The enigmatic Takeshi Kitano resumes his position as director and staunch idiosyncratic in this beautified attempt at high emotion and theatrical tragedy. Opening as a Bunraku doll drama, Kitano weaves three stories – a couple in search of forgotten love, a love-lost aging Yakuza and a J-Pop idol's fall from grace – under a series of motifs and ellipses. Often a subdued experience – one communicated through images and semantics before dialogue – Dolls is blanketed in a thick, prevailing sadness, punctuated by the rich-yet-empty framing of characters, isolated as if by the confines of an omnipresent stage setting.

Reviewed by Tim Wong

WHEN IN DOUBT, hide under the covers.

It's this most irrational of rationale that punctuates Takashi Shimizu's domesticated genre-horror, The Grudge (aka Juon): on second viewing, totally absurdist, yet as an initial, unexpected encounter of the lights-out variety, utterly pant-wetting.