I've met Park Chan-wook three times in my life: At a signing for Oldboy at Tower Records in Soho, then at the NYFF premiere of Sympathy for Lady Vengeance and once again at a Q&A for Thirst at the same festival. Only at the last event did I get to ask him whom his favorite inspirations were: He said Kim Ki-young and Yasuzo Masumura—which led me to binge on the latter’s works.

But now, having watched The Last Witness, it's…

In one word: sloppy. There are some potentially interesting ideas here in understanding the torment an artist "requires" in order to become successful, but it's not handled with the kind of refinement necessary to be impactful. Compare, for instance, with how Almodóvar tackles a similar topic in Pain and Glory, where there's a nervous urgency in every scene to remind us of what's at stake.

The biggest issues with Rockstar are arguably technical: Editing is less than optimal, with many…

LIFE AS FICTION — Punch is not a blockbuster. It's about a poor high school kid growing up with a disabled father hellbent on dancing at a cabaret. It's about mothers and being an outsider in a closed off world. It's about fathers and sons and teachers and students. Most importantly, it's about knowing that one cannot separate all these, that in the evermore complicated world we live in, everything converges at once, and we must learn to find solace…