Serpent's Path & Eyes of the Spider (Japan, 1998)

Who knew that in 1998, we got a Japanese precursor to Park Chan-wook's Vengeance-trilogy, only this time it's a duo. 

Both directed in the same year by everyone's (you horror connoisseur's out there) favorite Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and both dealing with the ever returning, never-dying theme of revenge. I mentioned Chan-wook because Serpent's Path especially feels like a huge inspiration for his Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005), only here we got a much higher body count. Serpent and Spider very much goes hand in hand, sharing some of the same actors and how they deal with the possibility of being able to exact pain on those who've ruined your life, and in some instances it gets way darker than Chan-wook's films. 

The two stories are also like different branches on the same tree, where in Spider a man discovers a darker side of himself after exacting revenge on his daughter's killer, and in Serpent a man enlists a friend to help him identify and exact revenge upon his daughter's murderer. Kurosawa manages to juggle the films plot elements not to close to each other and finds their own personalities with ease, the only thing the viewer know is that someone is going to pay for a heinous crime.

Genre: Drama/Crime

Pornostar (Japan, 1998)

Arano knows no fear. When questioned or threatened, his first response is to lash out with a knife. Before long, his natural viciousness is harnessed by some callow pimps against their Yakuza bosses, but Arano (who dreams of knives raining down from the sky) is more of a psychopath than any of them imagined.

Pornostar (a.k.a. Tokyo Rampage) is the directorial debut of Toshiaki Toyoda, who later would make the absolutely brilliant Blue Spring (2001) and also 9 Souls (2003). While not as good as those, Pornostar still is a cool film about a guy who really hates the yakuza and is looking for trouble everywhere he goes.

Genre: Crime

The Bird People in China (Japan, 1998)

A young Japanese salaryman is sent by his company to a remote Chinese village to evaluate precious Jade that is found there, but before he arrives meets the yakuza who was sent to tail him to protect his bosses interest in the company. When the men finally arrive their mission become sidetracked by their interest in a mysterious young village girl, her haunting English language song and the secret that makes men fly like birds.

You have to admit, that it's easy to get curious with a synopsis like that. Surprising as it may sound, the film was actually directed by one of Japans craziest directors, Takashi Miike (Ichi the Killer, Audition). Here he uses a far more laid-back approach to the film than most of his other works, and it can be described as the most mature or serious film in the directors filmography. It's interesting to see a man that is responsible for some of the most gory and brutal scenes in Japanese film history, now takes the time to show the clouds rolling in over the hilltops, and the children who play on the grassy fields with towering mountains in the background. With a good story and beautiful settings, The Bird People in China should be one of Miike's most respected works.

Genre: Drama/Comedy

The Hole (Taiwan, 1998)

A strange disease starts to affect people in Taiwan just before the year 2000. The authorities order everyone to evacuate, but some tenants of an apartment building stay put, including a shop owner who lives by himself. One day, a plumber goes to the shop owner's apartment to check the pipes. The plumber drills a small hole in the floor, which comes down through the ceiling of another apartment. The hole never gets repaired, and this leads to some tension between the shop owner and the woman who lives below him. 

I hope you're the kind of person that can handle a film with a slow pace, because Tsai Ming-liang's (Goodbye, Dragon Inn, Vive l'Amour) The Hole sure is taking its sweet time convincing you that this film is indeed amazing. Don't worry, it is amazing, but it may take a while before you know it. Imagine the opposite (ok, almost) of a Hollywood blockbuster with enormous explosions and a huge cast, then throw out the script and keep the dialogue down to a minimum. A great film, if you have the patience for it. 

Genre: Drama

April Story (Japan, 1998)

In spring, a girl leaves the island of Hokkaido to attend university in Tokyo. Once there, she is asked to reveal why she wanted to go there in the first place.

Director Shunji Iwai has some respectable films under his belt, among them are the critically acclaimed All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001) and Love Letter (1995), a mammoth of a love story. With April Story he made a slower paced and more relaxed romance drama involving a teenage girl on a kind of quest. A simple story but with a lot of heart, and if Iwai hadn't treated the film the same way as with his other huge films the plot would have fallen apart instantly. It's quite short, clocking in at barely over an hour, but I wish it went on longer because you really get into the story and at the end, when all the pieces are put together you just want to see how it all plays out. I wouldn't say that nothing gets resolved, it's just me who wished to stay a little while longer in Tokyo, waiting for a happy end. And if I don't want a film to end, I'd say that's a great achievement.   

Genre: Drama

After Life (Japan, 1998)

After people die, they spend a week with counselors, also dead, who help them pick one memory, the only memory they can take to eternity. They describe the memory to the staff who work with a crew to film it and screen it at week's end. 22 dead arrive that week, assigned to three counselors and a trainee. One old man cannot find a memory, so he watches videotapes of his life. Others pick their memory quickly, and the film crew gets right to work.

After Life is directed by one of Japan's best directors, Hirokazu Kore-eda, who gave us great films like Nobody Knows (2004) and Still Walking (2008). After Life is his brilliant view of life after death, and the complications that follows. It's like a personal investment in people's lives, and not just actors as Kore-eda wanted genuine emotions and real stories so we see many people that talks about real experiences. The film was planned a decade before being made and was directly inspired by Kore-eda's childhood memories of his grandfather's dementia, which made him aware of just how important memories are to our identity. 

Genre: Drama. 1h 58min.

Christmas In August (South Korea, 1998)

The plot follows a portrait photographer, Jung-won and his developing romance with a parking agent, Da-rim. However, the romance never gets a chance to develop into intimacy. Jung-won soon finds out he is suffering from an unnamed illness and has to come to terms with his impending death. He sets out to continue living as usual, going out with his friends and spending time with his family in the small town he has lived for decades.

To create this excellent screenplay, the director purposely shot the film with slow movements and still camera work to capture the feel of photography, which is a huge part of the plot. A beautiful melodrama with an emotional impact on the viewer, Christmas in August is sure to break down your defenses and make you feel something real.

Genre: Drama/Romance

Whispering Corridors (South Korea, 1998)

Whispering Corridors is set in a typical all-female high school in Korea and the story begins on the night before the first day of the new school year. A female teacher, Mrs Park, has discovered something mysterious and weird concerning a late pupil of the school called Jin-ju who had committed suicide in the school’s art rooms nine years previously, and her ghost was said to haunt the art rooms which had been closed up after the incident. However, before she can explain about her discovery she is attacked and murdered, and the next day she's found hanged.

Whispering Corridors is the first movie in its franchise, and it spawned four sequels. This one, and Voice (2005) are really the only ones you need to see, for the others are fairly mediocre. The horror aspects of these films are barely enough to give you a few chills, but they made a strong social commentary on the Korean school system, and they did it with a spooky ghost story in the lead. 

Genre: Drama/Horror

The Quiet Family (South Korea, 1998)

A humble family decides to buy a lodge in a remote hiking area. When they finally gets a customer, he ends up committing suicide, and the distraught family buries his body to avoid the bad publicity. But their luck gets worse, more customers ends up dying, and the family becomes desperate to save the situation.

The Quiet Family is director Kim Ji-woon's (I Saw the Devil, A Bittersweet Life) feature film debut and by far one of the funniest movies I've ever seen; pure 'black comedy' gold. People dies left and right, and it's downright hilarious. It also features pre-stardom Choi Min-sik (Oldboy) and Song Kang-ho (Memories of Murder) as two brothers who just can't get a break.

Everyone needs to see this one. Now!

Genre: Comedy/Crime. 1h 38min.

Bullet Ballet (Japan, 1998)

A man sees his life changed for ever when his fiancee shoots herself. Baffled, he wants by all means to obtain such a gun and he finds himself caught in a violent group of young vicious punks. They first beat him severely and then he seeks revenge with his fist, then with a gun.

Another Shinya Tsukamoto film, which pretty much follows the same pattern as many of his other movies; black & white and shot with a hand-held camera, thus adding an effective sense of realism. Raw as hell.

Genre: Crime/Drama/Thriller

Ringu (Japan, 1998)

Reiko is researching into a 'Cursed Video' and interviewing teenagers about it. When her niece Tomoko dies of 'sudden heart failure' with an unnaturally horrified expression on her face, Reiko investigates. She finds out that some of Tomoko's friends, who had been on a holiday with Tomoko the week before, had died on exactly the same night at the exact same time in the exact same way. Reiko goes to the cabin where the teens had stayed and finds an unlabeled video tape. 

Yes, it's one of the most well-known horror films in history, but no asian movie list is complete without it. And we're not talking about some sequel, remake or reboot, we're talking the 1998 original Ringu. The film that hundreds of others movies copied and tried to imitate in its wake. I know many say it's somewhat dated and by now the whole 'ghost with long black hair'-thing has been done to death (no pun intended), but see this film alone, at night in a pitch black room and try not to get scared. It gets all the important things right; the scares are not over-used, the main characters are sympathetic and likeable, the soundtrack is haunting and minimalistic, and it all centers around a great original mystery that you just have to see to the end. It's more or less essential for every horror fan to have seen it. 

It's humorous to imagine back to the time of Ringu's release, when it emerged only as a bootleg in the West and had a reputation of being one of the scariest films ever made, just like The Blair Witch Project (though that came out the year after Ringu). Nowadays it has been released countless times on DVD and Blu-ray, but once it only existed as a hard-to-find, almost mythical piece of cinema.

Genre: Horror/Mystery