Sean Gilman

A film critic in Tacoma, Washington. Bylines at The Criterion Collection, the Mubi Notebook, Frame.land, InReview Online, Seattle Screen Scene and more.

Devils on the Doorstep

Japan Cuts 2024 - Part One

If you’re a subscriber to The Chinese Cinema, you know that the posts have been sparse over the last month or so. That will happen occasionally, as I get commissions that require some weeks of research and writing to put together, and I hope you all will continue to

Anno Hideaki

Shin Godzilla: Orthochromatic (Anno Hideaki & Higuchi Shinji, 2016)

It’s hard to believe it’s been eight years since Shin Godzilla. I guess a lot of things have happened in the world since 2016, but it doesn’t really seem all that long ago. Anno Hideaki and Higuchi Shinji have since proceeded to reinvent the sci-fi films of

Devils on the Doorstep

Sōmai Shinji

Reviews: Sailor Suit and Machine Gun (1981) – May 7, 2024 Moving (1993) – July 30, 2024 Capsule Reviews: Typhoon Club (1985) – June 6, 2024

Somai Shinji

Sōmai Shinji Capsule Reviews

Typhoon Club (1985) – June 6, 2024 Sōmai's A Brighter Summer Day? Maybe, maybe not. Yang seems more interested in exploring the ways the world has failed his kids. Somai more in expressing the varieties of malformation in the junior high school mind.  Someday, a real rain will come.

Guan Hu

Guan Hu

Reviews: Mr. Six (2015) – January 4, 2016 The Eight Hundred (2020) – April 21, 2022 Black Dog (2024) – May 24, 2024

Paid-members only

John Woo

Thrice a Thief (Ralph Nelson, 1965 and John Woo, 1991 & 1996)

Paid-members only

Obayashi Nobuhiko

Beijing Watermelon (Obayashi Nobuhiko, 1989)

Paid-members only

King Hu

The Valiant Ones (King Hu, 1975)

Ann Hui

July Rhapsody (Ann Hui, 2002)

The Cantonese title for Ann Hui’s July Rhapsody translates roughly as “A Man at 40”, the English title apparently being a riff on the May-December concept, although specifically focusing on only one person in the age gap relationship, the man halfway through his life. The movie itself is more

Ding Sheng

Nothing Can't Be Undone by a Hotpot (Ding Sheng, 2024)

Ding Sheng’s latest film, his first since A Better Tomorrow 2018, his lamentable update of the John Woo classic, is the second Mainland Chinese caper/heist film with the word “hotpot” in the title that was distributed in North America by China Lion Films that I’ve seen. Chongqing

Zhang Lü

Zhang Lü Capsule Reviews

Gyongju (2014) – March 13, 2014 A post-Hong film, but more vibes-based and death-haunted than anything Hong had done up to that point ten years ago when it was made. Reminded me as much of Kiohara Yui's Remembering Every Night, released last year, as it did Hong. Zhang Lü

Paid-members only

Wong Jing

Casino Raiders (Wong Jing & Jimmy Heung, 1989)

Paid-members only

Somai Shinji

Sailor Suit and Machine Gun (Somai Shinji, 1981)

Heo Myeong-haeng

The Roundup: Punishment (Heo Myeong-haeng, 2024)

The man with the cinder block fists is back, and this time he’s learning what the internet is. For the last three years, Ma Dong-seok (aka Don Lee) has been making sequels to his hit 2017 film The Outlaws, in which he plays a large cop working his way

Liu Jian

Art College 1994 (Liu Jian, 2023)

I wrote about Liu Jian’s Have a Nice Day back when it played the Seattle International Film Festival in 2017. Thanks to SIFF’s arcane embargo policies, I was limited to exactly 75 words. Here they are: The second feature from director Liu Jian is an animated network-noir that

Paid-members only

Johnnie To

The Mad Monk (Johnnie To, 1993)

Ward Serrill

Dancing with the Dead: Red Pine and the Art of Translation (Ward Serrill, 2023)

Eliot Weinberger’s seminal study, 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, takes for its subject a single poem and looks at a number (19 plus several more in later editions) of different translations of that poem over the course of the 20th century. The approach allows Weinberger, in only

Paid-members only

Ann Hui

Visible Secret (Ann Hui, 2001)

Paid-members only

Jimmy Wang Yu

Beach of the War Gods (Jimmy Wang Yu, 1973)

Paid-members only

Joseph Kuo

The Mystery of Chess Boxing (Joseph Kuo, 1979)

Paid-members only

Yang Bingjia

Eye for an Eye 2 (Yang Bingjia, 2024)

Xu Haofeng

100 Yards (Xu Haofeng & Xu Junfeng, 2023)

The following is a re-edited and slightly-modified version of the review I wrote for InReview Online's coverage of the Toronto International Film Festival in the fall of 2023. Xu Haofeng makes movies for people who enjoy and understand the finer points of martial arts choreography. His best-known film

Patrick Tam

My Heart is That Eternal Rose (Patrick Tam, 1989)

The following is a re-edited and slightly-modified version of the review I wrote for InReview Online's coverage of the Fantasia International Film Festival in the summer of 2023. One or two festivals ago, I can’t remember which—this time of year they all blend together, I wrote

Patrick Tam

Nomad (Patrick Tam, 1982)

The following is a re-edited and slightly-modified version of the review I wrote for InReview Online's coverage of the New York Asian Film Festival in the summer of 2023. One of the finest films of the Hong Kong New Wave, Patrick Tam’s Nomad plays at this year’

Strange Tales

2023 Fall Festival Compilation

As I put together in 2022 and again for last Spring, here is a collection of the reviews I wrote for InReview Online's coverage of various film festivals from around the world. For publication here, the reviews have been re-edited and occasionally expanded. Check out the rest of