100 Hong Kong Films
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- DirectorKar-Wai WongStarsTony Leung Chiu-waiMaggie CheungSiu Ping-LamTwo neighbors form a strong bond after both suspect extramarital activities of their spouses. However, they agree to keep their bond platonic so as not to commit similar wrongs.And so our greatest Hong Kong film concludes with a quotation from writer Liu Yi-Chang’s stream-of-consciousness novella, Intersection, which loosely inspired Wong Kar-wai into capturing the tentative affair between two would-be lovers who cross paths briefly before parting forever.
The same destiny, ironically, could be said to apply to the diverging receptions of this rapturous film itself: just as it had stormed the global arthouse market and propelled its director into the league of the world’s greatest living auteurs, the multiple-award-winning drama looks set to be perpetually overshadowed by its canonised prequel, Days of Being Wild, in its home city – thanks partly to the 1990 film’s matchless feat in gathering six major stars for one elaborate narrative experiment. For any self-respecting Hong Kong critic who has witnessed the phenomenon first hand, it must feel a little sacrilegious not to love the Leslie Cheung-fronted heartbreaker.
Unlike Days of Being Wild – or in fact, 2046, which again charts the crisscrossing relationships among an ensemble cast and neatly rounded up Wong’s unofficial 1960s trilogy – In the Mood for Love is essentially a romantic two-hander which characteristically shuns the overt emotional wrestling of its two bookending films. The result is a film so simple in its premise – and so chaste and subtle in its expression – that the slightest turns of heads are bound to give an ecstatically poignant impression.
The year is 1962, and as next-door neighbours living in a crowded apartment complex, Mr Chow (Tony Leung) and Mrs Chan (Maggie Cheung in a cheongsam showcase) gradually discover their spouses are having a clandestine affair. Alternately finding solace by spending time with each other, and masochistically toying with the other’s emotions by rehearsing imaginary breakups, the two soon consummate their mutual longing by role-playing as their cheating partners.
Drenched in sumptuous colours and a hypnotic soundtrack that swings from Nat King Cole to Latin melody, the film is ably fashioned by William Chang and unfailingly photographed by Christopher Doyle and Mark Lee Ping-bin, two of the very best cinematographers in world cinema. Beneath the entrancing visual palette is a repressed romance which finds its apt denouement among the Angkor Wat ruins – a sublime touch of storytelling that renders In the Mood for Love as close to perfection as a Hong Kong film has ever attempted to be.
Mr Chow and Mrs Chan are in the mood for love but little more than that. All they can share are furtive glances, weightless words and a concrete reassurance that history forgets. - DirectorAnn HuiStarsGeorge LamCora MiaoSeason MaA Japanese photojournalist revisits Vietnam after the Liberation and learns harsh truths about its regime and its "New Economic Zones".Boat People is unquestionably one of the most important films in Hong Kong cinema, and yet it’s only with increasing distance that we begin to appreciate how infinitely evocative – as all great art is – this political thriller has managed to be. Centring around a Japanese photojournalist (Lam) who revisits the post-Liberation Vietnam in 1987 to document its rebirth, Hui’s film captivatingly reveals the horrors facing the people living in the port of Danang, who are sometimes sent to forced labour camps that are misguidedly labelled as ‘new economic zones’. Intriguingly, the film has for many years been seen as a foretelling of our own city’s destiny after 1997 – an interpretation not the least weakened by the Chinese authorities’ view of it as an ‘anti-communist’ work. The director herself has always denied, up to this day, the symbolic values of her work, and, watching it now in the cold light of day, it’s indeed not too farfetched for one to believe her film was simply a based-on-real-event drama intending to reveal the plight of the Vietnamese refugees, who were causing quite a stir in Hong Kong. Irrespective of the political readings it attracted, Boat People remains first and foremost a masterful drama about the survival of people, who may be possessing even less control on their lives than they thought. Its tragic sense of fatalism is haunting.
- DirectorJohn WooStarsLung TiLeslie CheungChow Yun-FatA reforming ex-gangster tries to reconcile with his estranged policeman brother, but the ties to his former gang are difficult to break.To understand how this particular John Woo-Chow Yun-fat collaboration – instead of their more stylistically accomplished The Killer or Hard Boiled – captured the imaginations of a generation is perhaps to chart the history of cinephilia in Hong Kong. With a Chinese title that translates as ‘the true nature of heroes’, Wu’s seminal heroic bloodshed movie has indeed combined the best of several (movie) worlds: as a relatively faithful remake of Patrick Lung Kong’s The Story of a Discharged Prisoner (1967), it is further spiced up by the principle of brotherhood and the honourable code of yi stemming from martial arts epics of yesteryears – especially those by his mentor Chang Cheh, for whom Woo had previously served as assistant director. While deliciously pitting Ti Lung and Leslie Cheung’s brother characters against each other as mortal enemies on opposite sides of the law, the action classic is also exponentially enhanced by Chow’s charismatic portrayal of Mark, the trench-coated partner-in-crime who’s left a burnt mark on our public consciousness: who could forget the sight of him lighting a cigarette with a burning banknote? His cockiness is exceeded only by his loyalty and heroism; in our approving minds, Mark is us.
- DirectorHan Hsiang LiStarsBetty Loh TiIvy Ling PoLi-Chu ChangThe story about the life of the students at a university in Hangchow. Chu Ying-Tai is a female who has to be disguised as a man in order to gain entry into the school.The Chinese folk legend of the Butterfly Lovers may have been adapted countless times but this sumptuous rendition – with its catchy tunes, poetic lyrics and eye-searing colour scheme – is hard to be surpassed either artistically or historically. Essentially doubling the fun of gender masquerade in the original story, The Love Eterne casts the Amoy opera actress Ling Po in the male shusheng role of Liang Shan-bo, a young scholar who chances upon Zhu Ying-tai (Loh), an aristocratic daughter who attends a male-only school disguised as a boy. The two immediately become ‘sworn brothers’ and subsequently spend three years together as classmates. However, after Zhu reveals her true identity, these BFFs’ decision to get married is tragically halted by her father’s plan to marry her off to a rich family, and the innocuous flirting gives way to a tear-jerking climax in the movie’s third act. A timeless work of art from a short-lived genre, this definitive huangmei diao film was a box office sensation and a cultural phenomenon across Southeast Asia (and especially in Taiwan), with Ling receiving a special award for outstanding performance at Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards – because the judges couldn’t decide whether to name her best actor or actress!
- DirectorKar-Wai WongStarsLeslie CheungMaggie CheungAndy LauA man tries to find out who his real mother is after the woman who raised him tells him the truth.The movie with which Wong Kar-wai became an auteur, Leslie Cheung became James Dean reincarnated and many of the unsuspecting mainstream audiences became bored out of their minds, Days of Being Wild is, above all, a hymn to rebellion: an intention noticeable from both Wong’s deliberate ditching of the conventional genre formula, as well as the fact that his film shares its Chinese title with Nicholas Ray’s masterpiece Rebel Without a Cause (1955) – apparently with a cause. Set in a 1960s Hong Kong which had never quite looked this gorgeous before, Wong’s nostalgic reverie wrapped its unacknowledged – but totally unmistakable – political allegories in entrancing lights and shadows, presented for the first time here by the inimitable trio of Wong, production designer William Chang and cinematographer Christopher Doyle. For critics, playboy Yuddy’s determination to leave his foster mother to look for his unknown birth mother has been regularly compared to Hong Kong’s then-impending Handover, while the character’s comparison of himself to a fabled kind of ‘bird without legs’ – and thus could only land when it died – also mirrored the sense of rootlessness keenly felt by the population.
- DirectorAng LeeStarsChow Yun-FatMichelle YeohZiyi ZhangA young Chinese warrior steals a sword from a famed swordsman and then escapes into a world of romantic adventure with a mysterious man in the frontier of the nation.After spinning our heads for decades with its delirious showdowns and romantised notion of chivalry, the wuxia genre finally conquered the world with – of all stories – a poignant romance about two pairs of would-be lovers perpetually repressing their feelings. Looking to hang up his sword and settle down with his longtime muse (Michelle Yeoh), a mighty swordsman (Chow Yun-fat) is sucked into another one-last-job scenario as an aristocrat’s daughter (Zhang Ziyi) recklessly juggles the thrills of the martial arts world, her secret affection for a bandit (Chang Chen), and the wish of her family to set her up for an arranged marriage. Described pertinently by Ang Lee as ‘Sense and Sensibility with martial arts’, this visually stunning, gravity-defying masterpiece won four Oscars (including best foreign language film) and ushered in a new era of traditional Chinese movies made with a global audience in mind, most aptly exemplified by Zhang Yimou’s Hero (2003).
- DirectorShu Shuen TongStarsLisa LuRoy ChiaoHilda Chow HsuanA woman falls in love with a visiting cavalry captain, but chooses to suppress it for the sake of her daughter.The legendary first feature by Cecile Tang – one of the extremely few woman filmmakers then working in Hong Kong – is a curious anomaly in many ways. One of the most significant arthouse classics in our film history despite its limited distribution, The Arch was photographed by the great Subrata Mitra (regular cinematographer for Satyajit Ray) in crisp black and white – amid a wave of lavishly coloured period dramas at the time – and edited by Les Blank and CC See with a Nouvelle Vague edge that intricately utilises freeze frames, quick zooms and fleeting flashbacks to visualise its protagonist’s fragmenting psyche. Lu plays Madam Tung, a dignified middle-aged widow soon to be honoured by the emperor for her chastity. She is, however, tormented by her suppressed desire for a cavalry captain (Chiao) temporarily billeted in her aristocratic residence; and when the captain turns his attention to her flirtatious young daughter (Chou), our heroine’s misery is completed. It is, in other words, as if Alain Resnais met Henrik Ibsen in 17th century China.
- DirectorMichael HuiStarsMichael HuiSamuel HuiRicky HuiThe kingpin of the Manix Private Detective Agency and his fellow detective solve cases together.As their popularity snowballed from the early days of television broadcast, the iconic Hui Brothers team left behind a trail of vernacular comedy movies that struck a resounding chord with working class audiences. Easily one of the best from writer-director Michael, The Private Eyes immediately impresses with its wordless opening credit sequence showing only the characters’ feet – in which a private detective tails his subject in a pair of miserably broken shoes, only to have one of his soles accidentally ripped off before stepping on a beggar’s bowl and a cigarette stub with his exposed foot. A cheeky, stingy boss who’s all too ready to exploit his employees, Michael’s small-time private eye is nonetheless faithfully aided by a honest, kung fu-fighting apprentice (Sam) and a stupid, stammering assistant (Ricky) who will literally test a bomb for him. Together with the funky soundtrack by Sam and his band, The Lotus, the movie also tapped into our collective consciousness with a range of riotous gags, from aerobics for chicken to a Sammo Hung-choreographed, Bruce Lee-inspired fight scene with flour and sausages.
- DirectorJohnnie ToStarsLouis KooSimon YamNick CheungAs election time nears, current Triad chairman Lok (Yam) faces competition from his godsons. At the same time, Jimmy (Koo) looks to increase his business relations with mainland China.Fans of Hong Kong gangster flicks breathed a collective sigh of relief when Johnnie To ended the genre’s post-Young and Dangerous impasse with his majestic two-part epic. Taking off from Election’s (2005) near-anthropological interest in the triad society’s origins, the veteran action auteur merges wit and gore in a disturbingly resonant political satire – very astutely disguised as a stylistically subdued dramatisation of the power struggles surrounding the biannual voting process at the top of ‘Hong Kong’s oldest triad’. A slow-burning crime caper spiced with occasional bursts of sadistic brutality (most memorably, a character is literally ground up and fed to the dogs), Election 2 is further enhanced by its political subtext: the candidates here, elegantly played by Koo and Yam, are not only trapped by their own lust of power or wealth, but also the mainland Chinese government’s omniscient influence on their handover of power. At its most ingeniously cynical, the film has made a mockery of our simplistic capitalist ideals and democratic aspirations in the very same stroke.
- DirectorJohnny MakStarsJing ChenLung ChiangLing ChowFour men sneak into Hong Kong to rob a jewelry store. Before the robbery, they're hired by a local triad to kill a man, who turns out to be a cop. They have to execute the heist while hiding from the police hunting them down.A marvellous pre-cursor to the explosive crime thrillers of John Woo and Ringo Lam, Johnny Mak’s directorial debut follows several Red Guards-turned-armed robbers through the sharp end of these Mainlanders’ dreams of making a fortune in the more ‘modernised’ Hong Kong. Led by a highly sought-after criminal intending to pull off a heist at a Tsim Sha Tsui jewellery store, the infamously violent Big Circle gang – while finding their loyalty increasingly split by the allures of the city – soon become the hottest target of the police force after being tricked by a small-time triad boss and sometime informant into murdering a corrupt cop. With memorable set-pieces ranging from a helicopter ambush – which may have inspired the mob boss sequence in Godfather III (1990) – to a gunpoint standoff that undeniably anticipated some of Woo’s most famous scenes, Long Arm of the Law tops it off with a climatic shootout inside the claustrophobic Kowloon Walled City that even today remains a milestone of our action cinema.
- DirectorTian-Lin WangStarsGrace ChangYang ChangPo-Chien ChinGrace Chang seduces as Hong Kong's most sensual Carmen ever. The torrid passions of Bizet's famous opera gets a postmodern reading when it is transposed to the noir-like setting of Hong Kong's Wanchai district. One of the most exhilarating and energetic musicals in the Chinese language.Wong Jing’s half-serious assertion that his father Wang Tianlin ‘has a bit of Wong Kar-wai in him’ does look to have some weight based on this Cathay noir musical, a localised but no less stylish adaptation of Bizet’s Carmen. Grace Chang shines in the leading role as a sassy nightclub singer who, after taking up a dare to seduce the engaged pianist (Chang Yang), soon falls for the train wreck of a man. As the two’s emotional tangle sends them into a downward spiral, their film is right up there among Hong Kong’s greatest musicals.
- DirectorPeter Ho-Sun ChanStarsMaggie CheungLeon LaiEric TsangTwo Chinese-mainlanders living in Hong Kong form a close friendship. Over the years this grows into love, but there are obstacles.Destiny is calling Lai’s new immigrant from northern China, who forms a ‘friendship’ – with benefits – with Cheung’s Guangzhou comrade out of loneliness and a shared passion for the Mandarin pop legend Teresa Teng. The catch? He has a fiancée back home and she has her materialistic ambitions to fulfil. Definitely a love story and certainly one of our cinema’s very best, Chan’s nine-times Hong Kong Film Awards winner charts the decade-spanning near-romance with acute cultural awareness and a sublime touch of emotional delicacy.
- DirectorWei LoStarsBruce LeeNora MiaoJames TienA young man seeks vengence for the death of his teacher.After his master Huo Yuanjia is poisoned by the Japanese, gifted disciple Chen Zhen (Bruce Lee) becomes a murderous avenger who can’t stop terrorising the Hongkou Dojo and any racist banner in his sight, including the notorious ‘Sick Man of East Asia’ and ‘No dogs and Chinese allowed’. Eventually, Lee will leap into the air and kick towards the colonial oppressors while being fired at with pistols, turning himself into a nationalistic martyr with the most iconic of final freeze-frames.
- DirectorAndrew LauAlan MakStarsAndy LauTony Leung Chiu-waiAnthony Chau-Sang WongA story between a mole in the police department and an undercover cop. Their objectives are the same: to find out who is the mole, and who is the cop.If you really think about it, they should have put a spoiler warning on the promo posters of this exemplary undercover cop thriller: after all, what’s the point of a suspense noir when even your elderly neighbour – and her maid – knew that Tony Leung is going to put a gun to Andy Lau’s head at the movie’s climax? More ridiculous still: some guy called Marty did an obscure little remake and won a piece of bronze or two in Hollywood, where Hong Kong was spelled as ‘J-a-p-a-n’.
- DirectorShilin ZhuStarsXuan ZhouShi ShuRhoqing TangSet in the Qing Dynasty, years of emperor Guangxu. Guangxu feels involuntarily like a puppet because of dowager Cixi's reigning behind the curtain. He wants to support a political reform.The greatest of Qing dynasty court dramas also happens to be the most historically important Hong Kong film ever made. First released during the civil war, Shanghai filmmaker Zhu Shilin’s mega-budget epic – about the vicious political wrangling between Empress Dowager Cixi (Tang), Emperor Guangxu (Shu) and his wife Pearl concubine (Zhou), all mesmerisingly portrayed – was cited by Mao Zedong as ‘a film of national betrayal’ in 1954, before being labelled ‘a traitor’s film’ by the Gang of Four in 1967, thereby kicking off the devastating Cultural Revolution.
- DirectorHo YimStarsJosephine KooSiqin GaowaWeixiang XieCoral, a Hong Kong woman tortured by city life, returns to her hometown to visit her two old friends. They all find that some precious things in life that disappear through the years can never be recovered.Taking respite from her chaotic life in Hong Kong, a businesswoman (Koo) returns to her ancestral home in southern China, where she’s been away for 20 years. There she reunites with her two childhood friends (Siqin and Xie), who are now leading a mundane married life in an agricultural community, and the three become consumed by complicated emotions arising from their widening moral and materialistic divide. Inspired by his father’s passing, Ho exquisitely turns his nostalgic longing for family roots into a lyrical meditation on the sentimental bonds which await across the border.
- DirectorFruit ChanStarsSam LeeNeiky Hui-Chi YimWenders LiAutumn Moon (Sam Lee), a low-rent triad living in Hong Kong, struggles to find meaning in his hopelessly violent existence.Made for chump change and shot on leftover film stock, Chan’s mischievously morbid effort tells the sad story of a triad member (Lee) who’s dropped out from school and abandoned by his family; even his friendship with a mentally disabled larkie (Li) and a terminally ill girl (Yim) seems to be cursed by the trio’s possession of a schoolgirl’s suicide notes. Every frame of this tale of wasted youth and irresponsible adults – possibly Hong Kong’s most acclaimed indie feature ever – screams of muffled anguish.
- DirectorSun-Fung LeeStarsChi-Sing ChowYik-Mei FungLuquan GaoCold Nights features great performances by both Pak Yin as a tough minded "new woman", Shusheng, and Ng Cho-fan as her weak husband, Wang Wenxuan, whose spirits have been crushed by the Sino-Japanese war.Ng and Pak had starred opposite each other a number of times but the 1950s screen couple – almost always typecast as vulnerable husband and independent yet devoted wife – were arguably at their heart-wrenching best in this excellent adaptation of a Ba Jin novel. Successively torn apart by his possessive live-in mother, her wish for a better future, the ongoing devastation of war and his steadily deteriorating physical condition, these star-crossed lovers are two for the ages.
- DirectorJeffrey LauStarsStephen ChowMan-Tat NgKar-Ying LawA Monkey King is reincarnated in the un human form as Joker, a highwayman oblivious to his original identity and the fact that 500 years earlier, he and his master, the Longevity Monk, were punished and made to stay human.From the genius casting of the irreverent Chow as the Monkey King to the masterstroke of letting Buddhist monk Tang Xuanzang (played by Law, no less) burst into The Platters’ Only You, Lau’s wildly imaginative Journey to the West adaptation is deservedly recognised for its sublime wackiness. Yet beneath all the time-travelling and supernatural slapstick of this postmodern two-parter is a traditional love story so cheesy it’s actually romantic. Also featuring the now-customary Wong Kar-wai spoofs.
- DirectorStanley KwanStarsMaggie CheungHan ChinTony Ka Fai LeungBiopic of 1930s Chinese actress Lingyu Ruan.At once an acting showcase for a present-day film star (Maggie Cheung) and a moving tribute to 1930s Shanghai screen legend Ruan Lingyu, Center Stage elegantly weaves together original footage of Ruan’s films, Cheung’s partly fictionalised re-enactment of her private life, as well as real-life interviews among cast and crew members. A meta-fictional exercise that sheds light on stardom from every angle possible, the film also helped Cheung to a Berlin Silver Bear award for best actress.
- DirectorKong LungStarsYin TseLing KaTsai-Jung ChanEveryone wants a piece of our rehabilitating hero (Tse in a leather jacket), an expert safecracker who’s persistently recruited by both sides of the law after more than a decade in prison – but will his unforgiving mother and upright brother understand? While this humane precursor of 1980s hero films may be eternally outshined by its much noisier remake (A Better Tomorrow), Lung’s early-career tale of an ex-con trying to go straight is an unsung masterpiece in its own right.
- DirectorMabel CheungStarsChow Yun-FatCherie ChungDanny Bak-Keung ChanFilmed in New York, story of naive young woman from Hong Kong who goes to New York to study. Street-wise cabbie cousin takes care of her in the big city.The favourite romance of many a Hongkonger, not least Mr Chow himself, this Alex Law-scripted drama is essentially a story of two lonely souls: a Hong Kong student (Chung) who moves to New York for her fickle boyfriend (Chan), and her older but no less puerile cousin (Chow), who settles her down before cheering her up with such sophisticated fares as, eh, going to Broadway musicals. Predictable it may be, but An Autumn’s Tale is as irresistibly heartfelt a film as it comes.
- DirectorSiu-Tung ChingStarsLeslie CheungJoey WangWu MaAfter a string of bad luck, a debt collector has no other choice than to spend the night in a haunted temple, where he encounters a ravishing female ghost and later battles to save her soul from the control of a wicked tree demon.“Dawn, please don’t come…” As Sally Yeh pleads soulfully to James Wong’s iconic tune on the soundtrack, the forbidden love between Cheung’s scholarly tax collector and Wang’s glamorous ghost meets its heartbreaking demise. Based on a Pu Songling short story that has also been adapted into Li Han-hsiang’s The Enchanting Shadow (1960) and Wilson Yip’s eponymous 2011 film, this Tsui Hark-produced supernatural action fantasy spawned two hit sequels and remains a vital showcase of our cinema’s madcap inventiveness. It’s like a sensual Evil Dead romance!
- DirectorKing HuStarsFeng HsuYueh SunLin TungIn Ming Dynasty China, the abbot of the San Pao Buddhist monastery must choose a successor. Among the high dignitaries invited, there are some who are after the priceless parchment kept in the temple: the Mahayana Sutras.Under the long, long shadow cast by Hu’s other seminal classics sits this oft-neglected masterpiece, shot back-to-back with Legend of the Mountain on location in South Korea. Deliberately paced and meticulously edited (by the director himself, who also wrote the screenplay and supplied the art direction), Raining is a simple story masterfully told, concurrently observing the choosing of a new abbot and the attempted theft of a priceless scripture in a Ming dynasty Buddhist monastery.
- DirectorKar-Wai WongStarsBrigitte LinTakeshi KaneshiroTony Leung Chiu-waiTwo melancholic Hong Kong policemen fall in love: one with a mysterious female underworld figure, the other with a beautiful and ethereal waitress at a late-night restaurant he frequents.Who could forget Faye Wong’s frisky fast-food joint waitress or Brigitte Lin’s Cassavetes-inspired smuggler in a blond wig? Jubilantly realised and populated by acutely lovelorn, if slightly unhinged, characters, the two loosely connected stories in this ad hoc project – shot quickly and cheaply amid the post-production limbo of Ashes of Time – delightfully tackles loneliness and chance encounters. Frenzied, quirky and irresistibly romantic, this hip little film channels the impish spirit of early Godard in Hong Kong’s urban setting.
- DirectorPeter Ho-Sun ChanWai-Man YipStarsJet LiAndy LauTakeshi KaneshiroChina, 1860s: Having his army slaughtered, General Qingyun joins 2 bandit leaders in raids on rebels and in blood oath. They form a Qing loyal army with eyes on rebel held Suzhou and Nanjing.Before making his gloriously divisive tribute to Chang Cheh’s One-Armed Swordsman with last year’s Wu Xia, Chan had already unleashed a superior remake of another Chang classic, The Blood Brothers (1973). In place of David Chiang, Ti Lung and Chen Kuan-tai are here Li, Lau and Kaneshiro, all magnetically watchable actors. As soldiers and bandits unite in the name of loyalty against a war-ravaged China in the mid-19th century, Chan’s epic captivates with its heroic taste for blood… and tears.
- DirectorShu Shuen TongStarsChi-Lu TsengHsiao-Ling ShawPao-Hsien FengFour college students and a doctor try to escape the Cultural Revolution.With its unflinching view of the Cultural Revolution and its equally bleak portrait of life in our materialistic city, Tang’s 1966-set drama about five Guangzhou residents attempting to flee to Hong Kong was banned by censors from release until 1987. One of the earliest films to deal with the clash of communist and capitalist ideals that would inevitably manifest itself with the 1997 handover, the moral degradation and spiritual disenchantment of its characters reveal the dehumanising effects felt by both sides of the border.
- DirectorAnn HuiStarsAndy LauDeannie IpHailu QinAfter suffering a stroke, an altruistic maid announces that she wants to quit her job and move into an old people's home.The most recent film on our list is a slice-of-life master-class – and a lock for best picture at next month’s Hong Kong Film Awards** – that speaks to all generations. Described in our recent five-star review as being ‘gently humorous, intensely moving but never outwardly sentimental’, this graceful based-on-true-events drama observes the dignity of the final years in the life of Sister Tao (Ip, named best actress at Venice), now in the care of the middle-aged son (Lau) of a family for which she has been a housemaid most of her life.
- DirectorTit LeeStarsYing CheungLuquan GaoBruce LeeA laid-off teacher (Cheung) buries his sympathy and takes on the thankless job as a rent collector in one of the storylines of this community drama: a panorama of tough luck, unemployment and raw humanity. Charting the misfortunes of nearly a dozen residents of a ramshackle partitioned tenement, this kitchen sink drama classic famously provides the motto (“All for one and one for all”) for its production company, Union Film. Bruce Lee appears briefly as the kid of an impoverished couple.
- DirectorShilin ZhuStarsQi FuQiuxia GongMing JiangZhu’s clinical adaptation of Puxian opera classic After the Reunion is a love story so fatalistically tragic it could make Shakespeare envious. It begins with three celebratory occasions – a 20-year-old scholar’s (Fu) triumphant return from the imperial exams, his impending wedding to the beautiful daughter (Hsia) of an aristocrat, and his mother’s (Kung) newly-given honour as a chaste widow by the emperor – and ends with four suicides – brought about by a maze of feudalistic taboos and unfortunate decisions. An unforgettable 90-minute waltz into hopelessness.
- DirectorAnn HuiStarsKang-sheng LeeAnthony Chau-Sang WongKwan-Ho TseOrdinary Heroes is a 1999 Cantonese-language film directed by Ann Hui. It was co-produced by Hong Kong and China. It concerns social reform activists in Hong Kong. The film's Chinese title refers to a popular song by Taiwanese singer Teresa Teng.An essential and one-of-a-kind homage to the decades of social movement in Hong Kong, Hui’s sprawling political drama depicts the lives of various characters, including Tse’s social activist and Wong’s Maoist Catholic priest, all tied together by Loletta Lee’s evocatively designed role: a young woman who’s lost her memory following an ‘accident’. Highlights include a street play about the late political pioneer Ng Chung-yin, charismatically given by real-life ‘artivist’ Augustine Mok Chiu-yu.
- DirectorJohnnie ToKa-Fai WaiStarsChing Wan LauAndy OnKa-Tung LamA rookie cop teams up with a former detective with a supernatural gift to hunt down a serial killer.While To and Wai’s long-time collaboration had produced its fair shares of major hits (Fulltime Killer, Running on Karma), few could have anticipated the meticulous plotting of this psychodrama packaged as a crime thriller. Centring around a loony ex-inspector (Lau) who can see the ‘inner demons’ of others, this weirdly fascinating detective mystery merges Wai’s supernatural drift and fatalistic worldview with To’s film noir sensibilities and clinical shifts to ultra-violence. The Wellesian climax, mirroring The Lady from Shanghai, reveals the characters’ fractured personas to near perfection.
- DirectorAllen FongStarsLei ShihHong ZhuWai-Man YungA young man dreamed of a career in comics and movies. But his father would rather gave up all he had in order to let him receive formal education.Fong was named best director at the Hong Kong Film Awards for each of his first three films. With this autobiographical debut feature – also a best picture winner at the Awards’ first edition – the New Wave helmer reinvented the 1950s sub-genre of Cantonese father-son melodrama with his neo-realist aesthetics. Despite its historical accuracy and working-class flavour, the affecting story of a stern father and his school-hating, cinema-loving son has touched viewers from all social backgrounds.
- DirectorWoo-Ping YuenStarsJackie ChanSiu-Tin YuenJeong-lee HwangWong Fei-Hung is a mischievous yet righteous young man, but after a series of incidents his frustrated father has him disciplined by a master of drunken martial arts.Chan establishes his brand of martial arts slapstick in the only way he knows how: by turning the often straight-faced and always disciplined folk hero of Wong Fei-hung into a clownish trouble-maker. Essentially a succession of hard-hitting one-on-one combats connected by a flimsy storyline, this kung fu spectacle follows Chan’s young punk as he picks fights, eats without paying, and finally redeems himself by learning the legendary Drunken Fist from his sadistic teacher, Beggar Su (Yuen).
- DirectorStanley KwanStarsLeslie CheungAnita MuiAlex ManFleur is the blue angel in one of Hong Kong's "flower houses" - bordellos and night clubs of the 1930s. A detached and beautiful performer, she falls in love with Twelfth Master Chan, heir to a chain of pharmacies. They agree to a suicide pact. 50 years later, in modern Hong Kong, Fleur's ghost appears in Yuen's newspaper office, wanting to place an ad to find Chan, who never arrived in the afterlife. Yuen, and his equally bewildered girlfriend, An Chor, are captivated by Fleur and her story.Small wonder this contemporary ghost story has been canonised as one of the great Chinese-language films. At the centre of it all is Mui’s hypnotically solemn performance as the ghost of a courtesan returning to look for her lover (Cheung), who has possibly survived their suicide pact in 1934. Kwan’s supernaturally nostalgic drama is a haunting reminder of both the transience of city life and, well, how we just don’t kill ourselves for love like we used to any more.
- DirectorCheh ChangStarsJimmy Wang YuChiao ChiaoChung-Hsin HuangA noble swordsman, whose arm had been chopped off, returns to his former teacher to defend him from a villainous gang of rival swordsmen.The conflicted psyche of an expert swordfighter is unforgettably captured in this Shaw Brothers classic, which launched an iconic character that would be recycled over the decades. After suffering maiming at the hands of his master’s smitten daughter (whose affections are not returned), Fang Gang (Wang) departs for a quiet life in the country, only to chance upon the remaining half of a powerful martial arts manual – which, of course, is just what a one-armed fella needs!
- DirectorSun-Fung LeeStarsCho-Fan NgYin PakBruce LeeWhen a young street thug becomes friends with the headmaster of a school, he gives up the triad life to enroll in the school.After losing his wife and daughter, and becoming separated from his young son during the war a decade earlier, a man (Ng, who also produced and scripted the film) becomes a dedicated orphanage director who crosses paths with a parentless pickpocket (a very impressive, teenage Bruce Lee before his move to the US) and decides to make him a better person. The Orphan’s long-lost colour negative was located in London in the 1990s – certainly one of the greatest finds in Hong Kong film preservation.
- DirectorHark TsuiStarsBiao YuenHoi MangAdam ChengA Chinese soldier in an ancient civil war flees the battlefield and gets caught up in a fantastical quest to save the world from evil.With a gibberish good-versus-evil plotline, the help of a Hollywood special effects team, and his very own delirious appetite for the visually entrancing, Tsui’s trend-setting swordplay fantasy is a surreal spectacle like no other. Every scene is a wonder in this hallucinatory story, which roughly concerns a human soldier’s (Yuen) quest for two mythical swords to save the world while a legendary reverend (Hung) battles to restrain a destructive monster for 49 days. Great pulpy fun.
- DirectorKim ChunStarsKim ChunYee FokChung-Ping GeungA year before Jules et Jim swept through the French New Wave, two penniless buddies (Tse and Woo) struggle to stay alive (be it through contemplated suicide or lack of sandwich money) and feel butterflies over the same virtuous but unavailable beauty (played by Nam, who sees the two as ‘friends’) in Chun’s urbane comedy. An influential prototype for the local sub-genre’s honest fool/streetwise sidekick combo, My Intimate Partner is as gently delightful as it’s awkwardly romantic.
- DirectorHan Hsiang LiStarsButterfly WuYin WangHsiang Chun LiAn older couple, struggling to have children of their own, adopts a young girl.The huangmei diao film that consolidated the Chinese operetta form’s popularity in Hong Kong, this lavish Shaw Brothers production recounts a fairytale romance abruptly and dishearteningly curtailed. When the restless emperor (Zhao) of the Ming dynasty disguises himself as a commoner and takes a stroll to the south, he quickly falls for a peasant girl (Lin) and promises to marry her after spending one night together – only for class divide and youthful callousness to get in the way.
- DirectorRingo LamStarsChow Yun-FatYueh SunDanny LeeAn undercover cop infiltrates a gang of thieves who plan to rob a jewelry store.Often regarded as a key inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (1992), Lam’s heist flick – despite its riveting action – is perhaps better appreciated as a character study of a world weary undercover cop and law-enforcing protagonist (Chow, playfully intense) who is torn between his police duty and loyalty to his criminal friends, after being assigned to infiltrate a crime gang and set them up for an arrest. This, incidentally, is where thieves in shades became all the rage.
- DirectorStephen ChowStarsStephen ChowWei ZhaoYat-Fei WongA young Shaolin follower reunites with his discouraged brothers to form a soccer team using their martial art skills to their advantage.“How are we different from a salted fish if we have no dreams in life?” asks Chow’s street cleaner in the actor-director’s delirious crowd-pleaser, in which washed-up kung fu disciples band together to win a footy tournament. An embarrassingly life-affirming underdog sports movie made special by its reckless abandon to entertain, Shaolin Soccer would eventually see the fellowship conquer evil – or, more precisely, ‘Team Evil’. Through its myriad of pop culture references, from Dragonball to The Matrix, the comedy became the top-grossing Hong Kong movie at the time.
- DirectorAnn HuiStarsJosephine SiaoKar-Ying LawAllen TingThe Suns are a typical Hong Kong family: May, forty something, works for a trading company; her husband, Bing, works as a low-grade civil servant, and Allen, their teenage son, is still at school. Trouble strikes one day when Bing's mother dies of a stroke, leaving her husband old Mr. Sun. Alzheimer's Disease is diagnosed. From that day on, the family's daily life is thrown into a poignant. Old Mr. Sun develops a tendency to wander off and get lost, he wakes up yelling in the middle of the night plus he is rude and disobliging ... all this, along with May's already full schedule as wife, mother and employee, drives her close to the edge of her endurance. The very last thing they all wanted has to happen: old Mr. Sun has to go into a Nursing Home. But it does not turn out quite like they expected...Hui shows her humanist sensibility with a bittersweet drama on life’s capriciousness. Having always hated each other, a middle-aged working housewife (Siao in a multiple-award-winning role, including the best actress honour at the Berlin Film Festival) finds herself quickly becoming the caretaker of her father-in-law (Chiao), a former air force lieutenant who’s losing his mind to Alzheimer’s. Her timid husband (Law) isn’t much help, nor are his indifferent siblings; but love, amid the gently comical domestic chaos, is still definitely in the air.
- DirectorChusheng CaiWeiyi WangStarsChing LeeYing CheungSun WongOpening in a rural Guangdong recovering from the Sino-Japanese War, this morally upright tearjerker chronicles the tragic fate of a peasant couple driven away to the city by a nasty landlord (Cheung) – only for the husband (Li) to get tricked into the army, and the wife (Wong) into prostitution. Bringing together some of the best talents among Shanghai leftist filmmakers (including famed director Cai Chusheng, who produced the film), Wang’s story of love, perseverance and post-war hardship is often considered the first critically acclaimed Cantonese movie after the war.
- DirectorChia-Liang LiuStarsChia-Hui LiuSheng FuLily LiMongols with the help of an insider, ambush the influential Yang Family, defenders of the dynasty. The Mongols must hunt down all Yang survivors so their insidious plot to overthrow the dynasty will not be uncovered.A solemn classic remembered for its tragedies both on- and off-screen, this Song dynasty-set revenge epic marks the final screen appearance of the martial arts superstar Fu Sheng – who died in a car accident during production – and tells of the patriotic Yang family’s attempt to avenge their dead members, who were ambushed by a traitor conspiring with northern invaders. Gordon Liu makes up for Fu’s absence in the role of Yang’s fifth son, who becomes a Buddhist monk and shines in some of the greatest pole fighting sequences ever put on celluloid.
- DirectorKea TsoStarsYing CheungPing HaYat-Fan KongThe sins of the patriarch filter down to the next generation in Tso’s adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s play, Ghosts. Eighteen years after he was sent overseas by his suffering mother (Wong), the son (Cheung) of an affluent household returns as a shadow of himself – both physically and spiritually – before unwittingly falling for his philandering father’s illegitimate daughter (Ha), conceived through the rape of a housemaid. No doubt ironically titled, Motherhood presents a restrained subversion of the Cantonese family melodrama tradition.
- DirectorHan Hsiang LiStarsXiaoqing LiuYe ChenTony Ka Fai LeungNuanced acting, an obsession with period detail and the rare opportunity to shoot at Beijing’s Forbidden City lends this sequel to The Burning of the Imperial Palace (1983) an authenticity seldom witnessed in Qing dynasty palace films. Next to the vicious power struggles between the empress-dowagers and court officials, Leung’s tortured portrayal of the dying emperor – in the film’s first half alone – was enough to earn him best actor at the Hong Kong Film Awards.
- DirectorToe YuenStarsChet LamJan LamAndy LauTo secure a better future, Mrs Mc sends her son McDull (who is a piglet attending kindergarten) to many different classes and she has also bought her grave on mortgage. Inspired by J K Rowling, Mrs Mc tries her hand at writing. At bedtime, she tells McDull the story she wrote although McDull keeps asking her to read him Harry Potter instead. The story she wrote is actually the story of McDull's father, McBing, Prince de la Bun.Those who dismiss McDull as a cutesy piggy animation have missed the point: the franchise’s deceivingly innocent façade is mere sugar coating for some of the most acute observations and disheartening commentaries on our city in any form of local literature. This second film, which poetically follows the dumb working-class kid McDull’s search for his birth father, is the best of it all, parodying everything from our penchant for redevelopment to our absurdly rigid education system.
- DirectorChia-Liang LiuStarsYue WongChia-Hui LiuLieh LoA prince enlists a thief to serve as his bodyguard to protect him from assassins.Showcasing action choreography at its most imaginative, this martial arts freakshow boasts a litany of memorable set-pieces involving fighters ‘pretending’ to be physically handicapped, mentally deranged or – in the most fascinating case – not really fighting at all. The story, cursory as it is, involves a profligate Manchu prince (Gordon Liu) travelling incognito who brushes off assassins sent by his brother with the help of the titular petty thug (Wong), who’s forced to apprentice himself to obtain an antidote for the poisonous wound on his head.
- DirectorChing DoeStarsJeanette Lin TsuiHong MuJulie Yeh FengMarriage seems to be on everyone’s mind in this Cathay Studios rom-com, which casts an affecting gaze on sisterhood – here charmingly embodied by four great beauties of Mandarin cinema. As the tomboyish third daughter of an affluent widower, Lin’s titular role vivaciously oversees the matters of the heart of her siblings – including the selfless eldest (Mu), the promiscuous second (Yeh) and the innocent youngest (Soo) – while bumbling and fumbling towards her own discovery of love.
- DirectorJing WongStarsChow Yun-FatAndy LauJoey WangA master gambler loses his memory and is befriended by a street hustler who discovers his supernatural gambling abilities.The high-grossing action comedy that inspired countless sequels, prequels, spin-offs and rip-offs, Wong’s definitive gambling movie is anchored by a sparkling Chow Yun-fat – all slicked-back hair, tuxedo and cocky smirks. His master gambler Ko Chun has left an indelible mark on our collective consciousness.
- DirectorJohnnie ToStarsAnthony Chau-Sang WongFrancis NgJackie Chung-yin LuiTriad boss Lung, who has just escaped being killed in an assassination, hires five killers for his protection. Their grown solidarity is under compulsion when Lung gives a special order.Firing guns in messianic poses becomes an art form in the extraordinary shopping mall shoot-out in The Mission, which follows five hitmen as they form a camaraderie of bodyguards for a triad kingpin. A minimalist thriller with style and attitude to spare, it also features the subtlest plot turn in the Hong Kong action genre.
- DirectorKar-Wai WongStarsBrigitte LinMaggie CheungLeslie CheungA broken-hearted hit man moves to the desert where he finds skilled swordsmen to carry out his contract killings.A Jin Yong adaptation, Wong Kar-wai-style. Structured with the concept of cyclical repetition from the Chinese almanac, the auteur’s impressionistic riff on the classic wuxia novel The Eagle-Shooting Hero is a desert-bound swordplay drama whose only concern seems to be its characters’ sentimental longings.
- DirectorSammo Kam-Bo HungStarsBiao YuenChing-Ying LamSammo Kam-Bo HungA young man discovers that his reputation as a fearsome martial artist is manufactured by his rich father, after meeting a real martial arts master, who's also a master thespian, and is determined to apprentice under him to learn kung fu.An invincible fighter (Yuen) in Foshan discovers that his father has paid off all his opponents to save him – the only descendent of the wealthy Leung’s family – in this engrossing Wing Chun comedy by Hung, who directed, choreographed and impressed as the leading man’s eccentric master.
- DirectorClara LawStarsMasatoshi NagasePei-Hui LiSiu Wan ChoiTwentysomething Japanese tourist, Tokio, comes to Hong Kong looking for good cuisine. He does all that the tourist is expected to do, but is disappointed with the food so far. By chance, he meets 15-year-old Pui Wai. She's been left behind with her eighty-year-old Granny, her parents too busy with their immigration problems in Canada. Differences in culture, language and age serve as no barrier, as Tokio finds a soulmate in Granny, Hong Kong cook extraordinaire. He discovers the secret to Granny's cooking and learns that she's known all along that her family will not be taking her to Canada when they leave.A teenage schoolgirl (Li) living with her senile grandmother finds a kindred spirit in a Japanese tourist (Nagase) wandering in a state of existential confusion. Law’s meditative tale of migration and urban ennui is engaging despite its meandering proceedings. It’s also surprisingly articulate in spite of the protagonists’ broken English.
- DirectorHark TsuiStarsBrigitte LinSally YehCherie ChungThe movie is set in chaotic 1920's China, when warlords fought each other for power while Sun Yat-Sen's underground movement tried to establish a democratic republic. The movie tells the story of three young women and two young men who are thrown together. One young woman grabs a box of jewels during the looting when one warlord takes Peking. A deserting soldier joins her, but the jewels end up at the Peking Opera. Here we meet the daughter of the head of the troupe, who dreams of being an actress. But even female roles are played by men in the opera. Soon, the daughter of the currently ruling warlord and a male agent of the democratic underground are involved.Lin, Chung and Yeh make for a charismatic star trio in this gender-bending, genre-blending crowd-pleaser, an early milestone for Tsui’s Film Workshop. Frenetically paced throughout, the backstage comedy cum espionage thriller provides a hugely exhilarating spin on the political chaos of 1910s China.
- DirectorShilin ZhuStarsQiuxia GongFei HanHua JiangA financially struggling office worker goes into debt in order to afford traditional holiday gifts for his boss and landlord.The twisted irony in social customs is devastatingly explored in Zhu’s powerful film, which sees a debt-ridden white-collar worker (Han) juggle between the need to send his boss gifts during Mid-autumn Festival – to avoid losing his job – and maintaining the basic dignity of his family.
- DirectorHark TsuiStarsLieh LoChen-Chi LinAlbert AuThree lazybones friends manufacture a firebomb and place it in a cinema. Pearl, a sadistic young girl, has observed the scene, follows the bombers and starts to manipulate them. The four criminals plan more and more daring acts.An early testament to Tsui’s readiness to disturb and provoke, the movie’s first cut was banned in HK for its bombing premise and anti-social sentiments. Re-edited with a new storyline about American arms smugglers, Dangerous Encounters remains a hysterical thriller soaked with teen violence and full-on social anarchy.
- DirectorKim ChunStarsShizeng MaMan-Lei WongJiasheng LinNo one does a forced smile better than Ma in this family melodrama. As an underemployed performer struggling financially to care for his ailing wife and send his two children to school, the real-life Cantonese opera star turns in a heartbreaking performance which epitomises the hardship of his generation.
- DirectorJeffrey LauStarsLawrence Ah-MonFai-Hung ChanKwok Leung CheungThe film is about a movie hero of the 60s called Black Rose, but she was actually real, and a woman in the 90s is mistaken for her because she's in the wrong place at the wrong time and somebody is doing crimes as Black Rose, who isn't the real Black RoseA nostalgic comedy that inducted Lau into postmodern cinema hall of fame, this accidental classic parodies 1960s Jane Bond movies (Cantonese flicks with crime-busting heroines) with a pitch-perfect sense of style and wackiness. Leung’s deadpan impersonation of 60s actor Lui Kei is now the stuff of legend.
- DirectorBruce LeeStarsBruce LeeChuck NorrisNora MiaoA man visits his relatives at their restaurant in Italy and has to help them defend against brutal gangsters harassing them.Chuck Norris may be able to slam a revolving door, but he’s still no match for Bruce Lee’s fearless country bumpkin – who is, however, afraid of naked Italian ladies. The Colosseum duel (and some hairy moments) aside, the kung fu star’s Rome-set directorial effort also surprises with its comedic touch.
- DirectorJohn WooStarsChow Yun-FatDanny LeeSally YehA disillusioned assassin accepts one last hit in hopes of using his earnings to restore vision to a singer he accidentally blinded.That church! Those white doves! The awesomely sappy Cantopop soundtrack! Arguably Woo’s most artistically accomplished film of the 1980s, this one-last-job epic plays like a perfect cross between Jean-Pierre Melville and Sam Peckinpah, deftly reversing Chow and Lee’s roles in City on Fire (1987) to thrust male bonding into high camp.
- DirectorHo-Cheung PangStarsMiriam Chin-Wah YeungShawn YueSingh Hartihan BittoHong Kong health authorities have implemented a law that bans indoor smoking. As office smokers now take their cigarette breaks outside, a mild-mannered advertising executive meets a cosmetics salesgirl as an awkward flirtation ensues.From the hazy ambiance of its KTV lounge parties to its uncannily realistic portrayal of Cantonese banter’s amusing ways, Pang’s bittersweet rom-com about two chain-smoking would-be lovers looks reality square in the eye: while urban romances may be capricious, our city’s indoor smoking ban is permanent.
- DirectorHark TsuiStarsSiu-Ming LauMichelle YimShu-Tong WongA journalist attempting to solve a mystery in "Martial World" enlists the aid of a master fighter and a woman named Green Breeze. They go to a mysterious castle where they come across poisonous butterflies and a black-leather-clad killer.The maverick director’s career-long schizophrenic sensibilities originated here: a breathtaking debut which encompasses everything from a wuxia writer-turned-detective as narrator, a medieval castle as the site of its locked room murder mystery, and millions of butterflies as its terrorisers. Hitchcock would have smiled with envy.
- DirectorJackie ChanChi-Hwa ChenStarsJackie ChanMaggie CheungBrigitte LinA virtuous Hong Kong Police Officer must clear his good name when the drug lord he is after frames him for the murder of a dirty cop.Chan defied death – and incurred a variety of injuries – as a brave and truly athletic cop in this pinnacle of action choreography, whose death-defying stunts amaze from start (which sees the actor hang onto a speeding double-decker bus with an umbrella) to finish (with a glass-shattering, escalator-jumping climax).
- DirectorRicky LauStarsChing-Ying LamSiu-Ho ChinRicky HuiThe planned reburial of a town elder goes awry as the corpse resurrects into a hopping, bloodthirsty vampire, targeting everyone responsible for digging the grave. A Taoist Priest and his two disciples attempt to stop the terror.A supernatural game-changer that started a franchise and set the rules for all things jiang shi, Lau’s uproarious horror comedy popularised the mythology of Chinese hopping vampires (commonly said to be corpses reanimated out of indignation) – if not also sticky rice, the most hated item of the undead.
- DirectorPatrick TamStarsAaron KwokCharlie YeungIan Iskandar GouwAfter his mother flees the family home, a son turns to thieving in order to support his father, an abusive sort who is addicted to gambling.Kwok won his second of two consecutive best actor awards at the Golden Horse with this exceptional comeback effort by Tam. Crisply edited and masterfully narrated, the Malaysia-set drama takes an unflinching look at a gambler’s destructive influence on – and unfathomable betrayal of – his young son (Ng).
- DirectorEvans ChanStarsLindzay ChanKin Chung FungPing HaIn late 1989, angered by comments made by Liv Ullmann about Hong Kong's treatment of Vietnamese refugees, Rubie composes a letter to the actress. Passages from the letter are revealed throughout the movie as Rubie, her friends, and family come to terms with the impending handover to China, and decide whether to remain in Hong Kong or emigrate abroad.Starting out as a cinematic response to Liv Ullmann’s condemnation of our city’s deportation of 51 Vietnamese refugees in 1990, Chan’s impossibly intellectual post-Tiananmen essay-cum-melodrama offers everything from a Van Gogh ‘prank’ to a reciting of Invisible Cities. Last but not least: the other Anthony Wong emotes.
- DirectorKing HuStarsPei-Pei ChengHua YuehChih-Ching YangBandits kidnap a governor's son and demand their imprisoned leader to be set free in exchange. The governor's daughter, a skilled martial artist, is sent to rescue him, but eventually finds herself overmatched and in need of assistance.Before the iconic director moved to Taiwan and shot Dragon Gate Inn (1967) and A Touch of Zen (1971) – indisputably two of the greatest martial arts films ever made – Hu refined the genre with this deliberately-paced quest for justice by Cheng’s female knight Golden Swallow and Yueh’s heroic swordsman Drunken Cat.
- DirectorHark TsuiStarsJet LiRosamund KwanBiao YuenLegendary martial arts hero Wong Fei-Hung fights against foreign forces' plundering of China. When Aunt Yee arrives back from America, Wong Fei-Hung assumes the role of her protector.Jet Li turned from Mainland wushu champion to international action star with Tsui’s nationalistic reinvention of the folk legend of Wong Fei-hung. Its climatic warehouse combat, partly on flopping ladders, is easily one of the best fight scenes of kung fu cinema.
- DirectorChing DoeStarsDai LinShan KwanHan ChinReleased in two parts on the second anniversary of Lin’s suicide, Ching’s adaptation of Taiwanese writer Wang Lan’s poignant WWII novel charts the decade-spanning affair of a pair of star-crossed lovers, who have long been kept apart by family pressure, the ongoing war, and more than a few lamentable life decisions.
- DirectorJohnnie ToStarsSimon YamSuet LamRuby WongWhen an obnoxious detective loses his gun to four young thugs, it's up to the P.T.U. (Police Tactical Unit) and their iron-willed leader to recover the weapon and clean up the mess before daybreak.Yam bends the rules in this convoluted nocturnal thriller, which is set in nightmarish motion when Lam’s uniformed buffoon loses his gun and his Police Tactical Unit mates decide to secretly retrieve it for him before the night ends. Cynical irony abounds.
- DirectorYuen ChorStarsShen ChanKuan Tai ChenMei Hua ChenA group of people are crowded together in a crappy tenement slum. The place is ruled with an iron fist by its strict landlady, who along with her sleazy husband, tries to exploit their tenants in whatever way they see fit.A crowd-pleasing social satire which struck a chord with the TVB-loving population of the time, Chor’s adaptation of a 1940s stage comedy turns domineering landlords, corrupt firefighters and policemen into the laughing stock of the people – revitalising Cantonese dialect cinema along the way.
- DirectorGordon ChanDante LamStarsAnthony Chau-Sang WongMichael WongStephanie CheTung is a street cop in Hong Kong who's friends with a Triad named Fai. Fai hires a hit man to murder a business rival; the hit goes wrong and Fai, implicated in the incident, goes on the run.One of the funniest police thrillers Hong Kong cinema has ever seen, this offbeat dramedy alternates between ferocious meat cleaver battles with vicious mobsters and bantering sessions among three unorthodox cops, who philosophise their way through a lifestyle of drugs, bribes and loose women.
- DirectorTit LeeStarsKim-Fai YamXuexian BaiSing-Po LeungA laborious collaboration with the influential Cantonese opera librettist Tong Tik-sang, and a seminal masterpiece for any enthusiast of the art form, Lee’s screen adaptation of the Ming dynasty opera is arguably the best Yam-Pak film alongside Butterfly and Red Pear Blossom, also directed by Li in 1959.
- DirectorYuen ChorStarsLily HoHua YuehBetty Pei TiThe Four Seasons Brothel is run by a ruthless madam, Lady Chun Yi. Countless young girls have been kidnapped or bought and then sold into a life of servitude, prostitution, and torture at this brothel. Ai Nu, an honest, but poor family's only daughter, is one of the newest girls that was recently kidnapped and sold to Lady Chun. To complicate matters even more, Lady Chun is a lesbian and quickly falls in love with the virginal Ai Nu, who will not let her spirit be broken and tries to escape again and again. This causes Lady Chun to use all of her resources to break her, including auctioning off Ai Nu's virginity to a group of wealthy businessmen. She eventually entrusts Ai Nu with a number of ancient kung-fu secrets like the Ghost Hands, which allows you to thrust your fists into an opponent's chest. Soon after murder erupts within the brothel. A diligent detective, Chi Te, visits the brothel and becomes increasingly involved in the murder investigation. He realizes he must do everything he can to prevent Ai Nu from taking her much deserved revenge on everyone that has wronged her over the years.Controversial on its initial release due to its lesbian and exploitation themes, Chor’s rape-revenge epic – mixing swordplay with period erotica – still arrests the senses with the sheer intensity of its tale, which sees a defiant beauty (Ho) exacting vicious retribution on her tormentors years after being abducted into a high-class brothel.
- DirectorAllen FongStarsKwok-Lam ChaChi-Hung ChangMing-Cheung ChinWhen romance starts to cool, Ah Ying applies for a job in a film centre. Instead of paying her for her work, the centre lets her attend its classes for free. She is later drawn into a relationship with her teacher. Based on the life of its leading actress, Hui So Ying, and using non-professionals, the film is a realistic portrayal of contemporary Hong Kong life.A pioneer of Chinese docu-drama, Fong’s naturalistic movie compassionately tells the tale of an unlikely relationship between two frustrated dreamers: a young woman (Hui essentially playing herself) reluctantly working for her fish hawker parents, and an idealistic middle-aged acting teacher (Wang) hoping to realise his film project.
- DirectorTung-Shing YeeStarsChing Wan LauAnita YuenCarina LauA jazz musician (Lau Ching-Wan) who has problems in both his life and career breaks up with his girlfriend, and moves into a poor neighborhood. There, he meets a girl (Anita Yuen), who started being interested in him as of his saxophone skills. Their friendship turns into a romance, and he gets inspired to write songs again. However, Min discovers that she has an issue with her health-condition...Yuen plays the role of her life in this superb remake of Doe Ching’s Shaw Brothers tearjerker Love Without End (1961). As an ultra-bubbly cancer patient from a Cantonese opera-singing family, her doomed romance with Lau’s worn-out jazz composer is still one of our cinema’s greatest romances.
- DirectorKar-Wai WongStarsLeslie CheungTony Leung Chiu-waiChang ChenA couple take a trip to Argentina but both men find their lives drifting apart in opposite directions.A pair of bickering Cantonese gay lovers (Cheung and Leung) stranded in Argentina may be an unusual idea of cinematic poetry but Wong, who was named best director at Cannes, managed the impossible with this lyrical break-up movie. His eye for wistful symbolism – highlighting Buenos Aires as Hong Kong’s antipode – is out of this world.
- DirectorYuen ChorStarsYin PakWood-Yau CheungLap Ban ChanA beloved schoolteacher contracts tuberculosis, sees his five children begging on the street for his wife’s medical fees, and borrows from a loanshark before finding his infant daughter dead due to delayed medical attention in this classic melodrama – arguably the ultimate weepie for parents.
- DirectorWen YiStarsGrace ChangPeter Chen HouChien-Fei ChangA woman finds out that she's adopted and sets out to find her long-lost biological mother.Chang made her star turn in this Mandarin musical about a talented singer-dancer who, while showered with affection by her family and classmates, discovers on her 20th birthday that she’s an adopted orphan. Not even an unsettling search for her birth mother could dampen this truly buoyant song-and-dance showcase.
- DirectorWilson YipStarsDonnie YenSimon YamSiu-Wong FanDuring the Japanese invasion of China, a wealthy martial artist is forced to leave his home when his city is occupied. With little means of providing for themselves, Ip Man and the remaining members of the city must find a way to survive.After S.P.L. (2005), Dragon Tiger Gate (2006) and Flash Point (2007), the Yip-Yen combo reaches its zenith with this engrossing martial arts biopic on the titular Wing Chun legend. Patriotic fluff it certainly is, but Yen displays enough deadpan cool and dignified invincibility to shine in the role of his life.
- DirectorYuen ChorStarsLung TiLieh LoLi ChingDon't miss this one it is excellent. Chinese sword masters pair up to fight off yet another villain for the deadly PeacockDart. The ending is eye popping don't miss this one. Shaw Brothers come thru yet againTi’s poncho-wearing, solitary swordsman slashes through the vanity of the martial underworld in Chor’s most celebrated adaptation of wuxia novelist Gu Long. If low on realistic characterisation, this swordplay fantasy hypnotises with its brooding ambience and imaginative weaponry.
- DirectorKwok-Ming CheungStarsLun ChiaHing-Yin KamEddie ChanAn undercover cop goes deep undercover to inside one of Hong Kong's most notorious Triad gangs only to find him getting consumed by a life of crime and seediness.A fresh-faced policeman (Chan) assigned to infiltrate the triads sinks into a downward spiral of violence in this early New Wave gem. Clearly inspired by Serpico (1973), Cheung’s gritty look at his protagonist’s escalating alienation and disillusionment would later kick-start the sub-genre of undercover cop drama in Hong Kong.
- DirectorPatrick TamTong Kay Ming TerryStarsCecilia YipLeslie CheungPatricia HaA story about the experiences of a group of youngsters who feel lost and try to find the true meaning of life.Daring in form and casually nihilistic in content, this New Wave classic is a youthful slice-of-death drama which became notorious for its open attitude to sex – there’s lovemaking on a moving tram! There’s also an abruptly violent conclusion, oddly involving the Japanese Red Army.
- DirectorPingqian LiStarsQiuxia GongFong PauHui ShiA sadder than sad story about a fun-loving optimist whose interest in comedy performance is despised by both his family and his wealthy future in-laws, Li’s tragic-comedy follows the 50-year-old father (Bao) as he maintains a dignified façade after losing his long-held accounting job in an occupied Tianjin in the 1940s.
- DirectorStephen ChowStarsStephen ChowWah YuenQiu YuenIn Shanghai, China in the 1940s, a wannabe gangster aspires to join the notorious "Axe Gang" while residents of a housing complex exhibit extraordinary powers in defending their turf.The underdog hero of Hong Kong cinema went mega-budget for this CGI extravaganza, a martial arts comedy so outrageously cartoonish it put its writer-director-producer-star temporarily on the world map. Film buffs will be in heaven spotting the references, from Bruce Lee lore to The House of 72 Tenants (1973).
- DirectorHan Hsiang LiStarsLi Hua LiChun YenLei ZhaoWu Ze Tian rules as empress during the Tang and Wu Zhao dynasties.Maybe it’s the distractingly sumptuous visuals, or maybe it’s the battle of wits which characterises its sophisticated dialogue, but this operatic tale about China’s first female ruler was initially panned by the critics – before it came to be seen, belatedly, as a consummate historical costume drama with a female-empowering touch.
- DirectorEddie Ling-Ching FongStarsPatricia HaAlex ManKuo-Chu ChangRebellious Yu Yuan-gi becomes a Taoist priestess in order to avoid traditional roles designated to her as a woman by the society and focus on her studies and poetry. However, her trysts with both her maid and a ronin lead to trouble.Ha cements her sex symbol status in this landmark period erotica of progressive feminist and existentialist undertones. As a Taoist priestess-cum-literati, and hostess of nightly orgies, her pleasure-seeking heroine refuses to be tied down in matrimony or, indeed, to any one lover – male or female.
- DirectorAnn HuiStarsJosephine SiaoKenny BeeMang-Ha ChengA Cantonese opera company arrives in Cheung Chau to perform for a rich man, who wants to marry of his nephew Dick to the star of the company Ah Gee. As soon as they arrive, the company is thwarted by a female spirit, Catshit, who turns out to be the precursor of a whole army of spirits sent to pester the uncle and one of the older actors. Only Ah Gee and Dick find out that the danger has something to do with a crime committed by Ah Gee's ancestors. This involved selling bad medicines to soldiers as a result of which a whole platoon of ghosts is out for vengeanceA Cantonese opera troupe encounters the vengeful ghosts of a war-time forged medicine disaster. From phantoms and curses to spells and possessions, this New Wave representative is a furiously paced, Cheung Chau-set horror farce which throws every creepy facet of Chinese superstition at the audience.
- DirectorFruit ChanStarsHailu QinWai-Fan MakXiao Ming BiaoHong Kong life from the perspective of a young northern mainland Chinese woman working as a prostitute in Hong Kong.The quests for better living of two Mainland migrants – a Chinese opera performer working temporarily as a prostitute (Qin) and a young daughter overstaying her visa (Mak) – become intertwined through the stinky, exotic fruit in this gently observed effort, the first title in Chan’s unfinished ‘Prostitute Trilogy’.
- DirectorTian-Lin WangStarsMing YuYin WangKelly Lai ChenA young lady has taken the place of caring for her two younger brothers since the death of their mother. She is content with putting her life on hold whilst she cares for them until one day when she meets an old classmate and her father proposes marriage to a colleague. She's unsure what kind of stepmother her father's new bride might make. Will she be mean and cruel like the woman across the alley or will she be kind and benevolent? What about her new beau? Will the family accept him and can the two work everything out?The transience of youth and the difficulty in affirming love in all circumstances are delicately alluded to in this Eileen Chang-scripted family melodrama, which sees a middle-aged widower’s (Wang Yin) decision to remarry being disrupted by his three children’s fear of a potentially evil stepmother.
- DirectorKing-wai CheungKJ is a biography of a HK musical genius. At the age of 11, KJ won the Best Pianist price and went to Czech to perform with a professional orchestra. Touching on subjects such as the meaning of life, God and the artistic process, the director's 6-year-conversations with KJ reveal how a young man inspires by his music teacher, Nancy Loo and how he conflicts with his peers and parents. KJ is not about the victory of a genius, but how he learns to be a "human being".Cheung’s magnificent documentary sees egotistic music prodigy Wong Ka-jeng questioning his existence at the age of 11 – when he’s arguably peaked; at 17, the boy’s free spirit was already corroded by meaningless competitions and his parents’ divorce. His struggle is largely unspoken – and it’s all unspeakably sad.
- DirectorTung-Shing YeeChi-Leung LawStarsLeslie CheungKaren MokShu QiA struggling director is offered the opportunity to direct a Cat-III film to revive his career. Torn between artistic integrity and financial troubles, he also has to deal with his jealous girlfriend and keep his gangster financiers happy.It’s not quite the highbrow smut it aspires to be but Viva Erotica, which tells of the artistic pursuit of a downtrodden filmmaker reluctantly engaged to helm a softcore skinflick, remains one of the few satires on Category III filmmaking that manages to be frank, funny and humane all at once.
- DirectorChusheng CaiStarsLi-li LiLi QingMing JiangSet during the Orphan Island period of Shanghai, the film follows a group of revolutionary patriots-cum-assassins who finally earn the support of the suffering public.The oldest movie on our list is a war-time drama which passionately fuses espionage noir with social-realist drama. Set during the Orphan Island period of Shanghai, the film follows a group of revolutionary patriots-cum-assassins who finally earn the support of the suffering public. ‘We’re all Chinese,’ so they repeatedly chant.
- DirectorAnn HuiStarsSylvia ChangAngie ChiuNorman ChuA real murder case which was complicated by the minage ' trois relationship of the victim and the main suspects. As different witnesses narrated their conflicting stories, the case seemed set to lead to nowhere; especially when the real identity of the dead person was finally discovered.Part pseudo-ghost story, part Hitchcockian mystery thriller, Hui’s debut feature wraps a brutal double murder at its core with disorienting editing, fragmented chronology and some utterly haunting sequences. Its final scene, involving a cleaver and a pregnant woman, is as ridiculously gory as it is surreal.
- DirectorClarence FokStarsChingmy YauSimon YamCarrie NgA young woman is trained by a martial arts specialist to become a professional assassin.Man-hating lesbian assassins populate this Wong Jing-scripted and produced erotic thriller, whose absurdly OTT campness renders it a cult fave internationally. Yau’s classic one-arm-over-the-breasts posture unleashed a new era of sex icons who, even while topless, don’t reveal their goods.
- DirectorFung FungStarsBruce LeeChau-Shui YeeHoi-Chuen LeeThe English was actually The Kid.Bruce Lee shined in his first leading role as A-Chang in this vivacious social comedy, playing a 10-year-old orphan who’s raised by a righteous uncle (Yee), groomed by a skilled thief (Fung) and involved in all sorts of trouble around the factory of a hilariously forgetful miser (Lee Hoi-chuen, Lee’s father).
- DirectorJohn WooStarsChow Yun-FatTony Leung Chiu-waiTeresa MoA tough-as-nails cop teams up with an undercover agent to shut down a sinister mobster and his crew.Life is cheap (and bullets apparently cheaper) in this ultra-cool, ultra-stylish shoot ’em up. From Chow’s gun-fu-fighting supercop to Woo’s cameo as a contemplative jazz bar owner, and from its birdcage-kicking teahouse shootout at the start to its hospital-exploding, baby-saving climax, Hard Boiled remains any action fanboy’s wettest dream.
- DirectorClement Sze-Kit ChengChi-Kin KwokStarsSiu-Lung LeungKuan Tai ChenTeddy Robin KwanWeedy office worker Cheung is sent to a remote village to secure property rights for his real estate company. Two martial artists run the village's teahouse, which was once the kung-fu school of their teacher Master Law. Law is in fact lying unconscious upstairs in a three decades-long coma, but he awakes when gym boss and local landlord Pong attempts to secure the teahouse for redevelopment. Law mistakes Cheung for a former student and starts training him in preparation for a martial-arts tournament at Pong's gym that will decide all their fates.Kung fu stars of yesteryear carry this spirited homage to an old genre by two up-and-coming directors. That the low-budget retro action comedy was named best picture at the Hong Kong Film Awards reveals as much about our cinema’s current nostalgic wave as it does a gradual changing of the guard.