Sensei Sensibility

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 waitin...

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 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,...