Blog Archives

Aftershock (2010)

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Posted on August 15, 2010 by John Snadden

With a very good trailer and well publicised production from China’s number one film-maker, Aftershock is the most eagerly awaited mainland release this year. It opens with the recreation of the Tangshan earthquake in North East China in 1976, when nearly a quarter of a million people died. Aftershock follows the lives of a family torn apart by this natural disaster.

Director Feng Xiaogang has made some of the best and most successful genre films of the past decade. His … (read more)

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Red Cliff (2009)

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Posted on July 31, 2010 by John Snadden

When Cantonese director John Woo left Hong Kong for Hollywood in the mid-1990s, many people expected him to become one of the giants of world cinema. His American movies turned out to be, at best, problematic and his talent for combining strong human drama and rip-roaring action sequences was never fully realised. His most recent Hollywood film was Paycheck, I doubt in the history of American movies has a more apt title ever been given.

Two years ago, Woo … (read more)

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Bodyguards and Assassins (2009)

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Posted on January 12, 2010 by Tom

I knew very little about Bodyguards and Assassins going into the theatre. I had heard a basic plot outline that could be described as ‘16 Blocks with a team of kung-fu fighters instead of Bruce Willis’. Having now seen the film I think that sentence does a disservice to the film.

B&A is set in 1906, British ruled, Hong Kong. Revolution is in the air with student protests and rebel groups finding their footing. With police and other forces … (read more)

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The Warrior and the Wolf (Lang Zai Ji) (2009)

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Posted on December 2, 2009 by Elizabeth Kerr

Wolves have a storied place in mythology and folklore ranging from reverence to revulsion. Wolves tend to be venerated in Native American cultures – but it’s just a tendency. Romulus and Remus were wolves and they founded Rome. We’ve all been warned to ‘beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing’, and we know how poor Red Riding Hood fared. And, uh, hello … werewolves? Based on a story by Akutagawa-winner Inoue Yasushi, The Warrior and the Wolf is a three-part meditation … (read more)

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Jump (Tiu Cheut Heui) (2009)

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Posted on December 2, 2009 by Elizabeth Kerr

Before continuing, I’ll admit bias here: I’m a sucker for dancing movies. Yes, they’re schmaltzy and formulaic, but they’re also fun. When Antonio Banderas finally shook his booty in Take the Lead … aah. It was one of those moments of fleeting euphoria that only comes at the movies. Cheesy? Hell, yeah! Bring it.

So it was with an open mind I sat down for the long-delayed Jump, the latest by budding schlockmeister Stephen Fung (Enter the Phoenix… (read more)

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The Founding of a Republic (Jain Guo da Ye) (2009)

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Posted on October 18, 2009 by Deni

There’s always a level of alienation involved with being a non-Asian watching Asian cinema. I don’t mean to say being Asian automatically endows one with an in-depth knowledge of several thousand years of one’s own history any more than being a White European means you can, say, speak in detail about the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain in the migration period of 500AD. It’s just a fact; there are always going to be things that a person from one culture has … (read more)

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Old Fish (2008)

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Posted on January 15, 2009 by James

Not all things discovered in mysterious small packages are good. Several packages containing volatile home-made time bombs, for instance. Objects that can paralyse a city, waste civil resources and, if not dealt with promptly and carefully, lead to the loss of innocent limbs and lives.

Unfortunately, it’s a scenario that, today, we can appreciate all too well.

Utilising such assumed knowledge within its audience, Old Fish actually steps back from any sort of commentary on this particular infliction of terror … (read more)

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The Soong Sisters (1997)

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Posted on June 17, 2007 by John Snadden

Of all the films I saw in 1997, The Soong Sisters was my favourite movie of that year. It soon became the most awarded Chinese film of the late 1990s.

A Hong Kong-China co-production and distributed by the Golden Harvest company, The Soong Sisters is a biopic of three Chinese-born and American-educated young women, who each played an important part in modern Chinese history. It’s a triumph of ensemble acting and superb direction which weaves these three lives together.

Michelle … (read more)

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