Blog Archives

The Monkey King 2 (2016)

(from /, dir: )

Sun Wukong returns to the big screen in The Monkey King 2, the follow-up film to director Cheang Pou-soi’s 2014 Monkey King feature film. Right on time for Chinese New Year in the year of the monkey, it’s exactly what you want in a New Year film: big, broad, comfortably familiar and filled with with ample amounts of comedy and spectacle.

(If you’re not up on the Monkey King story — Aussies of a certain age should think Monkey (read more)

Comments Off on The Monkey King 2 (2016)

The Monkey King (2014)

(from /, dir: )

Well, this one’s been a long time coming! News that Soi Cheang was to direct a giant, IMAX 3D adaptation of part of the classical novel Journey To The West with a major action star in the lead hit the Web in early 2010, and there’s apparently been a sales stand with a poster at HK Filmart every year since then.

Now, all is revealed! After a couple of years of delays, The Monkey King is here in cinemas in … (read more)

Comments Off on The Monkey King (2014)

Infernal Affairs III (2003)

My expectations for Infernal Affairs 3 were not high. Infernal Affairs 2 had proved to be little more than a lazy attempt to ‘cash in’ on the (deserved) success of the first film by inexplicably substituting the original’s too-cool style for some bland direction and stupid story choices, and there seemed little reason to think IA 3 would be any different.

Well, at least this time Andrew Lau and Alan Mak have made something that can be described as a … (read more)

Comments Off on Infernal Affairs III (2003)

Breaking News (2004)

(from , dir: )

Johnnie To confuses me. I have never been able to satisfactorily account for why I enjoy his films so much, and I don’t like that. It has always seemed to me that he strikes a very uneasy balance between visual style and dramatic substance; those devices (plot and character-related) To employs to lend weight to the emotional side of his films are usually very conventional, but somehow he always manages to obscure this until I think about it afterwards, which … (read more)

Comments Off on Breaking News (2004)

Infernal Affairs (2002)

Andrew Lau, director/cinematographer of this film, has previously brought us such classics as the Young And Dangerous series, and the special effects fest Stormriders. However, he should also be held responsible for films such as the confusing Bullets Of Love (which I can’t help thinking of as “Bullets Urve Lurrrrve”) and the utterly tosspottish Wesley’s Mysterious File, in which the only mystery was how such a respectable cast were persuaded to show their faces in such drivel.

So … (read more)

Comments Off on Infernal Affairs (2002)