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

The Playlist

Guillermo Del Toro Wants To Make A Mexican Kidnapping Drama That Could Draw From His Father’s Real-Life Abduction

October 11

Guillermo del Toro has spent much of his career exploring humanity’s darkest impulses through monsters, ghosts, and fairy tales.

Read at The Playlist ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Guillermo Del Toro Wants To Make A Mexican Kidnapping Drama That Could Draw From His Father’s Real-Life Abduction

More from The Playlist on Cinepuuulse

‘Blade Runner 2099’ Trailer: Michelle Yeoh & Hunter Schafer Navigate A New Replicant Future In Prime Video’s Sci-Fi Sequel The Playlist

‘Ray Gunn’ Review: Sam Rockwell & Scarlett Johansson Can’t Save Brad Bird’s Overstuffed, Retrofuturistic Noir The Playlist

‘Something Is Killing The Children’: Craig Zobel To Direct Blumhouse Adaptation Of Hit Horror Comic The Playlist

‘Molepeople’: LaKeith Stanfield & Ben Mendelsohn Star In Rob Savage’s New Blumhouse Horror Film, Arriving August 2027 The Playlist