Prison drama Starred Up has a very familiar act one.  While part of that is due to the fact there are only so many ways to show a person entering jail, but when your focus is on inmate hierarchy it's hard not to jump to the 2010 French film Un Prophet.  Fortunately for Starred Up, the script takes a unique and interesting turn, catapulting it above its generic genre counterparts. 

While there are an abundance of Korean films that turn tragedy into revenge, there are very few that take a tragic situation and force the main character to do...nothing.  Often a horrific scenario unfolds which causes our protagonist to do unthinkable acts, all in the name of vengeful redemption.  In Han Gong-Ju, the cleverly crafted non-linear narrative portrays a character forced into inaction by those around her. Forced to wait for the law to work.  The result is a chilling account of a young woman trying to start over and trying to find a semblance of peace. 

LGBT films have yet to really breakthrough to a mainstream audience. Brokeback Mountain and Milk being rare recent exceptions, and those films were showered more with awards as opposed to box office dollars. Films portraying LGBT romantic leads fall into niche audiences and don't get the reception they sometimes deserve.  Eat With Me tells the story of a gay man finding first love, but that's just part of the story.  There's his mother. And his struggling restaurant. And free spirited neighbor. It would be easy to define this film as an LGBT story, but it's more than that. 

Lee Yong-Seung's directorial debut, 10 Minutes, is a pointed look at what decisions are faced by young adults as they finish college and enter the workforce. While at its surface noticeably Korean, 10 Minutes explores young adulthood well enough for the film to be embraced by western audiences. While Americans can't relate to the type of family hierarchy present in most Asian families, the politics of office life are fairly universal. But where the strongest connection to the film comes from is understanding that moment of fear, loneliness, and confusion that happens when finishing college. 

A great documentary should take a subject and shatter what you know about it.  A great documentary should also illuminate you to a subject with which you are not familiar.  Three documentaries I had the pleasure of seeing at The Los Angeles International Film Festival

It's not very often that a film makes me physically uncomfortable.  Blood, gore, horror, psychologically evil people are affecting, but rarely in a way that's viscerally upsetting. Bong Joon-Ho's Snowpiercer was so intense and claustrophobic there was a moment in the film I thought I'd need to leave and catch my breath. That's not to say I did not enjoy the movie. Quite the opposite. A bizarre, post apocalyptic vision of the future, Snowpiercer's closely intimate setting and unrelenting momentum (it does take place on a train, after all) will leave you longing for every pause and gasping for every reprieve.