Shu Qi - The Chinese Cinema

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Shu Qi

A collection of 12 posts

Visible Secret (Ann Hui, 2001)

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Visible Secret (Ann Hui, 2001)

So Close (Corey Yuen, 2002)

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So Close (Corey Yuen, 2002)

Gorgeous (Vincent Kok, 1999)

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Gorgeous (Vincent Kok, 1999)

The Island (Huang Bo, 2018)

The Island (Huang Bo, 2018)

Opening this week at the Oak Tree is the directorial debut of Huang Bo, a comic actor probably best known here for playing the Monkey King in Stephen Chow’s Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons. In The Island, he’s reunited with one of his co-stars from that

Hou Hsiao-hsien Capsule Reviews

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 of this

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

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

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 weightless.

Mojin: The Lost Legend (Wu Ershan, 2015)

Mojin: The Lost Legend (Wu Ershan, 2015)

International treasure Shu Qi stars in this blockbuster effects-driven film out of China, opening this week at the Pacific Place. One of a trio of grave robbers, Shu Qi and her compatriots Chen Kun and Huang Bo find themselves roped into a scheme to dig up a MacGuffin from an

The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2015)

Hou Hsiao-hsien

The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2015)

Hou Hsiao-hsien’s latest, his first film since 2007’s Flight of the Red Balloon, is set in the late Tang Dynasty period, starring Shu Qi as a young woman who returns home after ten years as a killer-in-training to wreak vengeance on the local ruler. The film follows a

Gone with the Bullets (Jiang Wen, 2014)

Gone with the Bullets (Jiang Wen, 2014)

So Jiang Wen made a Wong Jing movie. . . I watched the Thai DVD, which is the first version I’ve seen that has English subtitles. The running time is 119 minutes. Wikipedia and the IMDb give it a running time of 140 minutes, with a 120 minute international cut, while

Millennium Mambo (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2001)

Hou Hsiao-hsien

Millennium Mambo (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2001)

Millennium Mambo, released in 2001 and Hou Hsiao-hsien’s first to be theatrically distributed in the US, is his first one set entirely (well, almost) in the contemporary world since Daughter of the Nile, and like that film it tends to be passed over in favor of more ostensibly serious

Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons (Stephen Chow & Derek Kwok, 2013)

Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons (Stephen Chow & Derek Kwok, 2013)

I see a lot of complaints that this, the latest from Stephen Chow, is “no Kung Fu Hustle (or Shaolin Soccer)” which, yeah sure, it’s a different kind of movie than those. Those were the culmination of 15 years of Chow’s comedy style, which burst on the scene