Our mark is 銀幕, ginmaku — the silver screen, and the same two characters in Japanese, Chinese and Korean.

I came to Tokyo at twenty-three for a summer job at a Shibuya mini-theatre and the job never quite ended. Fifteen years of festivals later I still think the only review that counts is the one the room gives you: where the laugh lands, the moment three hundred people stop moving at once, whether anybody stays for the credits.

Cinepuuulse follows Asian cinema — Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand — across about a hundred and twenty sources. A good number of them are Spanish, French and Portuguese, because those countries programme this work seriously and write about it better than most of the English-language trade. Genre and art-house get the same seat here. I am not ranking them, and nothing is scored out of ten.

Each story is a headline, a short excerpt, one still and a link to the outlet that did the reporting. We never republish the piece, and the still belongs to its studio or its photographer. A Korean trade paper appears in Korean, a French review in French. We point at the work; we do not put words in anyone's mouth.

— Daren Wise, Tokyo

← Cinepuuulse Archive

BFI / Sight and SoundUK

10 great films about infidelity

September 10

As Claude Chabrol’s classic psychological thriller La Femme infidèle returns to cinemas, discover 10 films in which affairs, betrayals and forbidden desires send ordinary lives spinning into…

Read at BFI / Sight and Sound ↗

More from BFI / Sight and Sound on Cinepuuulse

UKThe discreet murderer of the bourgeoisie: an interview with Claude Chabrol BFI / Sight and Sound

UKBucking Fastard: Herzog’s tale of two sisters who speak in unison is his best fiction feature in years BFI / Sight and Sound

UKOasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger: Fan-service rockumentary is very much the Gallagher brothers’ show BFI / Sight and Sound

UK“I never made a movie to just go make a movie, it was always an exploration of filmmaking”: our world exclusive interview with Tom Cruise BFI / Sight and Sound

One letter a week, in your inbox.

Latest