Andy Lau - The Chinese Cinema

The Chinese Cinema

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Andy Lau

A collection of 15 posts

Saviour of the Soul I & II (Corey Yuen, David Lai, & Jeffrey Lau, 1991 & 1992)

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Saviour of the Soul I & II (Corey Yuen, David Lai, & Jeffrey Lau, 1991 & 1992)

The Wandering Earth II (Frant Gwo, 2023)

The Wandering Earth II (Frant Gwo, 2023)

Four years and many, many crises ago, The Wandering Earth became one of the biggest Chinese blockbusters of all-time. A sci-fi epic about family and sacrifice for the collective good, it effectively welded Hollywood-style disaster effects action to a PRC-friendly message and dominated that year’s Lunar New Year season.

The Running Out of Time Series (Johnnie To, 1999 and 2001)

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The Running Out of Time Series (Johnnie To, 1999 and 2001)

Shock Wave 2 (Herman Yau, 2020)

Shock Wave 2 (Herman Yau, 2020)

A follow-up to the hit film Shock Wave has been in the works pretty much since it premiered in the spring of 2017. Warmly received as a throw back to classic Hong Kong cop movies, that film starred Andy Lau as a bomb disposal expert who thwarts a terrorist scheme

Running on Karma (Johnnie To & Wai Ka-fai, 2003)

Running on Karma (Johnnie To & Wai Ka-fai, 2003)

The first two-thirds play as a fairly typical Johnnie To/Wai Ka-fai cop movie. There are some supernatural elements of course, but it’s very much of a piece with the later Mad Detective and Blind Detective, in which superhuman perception is used to solve crimes long-hidden from the understanding

Shock Wave (Herman Yau, 2017)

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

The Adventurers (Stephen Fung, 2017)

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

My Beloved Bodyguard (Sammo Hung, 2016)

My Beloved Bodyguard (Sammo Hung, 2016)

Sammo Hung’s long-awaited return to the director’s chair (known as “The Bodyguard” here in the US and “My Beloved Bodyguard” everywhere else), his first since 1997’s Once Upon a Time in China in America, finds the now 64 year old star playing a recently retired security agent

A Moment of Romance III (Johnnie To, 1996)

A Moment of Romance III (Johnnie To, 1996)

For his final film before launching the Milkyway Image studio, Johnnie To took a super-generic script, applied a Steven Spielberg visual aesthetic, and almost made an FW Murnau movie out of it. A rarity for To, it's a period film, a romance set during the second World War, with Andy

Golden Chicken 2 (Samson Chiu, 2003)

Golden Chicken 2 (Samson Chiu, 2003)

The first Golden Chicken filtered 30 years of Hong Kong history through the life of one ridiculous prostitute and dared you not to be moved by her. Samson Chiu’s sequel, released one year later, tries the same trick, but with 30 years of Hong Kong cinema instead, most specifically

Zodiac Killers (Ann Hui, 1991)

Zodiac Killers (Ann Hui, 1991)

A somewhat misleading title, as the movie doesn’t have anything to do with a Zodiac, or really even any Killers. Instead this 1991 film is a portrait of Chinese students in Tokyo leading desperately miserable lives. Directed by the great New Wave filmmaker Ann Hui, it was apparently [http:

Blind Detective (Johnnie To, 2013)

Blind Detective (Johnnie To, 2013)

The big draw in Blind Detective is the reunion of Andy Lau and Sammi Cheng. Pop stars and cultural icons, it was the series of romantic comedies they made with To in the early 2000s that essentially saved his Milkyway Image company from collapse. The first few years of the

Boat People (Ann Hui, 1982)

Boat People (Ann Hui, 1982)

Revolution is war is hell. Something in the air with the Hong Kong New Wave and Japanese leftists in 1982. Patrick Tam’s Nomad envisions the United Red Army as psychotic dead-enders while Ann Hui here depicts an idealistic photojournalist who sees past the Potemkin images provided for him by

Days of Being Wild (Wong Kar-wai, 1990)

Days of Being Wild (Wong Kar-wai, 1990)

Wong Kar-wai’s second feature is, I think, one of the great films about the post-war generation and the lingering effects the war had on their psyches and their visions of the world. Set in 1960, the main characters would have all been born in the mid to late 30s,

Infernal Affairs (Andrew Lau & Alan Mak, 2002)

Infernal Affairs (Andrew Lau & Alan Mak, 2002)

In the midst of a lengthy binge on Johnnie To movies, preparing for a They Shot Pictures episode we hope to record this weekend, I’ve tried to fit in a few other Hong Kong films that I thought might have influenced or been influenced by To’s work. I