REVIEW: Mao’s Last Dancer [2009]

“The world up here is huge and bright” Like the frog in an old children’s story his father told, young Li Cunxin had no idea what awaited him outside his well. Plucked from a classroom at eleven years old to be tested for agility and balance, Chairman Mao’s government took control of his life by excising him from family in order to be educated and groomed into an elite dancer. He was to be a spokesman for the Communist party, a beloved son of China carrying his culture into a…

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REVIEW: 色, 戒 [Lust, Caution] [2007]

“I have a mission” I can’t stand American film distributors and how they handle foreign films. With their money-scheming minds, they give us movie trailers without any dialogue, trying their best to disguise the fact that the work is not in English. If they don’t let us hear a strange language or show a single subtitle, people may just think that it was a minimal piece meant to strike our senses. Unfortunately, for someone like me, I know before seeing the trailer that it is a foreign film—I’ve probably been…

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