Jackie Chan Project A 2 (Jackie Chan, 1987) The sequel is even more Chan-focused than the first Project A was, as the other Little Fortunes are absent (they were off in the jungle making Eastern Condors) and Jackie is joined by a trio of women played by Maggie Cheung, Carina Lau, and Rosamund Kwan, in an apparent nod
Jackie Chan Project A (Jackie Chan, 1983) Comparing Project A to Sammo Hung’s Wheels on Meals, released the next year in 1984, shows some stark differences between Sammo and Jackie Chan as directors. Both films are swashbuckling adventures with ridiculously athletic fights and stunts, slapstick comedy, and a real obsession with beating the hell out of
Johnnie To The Heroic Trio (Johnnie To, 1993) Before becoming a renowned auteur, a favorite of critics and film festivals the world over, Johnnie To was known primarily in the West for the two films he made in 1993 in collaboration with director and action choreographer Ching Siu-tung. The Heroic Trio and Executioners star Michelle Yeoh, Maggie Cheung,
Ringo Lam Wild City (Ringo Lam, 2015) After more than a decade of semi-retirement, legendary director Ringo Lam returns to the big screen with a thriller that hearkens back to the golden age of the Hong Kong crime film. Lam made his mark in the late 80s and early 90s with a series of action films–gritty,
Corey Yuen Yes, Madam! (Corey Yuen, 1985) Of the members of the Seven Little Fortunes Peking Opera troupe to become major figures in the Hong Kong film industry in the last 20 years before the colony’s handover to China, Corey Yuen is the least well known. Unlike Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and Yuen Biao, he stayed
John Woo A Better Tomorrow (John Woo, 1986) After an up and down decade as a director for hire, working alternately in the wuxia and wacky comedy genres, John Woo finally hit it big in 1986 when he teamed up with Tsui Hark and the Cinema City studio to remake Patrick Lung Kong’s 1967 drama The Story
Jiang Wen Gone with the Bullets (Jiang Wen, 2014) So Jiang Wen made a Wong Jing movie. . . I watched the Thai DVD, which is the first version I’ve seen that has English subtitles. The running time is 119 minutes. Wikipedia and the IMDb give it a running time of 140 minutes, with a 120 minute international cut, while
Cheuk Wan-chi Temporary Family (Cheuk Wan-chi, 2014) Reading the description for this comedy about people in the Hong Kong forced to share a luxury flat while they try to flip it in an over-competitive bubble market, I was hoping for a Hong Kong version of The More the Merrier, the 1943 George Stevens movie in which Jean
Teddy Chan Kung Fu Jungle (Teddy Chan, 2014) The latest acclaimed Hong Kong film to sneak onto Seattle Screens at the AMC Pacific Place (following Johnnie To’s Don’t Go Breaking My Heart 2 and Tsui Hark’s The Taking of Tiger Mountain, among other recent hits) is a new collaboration between director Teddy Chan and star/
Chang Cheh Masked Avengers (Chang Cheh, 1981) Masked Avengers was released in 1981, one of the latest in a series of films directed by Chang Cheh and starring a group of actors and stunt performers generally known as the Venom Mob, after the 1978 film in which they were first gathered, The Five Deadly Venoms. The plot
Hou Hsiao-hsien Café Lumière (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2003) Café Lumière was supposed to be one part of an anthology made to honor the 100th anniversary of Yasujiro Ozu’s birth, but the other directors involved dropped out and so Hou Hsiao-hsien expanded his section into a feature. It’s set in Tokyo and tells the story of a
Hou Hsiao-hsien Millennium Mambo (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2001) Millennium Mambo, released in 2001 and Hou Hsiao-hsien’s first to be theatrically distributed in the US, is his first one set entirely (well, almost) in the contemporary world since Daughter of the Nile, and like that film it tends to be passed over in favor of more ostensibly serious
Hou Hsiao-hsien Flowers of Shanghai (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1998) Flowers of Shanghai is based on an 1892 novel by Han Bangqing, considered a masterpiece but composed largely in the Wu dialect of Chinese, which is unintelligible to Mandarin speakers. The script (by Chu T’ien-wen, of course) is based on a translation by novelist Eileen Chang who wrote the
Hou Hsiao-hsien Dust in the Wind (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1986) The fourth in the series of coming-of-age films that marked Hou Hsiao-hsien’s transition from competent movie-maker to celebrated auteur, Dust in the Wind is based on the experiences of New Cinema multi-hyphenate Wu Nien-jen, most famous in the US for his starring role in Edward Yang’s Yi yi.
Hou Hsiao-hsien The Time to Live, The Time to Die (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1985) After his turn toward more personal filmmaking with 1983’s The Boys from Fengkuei, which was based on incidents from his own life transplanted onto a story of contemporary youth, and the following year’s A Summer at Grandpa’s, based on the recollections of Chu T’ien-wen, an author
Hou Hsiao-hsien The Boys from Fengkuei (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1983) Hou Hsiao-hsien’s fourth feature and self-proclaimed “first real film”. It followed a trio of totally pleasant romantic comedies starring Hong Kong pop star Kenny Bee, who was then trying to make it as an actor in Taiwan. Already in those films Hou was demonstrating some of the tropes that
Hou Hsiao-hsien Hou Hsiao-hsien in Seattle In the spring of 2015, the complete retrospective on Hou Hsiao-hsien that had been travelling the world for several months made its way to Seattle in truncated form. Ten of his films, five on 35mm film and five on video, played at three theatres across town over ten days, and
Tsui Hark The Taking of Tiger Mountain (Tsui Hark, 2014) Tsui Hark’s latest film, The Taking of Tiger Mountain, like his previous two films shot in 3D, is the latest in a string of works linking traditional genres to contemporary digital technology, recasting gong’an crime fiction and King Hu-era wuxia in the language of modern CGI-spectacle with his
Johnnie To The Big Heat (Johnnie To, 1988) So here we come to the first film in the genre that Johnnie To would become best known for: the urban crime thriller. Released a mere seven months after his first big hit, The Eighth Happiness, The Big Heat finds To working with Tsui Hark for the first and only
Kwan Tak-hing The True Story of Wong Fei-hung: Whiplash Snuffs the Candle Flame (Wu Peng, 1949) This film, released in 1949, was the first of 77 times Kwan Tak-hing played the kung fu folk hero Wong Fei-hung, kicking off a wildly successful series of serials that ran steadily for the next 15 years or so (including 25 films alone in 1956). I’ve only been able
Pang Ho-cheung Aberdeen (Pang Ho-cheung, 2014) Pang Ho-cheung’s ambitious family melodrama chronicles the intersecting lives of an all-star cast, at times grasping towards Magnolia and Yi yi but ultimately settling at an ending so unsatisfying one hopes it’s meant satirically. Which, knowing Pang, it very well might be. It’s an inverted cousin to
Johnnie To The Eighth Happiness (Johnnie To, 1988) Following up on the Cinema City romantic comedy Seven Years Itch, To re-teamed with producer-writer-star (not necessarily in that order) Raymond Wong Bak-Ming for an ensemble film designed for release during the Lunar New Year holiday, a week-long (more or less) celebration that is the highlight of the Hong Kong
Johnnie To Don’t Go Breaking My Heart 2 (Johnnie To, 2014) Beginning one year after the first film ends, financial analyst Cheng Zixin (Gao Yuanyuan) is still engaged to the winner of that film’s love triangle, reformed alcoholic Qihong (Daniel Wu) (recall that for her he quit drinking and built a skyscraper in the shape of her silhouette). They communicate
Zhang Ziyi My Lucky Star (Dennie Gordon, 2013) In 2009, Zhang Ziyi starred and produced the ultra-manic-pixie Sophie’s Revenge, a romcom in which she plays a cartoonist that nonetheless lacks a tenth of the nuance or emotional maturity of Caroline in the City. It was a big hit. In 2013, she made a prequel, sort of, in
Tsui Hark Flying Swords of Dragon Gate (Tsui Hark, 2011) Tsui Hark’s second variation on Kung Hu’s masterpiece, after 1992’s New Dragon Gate Inn (nominally directed by Raymond Lee). While that version added Tsui’s Blues–movie style sexual complications and gender-ambiguity along with a healthy dose of cannibalism while minimizing the fighting, this one ramps up
