Winners & Sinners Karl Maka Reviews [https://www.thechinesecinema.com/tag/karl-maka/]: The Aces Go Places Series [https://www.thechinesecinema.com/the-aces-go-places-series/] (Various, 1982-1989) - December 19, 2013 Capsule Reviews [https://www.thechinesecinema.com/karl-maka-capsule-reviews/]: Dirty Tiger, Crazy Frog (Karl Maka, 1978) — July 21, 2017 Odd Couple (Lau Kar-wing, 1979) — July 20, 2017 Laughing Times
Crippled Avengers Crippled Avengers Capsule Reviews Jason Kwan: Chasing the Dragon (2017) — April 15, 2018 Lotta wig acting going on here. I guess Wong Jing must have seen American Hustle. The Crippled Ho/Lee Rock hagiography no one asked for. I haven’t seen the Andy Lau Lee Rock movies from the early 90s (you know,
Good Men, Good Women Cathy Yan Capsule Reviews Dead Pigs (2018) – June 19, 2018 Cathy Yan’s Dead Pigs manages to be even more colorful than the highly-acclaimed Taiwanese film The Bold, the Corrupt, and the Beautiful, while also being a great deal of fun and a compelling portrait of what gets left behind when a community washes
Lu Yang A Writer’s Odyssey (Lu Yang, 2021) Given the number of effects-driven fantasy wuxia films that have come out in China in recent years, and the general mediocrity of the ones I’ve seen, I was a little wary of diving into the latest film from Brotherhood of Blades director Lu Yang. But A Writer’s Odyssey
Shimomura Yûji Crazy Samurai Musashi (Shimomura Yûji, 2020) Legendary samurai Miyamoto Musashi has defeated the champion of the Yoshioka clan in a duel. In retaliation, the clan gathers 100 samurai and 300 mercenaries to ambush him and exact their revenge. But then things go terribly, terribly wrong as that crazy samurai kills them all, one after another in
Herman Yau Shock Wave 2 (Herman Yau, 2020) A follow-up to the hit film Shock Wave has been in the works pretty much since it premiered in the spring of 2017. Warmly received as a throw back to classic Hong Kong cop movies, that film starred Andy Lau as a bomb disposal expert who thwarts a terrorist scheme
Yang Lina Spring Tide (Yang Lina, 2019) Out today from indie distributor China Lion Films, streaming through iTunes and Fandango, is one of the better Chinese films to see an American release in this plagued year 2020. Spring Tide is the long-awaited second feature film from director Yang Lina. I caught her first fiction film, the moody
Introduction Why “The Chinese Cinema”? The question of why I named this project “The Chinese Cinema” and not something else has come up more than once since I adopted the name in 2017. The objection is that it flattens out the very real cultural, cinematic and political distinctions between the People’s Republic of China,
Bruce Lee Game of Death (Robert Clouse, 1978) Just the most remarkable collection of 1970s bodies on display: not just Bruce Lee, but Sammo Hung, Colleen Camp, and of course Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (whose body was, like Lee’s, also replaced by a double for a couple of early scenes). Each one iconic in their own way. An accidental
The Other Tony Leung Midnight Diner (Tony Leung Ka-fai, 2019) I am, as I suspect many people are, afflicted with an unquenchable fondness for movies about food. Close-ups of meat sizzling, the sound of tea being poured into a china cup, the crispy crunch of vegetables being chopped, it all triggers some kind of ASMR-like pleasure center deep in the
Tricky Brains Diao Yinan Review: The Wild Goose Lake [https://www.thechinesecinema.com/the-wild-goose-lake-diao-yinan-2019/] (2019) — September 23, 2019 Capsule Review: Black Coal, Thin Ice [https://www.thechinesecinema.com/tricky-brains-capsule-reviews/] (2014) — June 7, 2014
Andrew Lau The Captain (Andrew Lau, 2019) Andrew Lau Wai-keung is perhaps the most representative Hong Kong director in the post-Handover era. An accomplished cinematographer dating back to the late 80s (most famously he shot Wong Kar-wai’s debut As Tears Go By and half of Chungking Express, and his first ever DP credit was for Ringo
Good Men, Good Women Johnny Ma Reviews: Old Stone [https://www.thechinesecinema.com/old-stone-johnny-ma-2016/] (2016) — December 3, 2016 Capsule Reviews [https://www.thechinesecinema.com/good-men-good-women-capsule-reviews/]: To Live To Sing (2019)— October 4, 2019
Fallen Angels Ang Lee Reviews [https://www.thechinesecinema.com/tag/ang-lee/]: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon [https://www.thechinesecinema.com/crouching-tiger-hidden-dragon-ang-lee-2000/] (2000) — August 28, 2013 Capsule Reviews [https://www.thechinesecinema.com/ang-lee-capsule-reviews/]: Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) – May 5, 2018 Sense and Sensibility (1995) – August 13, 2015 Lust, Caution (2007) — November 5, 2019 List: Ang
Tricky Brains Derek Tsang Reviews: Soulmate [https://www.thechinesecinema.com/soulmate-derek-tsang-2016/] (2061) — June 4, 2013 Better Days [https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/contemporary-chinese-cinema-derek-tsang-s-better-days-has-finally-been-released-but-at-what-cost] (2019) — August 2, 2015
Wong Jing Enter the Fat Dragon (Wong Jing & Tanigaki Kenji, 2020) Things have been tough in Hong Kong lately. Months of protests over the lack of democracy and transparency in the Special Administrative Region sparked violent reprisals by police, with fears of the coronavirus outbreak on the Mainland only making things worse. The protests have split the entertainment community, with many
Ang Lee Ang Lee Capsule Reviews Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) – May 5, 2018 A nice movie. Basically a straight version of a family Lunar New Year comedy. All's Well Ends Well or Boys Are Easy for the international art house circuit. But with oh so much food. Added April 25, 2023: À la
Strange Tales Both Sides Now: Women in Chinese Film at the DC Chinese Film Festival This weekend, the (Washington) DC Chinese Film Festival [http://www.dccff.org/schedule.html], in partnership with The One International Women's Film Festival, presents a mini-festival focused on women in Chinese Cinema called “On Both Sides of the Camera” focusing on Chinese films by and/or about women.
Strange Tales Notes on Filmspotting’s Contemporary Chinese Cinema Marathon A few weeks ago, Adam and Josh at the Filmspotting [https://www.filmspotting.net/] podcast invited me to help curate a selection of 2010s Chinese-language movies for them to talk about on their show. I was more than happy to help, as I’ve been a fan of the show
Lou Ye The Shadow Play (Lou Ye, 2018) At this point the best advice I can give you, the prospective viewer of a Lou Ye movie, is this: don’t see it in a theatre, and if you must, sit as far away from the screen as possible. Possibly contemporary cinema’s most extreme abuser of the close-up,
Miike Takashi First Love (Miike Takashi, 2019) Every time I watch a Miike Takashi movie, I end up asking myself why I ever watch movies that aren’t Miike Takashi movies. That’s certainly the case with First Love, his latest, which premiered at Cannes earlier this year and opens next week at the Uptown. It’s
Diao Yinan The Wild Goose Lake (Diao Yinan, 2019) One of the most anticipated Chinese titles of this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival is Diao Yinan’s follow-up to his Berlin winning 2014 film Black Coal, Thin Ice. Like that film, The Wild Goose Lake is a moody Chinese noir, full of morose characters trapped in a world
Iwai Shunji The Case of Hana and Alice (Iwai Shunji, 2015) What do you do if you want to make a prequel to one of your best movies, one built as much around the performances of two terrific young actresses more than anything else, but a decade has passed and the actresses are now much too old to be playing the
Michelle Yeoh Michelle Yeoh Capsule Reviews Magnificent Warriors (David Chung, 1987) — December 20, 2013 A self-consciously Hollywood-esque period adventure with Michelle Yeoh as an Indiana Jones-inspired hero who helps a small town (set ostensibly somewhere like Bhutan) resist the Japanese with the help of Richard Ng and Derek Yee. Relentlessly-paced, with a series of show-stopping action
Kam Ka-wai Big Brother (Kam Ka-wai, 2018) Into the hallowed tradition of high school movies wherein juvenile delinquents are straightened out by an unconventional teacher steps none other than Donnie Yen, his furious fists solemnly taking up the mantle of Blackboard Jungle, Stand and Deliver, and Dangerous Minds. It’s clearly a project that means something to
