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Tropical Malady (2004)
Tropical Malady is a sophisticated, loving, humane, yet haunting film that explores the relationship between two beings. Like his previous film, Blissfully Yours, Weerasethakul constructs Tropical Malady through the juxtaposition of two related halves. However, in this case, the relation between the halves isn’t as overt.
Heed my warning: this film will linger on in your mind for weeks!
The first story looks at the courtship between two young men: Tong, an ice factory worker, and Keng, a soldier. … (read more)
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The Untold Story (1992)
This is one of those flicks that get labelled “controversial” and it is pretty darn easy to see why. Sure, we are a long way from Salo territory but Untold Story definitely disturbs. Far more than Audition which regularly gets mentioned in the same sentence as ‘gut-churning’.
All this needs some explaining though so here goes. Wong Chi Hang is a rather weedy, highly strung restaurateur in Macau. When police discover the sliced and diced limbs of a relative of … (read more)
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Transformers: The Movie (1986)
This 1986 big budget continuation of the series must have come as quite a shock to children everywhere. Eleven year olds, imprinted like baby ducks with toys that turned from robots into various types of vehicular transport, must have been stunned with what the movie offered up. Unaware that toy producer Hasbro saw the movie as a deck clearing exercise for a new line of toys, kids must have been close to traumatized to witness Autobot leader Optimus Prime’s brutal … (read more)
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Tiger on Beat (1988)
Tiger On The Beat is a pretty routine Hong Kong take on the American buddy cop genre. Lau Kar Leung must have been strangely out of sorts when he made this — the bloody action and crude comedy seems more akin to Wong Jing than the director that brought us The 36 Chambers of Shaolin. Perhaps he simply feels more comfortable in the martial arts world of old.
Conan Lee doesn’t make much of an impression in the lead … (read more)
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Tiger on Beat 2 (1990)
Everything about this in-name-only sequel to Tiger on the Beat feels second rate, but for some reason I found it enjoyable — well kinda. Most of the original cast members return in slightly different roles, the bonus being that Conan Lee can fight Gordon Liu again (though it’s not a patch on their first effort). This is real B grade stuff; it looks like it was reeled off pretty quickly without much care for the end result. Also, for an … (read more)
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A Time For Love (2005)
A Time to Love is an homage to William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. However, unlike many of the sorry filmic adaptations of this play, A Time to Love is one of the more touching versions, carrying with it a pure subtlety and innocence that one would only expect from a director who has graduated from the Beijing Film Academy.
A Time to Love tells the story of the tragic relationship between Hou Jia, (played by Lu Yi) and Qu … (read more)
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Tetsuo II: Bodyhammer (1992)
Tsukamoto Shinya’s Tetsuo II: Bodyhammer is a slightly superior pseudo-sequel to 1988’s Tetsuo, and like that movie, it’s weird, crazy stuff indeed. Logic and rationality quail, run away and quickly die of fright when confronted with a movie like this. While it must be said that it is more narratively comprehensible than the original film, that isn’t saying much.
The story, so far as one can tell, involves a mild mannered businessman (Tomoroh Taguchi) whose son is killed and … (read more)
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Throw Down (2004)
Johnnie To is ever the genre-shifting shapechanger. You can’t get a hold on him; just when you think you’ve got a firm grasp on his style, he jinks around, unhooks your hold and throws you back to the mat. I mean that in a good way.
Throw Down sees To partially back in the quirky territory of previous Milkway Image productions like The Odd One Dies and Too Many Ways To Be Number One, but in a more good-hearted … (read more)
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