Search for Hong Kong

Suddenly, the "Hong Kong style" is in. Not only are director John Woo and actor Jackie Chan both releasing English-language films early in 1996 (Broken Arrow and Rumble in the Bronx, respectively), but the number of Hong Kong titles obtaining wide...

Based on a perusal of reviews for Cloud Atlas, one might be convinced that the sprawling, ambitious, epic adaptation of David Mitchell's 2004 novel is either a masterpiece or an unmitigated disaster. The reality is somewhere in between. It's hard t...

Curse of the Golden Flower is director Zhang Yimou's ambitious attempt to blend martial arts action with Shakespearean melodrama. It's not a perfect marriage but it offers two hours of solidly over-the-top entertainment featuring incredible visual...

Moody. Mournful. Slow. Languorous. Long takes. Deep colors and deeper shadows. Images that linger. All of these thoughts, observations, and impressions come to mind while watching Wong Kar-Wai’s 2000 feature, In the Mood for Love. The film w...

There are times when a movie looks a lot better on screen than it sounds from a description, and Kekexili: Mountain Patrol is an example. The one-sentence synopsis of the movie makes it sound like a dull, quasi-documentary conservationist picture ...

Kung Fu Hustle is an action/comedy designed with lovers of the '60s and '70s Shaw Brothers' movies in mind. It's an homage to a genre that, despite being regarded as campy by about 95% of the movie-going populace, has nevertheless captured the hea...

If compared to the recent batch of high-profile live action remakes of animated classics, Mulan is a unique case. When it comes to baggage, it has the lightest load. Beauty & the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King all made more than $200M during...

Groundhog Day was released in 1993. For the next 20+ years, no major production touched the Twilight Zone-ish premise. Recently, however, a new generation of filmmakers has discovered Groundhog Day and decided to try their hands at expanding t...

Chen Kaige's The Promise is a beautiful film, filled with stylized, CGI-enhanced foregrounds and backgrounds that look like they were lifted directly from fairy tale-inspired paintings. There's not much about the look of The Promise that's realist...

Generic animated cash-grab.  It’s hard to think of a more appropriate phrase to describe Ratchet and Clank, the video game-based movie being dumped unceremoniously into theaters for what will probably amount to a one-week run. (Tepid box office co...