Korean director Shin Tae-ra delivers a shocking thriller for fans of Asian horror. Meek insurance investigator Jeon Jun-oh (Jeong-min Hwang) seeks the truth about a potential scam artist whose bloody exploits reveal a deep psychotic streak. As Jun-oh gets wrapped up in the case and the police refuse to acknowledge foul play, he finds himself more personally involved than he ever expected.
In an effort to win back her superstar pianist boyfriend, chubby Mini Mo (Sammi Cheng) vows to lose 200 pounds over six months. Her ally in the impossible task is the equally robust Fatso (Andy Lau), who begins to fall in love with the ever-more-slender Mini. The new-and-improved Mini must now choose between two men -- the one who jilted her years ago and the one who has seen her through this arduous journey.
Directed by world-renowned filmmaker Takashi Miike and based on the novel by Ato Masaki, this visually stunning tale centers on the tumultuous and passionate relationship between two young gay prisoners inside a juvenile detention center. With outstanding performances from Ryuhei Matsuda and Masanobu Ando, this captivating homoerotic thriller marks another notable entry in the controversial director's considerable oeuvre.
Called "one of the most unsettling horror directors alive" by the New York Daily News, Takashi Miike lives up to that reputation with this disturbing shocker. An American journalist (Billy Drago) is searching for a prostitute in 19th-century Japan; what he finds instead is a deformed courtesan with a tale of unspeakable cruelty. Based on a Japanese horror novel, this presentation is the first uncensored version to be available in America.
Sex and the Beauties (Sing Gam Diy Shut)
Sex and the City
On Hollywood Boulevard, wannabe stars dress up as superheroes and pose for photos with tourists. Matt Ogens's documentary follows four dreamers who are just killing time until they're discovered. Get to know a Superman who takes the role a bit too seriously, an Incredible Hulk who sold his prized video game system for a bus ticket to Tinseltown, a Midwestern beauty queen turned Wonder Woman and a Batman in need of anger management therapy.
Blurring reality and fantasy, this lavish foreign-language romance concerns a love triangle between a leading actress (Xun Zhou) and her director (Jackie Cheung) during the making of a movie musical. Ironically, the film within the film tells a similar tale, providing an effective vehicle for heightened drama. With spectacular song and dance numbers, this lavish salute to Hollywood won six out of 11 nominations at the Hong Kong Film Awards.
It's X-Men meets Romeo and Juliet in Ten Shimoyama's ninja action thriller. Gennosuke (Joe Odagiri), from the Koga ninja clan, falls in love with Oboro (Yukie Nakama), from the rival Iga clan. The tribes are already exiled to the mountains, but the evil Shogun is intent on eliminating them. He pits the clans against each other in a duel to the death, where the ninjas wield their supernatural powers. But will inbred hate snuff out forbidden love?
Driven by an insatiable appetite for destruction, master samurai warrior Grave (Tak Sakaguchi) incites the ultimate battle when he steals a mythical coffin from its resting place at the sacred Tougan Temple. In this nonstop adventure filmed on location, rustic Japanese countryside complements bold cinematography to bring an edgy style to the film. Fight choreographer Yuji Shimomura makes his directorial debut with this ambitious fantasy actioner.
Addicted (Jungdok)
Possession
This moving film, written and directed by Kim Ki-Duk and starring Lee Seung-yun and Jae Hee, made its North American debut at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. A study of impermanence and despair, it tracks how a homeless man attempts to find solace and sanctuary in vacation houses left empty by their owners in between visits. Although he may have a roof over his head during his stay, the fleeting nature of security continues to haunt him.
Produced and co-written by acclaimed filmmaker Luc Besson, this stylized action thriller is set in Paris 2010, where the government has fenced off the city's ghettos, the most dangerous of which is District B13. Teaming up to infiltrate the lawless sector, an elite-unit cop and a reformed vigilante put their lives on the line in a gutsy attempt to retrieve a stolen nuke and thwart a terrorist attack by the city's most powerful gang.
Based on Novala Takemoto's best-selling Japanese novel Shimotsuma Story, this colorful live-action comedy from writer-director Tetsuya Nakashima tells a tale of unlikely friendship. When she meets rough-and-tumble biker chick Ichigo Shirayuri (Anna Tschiya), the refined Momoko Ryugasaki (Kyoko Fukada) is forever changed. But can a big-city girl who adores 18th century France, frilly dresses and parasols save her new friend from certain doom?
Hubert (Jean Reno) is a police inspector who receives a telephone call from Japan one day informing him that Miko (Yuki Sakai), the love of his life who disappeared nearly 20 years ago, has died under strange circumstances. She hasn't forgotten him -- in fact, she's named him executor of her will. But what Hubert soon discovers is that he's been saddled with a handful of problems -- and a daughter (Ryoko Hirosue) he never knew he had!
Filled with geekdom and gore, this tongue-in-cheek, teen creature feature centers on a high school prom at which the living dead await a crowd of unsuspecting students. Unfortunately for the promgoers, the only ones who can save them from zombiehood are the losers who couldn't even get a prom date in the first place. Can the vastly different cliques band together long enough to defeat the living dead? Jared Kusnitz and Greyson Chadwick star.
Based on the popular manga series, Katsuhide Motoki's fantastical film follows the half-human, half-yokai Kitaro (Eiji Wentz) as he struggles to maintain harmony between the humans of Gegege Forest and the mysterious spirits -- yokai -- who share the same woods. When sinister forces discover a magical ball, Kitaro must recover the powerful device before it disrupts the delicate balance between the two groups that inhabit the forest.
Untold Scandal (Seukaendeul: Joseon Namnyeo Sangyeol Ji Sa)
Dangerous Liasons
Irène (Audrey Tautou), who makes a fortune sweet-talking rich men, puts the moves on klutzy Jean (Gad Elmaleh), unaware that he's just a hotel bartender. But by the time she realizes her mistake, Jean is smitten with her. Letting men down easy has never been Irène's strong suit, but she finds a way to mend Jean's broken heart that ensures he'll never have to mix cocktails again. Vernon Dobtcheff co-stars in this wacky French farce.
Born with an acute sense of smell, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw) resorts to dark deeds in creating a perfume that captures the essence of a woman in this 18th-century thriller based on Patrick Süskind's best-selling novel. The disturbing intensity mounts as Baroque-born Grenouille's obsession to create the ultimate scent moves from innovation to murderous aberration. Alan Rickman co-stars along with Dustin Hoffman as a master perfumer.
A scientific exploration in search of a new energy source unleashes a group of powerful demons who begin possessing human bodies and destroying civilization. Close friends Akira (Hisato Izaki) and Ryo (Yusuke Izaki) wind up on different sides of this epic struggle. Akira's inner strength allows him to maintain his identity and fight for good, but the weaker Ryo is completely overtaken by Satan himself.
Teenage voyeur Hallam Foe (Jamie Bell) spies on his stepmother Verity (Claire Forlani) through binoculars, finding himself irresistibly attracted to her even as he becomes convinced she murdered his mother. When Hallam flees to the city and meets Kate, a woman who resembles his mother, his binocular-spying obsessions begin anew. He wins over the new girl, but when Verity and his father track him down, will the truth surface and drive Kate away?
ชัตเตอร์ กดติดวิญญาณ
Shutter
Dicky (Jiao Xu) yearns for the hottest new toy, a robotic dog. Instead, his poor father (Stephen Chow) presents him with a strange green ball he found in a junkyard. Turns out, the unassuming gift is actually a marooned alien endowed with unearthly powers. But is Dicky ready for the responsibility of a pet that's capable of granting his every whim? Director Chow lends his off-kilter sensibility to this fable about being careful what you wish for.
When an invading army conquers the ancient Korean capital of Balhae, beautiful swordswoman Yeon So-ha (So-yi Yoon) sets out to help the kingdom's prince (Seo-jin Lee) return from exile and reclaim his rightful throne. But with assassins and criminals hot on their trail, only by unsheathing their lethal blades can they defeat their enemies and return the prince to power. Director Young-jun Kim's martial arts thriller also features Hyeon-jun Shin.
After murdering his brother the emperor, taking over the throne and marrying the recently widowed Empress Wan (Ziyi Zhang), Li (You Ge) dispatches a group of assassins to kill Prince Wu Luan (Daniel Wu). Having survived the attack, Wu Luan sets out to avenge his father's death. Teaming with the empress, Wu Luan plans to strike during a lavish banquet Li is throwing for his ministers. This stunning Chinese film is based on Shakespeare's "Hamlet."
Set in the 1920s, director Tarsem Singh's visually lush drama stars Lee Pace as paralyzed movie stuntman Roy Walker, who bonds with an imaginative 5-year-old named Alexandria (Catinca Untaru) as they convalesce together in a Los Angeles infirmary. To coax the girl into procuring the cache of morphine he wants from the hospital pharmacy, the suicidal Roy regales Alexandria with an elaborate fantasy about larger-than-life heroes.
Forbidden to watch TV or go to the movies by his ultrareligious parents, young Will (Bill Milner) gets a hold of a camera, and his mind blossoms in this nostalgic comedy from the team behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Set in 1980s Britain, the film tells the tale of the friendship that blossoms between Will and class bully Lee (Will Poulter) when the latter recruits Will to help him make a home movie inspired by Rambo: First Blood.
After barely surviving a car crash that proved fatal for her best friend, Mi-ju (Hyeon-a Seong) abandons her career as a professional cellist and retreats into a quiet life teaching music. That is, until a sinister force arrives to stir up her haunted past. Mi-ju becomes increasingly consumed by the painful memories of the accident, and everything begins to spin out of control in this nightmare of terror directed by Woo-cheol Lee.
Shuji and Chise are two high school students that barely started a relationship with each other. Then, with no warning, a squadron of bombers from an unknown country destroy the city of Sapporo. All hope is lost when suddenly, the bombers are destroyed by a small red light floating across the sky. At this point, Shuji finds out that the one responsible for eliminating the enemy forces is Chise, who reveals herself as a cyborg engineered for mass-destruction.
Chakushin Ari
One Missed Call
When the phones, radios and TVs in the city of Terminus begin to broadcast the same strange signal, the transmission causes jealousy and hate to spew, turning once sane people into murderous lunatics. Trapped in a world gone mad, a faithless wife seeks the safety of her lover, while her affected husband hunts for her. David Bruckner, Jacob Gentry and Dan Bush each write and direct an act of this bloodthirsty horror tale.
Filmmaker Guy Maddin's intriguing homage to silent films centers on a man (Erik Steffen Maahs) who returns to his childhood home on an abandoned island and uncovers the shocking truth about his mysterious parents. Exploring the orphanage his parents ran when he was a child, Guy unearths a world of disturbing science experiments and diabolical schemes. Narrated by Isabella Rossellini, this unique film recalls some of cinema's earliest works.
With fond memories of the seaside orphanage where she was raised, Laura (Belén Rueda) persuades her husband (Fernando Cayo) to help her revamp it as a facility for disabled children. But once they move in, their son Simón (Roger Príncep) begins to exhibit dark and disturbing behavior. As Laura tries to understand Simón's increasingly malevolent actions, she becomes drawn into the house's terrifying secrets in this gothic chiller.
While investigating the gruesome death of a woman found in a puddle with her stomach inexplicably full of seawater, Detective Yoshioka begins to wonder whether he himself is actually the killer he's been looking for. He doesn't remember committing the crime, but the murder scene is littered with his belongings -- and his fingerprints are all over the body. Kiyoshi Kurosawa directs this gritty horror tale from the producers of The Grudge.
Gin Gwai
The Eye
After decades of warfare, Earth has become a toxic wasteland, and the survivors are slowly dying from a terrible disease. Dr. Azuma (Yusuke Iseya) has developed a genetic treatment that might help regenerate the population, but his experiment goes horribly wrong. Inadvertently creating a race of mutants that threaten the future of mankind, Dr. Azuma must seek an unlikely ally to help defeat the monsters he's created in this sci-fi adventure.
When virtuous high school student Dawn (Jess Weixler) becomes the victim of a sexual assault, she discovers that she has an unexpected line of defense: a toothed vagina. But for Dawn, coming to terms with the power and dangers of her anatomical anomaly may be easier said than done. Director Mitchell Lichtenstein's provocative feminist horror flick also stars John Hensley, Hale Appleman and Josh Pais.
After being captured and tortured by the psychopath Otis (Bostin Christopher), teen cheerleader Riley Lawson (Ashley Johnson) escapes and informs her parents (Daniel Stern and Illeana Douglas), who quickly sidestep the sluggish FBI and take matters into their own hands. But the Lawson's revenge plan hit a snag when Otis's unusual brother (Kevin Pollak) enters the picture. Jere Burns co-stars as the FBI agent assigned to the case.
Late one night, Lucas (Michaël Cohen) and Clémentine (Olivia Bonamy) encounter strange events in their remote country home. It starts with prank calls and strange noises, but when the power is cut off and their car disappears, the terrified couple is trapped by the unseen force. Is it simply kids from the school where Clémentine teaches, or could it have something to do with a mother and daughter who mysteriously vanished the day before?
Set in a dystopian near-future, director Richard Kelly's visionary tale mines post-Sept. 11 angst and paranoia as Los Angeles teeters on the verge of social, financial and ecological catastrophe. While a heat wave takes its toll on the sprawling metropolis, one man foresees the coming apocalypse -- but can he prevent it? The Rock heads the star-studded cast, which includes Sarah Michelle Gellar, Justin Timberlake and Miranda Richardson.
