Cinema City - The Chinese Cinema

The Chinese Cinema

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Cinema City

A collection of 15 posts

All the Wrong Clues (...for the Right Solution) (Tsui Hark, 1981)

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All the Wrong Clues (...for the Right Solution) (Tsui Hark, 1981)

Undeclared War (Ringo Lam, 1990)

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Undeclared War (Ringo Lam, 1990)

The Tiger on the Beat Series (Lau Kar-leung, 1988 & 1990)

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The Tiger on the Beat Series (Lau Kar-leung, 1988 & 1990)

The Fun, the Luck, and the Tycoon (Johnnie To, 1990)

The Fun, the Luck, and the Tycoon (Johnnie To, 1990)

Following up on the smash hit that was All About Ah-long, Johnnie To went back to television for a two-part film called The Iron Butterfly. I haven’t been able to track it down, but it looks to be a modern cop/Triad thriller, with Anthony Wong and Mark Cheng

All About Ah-Long (Johnnie To, 1989)

All About Ah-Long (Johnnie To, 1989)

After an auspicious, if commercially unsuccessful, debut with the New Wave wuxia The Enigmatic Case in 1980, To spent the early 80s working in Hong Kong television. In 1986 he returned to film working under Raymond Wong Bak-ming at the Cinema City studio, where he made the popular, if not

A Better Tomorrow (John Woo, 1986)

A Better Tomorrow (John Woo, 1986)

After an up and down decade as a director for hire, working alternately in the wuxia and wacky comedy genres, John Woo finally hit it big in 1986 when he teamed up with Tsui Hark and the Cinema City studio to remake Patrick Lung Kong’s 1967 drama The Story

The Big Heat (Johnnie To, 1988)

The Big Heat (Johnnie To, 1988)

So here we come to the first film in the genre that Johnnie To would become best known for: the urban crime thriller. Released a mere seven months after his first big hit, The Eighth Happiness, The Big Heat finds To working with Tsui Hark for the first and only

The Eighth Happiness (Johnnie To, 1988)

The Eighth Happiness (Johnnie To, 1988)

Following up on the Cinema City romantic comedy Seven Years Itch, To re-teamed with producer-writer-star (not necessarily in that order) Raymond Wong Bak-Ming for an ensemble film designed for release during the Lunar New Year holiday, a week-long (more or less) celebration that is the highlight of the Hong Kong

The Aces Go Places Series (1982-1989)

The Odd One Dies

The Aces Go Places Series (1982-1989)

Aces Go Places (Eric Tsang, 1982) — November 20, 2013 The first of the smash hit action/comedy series that was one of the first big successes of the Cinema City studio that dominated 80s Hong Kong. Pioneering Cantopop star Sam Hui plays a master jewel thief who helps a bumbling

Working Class (Tsui Hark, 1985)

Working Class (Tsui Hark, 1985)

A Cinema City film in all but name, as Tsui Hark directs for his own production company, Film Workshop, this comedy with pop star Sam Hui (of the Hui Brothers and the Aces Go Places series) and rock star Teddy Robin Kwan. Tsui himself rounds out the trio of workers

Seven Years Itch (Johnnie To, 1987)

Seven Years Itch (Johnnie To, 1987)

After finding success in his return to filmmaking with 1986’s Happy Ghost III, Johnnie To re-teamed with actor-writer-producer-Cinema City studio head Raymond Wong for a more conventional romantic comedy, loosely inspired by Billy Wilder’s popular 1955 Marilyn Monroe vehicle The Seven-Year Itch. Wilder’s film is an adaptation

Prison on Fire (Ringo Lam, 1987)

Prison on Fire (Ringo Lam, 1987)

A conventional yet effective prison drama from director Ringo Lam, who appears to have cornered the market on “On Fire” movies with this and City on Fire, also from 1987, along with the next year’s School on Fire. All three were made at the Cinema City studio, where Lam

The Happy Ghost Series (Clifton Ko & Johnnie To, 1984-1986)

The Happy Ghost Series (Clifton Ko & Johnnie To, 1984-1986)

After the failure of his debut film, The Enigmatic Case, Johnnie To went back to television for several years (where he directed, among other things, an acclaimed adaptation of Louis Cha’s Legend of the Condor Heroes), not returning to film until 1986, when Raymond Wong hired him to direct

Peking Opera Blues (Tsui Hark, 1986)

Peking Opera Blues (Tsui Hark, 1986)

A great movie, perhaps the best melding of director Tsui Hark’s twin impulses toward subversion and entertainment. The setup follows two plotlines that will come together and intertwine with a third, each focused on a female protagonist. Brigitte Lin plays the daughter of a local warlord. She dresses like

A Better Tomorrow II (John Woo, 1987)

A Better Tomorrow II (John Woo, 1987)

After its formation in 1980 by actors Dean Shek, Karl Maka, and Raymond Wong, the first film released by Hong Kong studio Cinema City & Films Co. was 1981’s Laughing Times, a comedy starring Shek as “the Chinese Charlie Chaplin” that is a kind of mashup of The Kid