Tsui Hark

A collection of 28 posts

The 36th Chamber

Septet: The Story of Hong Kong (Various, 2020)

It’s hard to imagine how long I’ve been talking about the film that would eventually become Septet: The Story of Hong Kong. The first time I tweeted about it appears to have been August of 2017, although that tweet is phrased as a reminder, which means I must

King Hu

The King of Wuxia (Lin Jing-jie, 2022)

Joining the ever-expanding pantheon of great Chinese filmmakers given the full-length documentary treatment is King Hu, the man behind many of the most accomplished and influential action films of all-time. But while Johnnie To, Ann Hui, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and Jia Zhangke are still very much alive and working, and thus

Paid-members only

Tsui Hark

The Master (Tsui Hark, 1992)

Paid-members only

21st century Propaganda Films

The Battle at Lake Changjin (I & II) (Chen Kaige, Tsui Hark, & Dante Lam, 2021-22)

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

Patrick Tam

Final Victory (Patrick Tam, 1987)

A pair of eyes stare at us from under a green bowler hat. Then Eric Tsang looking uncomfortable, also facing us. Back to the hat, now revealing the whole face under it, that of Tsui Hark: pale, bearded, and glaring. Back to Eric Tsang, scared perhaps by Tsui, perhaps by

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

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

Derek Yee

Sword Master (Derek Yee, 2016)

In 1977, at the age of twenty and appearing in only his third film, Derek Yee got the starring role in Death Duel, a film by prolific Shaw Brothers director Chor Yuen. After helping spark a revitalization of Cantonese language cinema with his hit ensemble comedy The House of 72

Corey Yuen

Yes, Madam! (Corey Yuen, 1985)

Of the members of the Seven Little Fortunes Peking Opera troupe to become major figures in the Hong Kong film industry in the last 20 years before the colony’s handover to China, Corey Yuen is the least well known. Unlike Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and Yuen Biao, he stayed

John Woo

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

Tsui Hark

The Taking of Tiger Mountain (Tsui Hark, 2014)

Tsui Hark’s latest film, The Taking of Tiger Mountain, like his previous two films shot in 3D, is the latest in a string of works linking traditional genres to contemporary digital technology, recasting gong’an crime fiction and King Hu-era wuxia in the language of modern CGI-spectacle with his

Johnnie To

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

Tsui Hark

Flying Swords of Dragon Gate (Tsui Hark, 2011)

Tsui Hark’s second variation on Kung Hu’s masterpiece, after 1992’s New Dragon Gate Inn (nominally directed by Raymond Lee). While that version added Tsui’s Blues–movie style sexual complications and gender-ambiguity along with a healthy dose of cannibalism while minimizing the fighting, this one ramps up

Tsui Hark

A Better Tomorrow III: Love and Death in Saigon (Tsui Hark, 1989)

I don’t know all the behind-the-scenes details about this, I’m not sure that anyone aside from Tsui Hark and John Woo really knows for sure, but as I understand it the story is this: following the breakout success of the Woo-directed and Tsui-produced 1986 film A Better Tomorrow,

Tsui Hark

Shanghai Blues (Tsui Hark, 1984)

In his essential book Planet Hong Kong [http://www.davidbordwell.net/books/planethongkong.php], David Bordwell examines a sequence in the 1986 film Peking Opera Blues where director Tsui Hark deftly coordinates the movements of his actors as they try to remain hidden from an inquisitive father (three of them,

Tsui Hark

New Dragon Gate Inn (Raymond Lee, 1992)

This was nominally directed by Raymond Lee, a cog in the Film Workshop machine, working as a planner or nominal director for several Tsui Hark and/or Ching Siu-tung projects. Tsui was pumping out movies like a madman in the early 90s, with 18 producer credits between 1990’s Swordsman

Tsui Hark

The Lovers and Love in the Time of Twilight (Tsui Hark, 1994 and 1995)

The Lovers starts as your typical guy-falls-in-love-with-girl-dressed-as-a-guy rom-com, then turns into hallucinatory elemental melodrama. Starring Nicky Wu and Charlie Yeung, Tsui here presents a fairly faithful version of the oft-told legend of The Butterfly Lovers [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_Lovers], a story somewhat akin to European legends like

Tsui Hark

Seven Swords (Tsui Hark, 2005)

Tsui Hark’s next major film after a CGI-driven remake of his own Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain in 2001, this is a less effects-driven wuxia epic than a riff on Seven Samurai with a Chang Cheh influence (the Northern Chinese medieval warfare of The Heroic Ones comes to

Tsui Hark

Young Detective Dee and the Rise of the Sea Dragon (Tsui Hark, 2013)

The anarchist prankster Tsui Hark who burst onto the Hong Kong scene over 30 years ago with Dangerous Encounters—First Kind and We’re Going to Eat You still lurks underneath layers of glossy CGI as the eponymous detective, in order to counteract their poisoned tea, orders all 1,200

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

Tsui Hark

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

Tsui Hark

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

John Woo

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 and

Tsui Hark

Green Snake (Tsui Hark, 1993)

Tsui Hark merges the punk outrage of his early films with the lavish, effects-driven wuxia of his later much more financially successful works in this pointed denunciation of the hypocrisies both sexual and racial in China’s religious traditions, the backward superstitional blindness of Taoism and the calcification of Buddhism