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CHINESE + KOREAN + JAPANESE |125 MINUTES | KENDALL SQUARE American audiences used to flaccid PG-13 horror fare are in for a shock . . . or three. Each of the East Asian directors behind this grisly nightmare of delightfully un-PC extremity offers a mini-masterpiece of the macabre. In "Dumplings," Hong Kong’s Fruit Chan cooks up a wantonly vile tale of celebrity vanity, with a chef (Bai Ling) serving wontons containing a rejuvenating ingredient contrary to good taste. "Cut" finds Korea’s Park Chan-wook (Oldboy) continuing his fascination with blood-soaked vengeance, as a film director (Lee Byung-Hun) is abducted and subjected to torture that outruns even Marathon Man. And "Box," a hallucinatory container of psychological dread from Japan’s Takashi Miike (Ichi the Killer), drifts through the memories of an æthereally beautiful novelist (Kyoko Hasegawa) who’s guilt-ridden over the childhood death of her twin sister, closing the film on an uncharacteristically bloodless but no less disquieting note.
BY BRETT MICHEL
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