Tag: Hong Kong

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A Chinese
Ghost Story
(Sien Lui Yau Wan,
倩女幽魂)

Director – Ching Siu Tung – 1987 – Hong Kong – Cert. 15 – 95m

*****

Some of the most seminal offerings of the commercial Hong Kong cinema are the product of creative wizard Tsui Hark. The producer who first gave John Woo his niche as bullet strewn action director on A Better Tomorrow (1986) also ensured director Ching Sui Tung’s place in fantasy film’s Hall of Fame with this stunning little offering.

The Hong Kong supernatural, fantasy genre is itself defined almost single-handedly by Tsui’s groundbreaking epic Zu: Warriors From the Magic Mountain (1983). CGS both typifies the genre and proves one of its finest examples. CGS spawned two sequels for what Tsui describes as “sentimental reasons – when the ghost died at the end, we want her to come back pretty badly.” He admits the sequels weren’t as good, though.

CGS opens in a downpour as a rain sodden Leslie Cheung (known to Western audiences from such diverse fare as A Better Tomorrow and art house hit Farewell My Concubine, Chen Kaige, 1993) watches a grim, head lopping argument between two bandits as he does his cowardly best to look inconspicuous. His work as a debt gatherer suffers something of a setback as he discovers the ink in his books has run with the damp, so once he arrives in the nearby town he’s unable to collect the payments he’d expected.… Read the rest

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A Moment
Of Romance
(Tin Joek
Yau Ching,
天若有情)

Director – Benny Chan – 1990 – Hong Kong – Cert.18 – 92m

***1/2

When a biker and gang member on the lam from a jewel heist takes a well-to-do girl hostage then falls for her, their romance is doomed – out on Radiance Blu-ray from Monday, August 21st 2023 following its screening in the London East Asia Film Festival (LEAFF) 2021

Gang member Wah (Andy Lau) is the archetypal bad boy who, in the opening sequence, speeds through a narrow gap between two lorries and wilfully breaks a wing mirror on a stationary police vehicle as he rides past. Director Chan keeps up the mayhem with a sequence of two competing lorries on a makeshift racing circuit, each with a pretty girl standing on top – until one of them crashes into a stationery car sending the falling girl through its windscreen and scattering the onlookers as the police approach.

Ascendant gang member Trumpet seems to have it in for Wah and puts him on getaway car duty for a jewel heist. Wah must improvise when cops happen by chance to turn up outside the building while the crime is in progress and during the ensuing pursuit by car, in which he gets the robbers successfully away from the scene, and on foot, his only way of escaping the cops is to take an innocent bystander hostage.… Read the rest

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Ride On
(Longma Jingshen,
龙马精神)

Director – Larry Yang – 2023 – China – Cert. PG – 126m

****

Ageing stuntman Jackie Chan must fight to retain ownership of the horse he has befriended and trained since rescuing it at birth – out on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital in the UK on Monday, July 24th following its release in UK, Irish, Chinese and US cinemas on Friday, April 7th

Why does one go to see a Jackie Chan movie? The usual reasons are the incredible stunts coupled with the likeable, knockabout comedy which is his trademark. Perhaps the star’s winsome personality also plays a part. His best films over the years have probably contained a mixture of all three. While these elements, notably Jackie’s personality, are all present to some degree here, they aren’t really its strengths – which are (1) the depiction of a career, reviewed by a person who is old, past their prime, and forced to confront the fact and (2) the relationship of a man with a horse which he has known from the time of its birth.

The day Ride On was released in both the UK and China was also Jackie Chan’s 69th birthday. While I don’t doubt he keeps himself in good condition, he is clearly no longer the young man he once was.… Read the rest

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Nomad
(Lie Huo Qing Chun,
烈火青春)
4K Director’s Cut

Director – Patrick Tam – 1982 – Hong Kong – Cert. 15 tbc – 92m

*****

A group of young Hongkongers fool around with sex and search for a cultural identity – plays in the UK as part of Focus Hong Kong 2023 at BFI Southbank which runs from Wednesday, July 12th to Saturday, July 15th

Opening with a curious conversation in a typically cramped Hong Kong apartment between a man embarrassed about being a father and his own father advising against lowering interest rates before moving swiftly through an equally cramped scene with the dour and concerned families of a young teen and the coquettish girl he has got pregnant, this freewheeling, slices of Hong Kong teenage life drama moves swiftly on to the man’s son Pong (Kent Tong), a lifeguard at the local swimming pool who in a complete switch of tone fails to get a rowdy and playful group of girl swimmers under control with the result that they throw him in the pool and humiliate him by stealing his shorts.

Before that, Pong has a run in with a confident young woman Kathy (Pat Ha) who sits in and refuses to move from his lifeguard seat unless he physically lifts her down.… Read the rest

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Let it Ghost
(Meng Gui 3 Bao,
猛鬼3寶)

Director – Wong Hoi – 2022 – Hong Kong – 100m

***

Three unlikely ghost stories from Hong Kong: an actor shoots a ghost scene with a real ghost, a young man’s girlfriend is possessed by a ‘horny ghost’, and a sweet romance develops as a cute little girl haunts a shopping mall – plays at the NFT on Friday, July 14th at 8.30pm as part of Focus Hong Kong 2023 at BFI Southbank which runs from Wednesday, July 12th to Saturday, July 15th

A ghost story shot anywhere else would probably set out to scare and unsettle, but in Hong Kong they have never hesitated to mix up their horror with other, seemingly incompatible genres. The first entry in this compendium of three ghost stories plays with notions of truth, reality and artifice through the time worn device of a film within the film, the second is a lightweight, gender-fluid, sex comedy while the third is a sentimental tale about a cute child and the passing of the era of the 1990s shopping mall.

In the first story, Scary Prison, a real ghost gets involved in the shooting of a TV series episode involving a ghost. The series is The Incarcerated Detective, set in a prison where the eponymous policeman investigates and apprehends evildoers among the inmates with his catchphrase, “Justice… always stands on the side of… Justice.”… Read the rest

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Lady Reporter
(Shi Jie Da Shai
aka
The Blonde Fury,
Righting Wrongs II,
Above The Law II)

Director – Mang Hoi – 1989 – Hong Kong – Cert. 18 – 90m

Movie ***

Action Sequences *****

Female FBI agent Cynthia Rothrock is sent to Hong Kong to put a stop to a counterfeit money scam operated by an editor out of a newspapers premises – on Blu-ray from Monday, June 26th

With New York facing a deluge of counterfeit banknotes originating in Hong Kong, and involving several felons with considerable martial arts fighting skills, agent Cindy (Cynthia Rothrock) is sent from San Francisco to Hong Kong to put the forgers out of business. She stays with her friend Judy (Elizabeth Lee) and begins working undercover as a reporter for the paper under Miss Miu. Going out to cover a fire with her camera, Cindy enters the blazing building and rescues a child, attracting the attention of rival publication photojournalist Shorty (director Mang Hoi) and his colleague (Chin Siu-ho). Shorty’s dad (Wu Ma) is the rival newspaper’s editor.

Cindy attempts to infiltrate the counterfeiting operation, but is discovered by Miu and escapes before she can see anything. Shorty, meanwhile, gets a lucky break and witnesses the abduction of Judy’s father, Prosecutor Yu (Roy Chiao), who is preparing the court case against the man behind the counterfeiting operation, newspaper editor Wang Dak (Ronny Yu).… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Memories To Choke On,
Drinks
To Wash Them Down
(Ye Heung,
Yuen Yeung,
Sham Shui Po,
夜香・鴛鴦・深水埗)

Directors – Leung Ming Kai, Kate Reilly – 2019 – Hong Kong – Cert. N/C 15+ – 77m

**1/2

Four stories from contemporary Hong Kong comprise three dramas and a closing documentary segment – plays Focus Hong Kong 2023 on Saturday, June 24th at 3.30pm

An anthology of four stories from contemporary Hong Kong – three fiction and one documentary – showing the city’s diversity: Forbidden City, Toy Stories, Yuen Yeung and It’s Not Going To Be Fun.

Forbidden City features an old lady (Leong Cheok-mei) and her immigrant carer (Mia Mungil). The first time ‘grandma’ mentions that her son is now a big shot but used – as the not quite right subs put it –to scratch his wee-wee when he was young, it’s funny. The second and third times, it becomes obvious she has dementia and keeps repeating the same phrases over and over. Mia initially refuses to accompany her charge to a reunion in town, but after taking a video of the old lady swearing that she won’t take her carer to her son’s office (“if I do that he’ll fire me,” the carer says), she agrees to accompany her on the bus into town.… Read the rest

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Made In Hong Kong
(Heung Gong Jai Jo,
香港製造)

Director – Fruit Chan – 1997 – Hong Kong – Cert. 15 – 108m

****

A teenager struggles to survive in Hong Kong around 1997 – plays Focus Hong Kong 2023 on Saturday, June 24th at 6pm

This picked up prizes at film festivals in the Far East and elsewhere. Director Fruit Chan assembled an excellent cast of young unknowns, shot his film on short ends, and ultimately obtained completion funding from impressed Oriental megastar Andy Lau.

The plot, worthy of Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee or Ken Loach, concerns teenager Autumn Moon Cake (Sam Lee), living in the Hong Kong equivalent of a council high rise block with his abandoned mother, looking out for his educationally subnormal best mate Sylvester (Wenders Li), dodging the local street gangsters and constantly struggling with the ever present open invitation to start a career with the more powerful and all pervasive triads.

Obsessed with a suicide called Susan (Amy Tam Ka-chuen), who threw herself off a tall building, Moon becomes involved with another girl, the terminally ill Ping (Neiky Yim Hui-chi) who is in need of expensive medical treatment, after she pays him a fraction of the money he’s attempting to extort from her mother (Carol Lam Kit-fong).… Read the rest

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Jackie Chan’s
Police Story
Trilogy

Police Story (Ging Chaat Goo Si, 警察故事)

*****

Director – Jackie Chan – 1985 – Hong Kong – Cert. 15 – 100m

Police Story II (Ging Chaat Goo Si Juk Jaap, 警察故事續集)

***1/2

Director – Jackie Chan – 1988 – Hong Kong – Cert. 15 – 101m

Police Story 3 Supercop (Ging Chaat Goo Si III: Chiu Kup Ging Chaat, 警察故事３超級警察)

*****

Director – Stanley Tong– 1992 – Hong Kong – Cert. 15 – 96m

The Police Story trilogy is a landmark of Hong Kong action cinema. As David West points out in his informative essay in the accompanying booklet to Eureka’s welcome 4K UHD release of the three films, the first one was the point in Jackie Chan’s career where he broke with period dramas to make a vehicle for himself that was totally modern, set in contemporary Hong Kong rather than an historic Chinese past or even the early twentieth century of his own Project A series of films. Action films set in the present started to emerge in Hong Kong in the early 1980s, with a couple of them directed by Chan’s fellow former Peking Opera schoolmate Sammo Hung, who managed to secure roles for Jackie some way down the cast list in Winners And Sinners (1983) and My Lucky Stars (1985).… Read the rest

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Vampire
Vs
Vampire
(Yi Mei Dao Ren,
一眉道人)

Director – Lam Ching-ying – 1989 – Hong Kong – Cert. 15 – 87m

***1/2

A Taoist priest must defeat various supernatural forces including a Western-style vampire occupying a coffin in an old church – out on Blu-ray in the UK on Monday, May 22nd as part of Eureka! Video’s Hopping Mad: The Mr. Vampire Sequels

Turned into a star by playing the Taoist priest who fights off jiangshi (hopping corpses) in the Mr. Vampire films, Lam went on to play similar characters in films and TV for the rest of his career until his death at age 44 in 1997. He directed this particular film himself, and while it sits easily alongside the ‘official’ Mr. Vampire entries, it’s a little bit different.

Once again, Lam’s Taoist priest and two bumbling assistants Hoh (Chin Siu-ho) and Fong (Lui Fong) battle with ghosts and other supernatural forces. First up is a ghost made up of excrement and teeth which escapes from imprisonment in a jar exposed to too much moonlight, which trope inverts Western vampire lore about burning up in sunlight.

Given directorial reins, Lam shows surprisingly little interest in jiangshi, their presence consisting of one friendly child (Lam Jing-wang) inspired by Mr.… Read the rest