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Showing posts from February, 2023

New Normal (Korean 2022) - DIFF Movie Review

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Welcome to Sensei Sensibility! You are the hungry mind yearning to devour quality Asian cinema; I am the (questionably) knowledgeable Sensei , more than happy to satiate your cinematic appetite. To anyone who's had the grave misfortune of living through the years 2020 to, well,  now , the phrase "New Normal" invokes chilling flashbacks to masks, hand sanitizer, and extremely awkward outdoor day-time coffee dates walking two metres from your crush.  However, thanks to the ever wonderful Dublin International Film Festival , New Normal means a raucously dark Korean thriller from Haunted Asylum 's Jung Bum-shik.  Jung has created a masterful, Hitchcockian anthology where the lives of strangers meet, and part, in ways unexpected - and often deadly.  The film opens with an ominous tone. Violence and misery run rampant in Seoul, fear and paranoia are the order of the day, and the weather adds to the apocalyptic overtones.  It's snowing. In June. For the first time

The Womb (2022) - Indonesian Horror Review

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Welcome to Sensei Sensibility!  You  are the hungry mind yearning to devour Asian horror cinema;  I  am the (questionably) knowledgeable  Sensei , more than happy to satiate your cinematic appetite. Rosemary's Baby meets Joko Anwar in Netflix's latest Indonesian release The Womb . ( Inang in Indonesian) Papa Don't Preach, Wulan is in trouble deep!  Poor, young Wulan, sympathetically played by Naysila Mirdad , has found herself landed with an unexpected pregnancy, a job loss and an impending eviction.  The charming young gent who put her in the family way wants nothing to do with Wulan and the baby -  unless it's to pay for an abortion. Financial assistance and compassion are  not to be found in her sleazy manager's office at the local supermarket where she works - unless she's succumbs willingly to his moustachioed, sexual advances. And the animal print shirt wearing landlord of the grotty slums where Wulan lives has had enough of waiting for the rent - he&

Unlocked (2023) - Korean Thriller Review

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Welcome to Sensei Sensibility!  You  are the hungry mind yearning to devour quality Asian cinema;  I  am the (questionably) knowledgeable  Sensei , more than happy to satiate your cinematic appetite. If the plot of Netflix's new K-thriller Unlocked is anything to go by, it looks like I'm not the only one who's been bingeing the hit show You . The gorgeous Lee Na-mi (Chun Woo-hee) is a carefree, and careless, twenty-something student who, like most twenty-something-year-olds, charges through life with her phone firmly glued to her hand, relying on it for every conceivable thing.  After a night of wild partying, the unthinkable happens and Na-mi wakes to find her phone missing! Fear not, gentle Na-mi, for a kindly voiced woman has just rung saying she found your phone on the night-bus, with its screen cracked, and has helpfully left it in for you to be repaired at Woo's Phone Repair.  Crisis averted!  Thoughts and prayers of gratitude for this good techno-Samaritan.  Lit