Michael Hui The Contract (Michael Hui, 1978) I guess the BBC asked a bunch of people for their top ten comedy lists. They didn’t ask me, but as I’m completely incapable of resisting the siren call of list-making, I made one anyway and put this film in at the bottom, ahead of favorites like Trouble
Raymond Yip Cook Up a Storm (Raymond Yip, 2017) One of only two Hong Kong films to be playing at SIFF this year is this cooking movie from star Nicholas Tse and director Raymond Yip. It’s a Lunar New Year film, opening a week after the holiday both at home and abroad, to avoid box office competition from
Pang Ho-cheung Love Off the Cuff (Pang Ho-cheung, 2017) Love Off the Cuff starts with a horror movie, a tale set in the recent past about a village terrorized by a monster that eats children. As creepy as it is ridiculous, it functions as a none-too-subtle allegory for the crisis at the heart of the relationship between Cherie (Miriam
Derek Hui This Is Not What I Expected (Derek Hui, 2017) One of two romantic comedies that tried and failed to unseat the powerhouse Fast & the Furious 8 at the Chinese box office this past May Day weekend, This Is Not What I Expected opens here on Friday, a week after its counterpart Love Off the Cuff. It’s a
Zhang Yimou Hero (Zhang Yimou, 2002) There’s a little making-of featurette on the Miramax DVD of Hero[1] that has some decent interviews with the cast and crew along with some breathless Hollywood narration. Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung, and Donnie Yen speak impeccable English, which makes one wonder what might have been if Hollywood wasn’
Hong Sangsoo Yourself and Yours (Hong Sangsoo, 2016) Yourself and Yours isn’t the latest film from South Korean director Hong Sangsoo, that would be On the Beach at Night Alone, which premiered a few weeks ago at the Berlin Film Festival (where it picked up a Best Actress award). But, Yourself and Yours may still get a
Introduction The Chinese Cinema Four years ago, in the spring of 2013, I caught a particularly vicious strain of cinephilia. I’d been a guest on the They Shot Pictures podcast a couple of times, talking about Josef von Sternberg, Yasujiro Ozu and Mikio Naruse, and we decided to sneak in an episode on
Strange Tales 150 of the Best Chinese-Language Films of All-Time I’ve been doing some cataloguing lately, trying to organize my books and movies and make some kind of plan for how I’m going to attack the Chinese Cinema over the next year or so. Three and a half years ago, I started a chronological Johnnie To project [https:
Ding Sheng Railroad Tigers (Ding Sheng, 2016) January is the greatest movie month there is. Not only are we in the lesser metropolises of America finally granted access to tardiest of the previous year’s award hopefuls (see this week’s Silence), but via studio counter-programming logic, we also get Hollywood’s most interesting action films. The
Cheng Er The Wasted Times (Cheng Er, 2016) The Wasted Times was originally slated to be released in October of 2015. The film’s trailer [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qH1HTm51lts] has been playing before presentations of Chinese-language films here in North America for at least that long, but the film kept getting pushed back. There was
Derek Yee Sword Master (Derek Yee, 2016) In 1977, at the age of twenty and appearing in only his third film, Derek Yee got the starring role in Death Duel, a film by prolific Shaw Brothers director Chor Yuen. After helping spark a revitalization of Cantonese language cinema with his hit ensemble comedy The House of 72
Johnny Ma Old Stone (Johnny Ma, 2016) A year or two ago, reports began circulating that chronicled a disturbing phenomenon in contemporary China. The nature of the insurance industry there was mangled such that people involved in car accidents where another person was injured had been incentivized to kill the accident victim, because if they lived the
Feng Xiaogang I Am Not Madame Bovary (Feng Xiaogang, 2016) A comedy of bureaucracy like many a film of the Romanian New Wave, but rather than the drab and bleak institutional ironies of the Eastern Bloc, Feng Xiaogang’s satire is bright and sprightly, bouncing along its tunnel visions for two and a half hours of contradiction made irresolvable by
Chan Tze-woon Yellowing (Chan Tze-woon, 2016) As a documentary about the 2014 Umbrella Movement, in which thousands of young Hong Kongers gathered to Occupy districts throughout the city in protest of the PRC’s decision to not allow the former colony to directly choose its candidates for high office, Yellowing is something remarkable in our time:
Yang Chao Crosscurrent (Yang Chao, 2016) Poetry is the subject of the moment for 2016. Like Volcanos and Asteroids and Mars before it, we’ve been blessed this year with a plethora of films about writers of verse. Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson, Terence Davies’s A Quiet Passion, and Pablo Larraín’s Neruda have all the
Dante Lam Operation Mekong (Dante Lam, 2016) Opening this week is the latest action film from director Dante Lam, whose Beast Cops and Jianghu: The Triad Zone were two of the better Hong Kong films to come out during the industry trough that followed the colony’s handover to China in the late 1990s. More recently, his
Kim Jeewoon The Age of Shadows (Kim Jeewoon, 2016) Hot off its premiere at the Venice Film Festival and the announcement of its being chosen as South Korea’s submission for the Foreign Language Academy Award, the latest film from director Kim Jeewoon opened this past Friday. But not in Seattle: it’s only playing at the Alderwood Mall
Derek Tsang Soulmate (Derek Tsang, 2016) A young woman, Ansheng, is tasked by her boss with tracking down the author of an in-progress serialized web novel, as their company would like to option it for a movie adaptation. (This is a thing that happens: the best film of 2014, Fruit Chan’s The Midnight After (now
Sono Sion Love Exposure (Sono Sion, 2008) ‘Over the Mountains Of the Moon, Down the Valley of the Shadow, Ride, boldly ride,’ The shade replied, — ‘If you seek for Eldorado!’ Love Exposure is an epic four-hour romantic comedy about terrible fathers, upskirt photography, Catholicism, and the meaning of love. Where Bicycle Sighs was a fairly typical minimalist
Sono Sion Suicide Club (Sono Sion, 2001) Don’t try suicide Nobody’s worth it Don’t try suicide Nobody cares Don’t try suicide You’re just gonna hate it Don’t try suicide Nobody gives a damn Suicide Club opens with a montage of the city at night, documentary realist footage of pedestrians moving through
Sono Sion Bicycle Sighs (Sono Sion, 1990) Sono Sion’s 1990 debut feature is a coming-of-age story heavily influenced by the then newly fashionable minimalist style, but with a few distinctive quirks. Sono himself plays Shiro, one of three friends hanging around delivering newspapers while they study for their college entrance exams. Shiro’s best friend, Keita
Edward Yang A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang, 1991) Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day was released earlier this year by the Criterion Collection. A home video event years in the making, rumors of its impending inclusion in the canonical collection (as part of Criterion’s partnership with the World Cinema Foundation) have been swirling since as far
Matt Wu One Night Only (Matt Wu, 2016) An Aaron Kwok movie is opening on Seattle Screens for the second time in three weeks, as the now venerable pop star/actor follows up his taciturn performance as the cooly rational police bureaucrat in Cold War 2 with a turn as a compulsive gambler with unresolved family issues in
Longman Leung and Sunny Luk Cold War 2 (Longman Leung & Sunny Luk, 2016) Picking up right where their 2012 hit film, which featured an all-star cast and swept the Hong Kong Film Awards, left off, Longman Leung and Sunny Luk present another suspenseful tale of corruption and double-dealing in the highest echelons of the Hong Kong police department, its two institutional halves at
Longman Leung and Sunny Luk Cold War (Longman Leung & Sunny Luk, 2012) In a slick chrome and black Hong Kong, two halves of the police force war with each other over methods and tactics. One one side: the operations department – active, aggressive, channeling the “we break the law to enforce the law” ethos celebrated in HK films since at least the mid
