My Memoirs of a Geisha in Gion District Kyoto, Japan

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ALL-TIME FAVORITE BLOG POST RE-BLOGGED:
A Trip to Kyoto wouldn't be complete without visiting Gion District, hoping to catch a glimpse of Geishas and Geikos/Maikos. Luckily, I did. Let me share with you my story how chasing a Geisha changed my life forever.

It was a free night for me, still in Kyoto. I met up with the brothers from Sweden and decided to tag along with their trip. I was suppose to go to a Ryokan that night but decided to forgo the plan since i haven't visited Gion yet.

Having bought the Kyoto Bus Pass, i was hoping i could ride it for free. Alas, a more practical and convenient way is to ride the train, two stops away from my hostel to Gion.

Where is Gion?

Gion district is located in the city center around Shijo Avenue between Yasaka Shrine and the Kamo River, and is filled with ochaya (teahouses where geisha entertain), theaters, shops and restaurants.

It was an excellent time to roam around Gion. Tourists flock to this area just before dusk hoping to snap a photo op with the beauties. We arrived around quarter to 20:00 so tourists were already leaving. Walking around the district was a treat in itself. Miniature houses where Geishas perform abound. Set dinner and cool entertainment where in place. I found myself wandering around the night along quiet alleys and trying peep through open windows of the restaurants. With no money, i decided to catch them before/after performance. After about 30 minutes, there she was.

Hanami-Koji

I saw her walking pass by me.

Walking and reservedly chit-chatting with a wealthy businessman. She was walking slowly, effortlessly chic and stylish in her elegant kimono and face all made up. She was in her 30's so I'm pretty sure she is a Geisha. I wanted to take a photo of her. I wanted to remember her. I wanted to show everyone who she is. But a part of me convinced me to simply watch her. She's not Zhang Ziyi from the movie Memoirs of a Geisha. She's not a clown, not an entertainer. So, while brothers were excitedly taking photos. I stood next to a post, watch her pass by me. She didn't look at me as what usually happen in the movies. She was settled, arms closed to the businessman. She had the quiet confidence in her, the charm of a lady that could lure everyone. She hit me right in the spot. She isn't like anybody else. She is a Geisha!

It was a surreal moment. I never knew in this lifetime, that i would actually be able to catch a Geisha in person. At first, i wanted to chase one, but in the end, i found one and decided to let her go. A Geisha is just like anyone of us - a person, a human being with emotions. It's her job. It's her passion. I've chatted with a local one time, and he mentioned how nowadays the young Japanese girls would not train to become a Geisha. But this is history, this is the way of life. I hope the tradition never ends. Long Live the Geishas!

I walked passed by the quiet streets and off to the highway, neon red lit lanterns parade the streets. Souvenir selling shops sell local goodies, restaurants offering overpriced restaurants, and the quiet truth lingers. Gion amazed me in so many ways. It's a different Japan as i remembered i said.

Geishas are aplenty in Kyoto. You can't see them anywhere, you have to find them. They are like cherry blossoms during autumn, quite impossible to find, and will forever be just a dream!

How to Get to Gion

Gion can be reached by bus from Kyoto Station in about 20 minutes. Take number 100 and 206 and get off at Gion bus stop. The closest train stations are Gion Shijo Station on the Keihan Line and Kawaramachi Station on the Hankyu Line.

Additional graphics and text sourced from here.

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Working Out Sweating and Eating A Lot of Local Cuisine in Saigon, Vietnam

11:00:00 AM Pinoy Boy Journals 0 Comments

STORY: This particular trip was my third in Vietnam, and second in Saigon. The last time i was in this city was back in 2009. I was actually quite surprised that there are a handful of changes within the district in Pham Ngu Lao, but over-all, it's still the same old happy place, only that there's more tall buildings, and well, more people. I've written many stories about my trips in Vietnam in the past like the Backpacking Saigon 101 and Top 10 Must Do in Saigon, but this particular trip was quite different. I didn't have any itinerary at all. I thought i needed to go back to Vietnam because it's just been a long time. I scoured the internet for a cheap flights, and there it was. After coming back from Indonesia a month prior, i reckon a second time trip to Saigon would be awesome.

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Vincent Van Gogh Exhibition at Ueno Royal Museum in Tokyo, Japan

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STORY: I just finished watching Loving Vincent. If you're a fan of Vincent Van Gogh, then you should watch this masterpiece. It's actually the world's first fully painted feature film. Because i still have Van Gogh high up until now, i thought i should share with you my experience visiting Vincent Van Gogh Exhibition in Ueno, Tokyo last December 2019.

The exhibit was held at the Ueno Royal Museum, tracing his short but well-lived career from Hague, through Paris, Arles, Saint-Remy and finally to Auvers-sur-Oise featuring over 40 of his masterpieces. What's particularly nice was that each painting was displayed together with his letters to his brother Theo, which made this exhibit even more personal. I particularly scheduled my visit to catch this exhibit because Vincent Van Gogh is one of my most favorite artists of all time. Getting here was not hard at all since the location is quite near Ueno Station, but coming from Shibuya it's quite far.

Photos were not allowed upon entry, which always bums me. Why? I left my personal belongings in a locker outside the exhibit hall, and proceeded after paying 1,800 Yen. I went in to enjoy seeing his masterpieces up close. I even took note of some of my favorites, and i carefully read the letters it went with it. Vincent was such a lonely soul, that i always see his painting as very emotional, and thought provoking. He was not celebrated during his time with over 800 paintings, and selling just one. Yet, he is known today as the father of modern art. Imagine, he only started painting at age 27 and taught himself the arts. Long live his life, through his works. Here are some of his paintings:

Starry Night depicts a dreamy interpretation of the artist's asylum room's sweeping view of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Though Van Gogh revisited this scene in his work on several occasions, "Starry Night" is the only nocturnal study of the view. Thus, in addition to descriptions evident in the myriad of letters he wrote to his brother, Theo, it offers a rare nighttime glimpse into what the artist saw while in isolation. "Through the iron-barred window I can make out a square of wheat in an enclosure," he wrote in May of 1889, "above which in the morning I see the sun rise in its glory." Source

Self Portrait, 1889 is both more confident and more aggressive. It is a surly, almost rude and choleric face - as if the sitter had had enough of examining his features for signs of madness. There are deep creases by the nose and cheekbones, the eyebrows are thick and prominent, the corners of the mouth have turned down: it is the face of a man with no more time for friendliness. The snaking and swirling lines that denote the background are used for the person and clothing of the artist, too, and the restless rejection of harmony and tranquillity to which these lines attest sets the keynote of the subject's facial features: the need to deform and remake has created a new disorder in his physiognomy. The face is not so much meant to be coarse or angry as full of vitality, of the sense of the moment. Painter and sitter being one and the same person, there is (as it were) no need for the model to keep still. The picture is not a pretty pose nor a realistic record; rather, the face van Gogh is here setting down on canvas is one that has seen too much jeopardy, too much turmoil, to be able to keep its agitation and trembling under control. It is not, in fact, an unfriendly face. This portrait articulates vitality. And the approach is plainly incapable of idealistic posing. Source

To Van Gogh this picture was an expression of 'perfect rest', or 'sleep in general'. The bright, cheerful little room has become a field of rapid convergences, sharp angles, and contrasts of high color. The perspective vision of the walls and bed is as exciting as one of his deep landscapes, where we are carried headlong to the horizon. But in such a view with 'a rushing series of lines, furrows rising high on the canvas', Van Gogh found an expression of 'calmness, of great peace.' These surprising reactions permit us to see the spontaneous intensification of movement in his rendering of things. For his high-strung nature, the most relaxed perceptions were already charged and restless. But his feeling of repose in paintings so full of movement is also the outcome of a kind of cathartic process; by projecting movement into nature, he is relieved of tensions and wins a real peace. Source

Portrait of Dr. Gachet is one of the most revered paintings by the Vincent van Gogh. It depicts Dr. Paul Gachet who took care of Van Gogh during the final months of his life. There are two authenticated versions of the portrait, both painted in June 1890 at Auvers. Both show Doctor Gachet sitting at a table and leaning his head on his right arm but they are easily differentiated in color and style. In 1890, the first version fetched a record price of $82.5 million ($75 million, plus a 10 percent buyer's commission) when sold at auction in New York. When accounting for inflation, this is still the highest price paid for art at a public auction. Source

Wheatfield with Crows is one of Van Gogh's re-created memories of the north, and is believed to be the last work of Van Gogh. In early July of 1890, Van Gogh travelled to Paris, alone, to stay with Theo and his wife Jo. Theo was in poor health and was having financial problems, which was an enormous worry to Van Gogh who was keenly aware of the burden he was on his brother and his family. In addition, the baby was ill and Jo too was suffering from exhaustion. Van Gogh returned quickly to Auvers but rapidly became severely depressed. Writing of this picture shortly before his suicide, Van Gogh conveyed something of its tragic mood: "Returning there, I set to work. The brush almost fell from my hands...I had no difficulty in expressing sadness and extreme solitude". Source

Vincent Van Gogh lived a very sad life. It's quite hard to control your tears seeing his works up close. A part of him will always live in the paintings, and that each was carefully and lovingly created using his imagination and great talent. Yet, his life was short-lived and tragic. I never cared that people would actually see me weep because if you've been studying his life, you know that it's only now that people get to appreciate him. People didn't get to know him better during his short life. Life was so hard for him.

I could not count the number of items i bought at the souvenir shop - from postcards, prints, books, and a lot of trinkets. I have quite a collection of Vincent Van Gogh coffee table books, and a month ago, i bought his Funko Pop. The best souvenir, i guess, was this responsive touch screen where i got to have a animated Vincent Van Gogh picture of myself. This saved the day for me from the loneliness of the exhibit.

I went outside, and stared at the trees around Ueno Park. The cold winter breeze was enough to comfort me from sadness. The only thing i can think of, is how to live my life to the full. A life Vincent Van Gogh never had.

It is good to love many things, for therein lies strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done with love is well done. ”

- Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh photos and text sourced from here.

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Top 25 Travel Resolutions for Travelers 2010

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ALL-TIME FAVORITE POST FROM 2010 RE-BLOGGED:

Every time we travel, we come to realize a couple of things for ourselves: lessons learned along the way, things we don't want to happen again, and events that are sometimes funny or sad, some even traumatic. It's best to use these experiences as learning tool for when the next trip comes along, that is why i came up with my Top 25 Travel Resolutions for Travelers this 2010.

1. Save up. We always realize the advantage of saving up before we leave for a trip. More money equals more time spent traveling. So, hold on to your money when the shopping sale season comes, or when you're dreading to buy that pair of shoes, that awesome shirt you don't need. Remember that there's no better way to spend money than buying yourself a plane ticket to paradise.

2. Get fit. There's nothing worse than not being able to climb the steep steps of the Angkor Wat or long walks finding a good hostel to stay in during midday in Bangkok. When you're charged and amped, you would not opt for a tuk-tuk or a taxi, instead you'll just walk. You save money and you keep fit, plus you get to see more interesting stops along the way. It's like hitting three birds with one stone, you see.

3. Be Clean. If you know what i mean, you don't want to be banged up abroad. It's about time. Time to look out for yourself.

4. Others would say pack less, i say pack more. Personally, i've experienced lack of shirts to use because i've used them all up and are straight to the laundry. Also, it works if you're really on a tight budget, you don't have to buy those shirts along Khao San road even if they're dirt cheap. Saves you money plus you don't wear the same shirt in all of your travel photos.

5. Invest in a good toiletry kit. I've experienced the worst - toothpaste in my soap, shampoo on my toothbrush. Not good at all, my friend. You're always out traveling anyway, so buy those really good fabric, water resistant toiletry kit that holds up your essentials.

6. If you're feeling that tonight's going to be a good, good night, i mean drinking to the night, buy cheap rhum or whiskey and cola at the nearest 7-11 store and drink up at your hostel or guest house. Then, go out to grab a couple more drinks at the bar. You'll realize a couple of Bahts or Dongs or Reals will save you up for more important matters, like another bottle the next day.

7. Sometimes internet use is expensive in some places. Along Khao San, it's cheap around 20 Baht an hour, but when you get to Koh Phangan and Krabi or anywhere down south to the islands, that's where internet price is jacked up, around 60 Baht every 30 minutes, that's 120 Baht in one hour. Wheeew.

8. Always ask before you buy. You have to agree on a price first - be it in a tuk tuk ride going to your place, or upon entering those sleazy clubs in patpong, or even upon ordering a small glass of hot lemon tea.

9. Charge your camera battery. You will definitely regret going on a tour or to wherever you're going, finding a red blinking sign on your camera Toink! You need to charge your battery camera all the time. That's 1/2 of your life lost because you weren't able to take the gorgeous sunset of the Angkor Wat.

10. Try to research, and ask around. Sometimes, the place you're looking for is right on the next block and you regret taking a taxi for 30 minutes looking for that place which is just right around the corner. Add up to the confusion is a non-English speaking Chinese driver.

11. Don't drink water out of a faucet. You'll ruin your trip. Trust me.

12. Sometimes department store merchandise is cheaper than the ones sold at the night market.

13. Don't drink and smoke in Singapore not because it's unlawful or you'll get caught but because it's unbelievably overpriced. Are you kiddin' me... P350 for a pack of Marlboro, and P150-P200 for a glass of tiger beer????

14. Don't avail of day tours. Walk and Do It Yourself. You will be surprised knowing that the most intimate experiences are when you just walk around, and take it all in. Be it sitting with the locals in Siem Reap, or helping out a lovely Vietnamese girl sell her freshly picked flowers in Hanoi.

15. Smile all the time. Remember you're not from there, it's always a good advice to be friendly. A smile will get you a free round of drinks, a smile will earn you friends, a smile will earn you a kiss.

16. Don't drink everyday and night even if the happy hour is so tempting. Or better yet, don't drink beer and coke everyday and every night. You don't want to be acidic when you get back home from the trip.

17. A few dollars less for a hostel or a guesthouse doesn't always mean you have to get it. A few dollars more will get you a very nice room with a great view of the ocean. So as the story was told in Sihanoukville.

18. When you are out and someone fights with you, walk away. Trouble is not what you want to be a part of when you're out in an unfamiliar territory. You don't want to be like the bleeding farang along Khao San who was beaten up by the locals because he offended them.

19. Even if you travel in groups, it doesn't mean you have to go out together every time. Take a day off to explore the city or an island alone. When you come back, you have so many more stories to share.

20. Even if you're heading to a tropical country, alway bring with you a pair of trousers. You don't want to be left out by your friends while they party in Zouk while you go back home with your short pants and sandals like what happened to me in Kuala Lumpur.

21. Invest in a WiFi capable internet phone. It's cheaper to update people back home through Tweeter or Facebook status than sending them an SMS message or worse, calling them.

22. Buy local art. Instead of those ashtrays, or displays you will find in almost every Asian City, buy Local art or furniture and have them shipped back home.

23. Learning a foreign language is not an easy task but learning how to say hello and thank you is very easy. Do it.

24. Try to mingle with the locals. Talk to them, try to do what they're doing. Laugh when they're laughing. Small talks are really nice.They will appreciate it. You will be rewarded.

25. Don't feel bad when you're coming back home. Smile, for you will always come back. You'll see.

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Top 25 Best Foreign Films of All Time (2020 Edition)

1:58:00 PM Pinoy Boy Journals 0 Comments

I am a true blue cinephile. I go to film festivals here, and abroad. I've attended Moscow International Film Festival and Busan International Film Festival last year. If not for Covid-19, i would be attending Tokyo International Film Festival and Hong Kong International Film Festival this year. When i travel, i always make time to go to movie theaters and catch the latest flicks showing. I've watched movies in Bangkok, Nagoya, Seoul and Jakarta, too. While in quarantine, i thought i share with you 25 of my most favourite foreign films of all time. More than a decade ago, i started getting interested in watching foreign films. I think a part of me will always be watching one, to get inspired. What can i say, i am a cinephile.

1. In the Mood for Love - Wong Kar-Wai - Hong Kong

Hong Kong, 1962: Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk) move into neighboring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite—until a discovery about their spouses creates an intimate bond between them. At once delicately mannered and visually extravagant, Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love is a masterful evocation of romantic longing and fleeting moments. With its aching musical soundtrack and exquisitely abstract cinematography by Christopher Doyle and Mark Lee Ping-bin, this film has secured a place in the cinematic canon, and is a milestone in Wong’s redoubtable career. Source

2. Irreversible - Gaspar Noe - France

The camera looks on unflinchingly as a woman is raped and beaten for several long, unrelenting minutes, and as a man has his face pounded in with a fire extinguisher, in an attack that continues until after he is apparently dead. That the movie has a serious purpose is to its credit but makes it no more bearable. Some of the critics at the screening walked out, but I stayed, sometimes closing my eyes, and now I will try to tell you why I think the writer and director, Gaspar Noe, made the film in this way. Source

3. Cold War - Pawel Pawlikowski - Poland

“Cold War” is one of those love-among-the-ruins romances that turn suffering into high style. Like its two sexy leads — who fall for each other and keep on falling — the movie has been built for maximum seduction. It has just enough politics to give it heft, striking black-and-white images and an in-the-mood-for-love ambiguity that suggests great mysteries are in store for those who watch and wait. You won’t wait long. The movie runs just 89 minutes, during which swaths of the 20th century flutter by like a flipbook. Source

4. The Killing of a Sacred Deer - Yorgos Lanthimos - Ireland/United Kingdom

Dr. Steven Murphy (Colin Farrell) is a renowned cardiovascular surgeon presiding over a spotless household with his ophthalmologist wife Anna (Nicole Kidman) and their two exemplary children, 12-year-old Bob (Sunny Suljic) and 14-year-old Kim (Raffey Cassidy). Lurking at the margins of his idyllic suburban existence is Martin (Barry Keoghan), a fatherless teen who Steven has covertly taken under his wing. As Martin begins insinuating himself into the family’s life in ever-more unsettling displays, the full scope of his intent becomes menacingly clear when he confronts Steven with a long-forgotten transgression that will shatter the Murphy family's domestic bliss. Source

5. A Fantastic Woman - Sebastian Lelio - Chile

The life that Orlando (Francisco Reyes) has built with his girlfriend, Marina (Daniela Vega), which viewers glimpse in the opening 15 minutes of A Fantastic Woman, has a warm sense of stability. Orlando relaxes at a spa, then heads over to a bar where he watches Marina, a singer, perform. They celebrate her birthday at a Chinese restaurant, then head home to their apartment. Their relationship (he’s a cisgender man in his 50s, she’s a transgender woman in her late 20s) feels quiet, but not secret; it’s something they’ve carved out together, free of judgment. Source

6. Life is Beautiful - Roberto Benigni - Italy

Some people become clowns; others have clownhood thrust upon them. It is impossible to regard Roberto Benigni without imagining him as a boy in school, already a cutup, using humor to deflect criticism and confuse his enemies. He looks goofy and knows how he looks. I saw him once in a line at airport customs, subtly turning a roomful of tired and impatient travelers into an audience for a subtle pantomime in which he was the weariest and most put-upon. We had to smile."Life Is Beautiful" is the role he was born to play. The film falls into two parts. One is pure comedy. The other smiles through tears. Benigni, who also directed and co-wrote the movie, stars as Guido, a hotel waiter in Italy in the 1930s. Watching his adventures, we are reminded of Chaplin. Source

7. Parasite - Bong Joon-Ho - South Korea

Described by its creator as “a comedy without clowns, a tragedy without villains”, Parasite is more Shakespearean than Hitchockian – a tale of two families from opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum, told with the trademark genre-fluidity that has seen Bong’s back catalogue slip seamlessly from murder mystery, via monster movie, to dystopian future-fantasy and beyond. We first meet the Kim family, headed by father Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho) and mother Chung-sook (Chang Hyae-jin), in their lowly semi-basement home, hunting for stray wifi coverage and leaving their windows open to benefit from bug-killing street fumigation. They have nothing but one another and a shared sense of hard-scrabble entrepreneurism. So when son Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik) is faced with an unexpected opportunity to home-tutor a rich schoolgirl, he gets his gifted artist sister, Ki-jung (Park So-dam), to forge a college certificate, bluffing his way into the job and into the home of the Park family. Source

8. Manta Ray - Putthipong Aroonpheng - Thailand

A humanist heart beats loudly in “Manta Ray,” the promising feature debut of Thai writer-director Phuttiphong Aroonpheng. Centered on a mute Rohingya man rescued by a Thai fisherman after having washed ashore near the Thai-Myanmar border, this superficially simple tale of identity, displacement and friendship is wrapped in layers of symbolism that will likely be pleasurably hypnotic for many viewers. While a tough commercial road lies ahead for the film, it seems assured of a lengthy festival life following September playdates at Venice, Toronto and San Sebastian. It will be interesting to monitor Aroonpheng’s progress from here. Source

9. Season of the Devil - Lav Diaz - Philippines

When news surfaced that Lav Diaz’s latest film was a self-billed “rock opera” titled “Season of the Devil,” you’d have been forgiven for thinking the prolific Filipino maximalist had made a drastic departure into proggy 1970s Ken Russell territory. As it turns out, Diaz’s definitions of both “rock” and “opera” are as idiosyncratic as everything else about his super-sized filmmaking. Dwelling solemnly on the lives and communities destroyed under the Marcos Dictatorship, and performed entirely in incantatory, instrument-free song that won’t be giving Lin-Manuel Miranda any sleepless nights, this uniquely onerous experiment may ostensibly be the filmmaker’s first musical, but its mood, aesthetic and historical outlook all place it unmistakably in Diaz’s creative universe: call it “Lav Lav Land,” if you will. Source

10. Cinema Paradiso - Giuseppe Tornatore - Italy

Just about everything you ever loved (or hated) about Italian films can be found in Giuseppe Tornatore's "Cinema Paradiso," from the industry's entrenched system of postdubbing to the unofficial requirement that, somewhere in the movie, a man treat a woman's breasts the way others do the accordion. Source

11. Bacurau - Kieber Mendonca Filho and Juliano Dornelles - Brazil

Brazilian auteur Kleber Mendonça Filho, here co-directing with his producer and production designer Juliano Dornelles, has relinquished the quieter, more humanistic tones of his earlier pictures for this disturbing ultraviolent freakout. Set deep in the north-eastern Sertão – the Brazilian outback – it mashes up many themes and influences, but is chiefly a scream of satirical defiance against new president Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right globaliser who made his international statesman debut at Davos this year, famously promising to make the country more open to foreign trade. This movie’s closing credits pointedly note that the production created 800 jobs. Source

12. Run Lola Run - Tom Tykwer - Germany

"Run Lola Run" opens with typical smashing bravado, as a few vague voice-over speculations about the nature of mankind give way to a strikingly bold image. A crowd milling around suddenly forms the word Lola as the camera shifts from ground level to aerial view, and with that we're off and running. Or Lola (Franka Potente) is, anyhow, in a film that keeps her hurtling forward almost all the time. The setup sounds like something out of a game's rule book: Lola's boyfriend, Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu), will be killed if she can't come up with a large sum of money and meet him across town in 20 minutes' time. Source

13. Y Tu Mama Tambien - Alfonso Cuaron - Mexico

This smash road comedy from Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón is that rare movie to combine raunchy subject matter and emotional warmth. Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna shot to international stardom as a pair of horny Mexico City teenagers from different classes who, after their girlfriends jet off to Italy for the summer, are bewitched by a gorgeous older Spanish woman (Maribel Verdú) they meet at a wedding. When she agrees to accompany them on a trip to a faraway beach, the three form an increasingly intense and sensual alliance that ultimately strips them both physically and emotionally bare. Shot with elegance and dexterity by the great Emmanuel Lubezki, Y tu mamá también is a funny and moving look at human desire. Source

14. Lust, Caution - Ang Lee - China

The title gets it the wrong way around. What we have here is first a lot of caution, then an explosion of lust. Ang Lee has followed his magnificent version of E Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain with another love story - more explicit in many ways, though more complex and oblique - and it's a movie that showcases Lee's flair for period detail and genre stylisation. For his sheer muscular verve and ambition, Lee deserves a standing ovation. Orson Welles was described once as picking up a play with the confidence of a marksman picking up a rifle, and that is exactly how I felt Lee handles this source material: a short story by Eileen Chang. He has given Tony Leung a chance to shine with one of the most charismatic and memorable performances of his career, and in the twentysomething newcomer Tang Wei, he has made a tremendous discovery. Fiercely intelligent and hauntingly beautiful, she gives a passionate, courageous performance that deserves a shelf-full of awards; it's already made her an Asian movie-star to rival Zhang Ziyi. Source

15. Shoplifters - Hirokazu Kore-eda - Japan

Shoplifters is, very quietly, a film about a crisis. The Shibata family comprises three generations crammed together into a small home—the adults earn low wages; work menial jobs; and struggle to feed, clothe, and educate the kids. This family, and their lives, could easily be framed in the dreariest way possible, and the writer and director Hirokazu Kore-eda has been up front about wanting to use his film to address the widening class divides in Japan, which have shredded the country’s social safety net. But his storytelling touch is deft, rendering Shoplifters a warm, heartfelt, and engrossing experience that’s entirely deserving of the Palme d’Or it won at Cannes this year. Source

16. Buoyancy - Rod Rathjen - Cambodia/Australia

Australian Rodd Rathjen’s first film as director, “Buoyancy” is a powerful dramatization of human trafficking within Thailand’s offshore fishing fleet. Shot largely in Khmer and Thai, and selected as Australia’s foreign-language Oscar contender, it may also be a role model for cultural sensitivity and activism. The film plays this week in competition at the International Film Festival & Awards Macao. Having discovered the harrowing subject in an online report, Rathjen set about interviewing survivors and escapees from the fishing fleet. Then he put together a cultural consultancy draft of the screenplay, before shooting it as authentically as possible. “We always had people who had been on the boats in the film in non-speaking roles,” Rathjen told Variety. “We could always ask while we were filming – everything from understanding the fishing process, to understanding the emotional and psychological trauma.” Source

7. Anti-Christ - Lars Von Trier - Denmark

In Antichrist – a film of rich, wild symbolism, violent beauty and boundless ideas – we encounter perhaps von Trier’s bleakest vision and his darkest, angriest film to date, where accusations of misogyny were again a source of controversy. From the outset of this vicious, visceral battle of the sexes, Antichrist has the mark of something supernatural. Unfolding within a mesmeric dreamscape, governed by its own rules, the film might be best read as a dark fairy tale, weaving all the metaphorical potentialities of Eden into a miasma of menace and death. Here, unreliable visions chew up meaning, a husband and wife fall apart when they can no longer connect with each other, and eventually, both are destroyed. Source

18. The Dreamers - Bernardo Bertolucci - France/Italy

In the spring of 1968, three planets -- Sex, Politics and the Cinema -- came into alignment and exerted a gravitational pull on the status quo. In Paris, what began as a protest over the ouster of Henri Langlois, the legendary founder of the Cinematheque Francais, grew into a popular revolt that threatened to topple the government. There were barricades in the streets, firebombs, clashes with the police, a crisis of confidence. In a way that seems inexplicable today, the director Jean-Luc Godard and his films were at the center of the maelstrom. Other New Wave directors and the cinema in general seemed to act as the agitprop arm of the revolution. Source

19. Kandahar - Mohsen Makhmalbaf - Iran/Afghanistan

A conundrum: the Islamic Republic of Iran, no friend of Western-style liberty, somehow nurtured (well, permitted) the great humanist cinema of the 90s. We’ll let the political scientists explain that one, and just note that men like Makhmalbaf and Abbas Kiarostami have directed on their own, and encouraged in others, films whose stripped-down, but never simple, artistry touches souls around the world. The stories are often about children —poor ones, blind or lame ones —who fight long odds not to triumph but simply to survive. In the past few years, the focus of Iranian films has shifted from within the country to its even more besieged neighbors in Kurdistan, Iraq and the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. That is the setting for Makhmalbaf’s masterpiece, with scenes of horrific beauty. At a Red Cross outpost, artificial legs rain from the sky in parachutes dropped from a plane, and the legless Afghani men race out of the tents to scavenge for them. Because he is also the great colorist of Iranian film, Makhmalbaf makes Kandahar an experience as visually elevating as it is emotionally devastating. Source

20. Lolita - Adrian Lyne - United States

The new version of Lolita, released at last, turns out to be a beautifully made, melancholy, and rather touching account of a doomed love affair between a full-grown man and a very young woman. But that, of course, is not what Vladimir Nabokov’s masterpiece is about. As Louis Menand pointed out in Slate – in a necessary statement of the obvious – Nabokov’s book is devoted to a love affair between a man and a child. The book Lolita is truly shocking and quite impossible to adapt “faithfully.” (Stanley Kubrick didn’t even try in his brilliant 1962 film version.) Nabokov’s narrator, Humbert Humbert, is an educated but moldy European living in America, a pedophile who longs for downy, slender limbs and “delicate-boned, long-toed, monkeyish feet” – the gawky, undeveloped beauty of 12-year-olds. The book is a lyrical black comedy balanced between lust and humiliation, between perversion and rhapsody. It is a dizzying, morally dangerous work – and an extraordinary entertainment. Humbert the fetishist covers his criminal intentions with stuffy cultural superiority and a show of parental concern. He’s a low, devious fellow, a worm, but a worm who, in the end, truly gives his love, and that’s the other side of the joke. Lolita is both an undermining satire of obsessive love and a genuine love story. Source

21. The Reader - Stephen Daldry - United Kingdom/Germany

THE READER is based on an acclaimed German novel that was also a bestseller in America. Kate Winslet plays 36-year-old Hanna, a mysterious trolley car worker in 1958 Germany, who starts a torrid affair with 15-year-old Michael Berg. In between explicit sex scenes, Hanna makes Michael read the books he’s reading in his literature class, including Homer’s ODYSSEY. One day, she suddenly disappears. Cut to 1966, where Michael, a law student now, is observing a trial for six female guards at a small Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust. Michael is disgusted and pained to discover that Hanna is one of the defendants. Source

22. The Night Comes For Us - Timo Tjahjanto - Indonesia

Action fans could hardly wish for anything more than what’s served up in “The Night Comes for Us,” a Jakarta-set Triad crime epic boasting some of the most inventive, gory, and dazzlingly choreographed screen violence in recent memory. Confidently executed by Indonesian writer-director Timo Tjahjanto, whose credits as one half of the Mo Brothers team include “Killers” and “Headshot,” this cartoonish cavalcade of carnage potently reunites “The Raid” stars Joe Taslim and Iko Uwais as former friends on a corpse-strewn collision course. Source

23. Beanpole - Kantemir Balagov - Russia

The first sounds, over the black of the opening titles, are of tiny, gasping breaths catching in a throat. It could be a death rattle or an asthma attack or the last throes of a strangulation, but it is undoubtedly a human in distress. And it’s a very close analog for how “Beanpole,” the slow, ferocious, and extraordinary second film from blazing 27-year-old Russian talent Kantemir Balagov can make you feel. You quite often have to remind yourself to breathe. These noises are coming from Iya (Viktoria Mironshnichenko), also known as Beanpole due to the almost freakishly tall figure she cuts, with her skin so pale, hair so fair, and eyes so huge under vanishing white eyelashes. She is experiencing one of her regular PTSD-related fits, frozen in place and dissociated, in the laundry of the overworked Leningrad veterans hospital in which she works as a nurse, in the months immediately following the end of World War II. Source

24. The Salesman - Asghar Farhadi - Iran

The Salesman begins with what seems like an earthquake—the ground starts to shake at a comfortable-looking abode in Tehran, cracks suddenly appear in the walls, and the happily married Emad (Shahab Hosseini) and Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti) have to flee into the street. The newest film from Iran’s master of the domestic potboiler, Asghar Farhadi, is as subtly and methodically told as his other works, but to begin, he does allow himself one obvious visual metaphor. Emad and Rana’s life together is going to come apart at the scenes, seemingly out of nowhere, like a cruel act of god. Source

25. Verdict - Raymund Ribay Gutierrez - Philippines

Writer/director Raymund Ribay Gutierrez shows no sign of first-timer nerves or showmanship as he steps up from his award-winning shorts Imago and Judgement to his debut feature – a no-nonsense domestic abuse drama that whips along with the pace of a thriller as he puts the Filipino justice system in the dock. Expanded from Judgement, it sees Max Eigenmann and Kristoffer King (in his final film role before his death, at just 36, this February) reprise their performances as Joy Santos and her violent husband Dante, whose latest drunken outburst hurts their six-year-old daughter Angel (Jorden Suan) and finally pushes his spouse to the limit. Badly beaten – but not before slashing Dante with a knife in self-defence – Joy scoops up their daughter and runs to a police station. As the bureaucratic wheels begin to turn, we follow her as she tries to report the incident and through ensuing trial. Source