TheRetroCritic

I finally talk about Kong: Skull Island .

Wong Kar Wai's eclectic style is at its sharpest here in this beautifully crafted, quirky, hypnotic, heartbreaking little story of loneliness in Hong Kong. Two different but thematically close stories are told, one with Tony Leung and Faye Wong, the other with Takeshi Kaneshiro and Brigitte Lin. Both stories follow lost souls trying to beat their loneliness and let go of the past but the dynamic of each tale is very different. The first story is a bit darker with Brigitte Lin's blonde "femme fatale" being involved in drug smuggling, kidnapping and...murder. It's more of a thriller, really. The second part is much lighter and really sticks to its French New Wave-style rom-com feel. The cast is one of the best you'll find in any Hong Kong film: Lin displays a cold, piercing exterior but suggests she's more sensitive than she lets on. Kaneshiro is the heartbroken, kinda naive, nice guy you find in a lot of Wong Kar Wai films (see Tony Leung in Happy Toge

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the cinema, long after a film like Antichrist , Dream Home comes along. Based on a true story (loosely, I'm guessing), the film explores Hong Kong's exorbitant rise in house prices post 1997 and director Ho-Cheung Pang peppers an otherwise pretty sensible story with some of the most graphic and disturbing serial-killings you'll see in any film. Strangulations, guts pouring out, slashed penises, brains blown off, screwdrivers through the eye...the list goes on. And yet, unlike 99% of horror films out there, the story and its characters actually remain involving and intriguing throughout. Main character Cheung's desperation and her troubled relationship with her father add an extra weight to the story and help make Dream Home more than just another slasher flick. And what a glorious slasher flick it is. With every new death more inventive and unpredictable than the last, Cheung crosses the line from despera