Sensei Sensibility

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 ti...

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...

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. I recently stumbled across   Lee Chung-hyun's 2020 South Korean thriller The Call . With such a generic title, I had vague expectations of a knock-off of  Ahn Byeong-ki's 2002  top-notch horror  Phone .  Whilst I do always like to be right , when it comes to Asian Cinema, I love it when a movie proves me wrong . Little did I know that The Call was one of the most hotly anticipated movies of 2020. How to define its genre? Thriller, crime drama, horror and, surprisingly, science fiction time travel roller-coaster – The Call is an absolute powerhouse knock out cinematic experience. The main action of the movie is set in 2019, where mopey millennial Kim Seo-yeon (Park Shin-hye) is dealing with more baggage than a concierge for a Kardashian. De...

Welcome to Sensei Sensibility! You are the hungry mind yearning to devour Asian horror themed cinema; I am the (questionably) knowledgeable Sensei , more than happy to satiate your cinematic appetite. Here on Sensei Sensibility we’ve covered plenty of ghosts ‘n’ ghouls (and even a gangster), no wonder we’re feeling peckish for something more… meaty… and delicious… like juicy, juicy braaaaaaains. (Or cabbages!) The Odd Family: Zombie on Sale , or as it’s succinctly known on Shudder: Zombie For Sale is a 2019 Korean zom-com that chomps away at the genre… and spits it back out. Against the backdrop of a thunderously dark and stormy night, a zombie escapes from a  local big pharma complex. Zombie-ism being an unexpected side-effect of a new diabetes drug, this once-test-subject is now making a beeline for the local village.  That would be a sinister enough opening to any horror movie were it not for the fact that our zombie, adorably played by Jung Ga-Ram , is the most inef...