YNOT at the Movies

Director Min Kyu-dong's action thriller "The Old Woman with the Knife" (파과 | South Korea 2025 | in Korean | 125 min.) is a ferocious, enigmatic character study. It's adapted from Gu Byeong-mo's bestselling novel, the film centers on Hornclaw (Lee Hye-young), a contract killer in her sixties who has spent over four decades working for the Shinseong Agency—a shadowy organization that eliminates people deemed "pests" under the clinical term "disinfection." Known in the underworld as the "Godmother," Hornclaw is both feared and quietly pushed aside, as age becomes a liability in a profession built on invisibility and control.

Hornclaw's rigid, solitary life begins to shift after she's injured on the job and receives help from a kind-hearted veterinarian, Dr. Kang (Yeon Woo-jin). As this unwanted connection threatens her long-held detachment, another figure enters her orbit: a younger assassin known as Bullfight (Kim Sung-cheol), who approaches her not as a rival, but with an unsettling familiarity. As Hornclaw continues to carry out assignments for an agency that now questions her relevance, she finds herself caught in a quiet but tightening web of emotional disturbance, moral ambiguity, and long-buried history. Violence accumulates at the edges, but what drives the tension is something more internal—an erosion of distance between Hornclaw and everything she once kept at arm's length.

Lee Hye-young delivers a performance of extraordinary control, inhabiting Hornclaw with deliberate movements and unreadable expressions. Her violence is quick, silent, and precise—a discipline born of survival. Bullfight, by contrast, fights with volatility and emotion, his aggression shaped by something unresolved. Director Min Kyu-dong contrasts these modes with care—ice against fire, efficiency against eruption. The action, though occasionally excessive, remains grounded in character.

The film touches on a deeper social reality: while men in their sixties are often seen as seasoned, women are quickly dismissed as "old." Hornclaw is never framed as fragile, but her anger at being quietly erased simmers beneath every exchange. The world no longer knows what to do with her, and underestimates her at its peril.

Yeon Woo-jin brings quiet warmth as Dr. Kang, whose act of care complicates Hornclaw's emotional distance. Kim Mu-yeol plays Ryu, the founder of the Shinseong Agency and Hornclaw's mentor, with the cold authority of someone who builds killers and discards them without sentiment.

"The Old Woman with the Knife" doesn't seek resolution or redemption. It observes what happens when usefulness expires—and what it means to persist anyway. Hornclaw is not softened by the film. She is sharpened, and left unexplained. The film doesn't translate her. It simply watches her remain—sharp, unreadable, and very much alive.

"The Old Woman with the Knife" opens in theaters on Friday, May 16, 2025.

There's a certain cinematic pleasure in watching a movie dive headfirst into chaos, and the director James Madigan's "Fight or Flight" (USA/UK 2025 | 97 min.), a midair action spectacle does exactly that. Built on a premise that defies both realism and gravity—one half-drunk ex-operative, a mysterious hacker, and a plane full of assassins—it moves with reckless urgency, more interested in carnage than coherence. The result is a film that functions less like a thriller and more like a fever dream in a pressurized cabin.

Lucas Reyes (Josh Hartnett) is an ex-FBI agent who is dragged out of forced exile in Thailand by the very agency that discarded him. His task: escort a high-profile hacker known as "The Ghost" on a long-haul commercial flight back to San Francisco from Bangkok. Predictably, nothing goes to plan. The plane is swarming with contract killers posing as passengers, each determined to eliminate the Ghost, and Reyes if necessary. What unfolds is an airborne bloodbath that gleefully tramples over logic and physics, letting Reyes fight his way through the fuselage like a sleep-deprived wrecking ball.

Reyes is clearly not at his best—he is disheveled, hungover, visibly unraveling. That only adds to the film's chaotic tone. Hartnett leans into the absurdity, playing him as a man who looks barely capable of standing upright, yet somehow manages to outfight, outstab, and outlast wave after wave of professional killers. There's no attempt to ground his abilities or explain away the contradiction. The film simply runs on the conviction that a broken man with a short fuse and a mean right hook can survive anything, provided the carnage never stops long enough to ask why.

The fight sequences come fast and unrelenting, each new confrontation erupting with bone-snapping intensity. But despite the tight quarters of the airplane setting, the film rarely mines the space for suspense or innovation. Instead, it repeats the same blunt-force formula: a burst of violence, a moment to catch breath, and then another assailant lunges into frame. It's effective in short bursts, but the lack of escalation or variation begins to dull the impact.

There are hints of deeper themes—trauma, abandonment, institutional rot—but they're kept vague and disposable, like unfinished thoughts buried under spilled whiskey and bloodstains. The film gestures toward emotional weight without ever really attempting it. Reyes has history, yes, but the movie isn't particularly interested in unpacking it. His past functions more like atmospheric noise than narrative substance.

Still, "Fight or Flight" commits fully to its particular brand of airborne mayhem. It's a film that knows exactly what it's delivering and doesn't flinch from its own absurdity. Josh Hartnett carries it through sheer physical presence and grim charisma, dragging himself from scene to scene like a man too broken to care and too angry to die. There's something watchable, even hypnotic, about its refusal to do anything halfway.

It may not be clever, or stylish, or especially memorable once the dust settles. But while it's playing, "Fight or Flight" offers the purest form of cinematic turbulence—messy, violent, and completely divorced from reality. Fasten your seatbelt. Or don't. Reyes won't notice either way.

"Fight or Flight" opens in theaters on Friday, May 9, 2025.

What happens to sorrow when there's no room to express it—no language for it, no time, no space? In Constance Tsang's soulful debut feature "Blue Sun Palace" (藍色太陽宮 | USA 2024 | in Mandarin | 116 min.), grief doesn't announce itself; it settles quietly into the corners of a cramped life. Her story unfolds in the overlooked spaces of Flushing, Queens, where undocumented labor, familial duty, and quiet despair shape the lives of women trying to survive far from home.

At the heart of this affecting film is Amy (Wu Ke-Xi), a Chinese migrant working in a massage parlor alongside Didi (Xu Haipeng), her closest confidante. Their friendship is a lifeline, a fragile source of warmth amid the physical and emotional weight of their daily existence. But when tragedy strikes during Lunar New Year, Amy is jolted out of her careful routines and forced to confront the life she's constructed, and what might lie beyond it.

Tsang draws heavily from her personal experience, weaving a narrative that's less about plot than emotional texture. The parlor isn't just a workplace, it's a shelter, a trap, a home, and a wound. Wu brings a haunted stillness to Amy, whose silence often speaks louder than dialogue. Lee Kang Sheng, as Cheung—a man involved with both Amy and Didi—becomes a quiet counterpoint: not a solution to their grief or circumstances, but a mirror reflecting their loneliness, yearning, and the emotional compromises they've made to survive.

Tsang's minimalist approach heightens the film's emotional impact. By holding back on overt sentiment and narrative exposition, she creates space for the characters' interior lives to emerge in small, revealing gestures. The absence of music, the close-quartered framing, and the silences between dialogue all deepen the sense of emotional containment that defines Amy's world.

What Tsang offers is not a story of redemption or closure but of endurance—of how people carry unspoken pain and find small, flickering moments of connection in lives shaped by absence. "Blue Sun Palace" doesn't seek to resolve sorrow, but to quietly observe how it lingers, seeps, and reshapes the boundaries of a life. The film poses a quiet, powerful question: what changes when we stop running from our sorrow?

"Blue Sun Palace" opens in theaters on Friday, May 2, 2025.

The acclaimed director Jia Zhangke's "Caught by the Tides" (风流一代 | China 2024 | in Chinese | 115 min.) arrives with the weight of time behind it. Pieced together from footage shot over the past two decades, it is less of a traditional narrative film than a long, slow meditation on change, memory, and loss—both in China and in Jia's own cinematic journey. This sprawling, impressionistic project, years in the making, feels like a personal summation of the director's favorite themes, even as it struggles under the looseness of its construction.

Qiaoqiao (Zhao Tao), a dancer, is left behind as the world around her rapidly changes. After her lover Bin (Li Zhubin) disappears in pursuit of better opportunities, she embarks on a solitary journey through China's evolving cities and forgotten landscapes. Strikingly, Qiaoqiao remains mute throughout the entire film, a choice that lends her story an air of haunted isolation but also deepens the emotional distance between character and audience. Her silence turns her into a vessel for the passage of time itself, though at times it also flattens her into an abstract symbol rather than a fully realized person.

Jia stitches this narrative loosely, blending archival footage, documentary-style scenes, and new material into an impressionistic collage. At its best, the film captures the eerie dislocation of modern China with striking imagery and an acute sense of melancholy. The use of pop music to mark the passage of time is especially effective, layering bittersweet emotion over Qiaoqiao's otherwise wordless drift.

But for all its beauty, the film struggles to sustain engagement. The story is so fragmented that even key emotional beats—betrayal, longing, resilience—register more as passing impressions than real turning points. The elliptical structure, once a strength of Jia's work, here starts to feel repetitive and numbing. Without dialogue or deeper access to Qiaoqiao's inner life, the film's emotional impact often dissipates into abstraction.

"Caught by the Tides" moments of real poignancy and whispers of lives slipping away—but it never fully connects. It's a film that feels more significant in intent than in execution.

"Caught by the Tides" opens in theaters on Friday, May 16, 2025.

Director Hwang Byeong-gug takes a hard-edged dive into South Korea's drug underworld in his crime-action thriller "Yadang: The Snitch" (야당 | South Korea 2025 | in Korean | 122 min.). Told through the eyes of an informant operating in a gray zone between law and crime, the film draws inspiration from real-life yadang—a rarely acknowledged figure in the justice system. In Korea's drug-related cases, yadang refers to brokers who act as intermediaries between law enforcement and criminals, providing police or prosecutors with insider information in exchange for financial rewards or reduced sentences. It's a provocative and timely concept that gives the film a distinct hook.

Kang-suoo (Kang Ha-neul) is a clever, street-smart hustler who is wrongfully imprisoned and offered a shot at freedom if he agrees to become a professional snitch. His handler is prosecutor Ku Gwan-hee (Yoo Hae-jin), a man whose ambition is matched only by his ruthlessness. Detective Oh Sang-jae (Park Hae-joon), relentless and uncompromising, rounds out the core trio, setting up a volatile game of manipulation and pursuit.

Kang walks a tightrope between vulnerability and cunning, while Yoo brings a tightly coiled menace to his character. Park's portrayal of the dogged detective adds intensity and emotional weight to the increasingly tangled plot.

What starts as a taut, politically tinged thriller begins to stretch the limits of believability in its final act. The film asks the audience to take a leap of faith, particularly with the fact that Kang-su survives increasingly extreme physical punishment, including being burned, and continues to operate at full force. These moments, intended to heighten the stakes, instead undercut the grounded tone the film works hard to establish.

While the yadang figure is compelling, the film often chooses genre thrills over character development. There's fertile ground here for moral complexity, but "Yadang: The Snitch" keeps things moving too fast to really let those tensions settle.

Still, the concept is original, the pacing is brisk, and the stakes are undeniably high. For fans of Korean crime cinema, this one offers enough punch, even if it's not always convincing.

"Yadang: The Snitch" opens in theaters on Friday, April 25, 2025.

The 68th San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM) returns April 17-27, 2025, with 150 films from more than 50 countries. This year's festival features 11 World Premieres, 10 International Premieres, 10 North American Premieres, and 6 US Premieres. But what truly defines SFFILM 2025 is its commitment to emotional storytelling and global perspective.

The 2025 SFFILM Festival is exclusively in theaters and event spaces in San Francisco and Berkeley including the Premier Theater at One Letterman, the Marina Theatre, the Presidio Theatre, the Roxie Theater, and the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA).

Similar to last year, there is a remarkable presence of films through the lens of Asian and Asian American filmmakers at this year's festival. Here are a few samplers.

(You may click on each still image for the corresponding screening or event's show time and ticket information.)

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• Isle Child (USA 🇺🇸/South Korea 🇰🇷 | in English/Korean | 88 min.)

  

  Based on his short film "Si,", writer-director Thomas Percy Kim expands his story into a tender and emotionally layered debut feature "Isle Child." It follows Si Miller (Ethan Hwang), a Korean American teenager whose comfortable life in Massachusetts is shaken when he learns that his South Korean birth mother is terminally ill. Though raised by his loving adoptive parents, the news stirs questions of heritage and identity that Si has never faced before.

  Kim handles the subject of transracial adoption with restraint and emotional intelligence. Rather than hinge the drama on trauma or rejection, the film charts a subtler course, focusing on the emotional ambiguity that surfaces when a young person begins to feel untethered from the life they thought they understood.

  Ethan Hwang's performance is quietly riveting and conveys Si's outward confidence and inward vulnerability with rare subtlety, capturing the emotional turmoil of a young man caught between two worlds. The film's terrific cinematography paints a vivid portrait of Si's journey of self-discovery, visually framing his world as both familiar and suddenly foreign.

  "Isle Child" is a delicate, beautifully realized meditation on family, identity, displacement, and the universal yearning to understand where we come from and where we belong to. It's one of the must-see world premieres at SFFILM 2025 and marks Thomas Percy Kim a major new voice to watch.

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• Happyend (Japan 🇯🇵/USA 🇺🇸/Singapore 🇸🇬/UK 🇬🇧 2024 | in Japanese | 113 min.)

  

  The writer-director Neo Sora's "Happyend" is a subtle and intimate examination of friendship, identity, and the quiet forces of control that shape everyday life. Set in a near-future Tokyo, the film follows two high school boys, Yuta (Hayato Kurihara) and Kou (Yukito Hidaka), whose once unshakable bond is tested by both personal tensions and broader societal pressures.

  Yuta and Kou's friendship feels effortless at first: a deeply rooted connection forged over years of shared habits, private jokes, and unspoken understanding. It's the kind of closeness that seems destined to last. But when a seemingly harmless prank prompts their school to implement an invasive surveillance system, the balance between them begins to shift. What begins as a shared rebellion slowly exposes a growing rift--between risk and caution, belonging and otherness, complicity and resistance.

  Sora renders their evolving relationship with sensitivity and restraint, capturing the subtle ruptures that mark the end of adolescence: a hesitation before speaking, a silence that stretches too long, a feeling that someone you once knew so well is starting to drift out of reach. The film is especially attuned to the specific challenges Kou faces as a non-citizen in Japan—a status that makes him more vulnerable to both institutional scrutiny and social exclusion. His growing awareness of the injustice he faces contrasts sharply with Yuta's relative indifference, whose position as a citizen shields him from the same stakes. This imbalance quietly but decisively alters the dynamic between them.

  Rather than dramatizing the painful process of growing apart, the film lets these tensions accumulate in the background, creating a portrait of disconnection shaped as much by social realities as by emotional change. The distance between the boys isn't just the result of growing up, it's a reflection of the structures that privilege some while marginalizing others.

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• 3670 (South Korea 🇰🇷 2025 | in Korean | 124 min.)

  With "3670", director Joonho Park offers a layered and emotionally honest story about entering a new life—and the risks of letting yourself be seen. The film follows Cheol-jun (Cho Youhyun), a North Korean defector trying to establish himself in Seoul, as he cautiously begins to explore the city's gay scene. It's his first real taste of personal freedom, and it comes with uncertainty, desire, and moments of quiet joy.

  Cheol-jun meets Yeong-jun (Kim Hyeonmok), a magnetic and popular local who frequents the convenience store where Cheol-jun works. At first, Yeong-jun is simply a friendly presence, gently encouraging Cheol-jun to step outside his comfort zone. But their friendship deepens in unexpected ways. Yeong-jun, despite his charm, carries his own doubts—especially after failing to enter university. Though he's drawn to Cheol-jun, he hides his feelings, believing he doesn't measure up. As Cheol-jun's feelings grow, Yeong-jun begins to pull away.

  

  The film captures this shifting emotional terrain with a mix of intimacy and rawness. There are dramatic confrontations, charged moments when vulnerability meets frustration, but they're grounded in character. Park skillfully reveals how two people can mean a great deal to each other while still holding themselves back, and how unspoken love can be just as painful as rejection.

  Kim Hyeonmok delivers a remarkable performance as Yeong-jun. His portrayal is charismatic and subtle, balancing confidence with deep-seated insecurity. Kim makes Yeong-jun feel real, lived-in, and unforgettable.

  "3670" is both a personal story of queer longing and a window into a very specific emotional world: one shaped by class, culture, and the quiet negotiations we make to protect ourselves.

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• The Botanist (植物学家 | China 🇨🇳 2025 | in Kazakh/Mandarin | 96 min.)

  

  In her assured debut feature, "The Botanist," writer-director Jing Yi crafts a visually poetic and emotionally restrained film set in a remote Kazakh village in China's Xinjiang region. The film follows Arsin (Jahseleh Yesl), a 13-year-old Kazakh boy with a deep fascination for plants and scientific observation. His quiet life, shared with his grandmother and older brother, unfolds in rhythm with the landscape and traditions that shape his everyday world.

  Arsin's most meaningful relationship is with Meiyu (Ren Zihan), a Han Chinese girl around his age whose family also lives in the village. Their friendship is gentle and curious, built on shared games, nature walks, and a quiet intimacy that hints at something deeper. The cultural differences between them are acknowledged but not dwelled upon—what matters most is their sense of closeness, which grows as naturally as the environment around them.

  When Meiyu learns she'll soon be leaving for boarding school in Shanghai, the impending separation introduces the idea of divergence—between childhood and adolescence, between tradition and modernity, between those who leave and those who stay. Arsin, whose imagination and love of nature serve as emotional anchors, must face the slow realization that the life he cherishes may not hold the people he loves forever.

  With understated performances and a dreamlike structure, "The Botanist" evokes a deep emotional world without forcing drama. Its quiet strength lies in what's left unsaid. Through Arsin's perspective, Jing Yi captures the subtle tension between rootedness and change, and the fleeting beauty of a connection formed in a world just beginning to shift.

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• Cloud (クラウド | Japan 🇯🇵 2024 | in Japanese | 124 min.)

  

  In "Cloud,", the acclaimed writer-director Kiyoshi Kurosawa delivers a sharply focused and unsettling portrait of a man drifting through the mechanics of modern life, only to find himself in over his head. Yoshii (Masaki Suda) is a quiet, meticulous online reseller whose sham business takes a turn after he upsets someone in the business.

  What begins as a study of routine and detachment gradually builds toward moments of violence that, while not entirely expected, feel disturbingly plausible. Kurosawa doesn't shock for the sake of surprise—instead, the intensity emerges naturally from the characters' shifting dynamic and the slow erosion of boundaries.

  Suda anchors the film with a restrained yet compelling performance. His character doesn't undergo a dramatic transformation but reveals an unsettling capacity for control and misjudgment as tension simmers beneath his composed exterior. The relationship with his assistant becomes the emotional core, not in romantic or sentimental terms, but as a study in power, ambiguity, and tension.

  Cloud is a film about the quiet slipperiness of moral boundaries, made all the more disturbing by how ordinary its world feels. Kurosawa's control of tone and pacing reinforces the sense that in this world, violence doesn't feel like a rupture—it feels like a possible outcome of inaction.

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• Winter in Sokcho (Hiver à Sokcho | France 🇫🇷/South Korea 🇰🇷 2024 | in Korean/French | 104 min.)

  

  Adapted from Elisa Shua Dusapin's award-winning novel, Koya Kamura's "Winter in Sokcho" is a quiet, contemplative film about proximity, distance, and the emotional limbo of mixed identity. Set in a coastal town in Korea, Sokcho, during its off-season slumber, during its off-season slumber, the film follows Sooha (Bella Kim), a young Franco-Korean woman working at a small guesthouse, whose routine is disrupted by the arrival of Yan Kerrand (Roschdy Zem), a French comic artist researching his next book.

  Koya Kamura builds the film around visual stillness and subdued rhythms. Snow-draped streets, dim interiors, and long, quiet takes heighten the sense that life is paused—or perhaps suspended in translation. There's a tension between what the characters express and what they hold back, communicated through glances, silences, and brief, sometimes awkward exchanges.

  Bella Kim conveys Sooha's internal conflict with impressive subtlety, hinting at a longing to connect but also a reluctance to expose too much of herself. Roschdy Zem's performance leans into quiet observation; his Yan remains at a remove, not cold but cautious—curious, yet unsure how to engage beyond surface impressions.

  "Winter in Sokcho" isn't about resolution or emotional breakthroughs. It's about living between two languages, two cultures, and the moments when we feel closest to someone just as they begin to drift away.

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• The Dating Game (USA 🇺🇸/UK 🇬🇧/Norway 🇳🇴 2025 | in Mandarin | 92 min. | Documentary)

  

  In "The Dating Game," director Violet Du Feng examines China's male-focused dating industry through the lens of a weeklong coaching bootcamp led by dating instructor Hao. In a country with a significant gender imbalance—tens of millions more men than women—Hao's business promises clients a shortcut to connection, attraction, and, ultimately, a girlfriend.

  Instead of genuine emotional growth, however, the camp delivers scripts: tactical conversation starters, "push-pull" psychological techniques, and curated personas built for impression management. Hao instructs his clients to treat dating as a formula—a matter of timing, control, and self-presentation. The film observes this process with steady, sometimes troubling detachment, showing men repeatedly performing these strategies on unsuspecting women in public spaces.

  The three clients featured differ in background and demeanor. One is quiet and reserved, another more eager but socially inexperienced, and the third seemingly more confident yet still awkward in practice. Rather than diving deep into their inner lives, the film focuses on how they engage with Hao's lessons—and how little those lessons seem to help. Hao's wife appears briefly, offering a limited female perspective on the work he does. But the film largely avoids interrogating the broader emotional or ethical consequences of his methods.

  A brief but jarring segment on virtual dating, where women maintain emotional relationships with AI-generated boyfriends, is introduced late in the film. While intriguing, it feels disconnected and underdeveloped, adding a side note about the emotional isolation cutting across gender lines without tying it back to the main story.

  By the end, none of the men leave transformed, and the effectiveness of Hao's coaching is dubious at best. "The Dating Game" captures a curious slice of modern China's dating landscape but stops short of delivering insight or critique. Instead, it quietly raises a more unsettling question: Is Hao a sincere teacher, or just another opportunist capitalizing on widespread loneliness?

It has been 32 years since Ang Lee made his groundbreaking classic "The Wedding Banquet," which wove cultural expectation, sexuality, and family into a quietly revolutionary rom-com. Much has changed since the original film—made before the legalization of same-sex marriage—and it is now reimagined at a moment when LGBTQIA+ rights in the U.S. are under increasing threat. Writer-director Andrew Ahn's "The Wedding Banquet" (USA, 2025 | 102 min.) is a rare retelling of the original story that honors its source material while speaking directly to the complexities of modern identity. Ahn's version embraces the same themes with new textures, a broader sense of inclusivity, and a tone that is both sharper and more heartfelt.

The story follows Min (Han Gi-chan), a gay Korean artist living in Seattle, who's juggling immigration hurdles and a deeply committed relationship with his boyfriend, Chris (Bowen Yang). When Min learns that his visa is at risk, he agrees to a marriage of convenience with his friend Angela (Kelly Marie Tran), who is trying to raise funds for IVF treatment with her partner, Lee (Lily Gladstone). It's a calculated plan—until Min's traditional grandmother, Ja-Young (Youn Yuh-jung), arrives from Korea and insists on throwing a full-scale wedding banquet. What follows is a steadily escalating tangle of half-truths, awkward performances, and emotional landmines, all simmering beneath the surface of a seemingly joyous celebration.

What's immediately striking about Andrew Ahn's approach is how much heart he brings to every frame without dipping into sentimentality. The film finds its rhythm in the quiet intimacy between characters, but it's not afraid of broad comedy either. The banquet scenes are genuinely funny, with sharp dialogue and clever visual gags, but they're also laced with tension. You can feel the weight of unspoken disappointment and cultural obligation even in the loudest, most celebratory moments.

Han Gi-chan is a revelation as Min. He plays the role with a mix of hesitation and quiet resilience, capturing the internal conflict of someone constantly shifting between love, duty, and survival. Kelly Marie Tran is equally compelling as Angela, bringing her character grounded charm and understated strength. Her scenes—whether light or vulnerable—have a natural ease that anchors the story. Lily Gladstone, as her partner, makes the most of a quieter role, offering stillness and sincerity that feel earned. Joan Chen, as Angela's overly supportive mother, adds comedic flair and heartwarming moments to the film. Bowen Yang, as Chris, delivers something beyond his usual comedic brilliance. His portrayal of a partner asked to shrink himself for someone else's safety is both quietly angry and achingly tender.

The film is as much about a chosen family as it is about blood. While it acknowledges the pain that can stem from parental expectation or generational misunderstanding, it never veers into insensibility. The scene-stealing grandmother, played with sharp wit and quiet sorrow by the incomparable, Academy Award-winning Youn Yuh-jung, brings a subtle yet profound commentary on legacy, lineage, and what it means to love someone—even when you don't fully understand them.

There's something refreshing about a romantic comedy that allows for messiness, contradiction, and evolving identity without trying to resolve everything neatly. Ahn's "The Wedding Banquet" isn't trying to tidy up life—it's simply reflecting it. And in doing so, it crafts a film that feels both comfortingly familiar and wholly new. It's romantic without being saccharine, funny without being flippant, and sincere without losing hope. A beautiful, modern retelling that stands tall on its own merit.

"The Wedding Banquet" opens in theaters on Friday, April 18, 2025.

Even though we all know war is brutal, our imagination is often limited to the depiction in Hollywood war epics. Directors Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza strip away the glamour of those war movies in "Warfare" (USA 2025 | 95 min.), delivering a harrowing, real-time descent into the chaos of combat. With its cinéma vérité approach, extended takes, and refusal to indulge in traditional war movie tropes, the film is an unrelenting and intense experience that captures the true brutality of war when a surveillance operation goes catastrophically wrong.

Based on a real-life mission in Ramadi, Iraq, in 2006, the film follows a group of young Navy SEALs deployed on a reconnaissance mission in insurgent-held territory. Among them are characters played by Charles Melton, Will Poulter, Joseph Quinn, D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Cosmo Jarvis, among others. As they set up a lookout position in an Iraqi apartment building next to an enemy stronghold, their presence is soon discovered, and the situation rapidly deteriorates, leading to a desperate fight for survival.

"Warfare" stands out for its authenticity among war movies. The script, co-written by Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza, is based on real accounts from veteran Ray Mendoza and his fellow SEALs who were part of the actual operation. This firsthand experience is evident in every aspect of the storytelling—from the precise tactical maneuvers to the raw emotional toll of combat. The film does not concern itself with heroics or grandiose speeches; instead, it sustains tension by focusing on the brutal, minute-to-minute struggle of soldiers trying to stay alive.

The ensemble cast delivers a grounded and respectful portrayal of the soldiers' sheer will to survive in impossible circumstances, as well as their unyielding brotherhood. While exposing their vulnerability as young men, they also display immense bravery in the face of non-stopping danger. By emphasizing their inexperience and rawness, the film adds a poignancy to its story.

The film unfolds in real time, using extended takes that heighten the tension without relying on excessive edits or shaky-cam gimmicks. The cinematography, led by David J. Thompson, captures the confined, claustrophobic nature of the SEALs' predicament, fully immersing the audience as if we are embedded with the platoon in battle. There are no dramatic music cues to signal an impending attack, no slow-motion shots of soldiers in anguish. Instead, the action unfolds with relentless, unfiltered realism, making it all the more heart-wrenching.

One of the film's most striking elements is Glenn Freemantle's sound design. The deafening gunfire and constant radio chatter heighten the sense of chaos, immersing the audience in the soldiers' confusion and desperation. Every heavy breath, anguished scream, and thundering explosion is rendered with unsettling realism, making the experience absolutely terrifying.

"Warfare" is not a movie about politics, nor is it a glorification of combat. It is a raw, unsentimental look at modern warfare through the eyes of those who have lived it. Garland and Mendoza's stark realism serves not just as a recounting of history but as a tribute to those who endured it. There are no rousing speeches, no neatly tied-up resolutions—only the inescapable reality of life-and-death decisions made in the heat of battle.

"Warfare" opens in theaters on Friday, April 11, 2025.

The French writer-director Alain Guiraudie's enigmatic new film "Misericordia" (Miséricorde | France/Spain/Portugal, 2024 | in French | 104 min.) is a masterfully crafted thriller that blurs the lines between desire, morality, and suspense. It continues the thematic exploration found in his previous acclaimed film "Stranger by the Lake" (L'inconnu du lac | France 2013), a provocative thriller about sex, desire, love, and murder.

Set in the quiet countryside of Occitanie, France, during the vibrant fall season, the film follows Jérémie (Félix Kysyl), an unemployed baker who returns to his hometown for the funeral of his former mentor, the village baker. What begins as a brief visit soon turns into a deeply unsettling entanglement with the deceased man's widow, Martine (Catherine Frot), his resentful and volatile son, Vincent (Jean-Baptiste Durand), and Vincent's best friend, Walter (David Ayala). Adding to the intrigue is an enigmatic priest, L'abbé (Jacques Develay), whose omnipresence raises more questions than answers. As relationships between these characters slowly unfold, buried secrets and hidden desires emerge. After a murder occurs, their moral compasses are further tested, deepening the film's intricate web of lies and deceit.

Guiraudie masterfully crafts a story that explores the dangerous pull of desire, the murkiness of human intentions, and the ways in which passion can blur moral boundaries. He takes a melancholic, autumnal approach, situating his characters in a setting where past wounds and long-buried secrets gradually resurface. The rural village and its surrounding forest, with their rich autumnal hues, become a psychological battleground, heightening the film's eerie and enigmatic tone.

The film thrives on ambiguity, both in its characters and its moral inquiries. Jérémie's motives remain elusive: is he simply nostalgic, yearning for connection, or does he have deeper, more self-serving intentions? The film resists the traditional dichotomy of heroes and villains, allowing its characters to exist in shades of gray. It compels the audience to reconsider their allegiances as the mystery unfolds, raising profound questions about guilt, redemption, and the hidden impulses that drive human behavior.

Félix Kysyl delivers a mesmerizing performance, shifting effortlessly between vulnerability and quiet menace as Jérémie. Catherine Frot lends Martine a depth that captures the complexities of grief, loneliness, and unresolved attraction. Meanwhile, Jacques Develay as the priest brings an unexpected blend of warmth and unease, his philosophical musings driving the film's deeper themes of mercy and judgment.

While "Misericordia" contains the hallmarks of a psychological thriller, it leans more heavily on the moral complexity of its characters. At its core, it is a meditation on human desire and the eerie ways in which the past and present intertwine. Much like "Stranger by the Lake," it subverts audience expectations, offering no clear moral ground.

"Misericordia" opens in theaters in the San Francisco Bay Area on Friday, April 4, 2025. Alain Guiraudie will present the film at a 6:30 PM sneak preview on March 24, 2025, at the Roxie Theater.

When it comes to spy movies, the action packed James Bond or Mission: Impossible franchises perhaps are the best known. However, the inventive auteur Steven Soderbergh's sleek "Black Bag" (USA 2025 | 93 min.) takes a completely different approach to the genre, featuring an outstanding ensemble cast. It's a delicious feast to the mind and a skillful blend of psychological tension and classic spy intrigue.

The title refers to the classified information that intelligence agents cannot disclose-even to those closest to them-compartmentalized into their personal black bag. Within Britain's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), secrecy is a way of life, for both personal and professional. But when a powerful cyber-weapon called Severus is on the verge of being activated, a group of agents find their black bags under scrutiny.

On a Friday, the NCSC agent George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) is assigned to root out a mole within the agency. The list of suspects includes four trusted colleagues and one name that shakes his world—his wife Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett), a high-ranking operative herself. The other suspects include the ambitious Colonel James Stokes (Regé-Jean Page), his lover and in-house psychologist Dr. Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris), and the enigmatic pair of Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke) and Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela), whose troubled relationship is riddled with secrets. Overseeing them all is the seasoned intelligence chief Arthur Stieglitz (Pierce Brosnan).

Each of them has some knowledge of Severus, a cyber weapon capable of destabilizing nuclear infrastructure. As George unravels the tangled web of deception, he must determine who can be trusted and who is playing a dangerous game. Lies and manipulation unfold not through explosive actions, but through clever dialogue and gripping psychological tango.

Based on David Koepp's sharp script, the director and cinematographer Soderbergh crafts a taut narrative of deception and betrayal. The film's tension builds in layers, allowing small moments of suspicion to gradually combust into gripping confrontations. Every actor delivers a nuanced performance, revealing just enough to keep the audience guessing. The characters all dress as flawlessly as the lies they tell.

What sets "Black Bag" apart from conventional spy movies is its smartly unfolded mind games. This isn't just about catching a traitor, it's about a marriage built on trust being tested by secrecy and duty and the manipulation of the minds of those you are supposed to trust the most.

"Black Bag" opens in the San Francisco Bay Area on Friday, March 14, 2025.