Bear with me. Knock Off is an action vehicle for Jean-Claude Van Damme, released in 1998 when his Hollywood career had arguably peaked and his films were on a rapid one-way highway to the video store. It was not a success in … Continue reading REVIEW: Knock Off (1998)
A comedy about an aging hit man returning to his profession turns out to be a timely reminder and elegiac meditation on what it means to grow old in Hong Kong. Time is the feature debut for filmmaker Ricky Ko, and … Continue reading REVIEW: Time (2021)
All-but-impenetrable to foreign audiences, and produced for the most unusual of reasons, Jeffrey Lau’s The Eagle Shooting Heroes is a fascinating side story from pre-handover Hong Kong. It also represents a chance to see some screen legends playing the broadest of … Continue reading REVIEW: The Eagle Shooting Heroes (1993)
A young man plays a cello in his apartment. There’s a knock on the door, and a woman walks past the cellist to answer it. She is immediately pulled back away from the door, and seconds later we see a … Continue reading REVIEW: G Affairs (2018)
Before hitting the big time with his Monkey King trilogy, Soi Cheang was the director of a number of excellent Hong Kong thrillers. Motorway (2012) was one; before that he helmed Accident (2009), a remarkable exercise in style, tension, and growing paranoia. The … Continue reading REVIEW: Accident (2009)
Hong Kong melodramas: they are where one separates the tourists from the locals, or the dabbler from the true believers. It is easy enough for an international viewer to check out the latest Hong Kong crime thriller, or martial arts … Continue reading REVIEW: Ladies Market (2021)
Yu Qiu (Nick Cheung) is a police officer deep undercover among the city drug gangs. After rescuing a young girl from a kidnapping, he stumbles upon a criminal enterprise exploiting children at the behest of a criminal mastermind known only … Continue reading REVIEW: The Trough (2018)
Around 2010 I travelled to Hong Kong where – among other things – I watched a fantastic live performance at the music venue Hidden Agenda. Getting there for a tourist was an ominous experience: an MTR ride to Kowloon, and … Continue reading REVIEW: The Way We Keep Dancing (2020)
The career of director Johnnie To can be pretty easily split into two phases. From the late 1990s he established his own production company, Milkyway Image, and embarked on a hugely successful career directing idiosyncratic crime films, romantic comedies, and … Continue reading REVIEW: The Bare-Footed Kid (1993)
Double Tap, directed by Law Chi-leung in 2000, is what it is: a film in which two overly emotional men face off against one another on the streets of Hong Kong. As melodramatic as a soap opera and aggressively masculine, … Continue reading REVIEW: Double Tap (2000)
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