21 Grams | By David Levinson

BRANDISHING THAT big ol' hand-of-God sense of fatalism, Alejandro González Iñárritu sets out to consider Paul River's (Sean Penn) point that "How two people meet is a mystery bigger than us". Conflating glorified soap opera material with grim, ashen realism, 21 Grams, much like Irréversible, is a film that takes a simple narrative, disrupts it, and then wraps it around a philosophical conceit. Only, instead of wrenching his characters through agony to get to bliss, Iñárritu's shambled chronology – which merges the past, present and future – weaves them about a harmonic apex of life and death that finds itself falling in and out of balance as the core tragedy unfolds.

Half-breeds and cultural outcasts dominate yet again in another Takashi Miike monster-mash; this time 'round, more true to the Dead or Alive universe than some of Miike-san's more recent cinematic digressions. Japanese-Brazilian outlaw Mario takes the lead, killing a mob of South American nobodies before commandeering a helicopter to rescue Chinese Kei (Michelle Reis) from deportation. The remainder of the film situates itself in Japan, in part around a dislocated Brazilian community in harm's way with the territorial Yazuka after Mario and Kei heist a stash of cocaine in the middle of a gangland deal.

Daunted by the prospect of more cliché-heavy list making, MUBARAK ALI took the lead in presenting ten of the so-called best from 2003.

The following lists were thrown together by a handful of Lumière's friends and family; probably with little-to-no thought, mostly just to fill redundant page space.

MUBARAK ALI cast his discerning eye over the legacy of Shyam Benegal, presenting us with a crash course in the work of one of India's key filmmaking voices.

TIM WONG plunged headfirst into the world of import DVD in pursuit of the most elusive cold-cuts from the East – and surfaced with a hefty credit card bill, among other things.

Jaded, TIM WONG attempted to revisit the year in movies that was 2003 – and found out it wasn’t all bad.

TIM WONG’s belated year in review continues here.

In something of an ode to the independent spirit, TIM WONG found out that Wellington's most discerning movie library is much more than an old flat with a whole lot of videos.

DAVID LEVINSON files an appreciation of Tsai “Ming-liang's What Time is it There?”.

I MISSED What Time is it There? when it screened at the International Film Festival two years ago – mostly due to lack of familiarity with the director – but was thankfully able to see it a year later on DVD. To date, it stands as the only Tsai Ming-liang that I have seen – yet, common mention suggests that it operates as the fulfilment of a style that has been flourishing across the breadth of his oeuvre.

Struggling at the prospect of writing an editorial for Lumière's Asian Cinema Special, TIM WONG managed to settle on a faux-Scorsese, Tour de Asia-type sortie into the movies that mattered from the East – but not before the occasional bout of cultural self-consciousness.

Reviewed by David Levinson

HAVING GONE FROM being the 'girl who almost ruined The Godfather 3' to one of America's foremost female auteurs within the span of three years is quite the feat in itself. Nevermind for someone who spent the greater portion of her life standing in the artistic shadow of her father. Sofia Coppola's metamorphosis began with the release of her ephemeral, sophomore effort, The Virgin Suicides, in 1999, and according to many, she now stands bearing wings of her own with her recently delivered second film, Lost in Translation – a wet dream of hotel ambience, insomnia, Kevin Shields, and perpetual night.