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. Who doesn't love an overly long anime title that refuses to trip elegantly off the tongue, but awkwardly stumbles out in the wrong order, complete with loo roll stuck to its shoe. Such is the fate of light-novel-now-anime The Tunnel To Summer, The Exit of Goodbyes. Gloomy but handsome Kaoru Tono (Oji Suzuki) is just one in a long line of awkward anime teens who decide to tamper with the very fabric of existence in order to escape their grim reality. Kaoru has begun fleeing his troubled homelife and traversing ever further into the secluded Urashima Tunnel. Local legend has it that the further you go into this mysterious, ethereal tunnel, the closer you are to regaining a lost heart's desire. As Kaoru is harbouring a dark secret pertaining to his tragic past, he has...

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. This is your captain speaking, buckle your seatbelts as we land in bumbling college newbie Tamaki Tsuru's world.  Fresh from a less-than-ideal high school experience, Tamaki is determined that college will be the new start she desperately longs for.  Our defiantly optimistic and somewhat klutzy heroine has it all mapped out. She's going to join an extra-curricular society, be Belle of the Ball, meet the love of her life at said society group and live happily ever after. Aw.  And by " aw " I mean, "Aw shit! Watch what you're doing, you fool! You're about to send a tennis ball soaring straight through an expensive piece of aviation equipment belonging to the Aviation Society, thus landing yourself in crippling repairs related debt that you'll spend the...

Welcome to Sensei Sensibility!  You  are the hungry mind yearning to devour a delicious bowl of noodley-human emotion -  I  am the (questionably) knowledgeable  Sensei , more than happy to satiate your cinematic appetite.  From gorging on celebrity T.V. chefs, nibbling on Netflix's smorgasbord of foodie shows, all the way to the mukbang craze, people love food. People love watching other people make, and eat food. As an entertainment source, this basic format has endured while the faddiest of on-screen trends have passed their best, and been thrown out. With so many options on the menu, how can one documentary about an old man and his (almost just as old) ramen shop stand out? Well, director John Dashbach finds a way.  Come Back Anytime centres around Masamoto Ueda , the hard-working, endearing "Master" of Bizentei, a little known but none-the-less popular eatery in Tokyo. Master is nearing retirement age, and what will that mean for the resta...

"An unopened door is a happy door..." - Maurice Moss 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. For those concerned about who will gift the world with spellbinding, epic anime once Studio Ghibli's Hayao Miyazaki finally travels on The Great Cat Bus to the Sky , fear not. Makoto Shinkai is here. Suzume is the latest release from the award-winning director, and like his recent popular works  Your Name  and Weathering With You , Suzume is an, action-packed coming-of-age fantasy, with  Ghibli-esque aesthetics and jaw-dropping animation.  And, forgive the cheesy cliché, a lotta heart.  "Strangers on a hill, exchanging eye contact..." I had the privilege of watching a special preview screening of Suzume at Lighthouse Cinema, Dublin with thanks to Japanese Film Festival Ireland (in ...

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...