Herman Yau The Legend is Born: Ip Man (Herman Yau, 2010) Oh yeah, another movie about Ip Man. This one covers his early years, growing up in a kung fu school, his first romance, years in college, and such. The emphasis, more than in any of the others, is on the specifics of the Wing Chun technique itself, with a whole
Peter Chan Wuxia (Peter Chan, 2011) Known in the US as Dragon, the actual title of Peter Chan’s 2011 film is Wuxia, the name of a genre of both film and literature, a word that is a compound of “wu” (military) and “xia” (chivalry, more or less). Wuxia stories are stories of warrior heroes, knights-errant,
Tsui Hark New Dragon Gate Inn (Raymond Lee, 1992) This was nominally directed by Raymond Lee, a cog in the Film Workshop machine, working as a planner or nominal director for several Tsui Hark and/or Ching Siu-tung projects. Tsui was pumping out movies like a madman in the early 90s, with 18 producer credits between 1990’s Swordsman
Wilson Yip SPL: Sha Po Lang (Wilson Yip, 2005) A rote cop/Triad story somewhat elevated by a serious commitment to operatic melodrama on the part of director Wilson Yip and composer Chan Kwong-wing. Sammo Hung is the gangster, Simon Yam the veteran cop willing to break all the rules to capture him. Donnie Yen is the new guy
Ann Hui Zodiac Killers (Ann Hui, 1991) A somewhat misleading title, as the movie doesn’t have anything to do with a Zodiac, or really even any Killers. Instead this 1991 film is a portrait of Chinese students in Tokyo leading desperately miserable lives. Directed by the great New Wave filmmaker Ann Hui, it was apparently [http:
Tsui Hark The Lovers and Love in the Time of Twilight (Tsui Hark, 1994 and 1995) The Lovers starts as your typical guy-falls-in-love-with-girl-dressed-as-a-guy rom-com, then turns into hallucinatory elemental melodrama. Starring Nicky Wu and Charlie Yeung, Tsui here presents a fairly faithful version of the oft-told legend of The Butterfly Lovers [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_Lovers], a story somewhat akin to European legends like
John Woo Red Cliff (John Woo, 2009) Five years after his last American film, 2003’s Philip K. Dick adaptation Paycheck, and a long, troubled and expensive shoot plagued by last minute casting changes, John Woo finally released the first half of his epic two-part film Red Cliff. It proved to be a critical and commercial success
Stephen Chow Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons (Stephen Chow & Derek Kwok, 2013) I see a lot of complaints that this, the latest from Stephen Chow, is “no Kung Fu Hustle (or Shaolin Soccer)” which, yeah sure, it’s a different kind of movie than those. Those were the culmination of 15 years of Chow’s comedy style, which burst on the scene
John Woo Heroes Shed No Tears (John Woo, 1986) Sharing a title and nothing else with Chor Yuen’s 1980 wuxia epic, this was John Woo’s project immediately preceding his breakthrough A Better Tomorrow and only released after that film’s success. It’s easy to see why Woo had initially decided to leave this shelved. It’s
John Woo Once a Thief (John Woo, 1991) If Cherie Chung hadn’t retired after making this movie, and maybe had gone on to star in some Wong Kar-wai movies, would she be better known today? She was one of the key Hong Kong actresses of the 1980s, beginning with her debut in Johnnie To’s first film,
Tsui Hark Seven Swords (Tsui Hark, 2005) Tsui Hark’s next major film after a CGI-driven remake of his own Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain in 2001, this is a less effects-driven wuxia epic than a riff on Seven Samurai with a Chang Cheh influence (the Northern Chinese medieval warfare of The Heroic Ones comes to
Tsui Hark Young Detective Dee and the Rise of the Sea Dragon (Tsui Hark, 2013) The anarchist prankster Tsui Hark who burst onto the Hong Kong scene over 30 years ago with Dangerous Encounters—First Kind and We’re Going to Eat You still lurks underneath layers of glossy CGI as the eponymous detective, in order to counteract their poisoned tea, orders all 1,200
Peter Chan Comrades, Almost a Love Story (Peter Chan, 1996) A descendant of Pál Fejős’s 1928 Lonesome, about two people who find love in the urban crowd and then lose it. The crowd here is Hong Kong in 1986 and the people are Maggie Cheung and Leon Lai. Freshly emigrated from Northern China, Lai barely speaks Cantonese or English
Corey Yuen She Shoots Straight (Corey Yuen, 1990) Neither “She Shoots Straight” nor the its alternate title (“Lethal Lady”) capture the film very well. It’s a film about family, specifically the kind of family where everyone is a cop. This family just happens to have a lot of daughters and only one son. Joyce Godenzi stars as
David Chung Royal Warriors (David Chung, 1986) I’m a little unclear on whether or not this 1986 film is In the Line of Duty or In the Line of Duty 2. Wikipedia says it’s the second one, after 1985’s Yes, Madam!. The IMDb says it’s the first one and uses “In the Line
The Odd One Dies The Aces Go Places Series (1982-1989) Aces Go Places (Eric Tsang, 1982) — November 20, 2013 The first of the smash hit action/comedy series that was one of the first big successes of the Cinema City studio that dominated 80s Hong Kong. Pioneering Cantopop star Sam Hui plays a master jewel thief who helps a bumbling
Johnnie To Drug War (Johnnie To, 2012) From the beginning, it explains that this is not your typical heroic bloodshed Triad film, concerned more with codes of honor and brotherhood and the mirroring of good and evil than anything else. No, instead this is going to be a straight police procedural, with no metaphysical mumbo jumbo: “You’
Tsui Hark Working Class (Tsui Hark, 1985) A Cinema City film in all but name, as Tsui Hark directs for his own production company, Film Workshop, this comedy with pop star Sam Hui (of the Hui Brothers and the Aces Go Places series) and rock star Teddy Robin Kwan. Tsui himself rounds out the trio of workers
Johnnie To Seven Years Itch (Johnnie To, 1987) After finding success in his return to filmmaking with 1986’s Happy Ghost III, Johnnie To re-teamed with actor-writer-producer-Cinema City studio head Raymond Wong for a more conventional romantic comedy, loosely inspired by Billy Wilder’s popular 1955 Marilyn Monroe vehicle The Seven-Year Itch. Wilder’s film is an adaptation
Ringo Lam Prison on Fire (Ringo Lam, 1987) A conventional yet effective prison drama from director Ringo Lam, who appears to have cornered the market on “On Fire” movies with this and City on Fire, also from 1987, along with the next year’s School on Fire. All three were made at the Cinema City studio, where Lam
Johnnie To The Happy Ghost Series (Clifton Ko & Johnnie To, 1984-1986) After the failure of his debut film, The Enigmatic Case, Johnnie To went back to television for several years (where he directed, among other things, an acclaimed adaptation of Louis Cha’s Legend of the Condor Heroes), not returning to film until 1986, when Raymond Wong hired him to direct
Tsui Hark Peking Opera Blues (Tsui Hark, 1986) A great movie, perhaps the best melding of director Tsui Hark’s twin impulses toward subversion and entertainment. The setup follows two plotlines that will come together and intertwine with a third, each focused on a female protagonist. Brigitte Lin plays the daughter of a local warlord. She dresses like
John Woo A Better Tomorrow II (John Woo, 1987) After its formation in 1980 by actors Dean Shek, Karl Maka, and Raymond Wong, the first film released by Hong Kong studio Cinema City & Films Co. was 1981’s Laughing Times, a comedy starring Shek as “the Chinese Charlie Chaplin” that is a kind of mashup of The Kid
Johnnie To The Enigmatic Case (Johnnie To, 1980) After getting his start working in television at Hong Kong’s TVB studio in the mid-1970s, Johnnie To made his feature debut in 1980 with a dark, stylish martial arts film made on the cheap for a small, leftist studio. Though quite similar in tone and style to the debut
Tsui Hark Green Snake (Tsui Hark, 1993) Tsui Hark merges the punk outrage of his early films with the lavish, effects-driven wuxia of his later much more financially successful works in this pointed denunciation of the hypocrisies both sexual and racial in China’s religious traditions, the backward superstitional blindness of Taoism and the calcification of Buddhism
