Tribcea Film Fest - Friday, May 4

West 32nd poster
Originally uploaded by Mirka23.

Tonight I saw two tense movies. The first was West 32nd, a Korean-American crime drama starring John Cho and Grace Park. John plays a a young lawyer who's trying to help out a family whose teenage boy seems to be wrapped up in a gang-related murder. Grace plays the sister of the boy. There was a wide range of Korean-American experiences on display in the story, and apparently most of the actors - aside from John, Grace, and a third main character played by Jun Sung Kim, from Seoul - are local actors.

I was happy to see that, even at the fifth screening, the director, some of the crew, and a whole bunch of actors showed up. It probably helped that most people involved in the film live around here, but I was still happy to see so many people who were excited about the project they had helped make. Here's a photo I took of Dante Han and Lanny Joon, two of the actors in the film.

Later I saw Rise: Blood Hunter, a sort of vampire thriller film. It was a lot scarier than I expected it to be. Lucy Liu plays a reporter who stumbles onto the wrong lead. She gets turned into a vampire and then seeks revenge on the people that did this to her. Some parts of the story don't make any sense, but it's loud, dark, gory and exciting, and Lucy Liu is half naked several times during the movie, so I'm sure it will do alright.