Devils on the Doorstep Hamaguchi Ryūsuke Reviews [https://www.thechinesecinema.com/tag/hamguchi-ryusuke/]: Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy [https://www.thechinesecinema.com/wheel-of-fortune-and-fantasy-hamaguchi-ryusuke-2021/] (2021) — November 2, 2021 Capsule Reviews [https://www.thechinesecinema.com/hamaguchi-ryusuke-capsule-reviews/]: Happy Hour (2015)— March 12, 2017 Asako I & II (2018) — October 3, 2018 Drive My Car (2021) — November 2, 2021 List:
Joseph Kuo Joseph Kuo Capsule Reviews Shaolin Kung Fu (1974) — January 12, 2022 Has almost nothing to do with Shaolin and really not much kung fu either, at least of the philosophical variety you’d find in more reputable films. Instead it has a whole lot of fighting: quick and brutal, if not especially gory. The
Joseph Kuo Return of the 18 Bronzemen (Joseph Kuo, 1976) Probably the most confounding entry in the excellent Joseph Kuo boxset from Eureka. Not so much because of the film, which is certainly unusual, but because it is so obviously merely the first part of a multi-film story (despite its title it is not in fact a sequel to The
Tricky Brains Joseph Kuo Reviews: The Swordsman of All Swordsmen (1968) – May 20, 2023 The Shaolin Kids (1975) — January 13, 2022 The 18 Bronzemen (1976) — January 13, 2022 Return of the 18 Bronzemen (1976) — January 14, 2022 7 Grandmasters (1977) — January 6, 2022 The 36 Deadly Styles (1979) — January 7, 2022 The Mystery of
Joseph Kuo The 18 Bronzemen (Joseph Kuo, 1976) Finally an honest-to-God Shaolin film from Joseph Kuo, and of course it’s not one that has the word “Shaolin” in the title. Focusing on the Temple’s site as a center of pro-Ming resistance to the nascent Qing Dynasty, it otherwise follows a typical Kuo revenge plot: like in
Joseph Kuo The Shaolin Kids (Joseph Kuo, 1975) Like Joseph Kuo's Shaolin Kung Fu, this has very little to do with the mythology around the Shaolin Temple, nor does it feature any kids, at least of the non-grown up variety. Nor is it a kung fu film in the vein of the Shaolin cycle Chang Cheh
Joseph Kuo The World of the Drunken Master (Joseph Kuo, 1979) Solid bit of Yuen-sploitation from Joseph Kuo, a prequel that dares to answer the question nobody anywhere ever asked: why does Beggar So, the Drunken Master, drink so much? Yuen kids Yat-chor and Cheung-yan handle the choreography, while patriarch Yuen Siu-tien appears very briefly in the opening moments, performing on
Joseph Kuo The 36 Deadly Styles (Joseph Kuo, 1979) There was a weird cutaway scene early in Joseph Kuo’s 7 Grandmasters that struck me as a mistake, a bit of the story thrown into the middle of another storyline, the context and meaning of which wouldn’t become clear until much later in the film. It was jarring
Joseph Kuo 7 Grandmasters (Joseph Kuo, 1977) With the start of the new year I’m finally digging into Eureka’s Joseph Kuo boxset. The only other Kuo film I’ve seen thus far is a dubbed version of The Mystery of Chess Boxing. Right away here the limitations of Kuo’s independent production in Taiwan, as
Derek Kwok Schemes in Antiques (Derek Kwok, 2021) The latest film from director Derek Kwok does exactly what it says in the title: there are antiques and a lot of schemes surrounding them. An mystery adventure film that has some of the same energy as the Detective Chinatown series, Schemes in Antiques has been out for a few
Wei Junzi Kung Fu Stuntmen (Wei Junzi, 2020) Wei Junzi’s documentary Kung Fu Stuntmen is about exactly what it says it is: the people who made Hong Kong action cinema the most breathtaking in the world for the past 60 years. It’s also about the decline and fall of that cinema, about nostalgia for a past
Dante Lam The Rescue (Dante Lam, 2020) Dante Lam’s latest propaganda piece for the Chinese military, following 2016’s Operation Mekong and 2018’s Operation Red Sea (one wonders if he wanted to call it Operation Rescue, but someone explained to him that that name was already taken), was supposed to anchor the 2020 Chinese New
Tsui Hark The Once Upon a Time in China Series With the fall 2021 release of Criterion’s Once Upon a Time in China boxset, I put all my reviews of the series together here in one convenient place. Once Upon a Time in China (Tsui Hark, 1991) Tsui Hark is the John Ford of Chinese cinema, and Once Upon
Hamguchi Ryûsuke Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Hamaguchi Ryūsuke, 2021) The similarities I found to Hong Sangsoo in Hamaguchi Ryūsuke’s last feature, Asako I & II, were surface level, based on the inexplicable doubling of (at least) one main character in a romance (as in Yourself and Yours), while the bulk of the movie’s greatness was to be
Crippled Avengers Xu Haofeng Reviews: The Final Master (2016) – June 1, 2016 100 Yards (2023) – September 18, 2023 Capsule Reviews: The Hidden Sword (2017) – October 5, 2017 Lists: Xu Haofeng Movies
Unknown Pleasures David Lai Reviews: Saviour of the Soul I & II (Corey Yuen, David Lai, & Jeffrey Lau, 1991 & 1992) – April 12, 2023) Capsule Reviews: Heaven and Earth (1994) – September 29, 2023
Unknown Pleasures Sun Chung Reviews: The Avenging Eagle (1978) – August 17, 2023 Capsule Reviews: Human Lanterns (1982) – October 19, 2018
Good Men, Good Women Ricky Lau Reviews: The Mr. Vampire Sequels (1986-1989) – October 9, 2023 Capsule Reviews: Mr. Vampire (1985) – July 15, 2013 Where’s Officer Tuba? (1986) — July 21, 2020 Lists: Ricky Lau Movies
Li Jun Cloudy Mountain (Li Jun, 2021) The big hit of this past Mid-Autumn Festival season on Chinese screens was Cloudy Mountain, the latest in a series of disaster films that double as propaganda pieces that praise the resourcefulness of the Chinese people and bureaucracy (not necessarily in that order) in responding to the cataclysmic side effects
Soi Cheang Limbo (Soi Cheang, 2021) Soi Cheang’s latest film might have been a continuation of the SPL series. He directed SPL 2, with the original’s director, Wilson Yip producing, while the two switched roles for the follow-up SPL: Paradox. Yip again produced Limbo, and it shares in common with those other two films
Hong Kong Documentary Filmmakers Inside the Red Brick Wall (Hong Kong Documentary Filmmakers, 2020) Inside the Red Brick Wall is a hour-by-hour accounting of what happened when the Hong Kong police department trapped several hundred pro-democracy protesters inside the campus of Hong Kong Polytechnic University in November of 2019. It joins Chan Tze-woon’s Yellowing and Evans Chan’s We Have Boots as essential
Hong Sangsoo In Front of Your Face (Hong Sangsoo, 2021) Hong Sangsoo’s latest feature, his second this year, is his first film not to feature actress Kim Minhee since 2016’s Yourself and Yours. Kim instead serves as Production Manager, and her sensibility seems to pervade the film, even if we can’t see her at work. Or rather,
Zhang Yimou One Second (Zhang Yimou, 2020) Zhang Yimou’s One Second was originally scheduled to premiere at the 2019 Berlin Film Festival, but was pull at the last, ahem, second for what were claimed to be “technical reasons” but widely assumed to be related to political censorship due to the film’s setting during the Cultural
Benny Chan Raging Fire (Benny Chan, 2021) Director Benny Chan died almost one year ago, just as he was finishing his final film, the Donnie Yen vehicle Raging Fire, which is being released this weekend across North America. Chan was a reliable director of genre films, raging from A Moment of Romance (1990), one of the true
Chan Kin-long Hand Rolled Cigarette (Chan Kin-long, 2020) Despite the fact that Hand Rolled Cigarette (no hyphen) is the directorial debut of Chan Kin-long, it is a film steeped in the golden age of Hong Kong crime cinema. It was produced by Lawrence Lau, also known as Lawrence Ah Mon, the director of late 80s/early 90s classics
