The Chinese Cinema

The 36th Chamber

Jia Zhangke

14 Ways of Looking at Jia Zhangke — February 5, 2019 Drunk for Life: Music in the Films of Jia Zhangke — March 13, 2019 Reviews: I Wish I Knew (2010) — January 23, 2020 Mountains May Depart (2015) — October 12, 2015 Ash is Purest White (2018) — November 1, 2019 Caught by the

Edward Yang

Edward Yang Capsule Reviews

In Our Time (1982) — August 23, 2020 Nothing more pure than Edward Yang’s complete and total lack of respect for international copyright law as it pertains to the use of popular music in film. He put two (2!) Beatles songs in his debut short film. Absolute legend. That Day,

The 36th Chamber

Edward Yang

Reviews: A Brighter Summer Day (1991) — July 27, 2016 A Confucian Confusion (1994) – November 3, 2022 Taiwan Stories: The New Cinema of the 1980s — September 7, 2020 Capsule Reviews: In Our Time (1982)— August 23, 2020 That Day, On the Beach (1983) — May 19, 2018 Taipei Story (1985) — March 15,

Kurosawa Kiyoshi

Daguerrotype (Kurosawa Kiyoshi, 2016)

Halloween may have passed but it’s always a good time to watch a creepy movie by a great director, and that exactly what Daguerrotype by Kurosawa Kiyoshi is. The artiest of the filmmakers to emerge in the J-Horror boom of the late 90s, or at least the one

Johnnie To

Johnnie To Capsule Reviews

A Moment of Romance (1990) — February 22, 2016 As Tears Go By told in the style of the last five minutes of All About Ah-long. Directed by Benny Chan, produced by Johnnie To, Ringo Lam, and Wong Jing (among others), but To claims much of the authorship credit, and

The 36th Chamber

Hou Hsiao-hsien

“It snowed a lot that winter in Yubari”

Hou Hsiao-hsien

Hou Hsiao-hsien Capsule Reviews

Cute Girl (1980) — March 18, 2015 Hou Hsiao-hsien’s first film pairs pop stars Kenny Bee and Feng Fei-fei in a totally pleasant and generic romantic comedy. He’s poor, she’s rich, they fall in love anyway. Tsui Hark’s Working Class is a much better version

Tsui Hark

Tsui Hark Capsule Reviews

The Butterfly Murders (1979) — July 17, 2021 Tsui Hark’s, I don’t know, “Song to Woody”? Here’s to King Hu and Chang Cheh and Chor Yuen too And Roger Corman and Dario Argento Here’s to the hearts and the hands of the men Who made crazy wuxias

Chang Cheh

The New One-Armed Swordsman (Chang Cheh, 1971)

Even at the warp speed of Hong Kong generic cycles, it’d be weird to remake a movie that came out only four years earlier, so Chang Cheh, in the midst of probably the most frenetic period of production of any great director ever, didn’t remake his smash hit

Chang Cheh

Chang Cheh Capsule Reviews

The Magnificent Trio (1966) — November 5, 2017 Chang Cheh’s second wuxia film, and the oldest one to survive. The first, Tiger Boy, was a low-budget black and white film for which he did the choreography himself. By all accounts it has been lost. The Magnificent Trio is in

The 36th Chamber

Chang Cheh

Chang Cheh: Visionary of Death — December 7, 2017 Chang Cheh: Death and Glory — May 23, 2018 Reviews: The One-Armed Swordsman (1967) — July 12, 2013 The Assassin (1967) — May 12, 2014 Return of the One-Armed Swordsman — July 25, 2013 Vengeance! (1970) — July 27, 2013 The Heroic Ones (1970) — July

Wilson Yip

SPL: Paradox (Wilson Yip, 2017)

It’s unclear if this film is actually a continuation of the SPL series or if it just started as one and then mutated into its own thing. I thought I saw the characters for “Sha Po Lang” on the title card of the movie though, so I’m just

Hong Sangsoo

Mysterious Object at Cannes: Claire’s Camera (Hong Sangsoo, 2017)

Claire’s Camera, barely over an hour long and shot in about a week at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, isn’t even the best Hong Sangsoo movie of the past year. That would be On the Beach at Night Alone. Nor is it likely to be the most

Herman Yau

Shock Wave (Herman Yau, 2017)

A kind of amalgam of The Taking of Pelham 123 and The Hurt Locker, the first of three Herman Yau films to be released in the first half of 2017 (released in late April, it was followed by The Sleep Curse in May and 77 Heartbreaks in June, with a

Yang Lei

The Legend of the Naga Pearls (Yang Lei, 2017

In what has been a strong summer for Chinese language releases here in Seattle (with Our Time Will Come, Wolf Warrior 2, Meow, Once Upon a Time, and The Adventurers following SIFF's minifestival of Hong Kong films and their presentation of the restored Taipei Story last week), Legend

Stephen Fung

The Adventurers (Stephen Fung, 2017)

Almost thirty years after A Moment of Romance, Andy Lau still looks impossibly cool riding a motorcycle. He does it here as the lead of a small gang of jewel thieves in Stephen Fung’s heist movie, his first film since the lunatic double punch of 2012’s Tai Chi

Tsui Hark

Once Upon a Time in Hong Kong: The Cinema of Tsui Hark

Tsui Hark⁠ has been the central figure in Hong Kong and Chinese language cinema for the past 40 years, responsible for at least a dozen different masterpieces as director and/or producer. He’s often likened to Steven Spielberg, though more for the universal popularity of his films and their

Zhao Xiaoding

Once Upon a Time (Zhao Xiaoding, 2017)

The intersection between myth and teen drama, between cartoon wuxia and soap opera, with a dash of Hitchcock just to make things interesting, Once Upon a Time is unlike anything likely to play on Seattle Screens this year. The directorial debut of longtime Zhang Yimou cinematographer Zhao Xiaoding (he shot

Wu Jing

Wolf Warrior 2 (Wu Jing, 2017)

Somewhat surprisingly, Wu Jing’s Wolf Warrior 2 is smashing box office records across China, on pace to overtake last year’s The Mermaid as the number one Chinese film of all-time. Wu is probably the greatest Chinese martial arts star of his generation, best known here in the

Benny Chan

Meow (Benny Chan, 2017)

From Mao to Meow: Revolution in Contemporary Chinese Cinema Pop will eat itself. “A cat is never on the side of power.” — Chris Marker Last summer veteran Hong Kong director Benny Chan brought us the year’s best martial arts film with the High Noon variation Call of Heroes. This

Karl Maka

Karl Maka Capsule Reviews

Dirty Tiger, Crazy Frog (Karl Maka, 1978) — July 21, 2017 The first of only two movies released by Gar Bo Films, the production company started by Sammo Hung and Lau Kar-wing. The company collapsed when several of its key collaborators left to form Cinema City and dominate 1980s Hong

Ann Hui

Our Time Will Come (Ann Hui, 2017)

The most anticipated, and almost assuredly the best, World War II film of the summer, by one of the greatest filmmakers of the past forty years, opens here tomorrow exclusively at the Pacific Place: director Ann Hui’s Our Time Will Come . Based on true events in the resistance against

Chen Yu-hsun

The Village of No Return (Chen Yu-hsun, 2017)

Settling down for Village of No Return, I was expecting another mediocre Chinese genre film, an effects-driven action comedy along the lines of Vampire Cleanup Department or Mojin: The Lost Legend, amiable thanks to a star turn from Shu Qi and a supporting role by Eric Tsang, but ultimately

Wong Chun

Mad World (Wong Chun, 2016)

For more than a hundred years, all over the world, what is taken to be serious cinema has been defined more often than not by content. Films for grown-ups are supposed to be sober examinations of the social and political issues of the day. These are the movies that

Chan Chi-fat

Weeds on Fire (Chan Chi-fat, 2016)

One of the three new films playing at SIFF this weekend as part of their miniseries commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China, along with Mad World and Cook Up a Storm, Weeds on Fire was one of the surprise hits of 2016