Strange Tales

A collection of 28 posts

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NYAFF 2026 Part Two

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NYAFF 2026 Part One

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Japan Cuts 2026

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2026 Summer Festival Preview

Looking ahead to my coverage of Japan Cuts, the NYAFF, and Fantasia

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What to Watch After You've Watched The Furious (Or Before, That's Perfectly Fine Too)

A user's guide to the artists behind the year's hottest action movie

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Further thoughts on Kill Bill, The RZA, Keanu Reeves, The Wachowskis, and Multiculturalism in Early 2000s Hollywood Genre Cinema

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IFFR 2026

Reviews from the 2026 edition of the Rotterdam International Film Festival

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Fantasia Festival 2025

Reviews of Rewrite, Honeko Akabane's Bodyguards, Holy Night: Demon Hunters, and Sham

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NYAFF 2025 Part Two

Reviews of Muromachi Outsiders (aka Samurai Fury), Deep in the Mountains, The Informant, and The Stone.

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NYAFF 2025 Part One

Reviews of three films from Hong Kong (Possession Street, Behind the Shadows, Smashing Frank) and Chinese director Vivian Qu's latest, Girls on Wire

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The Best Non-Chinese Language Films of the 21st Century (Thus Far)- Part Two (1-50)

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The Best Non-Chinese Language Films of the 21st Century (Thus Far)- Part One 110-51

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The Best Chinese Language Films of the 21st Century (Thus Far) - Part Three: 1-39

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The Best Chinese Language Films of the 21st Century (Thus Far) - Part Two: 79-40

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The Best Chinese Language Films of the 21st Century (Thus Far) - Part One: 110-80

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Contemporary Chinese (Streaming) Cinema

The Raquel Report: iQIYI's Queen of Triads, Snipers, and Wild Agents

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Contemporary Chinese (Streaming) Cinema

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2024 Festival Compilation

As I've done for the last couple of years, here is a collection of the reviews I wrote this year for InReview Online's coverage of various film festivals from around the world (Rotterdam, Cannes, the New York Asian Film Festival, Venice, Toronto, and the New York

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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

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2023 Spring Festival Compilation

As I put together last year, here is a collection of the reviews I wrote for InReview Online's coverage of various film festivals from around the world so far this year. Check out the rest of the festival coverage at the site, they've got a lot

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2022 Spring/Summer Festival Compilation

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The Best of the Martial Arts Films (Sandra Weintraub, 1990)

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Notes Towards a Voting Guide for Chinese Language Film in the 2022 Sight & Sound Poll

It’s Sight & Sound Poll season, that time once a decade when the venerable British film magazine polls critics and filmmakers from around the world to create a list of the Great Films of All-Time. Last time around, the poll made headlines when Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo replaced

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Both Sides Now: Women in Chinese Film at the DC Chinese Film Festival

This weekend, the (Washington) DC Chinese Film Festival [http://www.dccff.org/schedule.html], in partnership with The One International Women's Film Festival, presents a mini-festival focused on women in Chinese Cinema called “On Both Sides of the Camera” focusing on Chinese films by and/or about

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Notes on Filmspotting’s Contemporary Chinese Cinema Marathon

A few weeks ago, Adam and Josh at the Filmspotting [https://www.filmspotting.net/] podcast invited me to help curate a selection of 2010s Chinese-language movies for them to talk about on their show. I was more than happy to help, as I’ve been a fan of the