Sensei Sensibility

Welcome to Sensei Sensibility!  You  are the hungry mind yearning to devour Asian crime cinema;  I  am the (questionably) knowledgeable  Sensei , more than happy to satiate your cinematic appetite. Brothers in Harm: Time and time again, cinema has confronted the black and white morals and ideals of its audience. From Park Hoon-jung's underworld masterpiece New World (2013), to (yes, even) Point Break  (1991) - we have been presented with the fact that the crime equation doesn't always follow as: Cops = Good Bad Guys = Bad.  The honour and unswerving solidarity amongst big screen murderers and thieves often results in some of the most unflinchingly emotional, beautiful pieces of cinema.  Think I'm wrong? Ask yourself: How many times have you mysteriously gotten something in your eye whilst watching an Undercover Cop Posing As Gangster, on his knees in the rain, screaming at the sky, holding his slain comrade in crime, as said comrade bleeds out p...

Welcome to Sensei Sensibility!  You  are the hungry mind yearning to devour Asian viewing;  I  am the (questionably) knowledgeable  Sensei , more than happy to satiate your televisual appetite. If you're looking for an entertaining (yet deeply uncomfortable) watch over the holiday break, you'd do a lot worse than the eight episode Studio Mir Korean anime Lookism .  Piggy in the Middle  Bottom Adapted for Netflix from Taejun Pak's webtoon of the same name, Lookism is part slice-of-life/part body-swapping fantasy that confronts the viewer with harsh themes of bullying, trauma and exclusionary social classification. Park Hyeong-seok is a chubby loner with unfashionable glasses and what is obviously a home haircut. Savagely bullied at school by his classmates, events escalate to the point where Hyeong-seok's mother must transfer him to a new school in the big city, where he can start again with a clean, un-bullied slate. (By the way, the overly adult,...

Welcome to Sensei Sensibility! You are the hungry mind yearning to devour Asian themed literature; I am the (questionably) knowledgeable Sensei , more than happy to satiate your literary appetite.  If you’re looking for a grim and ghoulish read this winter, may I recommend You-Jeong Jeong’s The Good Son ? This 2016 South Korean crime thriller is the perfect read to get your blood racing on a dark, dismal night. Han Yu-jin wakes one morning in the family’s luxury sea-view apartment to find his mother brutally murdered and laid out in the sitting room – Yu-jin, covered in blood. Yu-jin has absolutely no memory of the night before and must now retrace both his and his mother’s steps to uncover the events leading up to this terrible incident. Can he solve this mystery before anyone discovers a murder has taken place? And, must Yu-jin then clear his name, or hide his crime? Starting at the end and working backwards is a fairly common crime trope, and when handled poorly, can of...