It should be 'Ong Bak' here, as that film has a surprising amount of cultural meat on its bones, but 'Born to Fight' is a gob-smacking joy from start to finish. Recklessly dangerous stunt work (that fall between two trucks still astounds multiple viewings later) and constantly inventive action sequences makes this an all-round, smile on the face, audience friendly winner.

Not quite the masterpiece I expected, but Kim Ji-Woon's modern fairytale still impresses.  Two sisters are terrorized by their cruel stepmother and seemingly uncaring father, but there is much more to this than meets the eye or ear.  A tightly constructed mystery that keeps you guessing until its final revelation, 'A Tale of Two Sisters' is marred only by some on-the-nose 'Ring' style scares in late in the day, but is a wonderful follow-up to Kim's 'The Quiet Family'.

Shinya Tsukamoto's 2004 film is a typically fractured and extreme tale of lost love and violence, yet he has matured since 'Tetsuo' days into a quietly brilliant filmmaker.  Tadanobu Asano is a medical student grieving over the loss of his girlfriend in a car accident.  He begins a strange affair with a self-destructive student, but just whose body is he carrying out an autopsy on?  All of love's mysteries are in here, and if it takes a couple of viewings to fully understand the story, it's worth the effort.

Takeshi Kitano never ceases to surprise and this road movie is a delight throughout. A yakuza (Kitano) takes a young boy on a journey through rural Japan to visit the boy's estranged mother. Comprised of witty vignettes, this begins as lightweight fluff but as the relationship deepens adds up to a whole lot more. Kitano's character conveys a sea of emotion while never changing expression and the tyke in tow is a perfect low-key foil to the yakuza’s buffoonery. Joyous, funny and beautifully shot, this is the perfect movie to show Takeshi Kitano is not just a "gun guy".

I was lucky enough to see this at a screening in 2005 and am glad to report it tops off Park Chan Wook's Vengeance Trilogy in style.  Lee Yeung-ae is a woman falsely imprisoned for a child-killing that had the nation hooked years previously, and upon release thirsts for revenge on the man who wronged her ('Oldboy's Choi Min-sik).  A seemingly hackneyed tale becomes a baroque ballet of righteous violence, and the film stuns with a  deliciously dark sense of humour and a bold approach to releasing vital information: the reason for the revenge is not revealed until almost one hour in, and is then told to a peripheral character.  'Lady Vengeance's denouement takes the story into much rockier territory than anticipated, and will inevitably lead to howls of bad taste, but this is extreme cinema with a strong moral compass.  In short, it's everything Tarantino's derivative, bloated 'Kill Bill' tried to be, but failed.

Park Chan Wook currently has the Asian film vengeance market cornered, but Imamura Shohei's bold, epic film rivals anything made today.  A violent, morally neutral tale of one man's killing spree, the film crosses back and forth through time to flesh out his family history, friends and relationships, yet offers no easy answers.  Ken Ogata is electrifying in the lead role, based on a real life killer, and it is not difficult to see why many critics labelled this Japan's best movie of the 1970s.  One for the permanent collection.

Still without a UK distributor, this Mainland Chinese love story is a real heartbreaker.  A man returns to his rural hometown and meets the (now-lame) love of his younger life, trapped in a loveless marriage to a deaf and dumb farmer.  What could have been a real slog is transformed through wonderful characterisation and a brilliant flashback structure into an emotionally devastating film that reveals how fate and chance, plus old-fashioned foolishness can send people on the wrong paths in life.  An undiscovered gem.

Park Chan Wook's fearsome revenge thriller is powerhouse proof that Asian cinema is still at the forefront of radical filmmaking.  An irresistible premise - a drunken salary man is mysteriously incarcerated for fifteen years, suddenly released and has five days to discover the truth - leads into a labyrinthine plot of memory, madness, violence and loss.  Park blends comic book visuals with breathtakingly confident storytelling to create a pulp masterpiece that is a one-two punch of physical and emotional pain.

Written by Rob Daniel