The Chinese Cinema

Ann Hui

Ann Hui Capsule Reviews

The Secret (1979) — July 29, 2019 In America this would have been followed by at least two more imitation movies where Sylvia Chang solves spooky murders, of declining quality and increasing morbidity, directed by men of course and not Ann Hui, whose debut this was. But they weren’t in

The 36th Chamber

Tsai Ming-liang

Reviews: Stray Dogs (2013) — October 4, 2013 Journey to the West (2014) — September 24, 2014 Journey to the West (2014) — May 26, 2020 The Night (2021) – September 22, 2022 Where (2022) – May 5, 2023 Capsule Reviews: Walker (2012) — October 4, 2012 Journey to the West (2014) — May 26, 2020 No

The 36th Chamber

Ann Hui

Reviews: Boat People (1982) — September 3, 2013 Love in a Fallen City (1984) — August 23, 2019 Starry is the Night (1988) —August 23, 2019 Zodiac Killers (1991) — April 9, 2014 Visible Secret (2001) – April 12, 2024 July Rhapsody (2002) – May 16, 2024 Our Time Will Come (2017) — July 6, 2017

Hong Sangsoo

The Day After (Hong Sangsoo, 2017)

“I think that I have no control over my destiny and that I don’t play the leading role in it. I think that I can die at any time, I am ready to accept it. I think everything is less serious than it seems. In fact, I think that

Hong Sangsoo

Hahaha (Hong Sangsoo, 2010)

Among the slightest of Hong Sangsoo’s films is this story about two men recalling their recent trips to a small town. The movie is narrated by each in turn, we see them in black and white still photos as they drink toasts between anecdotes. The twist is that they

Hong Sangsoo

Our Sunhi (Hong Sangsoo, 2013)

The culmination of the Jung Yumi films, in which a young film student unsuccessfully navigates the attentions of several competing men, none of whom see her for who she actually is, blinded by their perceptions of her prettiness, her innocence, her artistic sense, and so on. This cycle began with

Hong Sangsoo

Like You Know It All (Hong Sangsoo, 2009)

“Why don’t you admit you don’t know it all? It’s hard to get someone’s heart, right?” This was the first Hong Sangsoo movie I ever saw, at the Vancouver Film Festival in 2009, which is pretty much the ideal setting for a Hong movie about life

Hong Sangsoo

The Day He Arrives (Hong Sangsoo, 2011)

“Oh, Jeanne, to reach you at last, what a strange path I had to take.” For some reason, this final line from Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket was stuck in my head while rewatching The Day He Arrives. There’s no apparent relation between the two, though I have been thinking

Hong Sangsoo

Night and Day (Hong Sangsoo, 2008)

The Hongian hero, not so young anymore, finds himself alone in Paris. A quick intertitle informs us that this man, Seongnam (played by Kim Youngho), was at a party with some exchange students where marijuana was being consumed. Someone ratted him out to the police (pot smoking being apparently a

Hong Sangsoo

Woman on the Beach (Hong Sangsoo, 2006)

Coming off of one of his more audacious experiments in repetition, Tale of Cinema, in which the first half of the movie turns out to be a movie the main characters of the second half are watching, Woman on the Beach feels like a step toward conventionality. The two-part form

King Hu

King Hu Capsule Reviews

The Story of Sue San (1964) — August 4, 2014 King Hu’s directorial debut. He’d been acting and working a variety of other movie jobs (props, writing, etc) since the mid-1950s, and this is for the most part in the vein of his two films as assistant director under

Hong Sangsoo

On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate (Hong Sangsoo, 2002)

The best of Hong Sangsoo’s early films is this, his fourth feature. Following upon the great leap forward in narrative experimentation that was Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, with its bifurcated narrative of literal repetition and variation, Turning Gate takes a step toward the abstract. Again the narrative

Hong Sangsoo

Woman is the Future of Man (Hong Sangsoo, 2004)

After finding increasing warmth amidst narrative experimentation and a shearing away of formal adornment, with his fifth film Hong Sangsoo returns to the cruel satire of his debut. A bitter and cruel skewering of the pretensions, hypocrisies and stupid lusts of the modern man, the film is relentlessly bleak, offering

Hong Sangsoo

Tale of Cinema (Hong Sangsoo, 2005)

A depressed young man talks to himself, narrating his life as he meets up with his brother and then runs into an old classmate on the street. He meets her after she gets off work for dinner, which naturally enough becomes drinks instead. The two resolve to kill themselves, together,

Hong Sangsoo

Hong Sangsoo Capsule Reviews

On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate (2002) — May 9, 2013 Is it the remembering of the story of the Turning Gate that leads to re-enacting it, and if so, is it remembering the whole first half of the film that leads to inverting it? What’s the relation

The 36th Chamber

King Hu

Reviews: Come Drink with Me (1966) — July 10, 2013 Dragon Gate Inn (1967) — July 17, 2013 A Touch of Zen (1971) – March 28, 2021 The Fate of Lee Khan (1973) — April 5, 2019 The Valiant Ones (1975) – May 30, 2024 Legend of the Mountain (1979) — August 7, 2014 Legend of

Hong Sangsoo

Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (Hong Sangsoo, 2000)

Hong Sangsoo’s third feature and his first truly daring experiment in narrative shuffling. While each of the first two films were unconventional, splitting their stories in four and two halves, respectively, they still hewed to most of the basic rules of screenwriting coherence and causality: The Day a Pig

Hong Sangsoo

The Power of Kangwon Province (Hong Sangsoo, 1998)

Hong Sangsoo’s second feature is much more recognizably his work than his debut. He wrote the screenplay, as he will with all his subsequent films, but did not for The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well. Scenes are for the most part now filmed in static single takes

Hong Sangsoo

The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well (Hong Sangsoo, 1996)

Hong Sangsoo’s debut is most strikingly different from his later work in its bleakness and formal conventionality[1]. He hasn’t adopted the zoom yet, nor is he rigidly adhering to the master shot aesthetic either: there are insert shots, over the shoulder perspectives, single dinner scenes cut into

Sandra Ng

Goldbuster (Sandra Ng, 2017)

In her directorial debut, veteran comic actress Sandra Ng gives us a goofy farce, a compendium of horror movie tropes and references, and a sappy tribute to the underdog spirit of Hong Kong’s working class in the days of hyper-capitalism and real estate speculation. She plays a ghostbuster hired

Johnnie To

Running on Karma (Johnnie To & Wai Ka-fai, 2003)

The first two-thirds play as a fairly typical Johnnie To/Wai Ka-fai cop movie. There are some supernatural elements of course, but it’s very much of a piece with the later Mad Detective and Blind Detective, in which superhuman perception is used to solve crimes long-hidden from the understanding

Evan Yang

Sun, Moon, and Star (Evan Yang, 1961)

A two-part anti-romantic epic showcasing all the brightest stars of the MP&GI studio. A man, Xu Jianbai (Zhang Yang), looking back on his life, recalls the three women who dominated it, each identified with a celestial object. The first half recounts his years before the war, as he

The 36th Chamber

Johnnie To

Reviews: The Enigmatic Case (1980) — November 14, 2013 Happy Ghost III (1986) — November 26, 2013 Seven Years Itch (1987) — December 2, 2013 The Eighth Happiness (1988) — November 21, 2014 The Big Heat (1988) — January 9, 2015 All About Ah-long (1989) — February 1, 2016 The Fun, the Luck, and the Tycoon

Jia Zhangke

Jia Zhangke Capsule Reviews

Xiao Shan Going Home (1995) — January 22, 2019 Soul Asylum! Crash Test Dummies! Man, 1995 was everywhere in 1995. Xiao Wu (1997) — April 1, 2014 Jia Zhangke’s first full-length film is one of his more conventional, but like last year’s A Touch of Sin, Jia in genre mode

Zhang Yimou

Zhang Yimou Capsule Reviews

Red Sorghum (1988) — January 14, 2019 “You have red on you.” Ju Dou (1990) — April 24, 2019 Basically a noir in which two young lovers conspire against the woman’s husband. Except they don’t kill him (though they certainly think about it a few times) they just have sex