Film Fest News

Top picks of the 2025 Asian Film Festival of Dallas coming in July

Asian Film Festival's Baby Assassins: Nice Days

AFFD

The annual Asian Film Festival of Dallas — a nonprofit dedicated to celebrating Asian and Asian-American filmmakers — returns in 2025 with more than two dozen films including action movies, comedies, thrillers, and short films.

The four-day festival will take place July 24-27 at the Angelika Film Center Dallas, 5321 E. Mockingbird Ln. #230, and will include award-winning films, premieres, and red carpet action.

Highlights include:

Opening Night July 24: Shinji Araki's Japanese thriller Penalty Loop
Centerpiece July 25: Johnny Ma’s comedy-drama The Mother and the Bear (Johnny Ma will also be in-person at AFFD to participate in the post-screening Q&A.)
Women's Showcase July 26
Closing Night July 27: Yugo Sakamoto's Japanese action-comedy Baby Assassins: Nice Days

AFFD will also host a special Saturday Women’s Showcase spotlighting female filmmakers from across Asia—South Korea, India, Singapore, and Vietnam—as well as the U.S.

"For the festival as whole, while fans can still count on the high-energy action films we’re known for, a deeper theme emerged as I programmed the lineup — the power of connection," says Programming Director Paul Theiss in a release. "This year’s festival explores the deep human need to reach out, be seen, and never go it alone. And what better place to celebrate that spirit of connection than at a film festival, which brings us together through the shared experience of storytelling.”

Women's Showcase
Highlights include:

Mye Hoang's 25 Cats From Qatar. Film about an American flight attendant and cat cafe owner who reacts to a homeless cat crisis in Qatar by coming up with a plan to fly 25 cats to Milwaukee, with her cat cafe providing the way for people to adopt them.
Dương Diệu Linh’s Don’t Cry, Butterfly. Focuses on a wedding venue staffer who learns of her husband’s affair while watching live TV. Instead of confronting him, she uses a voodoo spell to reclaim his love.
Nelicia Low’s Pierce. Thriller follows the push and pull between a young fencer and his estranged older brother, recently released from juvenile prison after serving time for killing an opponent during a fencing match.

All three filmmakers will be in Dallas to participate in Q&As following their screenings.

Sunday will feature films with attending filmmakers leading up to the Closing Night screening of Yugo Sakamoto's Japanese action-comedy Baby Assassins: Nice Days, including:

Jeff Mann’s Paper Marriage finds comedy and drama in the story of a Chinese immigrant facing deportation, who pays an unemployed and directionless man to marry her.
Lee Jong-min and Yeum Moon-kyoung’s South Korean comedy The Last Woman on Earth looks at a female screenwriter who finds tension with her fellow film students due to her script’s anger toward men.

Also noted for its singular party presentations, this year the Asian Film Festival of Dallas will complement the screenings and filmmaker appearances at AFFD with Opening Night, Centerpiece, and Closing Night parties at the Angelika Film Center with Asian cuisine and crafted drinks by George Kaiho, featuring Suntory Japanese Whisky, as well as themed presentations, filmmaker meet-and-greets, and photo opportunities for film fans who have come out to enjoy the great AFFD programming during those evenings.

To purchase badges, tickets, and find a full list of all the films, go to asianfilmdallas.com.

Over the last 20+ years, the festival has provided opportunities for more than 400 Asian and Asian-American filmmakers to share their vision, often providing the only venue for their films to be shown in Dallas. The films have also allowed festival goers a chance to experience other lives and cultures without leaving their seats.

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Movie Review

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first but not by much

Blumhouse

Five Nights at Freddy's 2

Blumhouse Productions first made their name with the Paranormal Activity series, establishing themselves as a leader in the horror genre thanks to their relatively cheap yet effective movies. In recent years, they’ve added on “soft” horror films likeM3GAN and Five Nights at Freddy’s to draw in a younger audience, with both films becoming so successful that each was quickly given a sequel.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 finds Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and his sister Abby (Piper Rubio) still recovering from the events of the first film, with Abby particularly missing her “friends.” Those friends just so happen to be the souls of murdered children who inhabit animatronic characters at the long-defunct Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, children who were abducted and killed by William Afton (Matthew Lillard).

A new threat emerges at another Freddy Fazbear’s location in the form of Charlotte, another murdered child who inhabits a creepy large marionette. Mike, distracted by a possible romance with Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), fails to keep track of Abby, who makes her way to the old pizzeria and inadvertently unleashes Charlotte and her minions on the surrounding town.

Directed by Emma Tammi and written by Scott Cawthon (who also created the video game on which the series is based), the film tries to mix together goofy elements with intense scenes. One particular sequence, in which the security guard for Freddy Fazbear’s lets a group of ghost hunters onto the property, toes the line between soft and hard horror. That and a few others show the potential that the filmmakers had if they had stuck to their guns.

Unfortunately, more often than not they either soft-pedal things that would normally be horrific, or can’t figure out how to properly stage scenes. The sight of animatronic robots wreaking havoc is one that is simultaneously frightening and laughable, and the filmmakers never seem to find the right balance in tone. Every step in the direction of making a truly scary horror film is undercut by another in which the robots fail to live up to their promise.

It doesn’t help that Cawthon gives the cast some extremely wooden dialogue, lines that none of the actors can elevate. What may work in a video game format comes off as stilted when said by actors in a live-action film. The story also loses momentum quickly after the first half hour or so, with Cawthon seemingly content to just have characters move from place to place with no sense of connection between any of the scenes.

Hutcherson (The Hunger Games series), after being the true lead of the first film, is given very little to do in this film, and his effort is equal to his character’s arc. The same goes for Lail, whose character seems to be shoehorned into the story. Rubio is called upon to carry the load for a lot of the movie, and the teenager is not quite up to the task. A brief appearance by Skeet Ulrich seems to be a blatant appeal to Scream fans, but he and Lillard only underscore how limited this film is compared to that franchise.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first film, but not by much. The filmmakers do a decent job of making the new marionette character into a great villain, but they fail to capitalize on its inherent creepiness. Instead, they fall back on less effective elements, ensuring that the film will be forgettable for anyone other than hardcore Freddy fans.

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Five Nights at Freddy's 2 opens in theaters on December 5.

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