Year - 2004
20:30:40. The title refers to the amount of years that seems to pass while waiting for the movie to end. Basically the same story as Sex and the Beauties, only instead of thinking it's a comedy, this movie thinks it's an... » MORE
6 AM. The corpse isn't even cold yet but here's a parody/knock off of Jiang Hu. Steven Cheung and Kenny Kwan are Noodle and Bowl respectively, two lazy students who stumble into a triad lottery where the unlucky winner will have to... » MORE
A1. No, it's not about a steak sauce. A-1 I imagine refers to the front page of the newspaper: section A, page 1. Ling (Angelica Lee Sinje) is a fashion reporter, Kevin (Edison Chen) her photographer. She wants to quit her... » MORE
Abnormal Beauty. Jiney (Race) and her girlfriend Jasmine (Rosanne) are art students into photography. But then Jin takes a picture of a dead body and becomes obsessed with death, snapping pictures of dead animals, brooding, contemplating suicide, and having traumatic memories of... » MORE
Astonishing. This thriller from Herman Yau asks what would happen if you woke up one day and everyone treated you like you were someone else. Someone you knew. And that person that you knew, is now you, and works at your... » MORE
Attractive One, The. These cookie cutter romances deserve a cookie cutter response. Perhaps I should review them using a standard template. Writer/Director Matt Chow shovels up more of the same for a tired, bored audience.... » MORE
Beyond Our Ken. Ken (Daniel Wu) is a sturdy fireman who has no trouble with the ladies. That is, until his ex girlfriend Ching (Gillian Cheung) shows up one day at the nightclub where his current girlfriend Zhou-lan (Tao Hong) is a waitress,... » MORE
Butterfly. Flavia (Josie Ho) is a schoolteacher at an all-girls school, married to the nice and low key Mark (Eric Kot), and has a one-year old daughter. The only trouble is, she is gay, and once she meets the free spirited... » MORE
Chiseen. Cut rate quickimart version of JACKASS. As if the world needs such a thing. Apparently these short clips ran on MTV Asia, and have been compiled into a DVD by Taiseng for sale in the U.S. It does not appear... » MORE
Citizen Dog. Whimsical and surreal, candy-coated movie that overdoes it on the whimsy and leaves you feeling that you've been held down by a group of purple-clad elves and force-fed pixie sticks. ... » MORE
Cop Unbowed. Lam (Alex Fong) and Fung (Michael Tse) were best of pals, until Fung accidentally kills the girlfriend of Mr. Dick (Eddy Ko), the mob boss. Fung blames it on Lam, which cuts their friendship short prematurely, and permanently, as Lam... » MORE
Crying Fiddle. What a sad fiddle. But why? Why is this fiddle crying? Perhaps, if you sit down and watch CRYING FIDDLE, you will learn why. Perhaps, the fiddle cries because the movie made about it was shot cheaply on digital video... » MORE
Dating Death. A group of friends go out to a private island villa, where one of them, after confessing his love of one of the girls, is brutally killed. Five years later, they all go back, and natually, get bumped off one... » MORE
Driving Miss Wealthy. Lau Ching-Wan is an out of work, former police officer lands a job as the security guard/driver for Jennifer (Gigi Leung), the rich, spoiled daughter of a wealthy businessman. He poses as a Filipino named Mario and has to follow... » MORE
Dumplings: Three...Extremes. Miriam Yeung eats abortions in the hope of regaining her youth and becoming attractive once again to her rich but wayward husband (Tony Leung Kar-Fai). Bai Ling is the chef, making lovely little dumplings filled with the little bits of... » MORE
Elixir of Love. Richie Jen is a one man Bath & Body shop in imperial China, developing perfumes, soaps, and the like and testing them on a family of fishmongers (Eric Kot, Lam Suet, and Miriam Yeung) for the ultimate prize: being the... » MORE
End of the Stumer, The. What the hell is a Stumer? Did they mean the End of the Summer? The Stunner? The Stoner? The Stammerer? No, turns out they really sort of mean "The Stumer," defined as a forgery or I suppose a forger. This... » MORE
Enter the Phoenix. Stephen Fung turns from acting to directing and for his first full length feature has delivered an entertaining action-comedy gay triad movie. When the old triad boss (Yuen Biao in an inspired cameo) dies, his son Georgie (Daniel Wu) is... » MORE
Escape from Hong Kong Island. Mr. Raymond Mak (Jordan Chan) is a miillionaire stock broker that everyone else licks the boots of -- until suddenly, he is fired. That in itself is not bad, he's got another offer that has to be signed at the... » MORE
Explosive City. There's so many things wrong with EXPLOSIVE CITY it's hard to know where to begin. Perhaps with the tired idea of the kidnapping ring that raises kids to be assassins, for one. Then there's the international cast that occasionally drifts... » MORE
Eye 2, The. This sequel to The Eye (2002) manages to pick up a new idea and keeps the "I see dead people" genre fresh seemingly far past its expiration date. This time it's Shu Qi who gets the ability, in one of... » MORE
Fall In Love Too Easily. Why is it there are so many masturbation scenes in independent productions? Perhaps because the masturbatory nature of the entire enterprise is so much more readily apparent. In mainstream cinema, masturbation is played strictly for comedy. In the indys, it... » MORE
Fantasia. A loving tribute to the classic Hui Brothers comedies of the seventies, starring Lau Ching-Wan in the Michael Hui role (and doing a shockingly perfect impersonation of the man), as the head of a detective company. His impovershed and poorly... » MORE
Final Detention. Thai movies explore every lowbrow genre of film, so when I saw a Thai Women-in-Prison film, how could I resist? Maybe I could have resisted by recalling Thailand's draconian censorship laws. Another good way would have been to recall that... » MORE
Forbidden Wet Tales. This has to be the rauchiest digital video Category III production I've ever seen. Emily Kwan is a cop looking for a missing girl, who suspects that a writer of erotic films (Eddie Lam) is involved. They swap tales about... » MORE
Goddess of Mercy. Yang Rui (Liu Yunlong) is a Beijing businessman and womanizing pig who tries to nail the plain-looking but attractive An Xin (Vicki Zhao) on a bet from a friend. Instead, he falls in love with her. She keeps her distance,... » MORE
Heat Team. Completely ludicrous buddy cop picture that tries to combine serious action with completely unrealistic police procedures and behavior. Eason Chan is the slovenly cop who gets all the chicks, while Aaron Kwok is the uptight cop who is slightly dim,... » MORE
Herbal Tea. Herman Yau directs this uninspired oddball romance about a girl (Candy Lo) who runs an herbal tea cafe, and has ever since her elderly parents passed away when she was very young. She never leaves the neighborhood, and helps everyone... » MORE
Hidden Heroes. Ronald Cheung is a cowardly cop, faithless to his Japanese girlfriend, and an all around loser. Then a robot from the future shows up (Charlene Choi), tasked with making sure the future happens as planned. She has to keep him... » MORE
House of Flying Daggers. This must be the most beautiful movie I have ever seen. The Tang Dynasty fairy tale takes place mostly outdoors, the backdrop the four seasons and the changing terrain, from forests to grasslands to bamboo groves. Against this natural backdrop... » MORE
House of Mad Souls, A. To forget her ex-boyfriend Man, Jitty (Cindy Sirinya Berbridge) moves out of the city and into the suburbs. But wait -- it's even more horrible than that! While she's there, she keeps getting haunted by a little boy. From there,... » MORE
In Laws, Out Laws. Eric Tsang and his son Shawn Yue, two out of work hucksters in Hong Kong looking to make a buck any way possible, find out that Tsang's old flame, played by Lydia Shum (who appears to have hardly aged a... » MORE
Infernal Mission. The setup is a shameless ripoff of INFERNAL AFFAIRS, no background story required, since we all know the story. But here's twist -- this time, the stars are girls! Yay! Theresa Mak is the undercover cop, tapping out morse code... » MORE
Itchy Heart. Lau Ching-Wan is a married man, but seven years on he's got the itch and when his wife leaves town he hooks up with his old girlfriend (Carina Lau) and a sweet little young number (Cherrie Ying). His wife is... » MORE
Jiang Hu. Director Wong Ching-Po's first mainstream work is also his best to date. The short running time (under 90 minutes) aggresively compacts the story of Yik (Shawn Yue), a young hood who wins the chance to kill a triad kingpin in... » MORE
Koma. The old urban legend about waking up in a tub of ice with a note to call the police, only to find your kidney has been removed, is revived again for this suspense thriller. Ching (Angelica Lee) stumbles across a... » MORE
Kung Fu Hustle. The place is 1930's Shanghai, caught in the grip of the murderous Axe Gang. Sing (Stephen Chiau) and his sidekick (Lam Tze-Chung) are small time cons who try to pass as members of the all-powerful Gang in order to shake... » MORE
Leave Me Alone. Much maligned Ekin Cheng shows his stuff here is a slick, light hearted action movie about twin brothers Yiu (Ekin Cheng and Ekin Cheng), who switch identities and get mixed up in each other's troubles. Yiu Chun-Man is a gay... » MORE
Leaving Me, Loving You. I imagine when making the film there was a sleeping baby in the next room and no one was allowed to speak above a whisper. The director, Wilson Yip, must have been on so much Vicodin that he didn't realize... » MORE
Life and Times of Wu Zhong Xian, The. An adaptation of a stage play by Mok Chiu Yu, who also stars. Basically, this is a taped performance of the play, a one-man show, and not so much a show as a lecture. Mok Chiu Yu is sort of... » MORE
Life Express. A poor kid named Luk Fei (Liu Ci-Hang) is admitted to hospital with hemophilia while doctors (Richie Jen and Ruby Lin) scramble to find a bone marrow transplant, but the donor match that shows up is from a hardened criminal... » MORE
Love Battlefield. Director Soi Cheang has made a name for himself in Hong Kong of late by delivering quality horror films that feel at least a somewhat original and that are well crafted. He has taken his craft to the next level... » MORE
Love is a Many Stupid Thing. Under the generic and misleading title lies a very funny send-up of INFERNAL AFFAIRS, courtesy of schlockmeister Wong Jing. In his typical fashion, the title (and trailer) basically try to mislead audiences into thinking the movie is a remake of... » MORE
Love on the Rocks. A sweet romantic comedy featuring the cutest Hong Kong stars they could find. Louis Koo and Gigi Leung break up on Valentine's Day because he is not sufficiently romantic, and have until Easter to get back together. He gets in... » MORE
Love Trilogy. Three couples travel to Kunming in Yunnan province for various reasons; each representing a different stage in love. Each also represents a different market for the film, thus maximizing profitability. The old timers, married for seven years, are represented by... » MORE
Magic Kitchen. Sammi Cheng is the inheritor of her mother's restaurant and her reciepe books, both of which she clings to and doesn't want to change. Her young employee, played by Jerry Yan, has a different idea and wants her to cook... » MORE
Marebito. The ideas that underly MAREBITO are interesting, but the presentation makes us feel like we've all been here before, countless times. Whether its the video-camera point of view shots from BLAIR WITCH PROJECT or the sheer terror felt by victims... » MORE
McDull, Prince de la Bun. Like the first McDull movie, this picture is a remarkable animated interpretation of Hong Kong. This time McDull and his kindergarten is smack in the middle of an urban renewal project and slated for the wrecking ball. His mother, meanwhile,... » MORE
Miracle Box, The. Within the first ten minutes, I've learned that a rainbow is actually a full circle, half on earth and half in heaven; and if you write all your troubles on a piece of paper and put it in a box,... » MORE
Money Kills. A group of dimly intelligent provincial types come across a dead body and a big bag of money, and decide to keep the bag of money. There's Ken Wong, the "smart" one, whose business has failed and sort of wants... » MORE
Moving Targets. Wong Jing scores big with another cop vs. triad picture with a strong story and sense of local (Hong Kong) identity, similar to 2003's THE COLOUR OF THE TRUTH. Nicholas Tse and Edison Chen star as young, tough cops who... » MORE
My Baby Shot Me Down. Looking for some female vengeance in this movie whose title was obviously inspired by the KILL BILL soundtrack? Not really here. Instead it's the story of an actor turned serial killer -- as we all have long suspected, there's really... » MORE
My Sweetie. Hong Kong DJ Sammy Leung was pretty funny as an idiotic, child-like model in this year's Ronald Cheng megahit Supermodel. But I was little put off by his starring role here, as an idiotic, child-like shampoo company office worker. Since... » MORE
New Police Story. Jackie Chan is a police superintendant who leads his team into a death trap against a group of young amoral ultraviolent thieves who love to kill police. He turns to alcohol until a new partner (Nicholas Tse) gets him out... » MORE
One Night in Mongkok. One gang boss puts out a hit on another gang boss. Lai Fu (Daniel Wu), an empovershed mainlander they recruit for the job, arrives in Hong Kong while Officer Milo (Alex Fong) and his team (including Chin Kar-Lok and Ken... » MORE
Osaka Wrestling Restaurant. A low budget Japanese/Hong Kong co-production that makes up for lack of budget with energy and charm. Sammo Hung's son Timmy Hung plays Ricky, who dreams of becoming a famous chef. Wayne Lai is his estranged brother Mike, who is... » MORE
Papa Loves You. A month after releasing Herbal Tea, along comes another warm, fuzzy comedy from director Herman Yau, which even uses an alarmingly similar image -- star on a moped -- to advertise it. Happily, though, this effort is an improvement over... » MORE
Police Case. Boring shot on video production starring Elle Choi as a police secretary who sits around bored at her job all day while beat cop Ken Wong is out all day doing his rounds. Wong appears to be the only cop... » MORE
Protege de la Rose Noire. How can a film star the charismatic, popular, and peppy Twins (Charlene Choi and Gillian Cheung), be directed by action star Donnie Yen, concern costumed crimefighting against a sexy villainess and her hitwomen, combine action and comedy, and yet still... » MORE
Pyaasi Nagin. A complete rip off of the classic 1976 film Nagin. While it isn't quite scene-for-scene, a la Gus Van Sant's PSYCHO, it is pretty damn close. As if pretending otherwise, the movie opens with a disclaimer that "All the characters... » MORE
SARS Wars. Zombie movies are a dime a dozen these days, and though many of them are extremely bad, there is a built in audience that keeps shambling forward for more, and keep watching them despite being burned so many times in... » MORE
Secret Pursuit, The. Qiandao Lake. Xiuxiu's brother is killed by gangsters, his last words, "Yellow Ribbon." Meanwhile Mailong (Peter Ho Yun-tung) is a photographer working for Jimi (Tiffany Lee)'s Bridal Shop. He feels an ominous conspiracy creeping all around him. A sense of... » MORE
Sex and the Beauties. Wong Jing's comedy about women falling in love starts strong but loses steam and gets pretty dull in its last half-hour. But nevertheless he manages to tell a story of twenty, thirty, and fourty-something women in a way that is... » MORE
Shaolin vs. Evil Dead. A new hopping vampire film primarily for the U.S. market, expressly designed to piggy-back on the appearance of Gordon Liu in KILL BILL. Presumably producers hoped that viewers of KILL BILL would be curious about Liu, and wonder about how... » MORE
Silver Hawk. Michelle Yeoh's career has always been of great potential badly spent. She just seems so great -- she's got the moves, the acting ability, the looks -- but when it comes right down to it, her movies are often atrociously... » MORE
Six Strong Guys. Less than two years after Leslie Cheung jumped to his death from a balcony of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, I thought initially it may be in bad taste to begin a comedy with four stars contemplating a similar suicide. But... » MORE
Supermodel. Though Hong Kong has long imitated Hollywood and ripped off movie ideas one after another, it used to be the case that the Hong Kong version was always more outrageous and more entertaining. But in the post-THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY... » MORE
Three of a Kind. Michael Hui and Lau Ching-wan played opposite each other briefly earlier in the year in the Hui Brothers tribute film FANTASIA. Here Hui plays Dragon Lone, a famous kung fu novelist, who has suffered from writing block for 13 years,... » MORE
Throwdown. Gripping. And throwing. THROWDOWN presents a whole new way of seeing bodies in motion -- quick twists followed by loud thuds. Aaron Kwok is an enthusiastic Judo practitioner, who loves nothing more than finding other Judo wrestlers to fight. He... » MORE
Time to Love, A. Two weepy, over-melodramatic lovers, Qu Ran (Vicki Zhao Wei) and Hou Jia (Lu Yi) grow up in angst because their fanatically embittered parents hate each other, just like Shakespeare's ROMEO AND JULIET, which becomes what they consider to be "their... » MORE
Twins Effect II. Pure entertainment. Light, kids stuff to be sure, but lots of fun anyway. Not even remotely related to the original TWINS EFFECT, the second movie drops the Vampire theme entirely and delivers basically the Hong Kong equivalent of an Italian... » MORE
Ultimate Fight. Directed by Tony Leung Siu Hung, Chairman of the HK Stuntmen's Association. Starring Lau Kar Wing, the old Shaw Brothers action master, as a retired Jujitsu expert. I'm telling you all this so that you can be as profoundly disappointed... » MORE
Unplugging Nightmare. This is what the TROUBLESOME NIGHT series would look like with a little more money and more serious storylines. The story concerns a reporter (Yoyo Mung) who has the same dream over and over again for ten years, about a... » MORE
Wedding or a Funeral, A. Sam Lee is about to get married, but that night, his beautiful fiance (Paulyn Sun) is abducted and he is forced to capture a series of ever more hardened criminals for the abductor or she will be killed. The movie,... » MORE
White Dragon. It's rare that I see a Hong Kong movie in the theater. But this one ran at the Gene Siskel Film Center in downtown Chicago, and I popped over after work this evening to catch it. The movie was shown... » MORE
Yah Nark. Another cheap, shot on video, Thai ghost film. But wait! It's in 3-D! And so, another regretful impulse buy is made, and there's nothing left to do but watch what is advertised as the first 3-D Thai movie ever.... » MORE
Yesterday Once More. Johnnie To once again pairs Andy Lau and Sammi Cheng together for a romantic comedy. They've got great chemistry, as usual. This time they are a married couple of wealthy kleptomaniacs who love to steal things together. They divorce one... » MORE
20:30:40. The title refers to the amount of years that seems to pass while waiting for the movie to end. Basically the same story as Sex and the Beauties, only instead of thinking it's a comedy, this movie thinks it's an... » MORE
6 AM. The corpse isn't even cold yet but here's a parody/knock off of Jiang Hu. Steven Cheung and Kenny Kwan are Noodle and Bowl respectively, two lazy students who stumble into a triad lottery where the unlucky winner will have to... » MORE
A1. No, it's not about a steak sauce. A-1 I imagine refers to the front page of the newspaper: section A, page 1. Ling (Angelica Lee Sinje) is a fashion reporter, Kevin (Edison Chen) her photographer. She wants to quit her... » MORE
Abnormal Beauty. Jiney (Race) and her girlfriend Jasmine (Rosanne) are art students into photography. But then Jin takes a picture of a dead body and becomes obsessed with death, snapping pictures of dead animals, brooding, contemplating suicide, and having traumatic memories of... » MORE
Astonishing. This thriller from Herman Yau asks what would happen if you woke up one day and everyone treated you like you were someone else. Someone you knew. And that person that you knew, is now you, and works at your... » MORE
Attractive One, The. These cookie cutter romances deserve a cookie cutter response. Perhaps I should review them using a standard template. Writer/Director Matt Chow shovels up more of the same for a tired, bored audience.... » MORE
Beyond Our Ken. Ken (Daniel Wu) is a sturdy fireman who has no trouble with the ladies. That is, until his ex girlfriend Ching (Gillian Cheung) shows up one day at the nightclub where his current girlfriend Zhou-lan (Tao Hong) is a waitress,... » MORE
Butterfly. Flavia (Josie Ho) is a schoolteacher at an all-girls school, married to the nice and low key Mark (Eric Kot), and has a one-year old daughter. The only trouble is, she is gay, and once she meets the free spirited... » MORE
Chiseen. Cut rate quickimart version of JACKASS. As if the world needs such a thing. Apparently these short clips ran on MTV Asia, and have been compiled into a DVD by Taiseng for sale in the U.S. It does not appear... » MORE
Citizen Dog. Whimsical and surreal, candy-coated movie that overdoes it on the whimsy and leaves you feeling that you've been held down by a group of purple-clad elves and force-fed pixie sticks. ... » MORE
Cop Unbowed. Lam (Alex Fong) and Fung (Michael Tse) were best of pals, until Fung accidentally kills the girlfriend of Mr. Dick (Eddy Ko), the mob boss. Fung blames it on Lam, which cuts their friendship short prematurely, and permanently, as Lam... » MORE
Crying Fiddle. What a sad fiddle. But why? Why is this fiddle crying? Perhaps, if you sit down and watch CRYING FIDDLE, you will learn why. Perhaps, the fiddle cries because the movie made about it was shot cheaply on digital video... » MORE
Dating Death. A group of friends go out to a private island villa, where one of them, after confessing his love of one of the girls, is brutally killed. Five years later, they all go back, and natually, get bumped off one... » MORE
Driving Miss Wealthy. Lau Ching-Wan is an out of work, former police officer lands a job as the security guard/driver for Jennifer (Gigi Leung), the rich, spoiled daughter of a wealthy businessman. He poses as a Filipino named Mario and has to follow... » MORE
Dumplings: Three...Extremes. Miriam Yeung eats abortions in the hope of regaining her youth and becoming attractive once again to her rich but wayward husband (Tony Leung Kar-Fai). Bai Ling is the chef, making lovely little dumplings filled with the little bits of... » MORE
Elixir of Love. Richie Jen is a one man Bath & Body shop in imperial China, developing perfumes, soaps, and the like and testing them on a family of fishmongers (Eric Kot, Lam Suet, and Miriam Yeung) for the ultimate prize: being the... » MORE
End of the Stumer, The. What the hell is a Stumer? Did they mean the End of the Summer? The Stunner? The Stoner? The Stammerer? No, turns out they really sort of mean "The Stumer," defined as a forgery or I suppose a forger. This... » MORE
Enter the Phoenix. Stephen Fung turns from acting to directing and for his first full length feature has delivered an entertaining action-comedy gay triad movie. When the old triad boss (Yuen Biao in an inspired cameo) dies, his son Georgie (Daniel Wu) is... » MORE
Escape from Hong Kong Island. Mr. Raymond Mak (Jordan Chan) is a miillionaire stock broker that everyone else licks the boots of -- until suddenly, he is fired. That in itself is not bad, he's got another offer that has to be signed at the... » MORE
Explosive City. There's so many things wrong with EXPLOSIVE CITY it's hard to know where to begin. Perhaps with the tired idea of the kidnapping ring that raises kids to be assassins, for one. Then there's the international cast that occasionally drifts... » MORE
Eye 2, The. This sequel to The Eye (2002) manages to pick up a new idea and keeps the "I see dead people" genre fresh seemingly far past its expiration date. This time it's Shu Qi who gets the ability, in one of... » MORE
Fall In Love Too Easily. Why is it there are so many masturbation scenes in independent productions? Perhaps because the masturbatory nature of the entire enterprise is so much more readily apparent. In mainstream cinema, masturbation is played strictly for comedy. In the indys, it... » MORE
Fantasia. A loving tribute to the classic Hui Brothers comedies of the seventies, starring Lau Ching-Wan in the Michael Hui role (and doing a shockingly perfect impersonation of the man), as the head of a detective company. His impovershed and poorly... » MORE
Final Detention. Thai movies explore every lowbrow genre of film, so when I saw a Thai Women-in-Prison film, how could I resist? Maybe I could have resisted by recalling Thailand's draconian censorship laws. Another good way would have been to recall that... » MORE
Forbidden Wet Tales. This has to be the rauchiest digital video Category III production I've ever seen. Emily Kwan is a cop looking for a missing girl, who suspects that a writer of erotic films (Eddie Lam) is involved. They swap tales about... » MORE
Goddess of Mercy. Yang Rui (Liu Yunlong) is a Beijing businessman and womanizing pig who tries to nail the plain-looking but attractive An Xin (Vicki Zhao) on a bet from a friend. Instead, he falls in love with her. She keeps her distance,... » MORE
Heat Team. Completely ludicrous buddy cop picture that tries to combine serious action with completely unrealistic police procedures and behavior. Eason Chan is the slovenly cop who gets all the chicks, while Aaron Kwok is the uptight cop who is slightly dim,... » MORE
Herbal Tea. Herman Yau directs this uninspired oddball romance about a girl (Candy Lo) who runs an herbal tea cafe, and has ever since her elderly parents passed away when she was very young. She never leaves the neighborhood, and helps everyone... » MORE
Hidden Heroes. Ronald Cheung is a cowardly cop, faithless to his Japanese girlfriend, and an all around loser. Then a robot from the future shows up (Charlene Choi), tasked with making sure the future happens as planned. She has to keep him... » MORE
House of Flying Daggers. This must be the most beautiful movie I have ever seen. The Tang Dynasty fairy tale takes place mostly outdoors, the backdrop the four seasons and the changing terrain, from forests to grasslands to bamboo groves. Against this natural backdrop... » MORE
House of Mad Souls, A. To forget her ex-boyfriend Man, Jitty (Cindy Sirinya Berbridge) moves out of the city and into the suburbs. But wait -- it's even more horrible than that! While she's there, she keeps getting haunted by a little boy. From there,... » MORE
In Laws, Out Laws. Eric Tsang and his son Shawn Yue, two out of work hucksters in Hong Kong looking to make a buck any way possible, find out that Tsang's old flame, played by Lydia Shum (who appears to have hardly aged a... » MORE
Infernal Mission. The setup is a shameless ripoff of INFERNAL AFFAIRS, no background story required, since we all know the story. But here's twist -- this time, the stars are girls! Yay! Theresa Mak is the undercover cop, tapping out morse code... » MORE
Itchy Heart. Lau Ching-Wan is a married man, but seven years on he's got the itch and when his wife leaves town he hooks up with his old girlfriend (Carina Lau) and a sweet little young number (Cherrie Ying). His wife is... » MORE
Jiang Hu. Director Wong Ching-Po's first mainstream work is also his best to date. The short running time (under 90 minutes) aggresively compacts the story of Yik (Shawn Yue), a young hood who wins the chance to kill a triad kingpin in... » MORE
Koma. The old urban legend about waking up in a tub of ice with a note to call the police, only to find your kidney has been removed, is revived again for this suspense thriller. Ching (Angelica Lee) stumbles across a... » MORE
Kung Fu Hustle. The place is 1930's Shanghai, caught in the grip of the murderous Axe Gang. Sing (Stephen Chiau) and his sidekick (Lam Tze-Chung) are small time cons who try to pass as members of the all-powerful Gang in order to shake... » MORE
Leave Me Alone. Much maligned Ekin Cheng shows his stuff here is a slick, light hearted action movie about twin brothers Yiu (Ekin Cheng and Ekin Cheng), who switch identities and get mixed up in each other's troubles. Yiu Chun-Man is a gay... » MORE
Leaving Me, Loving You. I imagine when making the film there was a sleeping baby in the next room and no one was allowed to speak above a whisper. The director, Wilson Yip, must have been on so much Vicodin that he didn't realize... » MORE
Life and Times of Wu Zhong Xian, The. An adaptation of a stage play by Mok Chiu Yu, who also stars. Basically, this is a taped performance of the play, a one-man show, and not so much a show as a lecture. Mok Chiu Yu is sort of... » MORE
Life Express. A poor kid named Luk Fei (Liu Ci-Hang) is admitted to hospital with hemophilia while doctors (Richie Jen and Ruby Lin) scramble to find a bone marrow transplant, but the donor match that shows up is from a hardened criminal... » MORE
Love Battlefield. Director Soi Cheang has made a name for himself in Hong Kong of late by delivering quality horror films that feel at least a somewhat original and that are well crafted. He has taken his craft to the next level... » MORE
Love is a Many Stupid Thing. Under the generic and misleading title lies a very funny send-up of INFERNAL AFFAIRS, courtesy of schlockmeister Wong Jing. In his typical fashion, the title (and trailer) basically try to mislead audiences into thinking the movie is a remake of... » MORE
Love on the Rocks. A sweet romantic comedy featuring the cutest Hong Kong stars they could find. Louis Koo and Gigi Leung break up on Valentine's Day because he is not sufficiently romantic, and have until Easter to get back together. He gets in... » MORE
Love Trilogy. Three couples travel to Kunming in Yunnan province for various reasons; each representing a different stage in love. Each also represents a different market for the film, thus maximizing profitability. The old timers, married for seven years, are represented by... » MORE
Magic Kitchen. Sammi Cheng is the inheritor of her mother's restaurant and her reciepe books, both of which she clings to and doesn't want to change. Her young employee, played by Jerry Yan, has a different idea and wants her to cook... » MORE
Marebito. The ideas that underly MAREBITO are interesting, but the presentation makes us feel like we've all been here before, countless times. Whether its the video-camera point of view shots from BLAIR WITCH PROJECT or the sheer terror felt by victims... » MORE
McDull, Prince de la Bun. Like the first McDull movie, this picture is a remarkable animated interpretation of Hong Kong. This time McDull and his kindergarten is smack in the middle of an urban renewal project and slated for the wrecking ball. His mother, meanwhile,... » MORE
Miracle Box, The. Within the first ten minutes, I've learned that a rainbow is actually a full circle, half on earth and half in heaven; and if you write all your troubles on a piece of paper and put it in a box,... » MORE
Money Kills. A group of dimly intelligent provincial types come across a dead body and a big bag of money, and decide to keep the bag of money. There's Ken Wong, the "smart" one, whose business has failed and sort of wants... » MORE
Moving Targets. Wong Jing scores big with another cop vs. triad picture with a strong story and sense of local (Hong Kong) identity, similar to 2003's THE COLOUR OF THE TRUTH. Nicholas Tse and Edison Chen star as young, tough cops who... » MORE
My Baby Shot Me Down. Looking for some female vengeance in this movie whose title was obviously inspired by the KILL BILL soundtrack? Not really here. Instead it's the story of an actor turned serial killer -- as we all have long suspected, there's really... » MORE
My Sweetie. Hong Kong DJ Sammy Leung was pretty funny as an idiotic, child-like model in this year's Ronald Cheng megahit Supermodel. But I was little put off by his starring role here, as an idiotic, child-like shampoo company office worker. Since... » MORE
New Police Story. Jackie Chan is a police superintendant who leads his team into a death trap against a group of young amoral ultraviolent thieves who love to kill police. He turns to alcohol until a new partner (Nicholas Tse) gets him out... » MORE
One Night in Mongkok. One gang boss puts out a hit on another gang boss. Lai Fu (Daniel Wu), an empovershed mainlander they recruit for the job, arrives in Hong Kong while Officer Milo (Alex Fong) and his team (including Chin Kar-Lok and Ken... » MORE
Osaka Wrestling Restaurant. A low budget Japanese/Hong Kong co-production that makes up for lack of budget with energy and charm. Sammo Hung's son Timmy Hung plays Ricky, who dreams of becoming a famous chef. Wayne Lai is his estranged brother Mike, who is... » MORE
Papa Loves You. A month after releasing Herbal Tea, along comes another warm, fuzzy comedy from director Herman Yau, which even uses an alarmingly similar image -- star on a moped -- to advertise it. Happily, though, this effort is an improvement over... » MORE
Police Case. Boring shot on video production starring Elle Choi as a police secretary who sits around bored at her job all day while beat cop Ken Wong is out all day doing his rounds. Wong appears to be the only cop... » MORE
Protege de la Rose Noire. How can a film star the charismatic, popular, and peppy Twins (Charlene Choi and Gillian Cheung), be directed by action star Donnie Yen, concern costumed crimefighting against a sexy villainess and her hitwomen, combine action and comedy, and yet still... » MORE
Pyaasi Nagin. A complete rip off of the classic 1976 film Nagin. While it isn't quite scene-for-scene, a la Gus Van Sant's PSYCHO, it is pretty damn close. As if pretending otherwise, the movie opens with a disclaimer that "All the characters... » MORE
SARS Wars. Zombie movies are a dime a dozen these days, and though many of them are extremely bad, there is a built in audience that keeps shambling forward for more, and keep watching them despite being burned so many times in... » MORE
Secret Pursuit, The. Qiandao Lake. Xiuxiu's brother is killed by gangsters, his last words, "Yellow Ribbon." Meanwhile Mailong (Peter Ho Yun-tung) is a photographer working for Jimi (Tiffany Lee)'s Bridal Shop. He feels an ominous conspiracy creeping all around him. A sense of... » MORE
Sex and the Beauties. Wong Jing's comedy about women falling in love starts strong but loses steam and gets pretty dull in its last half-hour. But nevertheless he manages to tell a story of twenty, thirty, and fourty-something women in a way that is... » MORE
Shaolin vs. Evil Dead. A new hopping vampire film primarily for the U.S. market, expressly designed to piggy-back on the appearance of Gordon Liu in KILL BILL. Presumably producers hoped that viewers of KILL BILL would be curious about Liu, and wonder about how... » MORE
Silver Hawk. Michelle Yeoh's career has always been of great potential badly spent. She just seems so great -- she's got the moves, the acting ability, the looks -- but when it comes right down to it, her movies are often atrociously... » MORE
Six Strong Guys. Less than two years after Leslie Cheung jumped to his death from a balcony of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, I thought initially it may be in bad taste to begin a comedy with four stars contemplating a similar suicide. But... » MORE
Supermodel. Though Hong Kong has long imitated Hollywood and ripped off movie ideas one after another, it used to be the case that the Hong Kong version was always more outrageous and more entertaining. But in the post-THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY... » MORE
Three of a Kind. Michael Hui and Lau Ching-wan played opposite each other briefly earlier in the year in the Hui Brothers tribute film FANTASIA. Here Hui plays Dragon Lone, a famous kung fu novelist, who has suffered from writing block for 13 years,... » MORE
Throwdown. Gripping. And throwing. THROWDOWN presents a whole new way of seeing bodies in motion -- quick twists followed by loud thuds. Aaron Kwok is an enthusiastic Judo practitioner, who loves nothing more than finding other Judo wrestlers to fight. He... » MORE
Time to Love, A. Two weepy, over-melodramatic lovers, Qu Ran (Vicki Zhao Wei) and Hou Jia (Lu Yi) grow up in angst because their fanatically embittered parents hate each other, just like Shakespeare's ROMEO AND JULIET, which becomes what they consider to be "their... » MORE
Twins Effect II. Pure entertainment. Light, kids stuff to be sure, but lots of fun anyway. Not even remotely related to the original TWINS EFFECT, the second movie drops the Vampire theme entirely and delivers basically the Hong Kong equivalent of an Italian... » MORE
Ultimate Fight. Directed by Tony Leung Siu Hung, Chairman of the HK Stuntmen's Association. Starring Lau Kar Wing, the old Shaw Brothers action master, as a retired Jujitsu expert. I'm telling you all this so that you can be as profoundly disappointed... » MORE
Unplugging Nightmare. This is what the TROUBLESOME NIGHT series would look like with a little more money and more serious storylines. The story concerns a reporter (Yoyo Mung) who has the same dream over and over again for ten years, about a... » MORE
Wedding or a Funeral, A. Sam Lee is about to get married, but that night, his beautiful fiance (Paulyn Sun) is abducted and he is forced to capture a series of ever more hardened criminals for the abductor or she will be killed. The movie,... » MORE
White Dragon. It's rare that I see a Hong Kong movie in the theater. But this one ran at the Gene Siskel Film Center in downtown Chicago, and I popped over after work this evening to catch it. The movie was shown... » MORE
Yah Nark. Another cheap, shot on video, Thai ghost film. But wait! It's in 3-D! And so, another regretful impulse buy is made, and there's nothing left to do but watch what is advertised as the first 3-D Thai movie ever.... » MORE
Yesterday Once More. Johnnie To once again pairs Andy Lau and Sammi Cheng together for a romantic comedy. They've got great chemistry, as usual. This time they are a married couple of wealthy kleptomaniacs who love to steal things together. They divorce one... » MORE