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Matt Glasby
SCMP Contributor
Matt Glasby is a UK-based critic and author. His latest work, The Book of Horror: The Anatomy of Fear in Film, is an in-depth, illustrated guide to the scariest movies ever made.
Matt Glasby is a UK-based critic and author. His latest work, The Book of Horror: The Anatomy of Fear in Film, is an in-depth, illustrated guide to the scariest movies ever made.
Whether you love it, hate it or veer deliriously between the two, Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 romantic musical is an experience you don’t forget.
Star Wars fans may find The Mandalorian and Grogu an entertaining watch but it lacks real depth and feels more like a TV episode than a film.
55 Days at Peking (1963) paints the historical event as an Orientalist Alamo, while white actors ‘yellowface’ as the main Chinese characters.
Pearl Harbor was widely panned upon release in 2001 but with its strong cast and characters and explosive action, is it worth reassessing?
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David Cronenberg’s 1993 movie starring John Lone as a cross-dresser who woos Jeremy Irons’ diplomat was an interesting but failed experiment.
The charms of Bridget Jones’s Diary are still obvious when viewed today, but its politics seem to be from a different century altogether.
Filmed at Hengdian World Studios, DOA: Dead or Alive helped pioneer East-West cinema collaboration – even if it bombed at the box office.
Political dissent, societal control, a devastating virus: 20 years on, V for Vendetta looks less like a film than a prescient warning.
Alice Wu fought to film Saving Grace with an all Asian-American cast, and the film inspired a generation of Asian-American filmmakers.
Taxi Driver remains an overwhelming experience and Robert De Niro’s career-kick-starting role continues to resonate in today’s society.
Anna May Wong’s role in Daughter of Shanghai was one of the Chinese-American actress’ favourites. We look at why this B-movie stands out.
George Clooney’s charisma can’t mask the flaws of this 1996 gorefest written by Quentin Tarantino, from bad effects to treatment of women.
The Joy Luck Club (1993) is a complex tale of intergenerational trauma focusing on four Chinese mothers and their daughters in San Francisco.
The 1985 film, starring Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover and Oprah Winfrey, was much criticised upon release but received 11 Oscar nominations.
Soursweet (1988), about a Hong Kong family’s UK struggles, was a progressive film, despite the narrative controlled by its British makers.
Unbreakable, starring Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson, was not a hit at the box office upon release, but is now considered a masterpiece.
Peter Wang’s 1986 comedy-drama A Great Wall, which was filmed in San Francisco and Beijing, was better received in the US than in China.
It bombed upon release, but this 1995 sci-fi with Ralph Fiennes offers a vivid portrait of contemporary society, and some prescient warnings.
Also the first UK film made by a director of Chinese descent, Leong Po-chih’s Ping Pong flopped upon release but is being rediscovered.
David Fincher’s bleak, gruesome 1995 film starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman has inspired the feel of many serial killer flicks since.
Kiss of the Dragon was a box office success in 2001, but its racial stereotyping, violence and sexual frankness caused it problems in China.
Herzog injected himself into the grizzly story of bear ‘protector’ Timothy Treadwell’s death in one of the best documentaries of its type.
The Hong Kong director’s segment from the three-part erotic anthology Eros outshone those by Steven Soderbergh and Michelangelo Antonioni.
Kevin Costner’s unappealing anti-hero and bad writing were only some of the problems this expensive box-office failure had to contend with.
In Wayne Wang’s 1997 drama, the many sides of a city on the brink of change were shown through the camcorder of Jeremy Irons’ English writer.
With its gritty realism and complex themes, Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins helped turn superhero films into a dominant cinema genre.
Radiohead songs, visual poetry and Shawn Yue and Josh Hartnett in Vietnamese-French director’s art-house thriller shot mostly in Hong Kong.
As the Star Wars sequel turns 45 we look at how it bolstered the franchise with its epic fights and plot twist and why it wasn’t fun to make.
Rated 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, 2018 film Air Strike with Bruce Willis, Liu Ye and Fan Wei is a mishmash of genres and underwhelming action.
