The Movie:

On paper, Herman Yau's Rebellion sounds like a can't lose scenario. A gritty, violent looking tale of triad loyalty set on the mean streets of Hong Kong's Eastern District with a strong cast directed by the man who gave us The Ebola Syndrome and The Untold Story? Sign me up. That lovely red triangle with the CAT III logo on the box serves as a veritable guarantee of bloody action - maybe some bullet ballet, maybe some nasty hand to hand combat, there's gotta be some bloodshed in here, right? It's a Herman Yau Category III gangster movie, how can it go wrong?

The story takes places right when a triad leader named Jimmy is murdered. His right hand man, Po (Shawn Yue), is stuck with having to take on the role of leadership that his former boss has since left empty until his successor, Mrs. Wah (Ada Choi), who happens to be Jimmy's widow, returns back fro...Read the entire review

The film making scene that offered Herman Yau the opportunity to make Category III classics like The Untold Story and Ebola Syndrome no longer exists in Hong Kong, but the man continues to plug away and remains active with all kinds of low budget b-film efforts. Even if the fires of his off the wall film making have dimmed and its unlikely we'll see another Taxi Hunter out of the man, I'm kinda' glad his like is still out there. Unfortunately, The First 7th Night is a supernatural suspense tale that, while not horrible, is a mediocre vehicle unlikely to leave much of an impression.

Cabbie Long (Gordon Lam), nicknamed the Mapking, lives out of his cab. His trunk is full of his laundry, he hotplates his meals, the fleet of cabs parked under a dark underpass waiting for fares doubles as his neighborhood and family. Late one night he gets an odd fare in Pony (Julian Cheung), ...Read the entire review

The Film:

My third Xiaogang Feng film and now I finally know what kind of director the man is. My first two, Big Shots Funeral and The Banquet, were extremely divergent films, the former a stylistically low key comedy, the latter a lavishly produced opulent epic. Assembly (2007) is also different from those two, a period dramatic war film, what we in the States refer to as "Oscar bait" (and catch some awards it did). Artistically, the mainland Chinese director works within the same territory as a Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, or a William Wyler. I can safely say, the man aims to be a crowd pleaser.

Beginning in 1948, the film, which is based on a true story, follows Gu Zidi (Zhang Hangyu), a soldier fighting in the PLA (Peoples Liberation Army) during the Chines...Read the entire review

The Film:
For decades there has been a back-and-forth exchange of creative influences between Hollywood and Hong Kong. John Woo was heavily influenced by Sam Peckinpah, and in turn Woo's The Killer and Hardboiled helped rewrite the book on how action was presented in Hollywood films. For a long time, this relationship of Hong Kong influencing Hollywood and vice versa was limited primarily to loving homages and unabashed rip-offs, but seldom did it manifest in legitimate remakes. Perhaps the best known example of a remake is Martin Scorsese's The Departed, which had been made earlier in Hong Kong as Infernal Affairs. The Departed and Infernal Affairs served as a great example of how Hollywood could take an exceptional film from Hong Kong, and do it justice. Now, Hong Kong has taken a not-so-exceptional film, the 2004 action thrill Cellular, and ...Read the entire review

At a

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glance, at least, you'd think a son like Ryo (Shawn Yu) would have his parents beaming with joy. Their meek teenager is an exceptional student, a virtuoso on the violin, and, as it ...Read the entire review

THE SERIES

"The Sword and the Fairy" is one of those series' that could easily be missed by people as being disposable garbage. I had never heard of the series prior to reviewing it, nor knew what it was about. I made the classic mistake of assuming the picture of the two leads in period clothing indicated a TV series that would be a sweeping epic like "Curse of the Golden Flower." When the DVD arrived in hand and the description spoke of battles with "evil snake spirits," I began to get suspicious of what the following 34 episodes had in store.

I have always felt a new television series should be able to hook you in the first few minutes. I don't have to know the plot exactly or even know who the characters are, but the opening scene (or scenes) should have me invested in the remainder of the episode. For me the high mark in vague opening scenes definitely goes to "Lost." Unfo...Read the entire review

"They say happiness was a crystal ball. It was shattered when it fell from the sky. The broken pieces showered on everyone, and people began to pick them up. Some collected more, others found less. No one could find all the pieces."

Why can't more romantic comedies be this gentle? Even when its story falls maddeningly apart in its final half hour, "Look for a Star" maintains a sweetness that's all too missing in most modern romances. It is the tale of nice people falling in love, and while there may be the obligatory conflict, that is not the point. Here is a film that wishes nothing but happy thoughts on the audience.

Andy Lau stars as Sam, a billionaire industrialist who falls for Milan, a woman so vibrant and so lovely she could only be played by Shu Qi. Ah, but she is merely a lowly croupier in Sam's Macau casino (the MGM Grand, no less; the movie was filmed on location in all ...Read the entire review

It's

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been working the other way in recent years, with Hollywood raiding Eastern cinema to hammer out everything from The Departed to third-rate J-horro...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Lady Cop & Papa Crook is gritty crime drama slash goofy comedy, which manages to be both complex and entertaining. Hong Kong directors Alan Mak and Felix Chong provide the viewer with compelling characters, an interesting story and gorgeous visuals from start to finish.

The film does take a bit of time before the viewer understands fully what is going on. It opens with a gang smuggling diesel fuel from Hong Kong to mainland China. The operation is interrupted by the police, and one of the fuel trucks speeds off, careening down a busy highway pursued by the cops. The fuel truck soon crashes, killing both the driver and a young mother and her son in another car. We then move swiftly to a group of women in a night club dishing about their love lives a la Sex and the City. This transition is confusing to the viewer, until it is revealed that the night club is a fron...Read the entire review

Airing in 2007, the 37 episode TVB cop show The Ultimate Crime Fighter could also be called The Ultimate Kenny G Fan, Stuffy Cop Tries To Keep His Sweet, Geeky, Buck-Toothed Girlfriend because really there is far more of that than actual crime fighting.

Things start off promising enough. You have the great Yuen Biao (Prodigal Son, Dreadnaught, Dragons Forever, Peacock King) as Fo Sung, a former cop who became a monk, ditched the force and his family after shooting a kid. He comes back to HK and reunites with his old friend, noodle shop proprietor and apartment renter Wong Bo, played by another martial great Leung Kar Yan (Sleeping Fist, Legend of a Fighter). Fo Sung gets tangled with the police and becomes involved in a strange case where young men are seemingly becoming possessed, burning hot, imbued with super strength, freaking out on rampages before committing suici...Read the entire review

2006's Kung Fu Master is My Grandma is a dramatic comedy, one that aims for the light, family friendly, teen girl crowd. It has typical sappy moments, young generation vs. old generation dynamics, some romantic elements, and goofy humor. Oh yeah, and just a smidgen of kung fu.

Gucci (Isabel Chan) is a hot-headed girl. Her temper lands her in juvie after she assaults a wiseass jerk twice in the same night. She emerges from the clink to find that her mother died in an accident and her grandmother (Law Lan) is now her guardian. Apparently in China, it isn't considered bad form to just spring the news on a poor kid that her single parent has tragically died. Granny Wong Fei Hung and Gucci don't really know each other very well and have almost no communication. Gucci tries to spend a lot of time away from home while Granny silently frets. There isn't any great depth to the plotting, it is pure cl...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The Haunted Drum, a Thai picture that mixes drama, romance, and supernatural/horror elements from 2007, follows a young man named Ping (Kett Thantup) who is a music student who is take in by a master drummer named Aajaan Duang. Ping wants nothing more than to learn how to play an ancient drum named the Perng Mang, which if history is to be believed, was made from the skin of a beautiful woman named Thip (Woranut Wongsawan).

Ping's teacher gives him as many lessons as he can and Ping's ability fast improves under his tutelage. Everything seems to be coming up roses for the young man, who soon falls in love with a local girl, until some of Duang's students start showing up dead in increasingly bizarre ways. Complicating matters further is the presence of Muan (Anusorn Dachapanya), Duang's arch-rival, who does his best to steal the man's students and take them off t...Read the entire review

In 10 Words or Less
Hack comedy is not exclusive to America

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Out-there comedies
Likes: Asian cinema
Dislikes: Most comedies where the star plays several roles
Hates: The idea of "wacky" comedy

The Movie
Hoo boy. Where do I begin? This is one of the odder films I've seen come out of the East, coming across like an Asian version of "Date Movie," with take-offs of popular romantic-comedy storylines built around a loosely structured skeleton of a plot.

Kit is a young executive with a health supplement company whose career and personal life have come to a shared crossroads. After asking hisstewardess girlfriend Fung to marry him several times, only to be rebuffed again and again, he's g...Read the entire review

The Product:
When you think of Chinese cinema, a certain set of brothers typically come to mind. While foreign film has seen many significant offerings from the mainland and Hong Kong, it's the manic martial artistry of the siblings Shaw that draw the most attention. Of course, there's also the new wave of action heroes, from Jackie Chan to Jet Li, Stephen Chow to (insert latest red hot touted talent here). But as with all moviemaking, there is more to this particular Asian artform than roundhouse kicks, slo-mo gun battles, and death defying and re-defying stunts. Take Barbara Wong's clever comedy Happy Funeral. Like a John Hughes laugher from the '80s retrofitted into a post-millennial Chinese landscape, there is wit, warmth, and a last act overdose of manipulative schmaltz in this coming of age effort. The end result is actually something quite enjoyable - at least, for the first two...Read the entire review

I wonder what it must have been like to be Donnie Yen in the late 90's. He really got his start in the late 80's/early 90's, a time when HK martial arts films were at the end of an era. Gone were the 70's kung fu films, fading were the 80's stunt spectacles, and there was only the brief new wave boom that quickly died and was replaced by non-martial, slick action'ers and teeny-bop, pretty boy action stars. Yen was never out of work but, as he watched the genre he was suited for seemingly breathe its last breathes, things surely had to look a little bleak. Dark horizons or not, as a testament to his ambition, he did turn to directing. 1997's Legend of the Wolf stands firmly as a tossed off, low budget, first time director film, and as a result is very rough around the edges.

The story is very simple and the scripting incredibly muddled by holes in logic. Yen plays an amnesiac soldier (WW2) name...Read the entire review

Tai Seng's third Blu-ray offering is the over-produced, underwhelming House of Fury (Jing mo gaa ting, 2005), a shameless if innocuous Hong Kongese rip-off of Spy Kids (2001). In the earlier film two children, brother and sister, don't appreciate their parents until learning Mom and Dad are secret agents - and have to rescue them when their elders are kidnapped. In House of Fury, two much older children, also brother and sister, don't appreciate their widower father until learning he's a secret agent and must rescue him from ruthless kidnappers. Beyond this rather brazen bit of larceny, as an action-comedy-family melodrama House of Fury falls flat in all three departments, mainly due to the unambitious writing and extreme over-stylization - a case of sound and fury signifying nothing.

Tai Seng's Blu-ray looks and sounds quite nice however, though the extras are lit...Read the entire review

Everybody have fun tonight! Everybody Wing Chun tonight!

Oh, wait, that's Wang Chun. Wing Chun is a popular martial arts style that is often romanticized in Chinese films and television. The latest of which being the appropriately named Wing Chun which originally aired in 2007. Tai Seng recently released the entire forty episode series on DVD with an eight disc boxed set that is sure to please fans of martial arts and draw in new audiences.

One look at the cover will draw instant bouts of interest from HKC lovers with the likes of Sammo Hung, Nicholas Tse, and Yuen Biao displayed prominently. With the three of them present there is certainly an air of promise associated with this series. Is it a kung fu epic or simply a worthwhile distraction? Frankly it's a little of both though Wing Chun is definitely a flawed little gem.

Taking place presuma...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Director Wilson Yip's 2006 Dragon Tiger Gate, based on the long running Chinese comic book, sure is pretty to look at, even if it's a pretty shallow film. The story follows a man named Dragon (Donnie Yen), a young man who used to be a core member of Dragon Tiger Gate, a very covert martial arts academy. Dragon's younger brother, Tiger (Nicholas Tse), was raised by a big time criminal named Kwun. When Kwun meets up with a villain named Shibumi, he breaks up the meeting and steals a plaque that is apparently of great importance to the pair of bad guys.

Shibumi is pretty pissed off about this and so he and a bunch of henchmen decide to get it back. Meanwhile, a few useless romantic subplots are tossed into the mix and a guy named Turbo (Shawn Yue) beats some people up with nunchuks and tries to get into the Dragon Tiger Gate School. Once these plot points are out of the...Read the entire review

One of the most popular manga titles in Japan is Initial D, acar racing story that appeals to young and old readers alike. (Accordingto the bonus features on this disc, the manga was named after the Englishterm "starting from the D," a phrase I've never heard used.) As happenswith many successful comics in Japan, this story was turned into an animeseries. They didn't stop there though. There are scale modelsof the vehicles in the comic, clothing, remote controlled cars, a computergame and even a collectible card game. In 2005 the franchise wasexpanded in a way that few other manga comics have been: a live actionmovie was filmed. This film, entitled simply Initial D, hasnow been chosen by publisher Tai Seng to be their first Blu-ray release. The disc has a good though not reference image quality and an excellentsound d...Read the entire review

The Film:
There is no denying the tremendous impact Hong Kong filmmaking has had on American cinema, especially in the action and crime genres. The classic martial arts films that came out of Shaw Brothers Studios in the 1970s, as well as John Woo's The Killer and Hard Boiled were seminal in changing the way films all over the world were made, and the influence of these films can be seen in everything from The Matrix to Kill Bill and beyond. Even The Departed, the film that finally earned Martin Scorsese his much-deserved Oscar, was a remake of the HK classic Infernal Affairs. But just as American filmmakers have taken much from Asian filmmakers, so to have Asian directors gleaned much from the Western contemporaries, which is evidenced by recent films like Nai-Hoi Yau's Eye in the Sky.

What little story there is to be found in Eye in the ...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

The Chinese sensation Perhaps Love is a heady blend of romance, music, and the time-bending storytelling powers of director Peter Chan, who made one of my favorite little-known treasures, Comrades: Almost a Love Story. In Perhaps Love, he breaks the fourth wall of movie musicals, using the story of a director trying to make a modern take on the old genre to examine the nature of art and how it relates to the relationships in our lives.

The story centers on a love triangle that converges on a movie set in Shanghai. Nie Wen (Jacky Cheung, Ashes of Time) is a fading auteur now in service to the moneymen who finance his pictures. He's lost his drive, and with his big star, Sun (Xun Zhou, The Banquet), about to transition ...Read the entire review

When I first heard the buzz on Wilson Yip's Sha Po Lang/S.P.L./Killzone, that the film was a welcome return to the glory days of HK's no nonsense action, I was skeptical. While I ended up enjoying it, the resulting film was a bit of a mixed bag, a typical cops versus crooks crime drama with some decent action. After some drought years, S.P.L. gave Sammo Hung and Donnie Yen something substantial to do with their physical talents, but the film was a little too polished and serious to call it a sign of old school HK stunt action on a resurgence.

So, when Wilson Yip and Donnie Yen announced they'd be working together again on the comic book adaptation Dragon Tiger Gate, I was, once again, skeptical. Sorry, but years of flat action films and the death of actual talented stunt performers makes an old school fan a little more guarded when it comes to modern HK action films. Could the...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Swordsman II is one of the classics of early 1990s Hong Kong cinema, a runaway box office success at home and one of the first films to feature Jet Li in a starring role. Perhaps its storied reputation led me expect more than I could ever get, but I found it to be not a great film but a just-okay one, one that exemplified many of the weaknesses as well as strengths of films of its time and place.

Blade-wielding wine enthusiast Ling (Jet Li) and his sister Kiddo (Michelle Reis) journey to a remote monastery where they will meet up with their eight brothers and retire from society. Unbeknownst to them, the place has been ransacked by imperial soldiers, its remaining inhabitants scattered. After they make this discovery, Ling and his siblings hit the countryside in search of the survivors, planning to regroup and strike back at the warlords who attacked them. In the mean...Read the entire review

Heavenly Mission feels like a large melting pot of crime film influence, both native to Hong Kong and American roots. And, for a flick with so much influence, it ends up a bit better than expected. We're working with an enveloping protagonist counterbalance between the police and the criminals, similar to Michael Mann's Heat. However, Heavenly Mission is infused with both positive and negative flair in aesthetics and textual content that simultaneously make it more intriguing and less engaging than others in its genre.


The Film:

One of the common stereotypes about some foreign lands is that they are years behind other countries so far as trends are concerned. Borat just made a bundle with such jokes. If 2004's Ultimate Fight is any indication, China is a good decade behind when it comes to mixed martial arts by wallowing in the old UFC no-holds barred, style versus style ideal that begun in the mid 90's, before the sport evolved into what it is today.

The plot is a serviceable, throwaway number. Pretty boy, wannabe martial artist Kit wants to be a martial arts master. The only moves he knows are ones he imitates from classic kung fu VCDs. He goes into Jo's figurine store to check out a Bruce Lee statue and aides her when some hooligans accost her. The two make cute and she introduces him to her father, a Gracie Ju-Jitsu expert, who reluctantly takes on Kit as his pupil.

Kit needs all the help he can get bec...Read the entire review

The Movie

The one thing about a Johnnie To film you have to realize is that, there is always more than to it then it seems. To's work leaves you thinking and it is something you need to do to understand what is going on in a given movie. And some of the time, it will not be until the very end that everything starts to make sense. To's Running on Karma is a thinker with strong action and drama elements. As an overall movie, I was thought this was a pretty good movie if you are in the mood for a thinker that was made very well and has topnotch acting performances.

The story is about a fellow named Biggie (Andy Lau, Infernal Affairs). The reason his name is Biggie, is well, because he is a massivel...Read the entire review

The Film:
Jet Li's Fearless, which was released theatrically in the United States earlier this year, is the crowning achievement in the career of the martial artist-turned-actor. Despite the fact that American audiences know him best for his more recent work in American and European productions like Romeo Must Die and Kiss of the Dragon, it has been Li's work in Chinese and Hong Kong films -- over 30 in total -- that has made him one of the leading action stars in world cinema. Li was a child prodigy in the world of martial arts, winning his first championship at the age of 11. By the time he left the sport at 17, he was an international superstar, having spent five years as the All-Around National Wushu Champion of China. His first starring role came in the 1982's Shaolin Temple, a huge hit that catapulted Li even further into the role of international star.

Between...Read the entire review

The Movie

Please Teach Me English is a goofy insight about the romantic relationship between two people who fall in love with each other while in taking an English development course. Directed by the South Korean director Sung-su Kim (Musa: The Warrior), Please Teach Me English features a solid cast, a decent story, and lots of silly events to put a smile on your face. The film takes an approach where you do not have to think too hard about what's happening. When I first started the movie, I was not sure what to expect. The introduction was just so silly, I thought I was going to hate it. But I found once I got into the story, I couldn't stop laughing. The movie and its characters put a big smile on my face.

The leading female character is Young-...Read the entire review

The Movie

Drink Drank Drunk is a romantic comedy directed by Derek Yee (One Nite in Mongkok, Lost in Time) about a Budweiser beer promotion girl who falls in love with a French-born Chinese guy named Michel. The movie is a decent attempt at a love-stricken comedy, complete with slapstick performances and an all-around goofy cast.

Headlining the cast are Miriam Yeung (Love Undercover) as Siu Min and Daniel Wu (New Police Story) as Michel. Siu Min works nights at a local hotpot run by her gay boss and friend Bo Bo (Vincent Kok) as a beer promotion girl for Budweiser with her friends Rene (Renee Dai) and Toby (Toby Leung). As a beer promotion girl, she tries to get the patrons to buy Budweiser branded beer. She has a nickname "Ms. Never D...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Kin-lun Lam's directorial debut, 49 Days, is a gorgeous looking film that unfortunately suffers from some really disjointed storytelling and plot devices and an ending so contrived that it's actually painful to watch.

Set sometime in the past (the early 1900s?) the film tells the story of Lau Shing (Stephen Fung), a young man who is leaving the small country village where he was raised as well as his wife (!) to try his luck at city life. He's taking a couple of friends along with him for the ride and their plan is, once they arrive, to setup shop selling medicinal herbs. Before they leave they all get together for a big family portrait but the camera gets knocked over, a sign of bad luck and of things to come for Lau Shing and his pals.

From there we skip ahead a few years and Lau Shing's shop is doing very well. His wife keeps writing to him wondering when h...Read the entire review

Chok Dee (2005) is loosely based on the life of its star and former kickboxing champ, French fighter Dida Diafat. When I say it plays loose with the details, I mean in a way very common with entertainment. True life is usually a bit more boring, so sometimes you have to play with the facts when delivering a breezy commercial film.

Dida was a teenage street thug who took up kickboxing, trained in Thailand, and went on to become a successful kickboxing champ. Did he learn kickboxing while in prison from a wise old con who was in jail after being framed by a Thai criminal organization? No. Did he travel to Thailand alone, penniless, and persistently hang out in front of a kickboxing school that didn't want him and not give up until they admitted him? No (I found an old online interview where he says he first traveled to Thailand with some kickboxing gym buddies). Did he engage in underground fi...Read the entire review

May Cheng and her husband try to console their panicked, hyperventilating little boy. The boy is scared because while he and May were in the process of moving their stuff into their new apartment, the kid got briefly separated from his mother, and both May and the kid saw something scary inside the elevator shaft. Then, May and her husband have this brief exchange-

‟Honey, I just saw someone really scary-looking. No,... not a human being. I don't know what it was... It was crawling up the pipes.‟

‟Maybe we should move.‟

‟No. We've spent enough money buying this apartment. And its cozy here. We just need to get used to it.‟

What??? There is some horror movie stupidity. No Big deal. You just saw some kind of strange, sub-human creature crawling around in the ductwork of your apartment building. But, ya' know, aside f...Read the entire review

The Humanist (2001) is the debut film of Chan-woo Park collaborator Mu-yeong Lee, who co-wrote Park's Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Joint Securtiy Area. Park also served as co-writer for The Humanist.

A dark crime comedy of the blackest variety, The Humanist follows the bungled kidnaping plot of a privileged young man named Tea-ho (Jae-mo Ahn). A deadly mix of spoiled and demented, Tae-ho begrudges his wealthy real estate mogul father for giving Tae-ho a small allowance, shacking up with and marrying his former secretary, and, after he failed at college, forcing Tae-ho to go into military service. When Tae-ho accidentally kills a cop and is blackmailed, he needs money more than ever to keep from going to jail. He decides to have his father kidnaped, keeping the bulk of the ransom money to pay off his blackmailer, and hopes that by being the one taking charge of ge...Read the entire review