here with a look at many of the film's playing this year's line-up dedicated to bringing some of the best in Asian Cinema to local screens every November.
Without Shepherds Pakistan is a country that so many have heard about, or read about, or seen on the news, and the impression here in the West is that it’s of some kind of hellhole where the people are religious fanatics and the government is evil. It’s been called the most dangerous country in the […]
Confession of Murder South Korean cinema is known for its wild nature, fluctuating between polar opposite tones and often featuring extreme content. While often this is in the service of something dark and altogether nasty, designed to make audiences uncomfortable at the idea of enjoying themselves, Jeong Byeong-Gil’s Confession of Murder is all about the […]
The Rocket The Rocket’s narrative is deceptively simple: after Ahlo’s twin brother dies as a stillborn, the young Lao boy must prove to everyone that he isn’t the harbinger of misfortune, despite a string of tragic events that chases his family out from one unwelcome village to another. They find a drought-stricken village conducting a […]
Evangelion 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo is the third of four films released in the Rebuild of Evangelion tetralogy. Fourteen years after the third impact, Shinji awakens to a world he does not recognize. His body has not aged a single day. Earth lies in ruins, and those he […]
Linsanity There isn’t a sports fan across the globe that isn’t at least somewhat familiar with the remarkable story of Jeremy Lin. Linsanity allows fans a glimpse at the man whose boyhood dream of play pro basketball came true, but it slants into areas that it doesn’t need to. From a humble background to an […]
The Kirishima Thing The complexities of high school set the stage for this unconventional drama set in modern Japan. Through multiple perspectives, teens find themselves affected by a missing classmate, who’s central to the story but never seen. The Kirishima Thing goes about investigating his mysterious disappearance. The ensemble film begins on a Friday with […]
