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Features Live Action Movies

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

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

I Still Remember
(Er Ci
Ren Sheng,
二次人生)

Director – Lik Ho – 2021 – Hong Kong – Cert. N/C 15+ – 90m

***1/2

A young loser looks back on his life prior to running a 10K marathon to create an achievement of which he can be proud – online in the UK as part of Focus Hong Kong 2021 Easter from Wednesday, March 31st to Tuesday, April 6th

If you imagine that a movie with a title like I Still Remember would be chock full of flashbacks, you’d be dead right. Lee Chi Hang (Wu Tar Tung) fondly remembers his primary school teacher Wong Kwok Wai (Patrick Tam Yiu Man) who first encouraged him when he saw him cheering on his friend Yu Leung running the perimeter of a small playground and has continued to do so through most of his life.

Whatever he does today, though, Lee can’t seem to get it right. Working at the sales company run by the now grown up Yu (Johnny Hui), he consistently achieves the lowest scores in the weekly office tables. Lee fails for a long time to notice that co-worker and sometime fellow amateur runner Cheung Chi Ling (Sofee Ng Hoi Lam) is in love with him.

Her attempts to get him to run don’t work out either.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Kill It And Leave This Town

Director – Mariusz Wilczynski– 2020 – Poland – 88m

****1/2

From the Annecy 2020 Online Animation Festival

From its opening of a man smoking in the dark to its closing image of giants tied down on a beach like felled Gullivers in Lilliput, this is awash with the sort of gloomy imagery readily associated with East European art pictures. That’s not to say it isn’t highly effective though. Set partly in a grey, heavily industrialised town where chimneys constantly belch out smoke and partly in a seaside resort, it has a narrative through line but constantly weaves around that with a series of episodes, dreams and memories. Nevertheless it possesses its own, coherent inner logic.

An old woman (Krystyna Janda) wishes her husband (Andrzej Chyra) goodbye as he takes their son Janek (Maja Ostaszewska) out. Later she visits the shops where, although she makes a point of explaining that she has the correct change, no one seems to be interested in actually serving her. Indeed, these are strange shops. Sometimes the fishmonger’s assistant (Malgorzata Kozuchowska) guts fish and sometimes she guts little humans who are around the same size.

At one point a man (Daniel Olbrychski) whose hat conceals that he has the head of a cat delivers an unsettling line about his purposes in the world to do with power, evil and good.… Read the rest