Tag: Joey Iwanaga

No-Brainer | The Furious (2025) Review

June 11, 2026

We’ve got to talk about Joe Taslim and Kensuke Sonomura and Jeeja Yanin and all the With Eyes East favorites who’ve assembled for this action movie Super Bowl, but the story of The Furious might begin with a different name: Bill Kong. The last (and first) time producer Bill Kong came up on this site, it was in the comparison between live-action Blood: The Last Vampire – which he produced as a vehicle for Gianna Jun – and Kingdom: Ashin of the North, the homegrown Korean product which more successfully showed off Jun Ji-hyun to the world. If there’s one thing Bill Kong likes, it’s an American audience, as he also helped foster such crossover hits as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the Disney live-action Mulan. He may have found a fellow traveler in director Kenji Tanigaki, the Japanese action coordinator who cut his teeth on Hong Kong productions like SPL, Flash Point, and Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (not to mention odds and ends like Blade II and Takashi Yamazaki’s Always: Sunset on Third Street). Together, they’ve brought The Furious to the international market, starting with the Toronto International Film Festival, up to and including American screens the same day as the latest Spielberg release. That’s confidence. … More No-Brainer | The Furious (2025) Review

Critical Lore Question

September 12, 2025

My understanding of Baby Assassins was that it was, if not “a big deal,” then at least “known.” Using this very website as a record, my earliest awareness of the series dates back to 2022 (see: “Hydra review”), one year after the first movie released, and even by then, I felt late to the party. Note, in that review, I reference the movie without disclaiming that I hadn’t seen it, which might lead readers to incorrectly assume I had. Garsh, I just can’t let myself get away with anything, can I? I’m such a humble guy! I’d learned about it from an entertainment website like Polygon (which it wasn’t, as their earliest coverage is 2024), in an enthusiastic review or discussion. I suppose this is my mistake, thinking that such writing is somehow indicative of the national (or international) pulse. No, outlets like that are pretty small-time, despite all the damage wreaked by unethical games journalism. Regardless, I then assumed that there were tons of people out in the world whom I could chat with about Baby Assassins, or at least pose this burning question: “Who’s older?” … More Critical Lore Question

Homemade Gyoza Party | Baby Assassins: 2 Babies (2023) Review

January 23, 2025

I’m so excited that Baby Assassins ballooned into a media franchise, encompassing a trilogy of films, a TV series, a making-of documentary, and a making-of mockumentary, most of which came together in the last two years. Mahiro actress Saori Izawa has been working for a long time, as her action reels on YouTube plainly demonstrate – up to and including slicing a delivery pizza in half with a katana – mostly behind the scenes, even doubling Rina Sawayama in John Wick: Chapter 4. Our dear new franchise, then, is basically her proverbial (if not literal) John Wick moment, and honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised to see her featured more prominently in another American movie soon. It’s weird that American action cinema is currently in a renaissance, but for Japan, movies like Baby Assassins are the exception – kind of. … More Homemade Gyoza Party | Baby Assassins: 2 Babies (2023) Review