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Richard James Havis
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Riley Ip made films featuring stars such as Takeshi Kaneshiro and Anthony Wong. Here are the 3 best.
We recall a lurid mix of wuxia and witchcraft, Cheng Pei-pei in Dragon Swamp, and two films featuring a risible lizard and non-giant spider.
Angela Mao, all glammed up, plays an assassin in Broken Oath, a 1977 remake of a Japanese classic. It is one of her greatest performances.
Hong Kong’s film industry suffered a huge slump from 2000-2009, but did the mainland Chinese market and China co-productions save it?
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John Woo teamed with Tom Cruise for a ‘boring’ hit. Peter Chan turned to romance. Ringo Lam and Jean Claude van Damme made stomachs churn.
Known for the Infernal Affairs trilogy and Young and Dangerous films, Andrew Lau’s output is wide-ranging. We recall some lesser known films.
Sword-fighting films were popular in the 1960s and 1990s. Tsui Hark and Derek Yee were among directors who reinvented the genre this century.
Anthropologist Alice Roberts describes how secrets of diseases can be uncovered from old skeletons building workers and archaeologists find.
Shaw Brothers backed Lau Kar-leung to make two sequels to The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, one so bad it was the studio’s last martial arts film.
A library of Hong Kong films, including the likes of A Chinese Ghost Story and Hard Boiled, has been bought – good news for fans overseas.
Tsui Hark’s 1990 Hong Kong film Swordsman was a long and rambling affair that was difficult to follow, yet it was a resounding success.
1988 Hong Kong film follows Yu Jim-yuen, the master of the Peking opera school in Kowloon whose pupils included Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung.
We recall Journey to the West film adaptations, from Stephen Chow’s turn in the title role to one in which Donnie Yen plays the Monkey King.
A professor uses ‘anomalistic psychology’ to try to understand belief in phenomena that lack scientific support, such as psychics or ghosts.
Hong Kong filmmaking underwent successive evolutions thanks to films like Fist of Fury, Infernal Affairs and John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow.
A triad movie with a young Stephen Chow, a crude war film and a crime caper starring Leslie Cheung. These 3 Woo projects fly under the radar.
A psychologist who helped develop an award-winning meditation app explains how the practice can lower stress, boost concentration and more.
Known for lowbrow comedies and playing the underdog, Chow was successfully recast as a suave hero, playing a cop undercover as a schoolboy.
The Ip Man story has been explored in multiple films, from Wong Kar-wai’s The Grandmaster starring Tony Leung to one featuring Anthony Wong.
D&B films, started by watch retailer Dickson Poon, launched Michelle Yeoh’s action-movie career and was known for its ‘middle class values’.
The trio of 1990s adult movies with Hong Kong sex symbols like Amy Yip and Japanese adult-video actresses like Kudo Hitomi were a huge hit.
From July Rhapsody with Jacky Cheung to Love in a Puff with Miriam Yeung and Andy Lau in Love on a Diet, these movies offered something new.
We look at four remakes of classic Hong Kong films, from a Jackie Chan-led Police Story from the 2000s to a riff on Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury.
Based on a script Lee abandoned, the 1978 film ended up a bizarre mix of poor martial arts and mysticism. An expert dissects what went wrong.
Aaron Kwok’s early films garnered mixed reviews, from a terrible outing in Legend of the Liquid Sword to a great one in After This Our Exile.
Tsui Hark’s film series that originally starred Jet Li as martial arts legend Wong Fei-hung spawned several knock-offs, such as Kickboxer.
Anita Mui’s remarkable versatility made her characters captivating to watch in films that co-starred names like Jackie Chan and Chow Yun-fat.
Cheung’s turns opposite Gong Li as a gay opera singer and a gigolo in 20th century China were two of his best, but both fell foul of censors.
The Crow was Lee’s best movie but he was great in dubbed crime film, despite refusing to do kung fu for fear of comparisons with his dad.
