celluloid consommé

Donnie Yen’s latest project with Kam Ka-Wai makes its way onto physical media. Box and disc art courtesy of Well Go USA. Donnie Yen’s new directorial effort has brought a little buzz with it. Most of this buzz has come in the form of some less-than favorable reviews but primarily in the way that paints the film’s ability to entertain as a whole. The film has its clear artistic merits and does in fact entertain quite well despite some issues which will be touched upon later. Despite some technical aspects in  Sakra,  it can be said that Donnie Yen has still got it. But his age is making some roles become a little more questionable now, where he plays Qiao Feng (a character roughly half Yen’s age) in his adaptation of  Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils  as a scrappy young leader of the Beggars’ Sect. Yen’s spirited performance doesn’t bring any doubts about his ability to channel Feng’s attitude or convictions, and the fight choreography on display is simply incredible despite...

Charlotte Le Bon’s romantic coming-of-age tale…with a ghost. Poster image courtesy of Yellow Veil Pictures. Few things feel so perfectly of the season in which they’re depicted as they are in Charlotte Le Bon’s first feature,  Falcon Lake.  The completely manufactured yet wholly believable fall gusts of the midwest season in Carpenter’s  Halloween  (dead leaves were imported to Southern California neighborhoods during the peak of summer), the cycles of each dreadful season in the deeply haunting  Lady in White,  and the palpable sticky-hot summer heatwave in Robert Mulligan’s otherwise chilling film  The Other.  All serve as reference points to Le Bon’s illustrative portrait of one particular summer spent with Bastien and his family at a lake house with family friends. Bastien feels a familiar loneliness most kids do at the start of their teens: awkwardly stretched across the middle of their journey towards adulthood but at the head of hormonal im...