The Chinese Cinema

Ding Sheng

Nothing Can't Be Undone by a Hotpot (Ding Sheng, 2024)

Ding Sheng’s latest film, his first since A Better Tomorrow 2018, his lamentable update of the John Woo classic, is the second Mainland Chinese caper/heist film with the word “hotpot” in the title that was distributed in North America by China Lion Films that I’ve seen. Chongqing

Zhang Lü

Zhang Lü Capsule Reviews

Gyongju (2014) – March 13, 2014 A post-Hong film, but more vibes-based and death-haunted than anything Hong had done up to that point ten years ago when it was made. Reminded me as much of Kiohara Yui's Remembering Every Night, released last year, as it did Hong. Zhang Lü

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Wong Jing

Casino Raiders (Wong Jing & Jimmy Heung, 1989)

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Somai Shinji

Sailor Suit and Machine Gun (Somai Shinji, 1981)

Heo Myeong-haeng

The Roundup: Punishment (Heo Myeong-haeng, 2024)

The man with the cinder block fists is back, and this time he’s learning what the internet is. For the last three years, Ma Dong-seok (aka Don Lee) has been making sequels to his hit 2017 film The Outlaws, in which he plays a large cop working his way

Liu Jian

Art College 1994 (Liu Jian, 2023)

I wrote about Liu Jian’s Have a Nice Day back when it played the Seattle International Film Festival in 2017. Thanks to SIFF’s arcane embargo policies, I was limited to exactly 75 words. Here they are: The second feature from director Liu Jian is an animated network-noir that

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Johnnie To

The Mad Monk (Johnnie To, 1993)

Ward Serrill

Dancing with the Dead: Red Pine and the Art of Translation (Ward Serrill, 2023)

Eliot Weinberger’s seminal study, 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, takes for its subject a single poem and looks at a number (19 plus several more in later editions) of different translations of that poem over the course of the 20th century. The approach allows Weinberger, in only

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Ann Hui

Visible Secret (Ann Hui, 2001)

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Jimmy Wang Yu

Beach of the War Gods (Jimmy Wang Yu, 1973)

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Joseph Kuo

The Mystery of Chess Boxing (Joseph Kuo, 1979)

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Yang Bingjia

Eye for an Eye 2 (Yang Bingjia, 2024)

Xu Haofeng

100 Yards (Xu Haofeng & Xu Junfeng, 2023)

The following is a re-edited and slightly-modified version of the review I wrote for InReview Online's coverage of the Toronto International Film Festival in the fall of 2023. Xu Haofeng makes movies for people who enjoy and understand the finer points of martial arts choreography. His best-known film

Patrick Tam

My Heart is That Eternal Rose (Patrick Tam, 1989)

The following is a re-edited and slightly-modified version of the review I wrote for InReview Online's coverage of the Fantasia International Film Festival in the summer of 2023. One or two festivals ago, I can’t remember which—this time of year they all blend together, I wrote

Patrick Tam

Nomad (Patrick Tam, 1982)

The following is a re-edited and slightly-modified version of the review I wrote for InReview Online's coverage of the New York Asian Film Festival in the summer of 2023. One of the finest films of the Hong Kong New Wave, Patrick Tam’s Nomad plays at this year’

Strange Tales

2023 Fall Festival Compilation

As I put together in 2022 and again for last Spring, here is a collection of the reviews I wrote for InReview Online's coverage of various film festivals from around the world. For publication here, the reviews have been re-edited and occasionally expanded. Check out the rest of

Herman Yau

Death Notice (Herman Yau, 2023)

The fourth 2023 Herman Yau film to come across my digital transom (I’m still searching for the fifth film he released last year, Customs Frontline) is the one most like an actual movie. While The White Storm 3 was a depressing rehash of undercover cop movie tropes (before exploding

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Ching Siu-tung

The Heroic Trio and Executioners (Johnnie To & Ching Siu-tung, 1993)

Kimi Takesue

Onlookers (Kimi Takesue, 2023)

Onlookers is an observational documentary by American filmmaker Kimi Takesue. Over a quick 72 minutes in a series of static shots almost entirely lacking in dialogue, she paints a portrait of a small Laotian village, one whose gorgeous riverside landscapes and picturesque monasteries serve to attract tourists from around the

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Obayashi Nobuhiko

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (Obayashi Nobuhiko, 1983)

Jason Kwan

I Did It My Way (Jason Kwan, 2023)

I didn’t see the Andy Lau crime movie with a title borrowed from a hit 1960s American pop song that came out a couple of weeks ago, but I did see the one that comes out this week. I skipped The Goldfinger, despite the promise of an Andy Lau-Tony

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Wong Jing

Last Hero in China (Wong Jing, 1993)

Sammo Hung

Glory to the Fat Dragon!

Since today is Sammo Hung's birthday, I figure it's a good time to repost this look at his career, originally posted on the now-defunct website Frame.land back in the summer of 2017. There were originally several video clips interspersed throughout the essay, but they seem

The Odd One Dies

The Shaolin Cinematic Universe

This was originally commissioned by the Vulgar Cinema website in July 2014, and was published in December 2015. Then, after that site disappeared, it was revised and republished at Frame.land in May 2019. Now that site too appears to be defunct, so I'm posting it once again

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Liu Jiayin

All Ears (Liu Jiayin, 2023)