Office (2015)

The massive Hong Kong corporation Jones & Sunn is about go public. CEO Winnie Cheung (Sylvia Chang) is set to become a major shareholder after being a mistress to Chairman Ho Chung-Ping (Chow Yun-Fat) for twenty years. At the same time Winnie has been secretly romancing one of her executives, David Wong (Eason Chan) - and he has been secretly stealing company funds to play the stock market. New recruit Lee (Wang Ziyi) arrives eager to impress, and immediately falls for fellow new employee Kat (Lang Yueting), not knowing that she is actually the Chairman's daughter. This tale of corporate intrigue and romance plays out on a stylised set the size of an aircraft hangar, is shot in 3D, and is a musical. That certainly makes it one of the stranger Hong Kong film productions of recent years.

The film is directed by Johnnie To, my personal favourite filmmaker, and of course that means I arrived at the cinema with extremely high expectations. That may have been a mistake: it is a disappointing film compared to To's best, but it admittedly still a well-staged and often inventive musical - and how many musical films do you see coming out of Hong Kong anyway?

Tokyo Story (1953)

An elderly couple, Shukichi and Tomi Hirayama (Chishu Ryu and Chieko Higashiyama), take the train up to Tokyo to stay with their adult children. To their busy children they are a mild irritant, and they do their best to fob them off upon one another before paying for them to stay at a relaxation spa out of town instead. The only member of the family to offer them much attention or hospitality at all is Noriko (Setsuko Hara), the widow of their son who was killed during the war.

Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story came to this year's Melbourne International Film Festival as a beautifully remastered print and as part of a special retrospective on legendary Japanese actress Setsuko Hara. I had already watched one film in the series (Kimisaburo Yoshimura's A Ball at the Anjo House, reviewed here) but the opportunity to watch Japan's most widely acclaimed feature film on the big screen was too good to miss.

Train to Busan (2016)

Seok-woo is an office-bound Korean workaholic in the middle of an unpleasant divorce from his wife. Seok-woo's daughter Su-an (Kim Su-an) is not handling the separation well, and for her birthday persuades him to escort her on the train from Seoul to Busan. On the same day a virulent zombie outbreak spreads across Korea - including onto the train. Now Seok-woo, Su-an and a shrinking group of passengers must fight to stay alive until the train reaches its final destination.

Generally speaking, Asian films do not go too well with English-speaking audiences. Occasionally a film will break out and actually get a theatrical run in the USA, or the United Kingdom, or Australia. These outliers are usually representative of the most effective and crowd-pleasing films the continent has to offer, including films such as Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Hero, Shall We Dance, or The Host. Yeon Sang-ho's new zombie thriller Train to Busan is the latest film to join that list. It has already been a massive hit in its own country, and is receiving a proper cinema release in both the USA and Australia. If you are not a fan of zombies, then this is categorically not a film for you. If you are an enthusiast for all things undead and hungry, then rest assured this is the best zombie film in years; probably the best since Danny Boyle remixed the genre with 28 Days Later.

Our Huff and Puff Journey (2015)

Four high school students in Kita-Kyushu decide to travel by bicycle to Tokyo - a journey of 1,000 kilometres - to see their favourite pop group Creephyp in concert. Their adventures takes them by bike, bus and car, taking in Hiroshima, Okayama and Kobe along the way.

Our Huff and Puff Journey is not a great movie. It comes saddled with a lot of problems and faults, and together they do ultimately derail the film as a whole. While there are plenty of little highlights - a nice bit of acting here, a funny line of dialogue there - those highlights simply cannot outweigh the general issues that sink the whole enterprise. The film is only 91 minutes long, but feels a hell of a lot longer than that at the time.

Daigo Matsui presents the story through a combination of handheld video footage recorded by the girls as they document their journey, and higher-grade handheld footage that presents them from a third-person point of view. The visual similarities between the girls' own footage and the broader scenes makes that a slightly muddled creative choice, albeit one that Matsui openly embraces by the film's final shot. Clever on one level, and vaguely tedious on another. That last sentence is arguably a good summation of the film in general.

Where Are You Going (2016)

Always push your viewing habits. I am not demanding that you do so constantly, but always make sure you push a little on your comfort zones. If you only ever watch science fiction, go watch a straight drama. If you only watch Hollywood, go watch an independent film. If you watch a lot of films from Europe, watch one from Africa. I think it's a valuable exercise for any regular moviegoer to occasionally explore new territory, and I certainly try to do so from time to time. It cannot all be Johnnie To action thrillers and 1970s BBC science fiction episodes.

Where Are You Going is a new arthouse film by Chinese filmmaker Zhengfan Yang. Yang live in Hong Kong for five years, and it was clearly an experience that resonated with him because he returned there to showcase it in his new work. The film is a series of taxi rides through the city, each announced with a bilingual title card. Some of the journeys take place in silence. Some of them contain awkward, hesitant conversations between the taxi driver and his passenger. Some feature lengthy, in-depth conversations about life in Hong Kong and how the city is changing. The camera never moves, and it is not even pointed at the actors. Instead it's fixed straight ahead from the roof of the taxi: it makes Hong Kong itself as much of a character as the people inside the taxi.

The Handmaiden (2016)

In 1930s Korea a pickpocket named Sook-hee (Kim Tae-ri) is persuaded by the deceitful Count Fujiwara (Ha Jung-woo) to masquerade as a maid to a rich, disaffected heiress named Hideko (Kim Min-hee), in order to help him defraud her of her fortune. Fujiawara's master plan hits a snag, however, when Sook-hee and Hideko begin to fall in love.

In many respects, The Handmaiden is a wonderful oddity. It is the latest film by the internationally acclaimed filmmaker Park Chan-wook, whose previous films - including Oldboy, JSA: Joint Security Area, and Sympathy for Mr Vengeance - have established him a major creative force in his own country and a cult favourite internationally. This new film is an adaptation of the similarly acclaimed English-language novel Fingersmith, by Welsh author Sarah Waters. While the novel was set in 19th century England, Park has relocated the action of 1930s Korea: a country occupied by the Japanese, and where aspiring rich aesthetes seem more interesting in adopting Japanese language and culture than in defending their own heritage.

This film is a genuine surprise, in fact it is one of those films best viewed with as little knowledge about its storyline as possible. What I can say is that it is one of the best films I have seen this year, and showcases one of the world's most talented directors at the height of his powers.

Beware the Slenderman (2016)

In May 2014, two 12 year-old girls led one of their friends out into the woods near Waukesha, Wisconsin, and attempted to murder her. When questioned by police they claimed they did it to please the Slenderman - a fictional horror character created on the Internet to simulate an urban myth. The criminal case is still ongoing at the time of writing, yet the murder attempt is now the subject of a new documentary from Emmy winner and Oscar nominee Irene Taylor Brodsky (The Final Inch).

It is an immediately arresting subject for a film, since it is not only extremely horrifying but it sits at a nexus point between impressionable youth, school bullying, debates over media consumption, and how urban myths develop and operate.

Sadly, while Brodsky has selected a potent and quite disturbing subject matter, her documentary is only partially successful. Beware the Slenderman is a deeply flawed film: it is too long and repetitive, its focus and structure are a little messy, and it egregiously fails to cover all required angles of its story. The end result is a documentary that was certainly watchable, but not actually good enough to recommend to others.

Kaili Blues (2016)

The following synopsis is going to severely under-sell Kaili Blues, but here goes: Chen (Yongzhong Chen) is a reformed ex-con living in China's Guizhou province. He operates a small medical clinic with an elderly colleague, although of late he has become concerned about how his disreputable brother is treating his nephew Weiwei (Feiyang Luo). When he learns his brother has sent Weiwei away, and has even discussed selling the boy, he heads off to recover Weiwei and bring him home. He also finds himself roped in to returning a cassette tape of pop music that was given to his colleague by a lover many years earlier.

'Arthouse' is a term that gets thrown around in film criticism in a manner that often suggests that the critic has simply run out of better words to use. It can indicate all manner of things to all manner of writers. For some it will mean experimental narratives, editing or photography. For others it will signify a lack of narrative at all. For yet more writers it is simply a shorthand for directorial pretence. The word has been thrown at Kaili Blues an awful lot, in this case because the first time around the film really is remarkably impenetrable, and it is only once out on the other side that its immense merits become clear.

Personal Shopper (2016)

Maureen (Kristen Stewart) is a 28 year-old American living in Paris. During the day she works as a personal shopper for a rich celebrity named Kyra (Nora von Waldstätten). In her own time she obsesses over her recently deceased twin brother Lewis, and his promise to try and contact her from beyond the grave if he died. It is not long before something seems to be making contact, but whether it is her brother, her imagination or something altogether darker remains to be seen.

Personal Shopper is a horror film by stealth. It comes from acclaimed French director Olivier Assayas via the Cannes Film Festival, where it ran in contention for the prestigious Palme d'Or. At a glance it appears to be a typical French drama, with sullen overwrought emotion and privileged type complaining incessantly about their luxurious lives. Instead it is one of the best supernatural thrillers of recent years, and it has an alarming tendency to creep up on you and give one hell of a surprise.

A Ball at the Anjo House (1947)

In the aftermath of the Pacific War, the aristocratic Ando family has fallen on hard times. The proud father Tadahiko (Osamu Takizawa) is about to lose their mansion to a wealthy black marketeer. His lothario son Masahiko (Masayuki Mori) has seduced a family maid while secretly pursuing marriage with the marketeer's daughter Yoko (Keiko Tsushima). Daughter Akiko (Yumeko Aizome) spurned the advances of the family's chauffeur, who has now returned to the scene as an independently wealthy businessman. It is only Tadahiko's other daughter, the bright and thoughtful Atsuko (Setsuko Hara), who holds onto any kind of hope for the future. Together the family agree to host one final society ball, to commemorate and mourn the noble life to which they have all been accustomed.

One of the special programs of this year's Melbourne International Film Festival is a retrospective on the legendary Japanese actor Setsuko Hara. Shortly after the end of the war she starred in Akira Kurosawa's drama No Regrets for Our Youth. From there she was quickly cast in Keisuke Kinoshita's Here's to the Girls, as well as this film: Kimisaburo Yoshimura's A Ball at the Anjo House. In all three she came to typify the image of the 'new Japanese woman': one looking to the future more than dwelling on the past, and accepting Japan's new position in the second half of the 20th century.