Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

Ab-normal Beauty (2004)

Director: Oxide Pang

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

Heavy on the colour filters, whizz-bang editing and full-on soundtrack, the characteristic Pang Brothers style (‘Bangkok Dangerous’, ‘The Eye’) just about holds this uneven Hong Kong shocker together. There are distant echoes of ‘Peeping Tom’ in the first hour, as art student Jiney (Rosanne Wong) photographs the bloody aftermath of a car crash and becomes increasingly obsessed with capturing the precise moment of death, much to the consternation of her girlfriend Jas (Race Wong, her real-life sister). As the direction revels in the red-bathed imagery of the darkroom, Jiney gets a disturbing glint in her eye, yet after an hour the movie seems to tire of that idea and wheels on a leather-hooded psycho who assaults his female prey on camera and sends Jiney the evidence. The remainder is increasingly perfunctory, leaving the artful visuals and strong lead performances unable to dispel the queasy notion that we’re lingering too long over shots of young women being beaten to a pulp.

Author: TJ 2005-09-20 12:30:33

Time Out London Issue 1831: September 21-28 2005

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Ab-normal Beauty

Cast & crew

Director: Oxide Pang

Producer: Oxide Pang, Danny Pang

Cast: Ekin Cheng, Anson Leung, Race Wong, Rosanne Wong, Michelle Mee full cast

Genre(s): Horror

Duration: 101 mins


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.