Top30 Favorite Film Discoveries of 2017
25. You Can Count on Me
24. Salt N’ Pepper (സോൾട്ട് ആന്റ് പെപ്പർ)
I went on a Shweta Menon binge this year, despite the lack of subtitles in many of the films that I got to watch, because of reasons. LOL
23. The Rocket
As a person that grew up watching fireworks and firecrackers, and is no longer able to use them; I totally felt the passion this kid had by the end of the movie, in which he had to go against everything for being considered a bad omen to everyone around him.
22. Shirin (شیرین)
Well, that was certainly interesting.
21. Welcome to Dongmakgol (웰컴 투 동막골)
If Amelie ever was a war movie, it’ll be similar Welcome to Dongmakgol, which became one of the most successful South Korean movies at that time [still within the Top30, at time of posting].
20. Dawn of a Filmmaker: The Keisuke Kinoshita Story (はじまりのみち)
To commemorate the 100th anniversary of director Keisuke Kinoshita’s birth, animation director Keiichi Hara made a movie on the director’s life, presenting Kinoshita’s life as a young man who carried his mother on a cart across a mountain, before he ever decided to join Shochiku studios to become a movie director.
Ryo Kase and Yuko Tanaka’s chemistry is pitch perfect as mother and son, and it hits you in their final scene before Hara floods you with a supercut of Kinoshita’s body of work once he became a filmmaker. It’s quite moving. Even in the brief trailer.
19. The Equation of Love and Death (李米的猜想)
I also went on a Zhou Xun binge. xD
18. Kaza-Hana (風花)
Tadanobu Asano and Kyoko Koizumi play outcasts that find each other through unusual circumstances and keep each other company until their journey is complete.
17. Bangkok Traffic Love Story (รถไฟฟ้า มาหานะเธอ)
I’m starting to really get into Thai commercial cinema.
In this Thai rom-com, Li (Cris Horwang) shows us that cruising through love is tough, or even tougher, than your usual morning rush hour in public transportation.
16. Castaway on the Moon (김씨표류기)
After a failed suicide attempt, Mr. Kim (Jung Jae-Young, pulling double duty on this list with Welcome to Dongmakgol) gets -somehow- stranded on a tiny island in the middle of Han River. So close and yet so far of civilization, Mr. Kim pulls his crap together and begins surviving… all under the stalkery watch of a hikikomori [1] Ms. Kim (Jung Ryeo-Won).
The better version of Castaway meets Amelie. LOL
Kinoshita’s version of Ballad of Narayama is so amazing
breathtaking~
I had a hard time placing contemporary Japan with the idea of leaving their parents to die in the mountains. And the teeth. O_O