Perhaps not, because we may know and be annoyed at people like them already. Heiward Mak will be back and she should be. , has joked that his involvement with the production ‘self-immolated my own career’. From the genius casting of the irreverent Chow as the Monkey King to the masterstroke of letting Buddhist monk Tang Xuanzang (played by Law, no less) burst into The Platters’ Only You, Lau’s wildly imaginative Journey to the West adaptation is deservedly recognised for its sublime wackiness. “More importantly, he’s one of the rare examples [among actors] – and I don’t know what happened in his childhood – in that he always seems very fragile and insecure and deprived. Ex is smart and edgy but also earnest a seductive pop-art concoction that bleeds supposedly winning style. Here are some lists of films I've seen and at least rated (movie details in a. The awesomely sappy Cantopop soundtrack! Its final scene, involving a cleaver and a pregnant woman, is as ridiculously gory as it is surreal. © 2020 Digital Media Rights, all rights reserved. It was dead from the beginning.”. Its tragic sense of fatalism is haunting. He has a fiancée back home and she has her materialistic ambitions to fulfil. Nuanced acting, an obsession with period detail and the rare opportunity to shoot at Beijing’s Forbidden City lends this sequel to The Burning of the Imperial Palace (1983) an authenticity seldom witnessed in Qing dynasty palace films. Dir Jevons Au, Kiwi Chow, Ng Ka-Leung, Wong Fei-Pang, Kwok Zune (Kin-Ping Leung, Neo Yau Hawk-Sau, Liu Kai-chi, Ng Siu Hin, Wan Hongwei). Chinese state broadcaster CCTV announced it would not air the awards and online news sites like Sina and Tencent made no mention of. But, shouldn't Zhou Yi be someone who the audience, at the very end, sympathizes with? If you're into something more relaxing, these live streams and virtual tours ought to do the trick. Hong Kong Confidential (Latvian: Amaya) is a 2010 romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by Latvian director Māris Martinsons. Take it – I won’t wait anymore.”. Man-hating lesbian assassins populate this Wong Jing-scripted and produced erotic thriller, whose absurdly OTT campness renders it a cult fave internationally. Lee’s erotic espionage thriller caused a row when government censors ordered seven minutes of sex scenes to be cut because of explicit naked shots of actors and actresses. The actress embodies Zhou Yi perfectly well, her angelic features making her a picture-perfect object of adoration for the film's many weak-willed men. It’s also surprisingly articulate in spite of the protagonists’ broken English. The year is 1962, and as next-door neighbours living in a crowded apartment complex, Mr Chow (Tony Leung) and Mrs Chan (Maggie Cheung in a cheongsam showcase) gradually discover their spouses are having a clandestine affair. Quentin Tarantino ripped off Ringo Lam’s City on Fire for his debut, 1992’s Reservoir Dogs. “Tsui Hark’s Once Upon a Time in China,” the actor tells Time Out, before repeating it twice. Even though the audience gets a good look inside Zhou Yi's head, she never becomes someone worth the adulation the onscreen males throw at her. Your favorites, all in one place. What’s interesting in The Departed is the fact that everyone is a motherf**ker. Made for chump change and shot on leftover film stock, Chan’s mischievously morbid effort tells the sad story of a triad member (Lee) who’s dropped out from school and abandoned by his family; even his friendship with a mentally disabled larkie (Li) and a terminally ill girl (Yim) seems to be cursed by the trio’s possession of a schoolgirl’s suicide notes. For Zhou Yi, being near Ping brings back a wave of memories flashbacks of not only her time with Ping, but with Woody, a triad fling (Jacky Heung) and even the fleeting moment where she may have drawn the attention of nice guy cab driver Sol (Derek Tsang). Kung fu stars of yesteryear carry this spirited homage to an old genre by two up-and-coming directors. His struggle is largely unspoken – and it’s all unspeakably sad. The House of 72 Tenants 七十二家房客 (1973), 71. Genre: Horror Hitchcock would have smiled with envy. There's zero nudity in this very sweet film about being lesbian in contemporary Tokyo. Dir Doe Ching (Mu Hong, Julie Yeh Feng, Jeanette Lin Tsui, Dolly Soo Fung), “I’ll marry whoever comes out on top in the coin flip.”. Yau’s classic one-arm-over-the-breasts posture unleashed a new era of sex icons who, even while topless, don’t reveal their goods. Dir Ching Siu-tung (Leslie Cheung, Joey Wang, Wu Ma), “Sometimes, humans are more frightening than ghosts.”. Patriotic fluff it certainly is, but Yen displays enough deadpan cool and dignified invincibility to shine in the role of his life. Unlike Days of Being Wild – or in fact, 2046, which again charts the crisscrossing relationships among an ensemble cast and neatly rounded up Wong’s unofficial 1960s trilogy – In the Mood for Love is essentially a romantic two-hander which characteristically shuns the overt emotional wrestling of its two bookending films. But I’m still alive!”. Dir Wong Kar-wai (Leslie Cheung, Maggie Cheung, Andy Lau, Carina Lau, Jacky Cheung, Tony Leung Chiu-wai), “I used to think there was a kind of bird that, once born, would keep flying until death. Centring around a loony ex-inspector (Lau) who can see the ‘inner demons’ of others, this weirdly fascinating detective mystery merges Wai’s supernatural drift and fatalistic worldview with To’s film noir sensibilities and clinical shifts to ultra-violence. 92 The Legendary la Rose Noire 黑玫瑰對黑玫瑰 (1992), 58. I won’t let your kind go easily satisfied!”. Yiu-Kwok is a high school teacher, having a perfect family. I was wrong.”, “He remembers those vanished years. The Earth is too dangerous.”. The underdog hero of Hong Kong cinema went mega-budget for this CGI extravaganza, a martial arts comedy so outrageously cartoonish it put its writer-director-producer-star temporarily on the world map. Marriage seems to be on everyone’s mind in this Cathay Studios rom-com, which casts an affecting gaze on sisterhood – here charmingly embodied by four great beauties of Mandarin cinema. Dir Ricky Lau (Lam Ching-ying, Ricky Hui, Chin Siu-ho), “A corpse becomes a jiang shi because its last breath fails to leave the body.”. From Chow’s gun-fu-fighting supercop to Woo’s cameo as a contemplative jazz bar owner, and from its birdcage-kicking teahouse shootout at the start to its hospital-exploding, baby-saving climax, Hard Boiled remains any action fanboy’s wettest dream. The only film written, produced, and directed by Bruce Lee was to have been the first of a series in which he cast himself as Tan Lung, out-of-town strong-arm, here hired by the Chinese owner of a restaurant in Rome to sort out their problems with the local syndicate. The director herself has always denied, up to this day, the symbolic values of her work, and, watching it now in the cold light of day, it’s indeed not too farfetched for one to believe her film was simply a based-on-real-event drama intending to reveal the plight of the Vietnamese refugees, who were causing quite a stir in Hong Kong. Law’s meditative tale of migration and urban ennui is engaging despite its meandering proceedings. Make no mistake, we will be watching. The high-grossing action comedy that inspired countless sequels, prequels, spin-offs and rip-offs, Wong’s definitive gambling movie is anchored by a sparkling Chow Yun-fat – all slicked-back hair, tuxedo and cocky smirks. A marvellous pre-cursor to the explosive crime thrillers of John Woo and Ringo Lam, Johnny Mak’s directorial debut follows several Red Guards-turned-armed robbers through the sharp end of these Mainlanders’ dreams of making a fortune in the more ‘modernised’ Hong Kong. Definitely a love story and certainly one of our cinema’s very best, Chan’s nine-times Hong Kong Film Awards winner charts the decade-spanning near-romance with acute cultural awareness and a sublime touch of emotional delicacy. Dir Yim Ho (Josephine Koo, Siqin Gaowa, Xie Weixiong), “I never thought people our age would just die.”. The controversy deepened when, was nominated for (and subsequently won) Best Film at the Hong Kong Film Awards. A meta-fictional exercise that sheds light on stardom from every angle possible, the film also helped Cheung to a Berlin Silver Bear award for best actress. He gets your sympathy.”, Dir Wong Kar-wai (Takeshi Kaneshiro, Brigitte Lin, Faye Wong, Tony Leung Chiu-wai), “At the closest point of our intimacy, we were just 0.001 cm from each other.”. With Gillian Chung, William Wai-Ting Chan, Michelle Wai, Derek Tsang. Led by a highly sought-after criminal intending to pull off a heist at a Tsim Sha Tsui jewellery store, the infamously violent Big Circle gang – while finding their loyalty increasingly split by the allures of the city – soon become the hottest target of the police force after being tricked by a small-time triad boss and sometime informant into murdering a corrupt cop. An unforgettable 90-minute waltz into hopelessness. Yuen plays the role of her life in this superb remake of Doe Ching’s Shaw Brothers tearjerker Love Without End (1961). Part pseudo-ghost story, part Hitchcockian mystery thriller, Hui’s debut feature wraps a brutal double murder at its core with disorienting editing, fragmented chronology and some utterly haunting sequences. Destiny is calling Lai’s new immigrant from northern China, who forms a ‘friendship’ – with benefits – with Cheung’s Guangzhou comrade out of loneliness and a shared passion for the Mandarin pop legend Teresa Teng. A beloved schoolteacher contracts tuberculosis, sees his five children begging on the street for his wife’s medical fees, and borrows from a loanshark before finding his infant daughter dead due to delayed medical attention in this classic melodrama – arguably the ultimate weepie for parents. Table for two? The problem is that the film frames her in such a way that we should see beyond that definition - to find her a worthy person underneath the immaturity and self-involvement, and Chung doesn't have the depth to pull that off.