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Director: Wuershan Writers: An Changhe , Zhang Jiajia Stars: Masanobu Andô, You Benchang and Liu Xiaoye “The Butcher, the Chef and the Swordsman,” a dizzying period pop extravaganza from China, explodes with brio. Directed by Wuershan, a veteran of commercials who is making his feature debut, the film ricochets in a breakneck delirium from ham-fisted [...]
Opening:29 Dec 2011 Genre:Action, Adventure, MartialArts Distributor:Golden Village Pictures Director:Tsui Hark Cast:Chen Kun, Jet Li, Kwan Lun-Mei, Li Yuchun, Mavis Fan,Zhou Xun The bad guys are the eunuchs of the Imperial Court, who have created their own unaccountable secret police, armed with bizarre weapons and utterly ruthless in their quest for power and wealth. The good guys are led by [...]
Art movies are neither a popular nor profitable film genre in China, even though its annual box office exceeded 10 billion yuan ($1.54 billion) last year. With commercial productions of star-studded local hits and imported blockbusters crowding screens, little space remains for the domestic arthouse scene. For that reason, “The Piano in a Factory” (2010) [...]
You are about to enter another world that is the film End of Animal. Or is it a dream, and if that, more like an apocalyptic nightmare? Whatever it is, it’s a world that has signifiers that you know, but anything powered by electricity is cutoff. This means mobile phones as well. Even though cellular phones [...]
Magic to Win, money to lose. Producer Raymond Wong updates his Happy Ghostformula with this tepid comedy that should serve as a cautionary tale against remaking paper-thin pap from earlier decades. Not that there’s much to remake;Happy Ghost lumped together cute young girls with supernatural elements and random hijinks and called the resulting concoction a “movie.” If [...]
Some audiences may be exasperated at the recent surge of “main melody” films pushing the heroism and righteousness of modern China’s forefathers, but 72 Martyrs surprises. However, that surprise comes not from the film’s quality, but because the film seems to spend a lot of time not talking about the 72 Martyrs. Directed by Derek Chiu, who [...]
Jeff Lau is one amazing filmmaker – not because his films are always great, but because he attempts ambitious and emotional movies using random gags, screechy overacting, rampant slapstick and more navel-gazing romantic metaphor than should be allowed in any film. Lau’s films feature little consistency and less sense, plus they’ve become increasingly intertextual, requiring [...]