March 24, 2007

Post-trip HK movie rundown

While in Hong Kong I bought around 15 DVDs and VCDs. Here's a rundown of those I've seen so far...

  • La Brassiere: well known early 2000s flick about two guys hired to design bras at a clothing company. Some (Carina Lau, Gigi Leung) resist the idea of men joining the company, while others throw themselves at the blokes. Not particularly realistic, or mature, especially when bras are used as metaphors for relationships and personal growth, but it's got Lau Ching Wan and that's enough for me.
  • Security Unlimited - ancient (1981) flick starring the Hui brothers as employees of a security firm. Slightly more honed than their Private Eyes (1976) - the other one of theirs I've seen - but lacking that film's killer rock soundtrack. All the same, fantastic.
  • Future Cops - schlockmeister Wong Jing has a proud tradition of making terrible movies and this one is now exception. "Inspired" by the sequence in his City Hunter (1992) where Jackie Chan ends up dressed up as characters from Street Fighter, Wong expands this into a whole film, populating the characters with Hong Kong's finest. Andy Lau, Simon Yam, Ekin Cheng, Aaron Kwok, Jacky Cheung, Chingmy Yau, and (my favourite) comic actor Dicky Cheung make for a hefty lineup. All playing characters from a Sega game. Exactly how much money did Wong Jing throw at them? Were triads behind this? In any event the film (featuring future cops travelling back in time a la Terminator - Wong Jing loves ripping off others' films) is as bad as you'd expect, and as funny as you'd expect. Still better than the version with Jean Claude Van Damme, Kylie Minogue and Raul Julia though.
  • My Left Eye Sees Ghosts - silly and sentimental flick featuring Sammi Cheng missing her husband, whose ghost is played by an annoying Lau Chin Wan. Like the Sixth Sense it has a plot twist at the end, but unlike the Sixth Sense there are also a lot of wacky hijinks dead.
  • The Protege (2007) - actually saw this at the movies with Sally and her cousin William. The first time I've watched an HK flick in HK! Luckily there were English subtitles... anyway, the film is about drugs and has Daniel Wu (of the nice curvy nose) as an undercover cop and Andy Lau as an ageing drug baron. It's nicely shot, got a great central action sequence, and generally holds together. Directed by Derek Yee, who also directed the (somewhat better) One Night in Mongkok. The whole undercover cop thing has been done to death, esp after the Infernal Affairs series, but all up it's a good stout thriller that doesn't disgrace itself. If it doesn't come to this year's film fest I'll be outraged.

Then there's the selection of Stephen Chow films I bought:

  • God of Gamblers III: Back to Shanghai. Better than God of Gamblers II, but still pretty bad. The only mystery is why Mainland arthouse ingenue Gong Li decided to do a mo lei tau Cantonese comedy. Even more mysterious is why she did it again a couple of years later in the much better Flirting Scholar.
  • Love is Love (1990): pre-stardom comedy pitting young lovers Sandra Ng and Chow fleeing from her vengeful dad and trying to make it big in Hong Kong. Will it be easy? Of course not! Not bad, but not that good either.
  • The Magnificent Scoundrels (1991): Chow as a useless huckster teaming up with even more useless huckster Teresa Mo in a comedy of errors farce involving rival factions of thieves trying to con each other. The cast features Wu Ma, Yuen Wah (yeh!), Amy Yip (her breasts do most of the acting here), and Roy Cheung. It's all good fun, though a little too French or Blake Edwards for my taste.
  • Love on delivery (1994): The first film that Chow directed and it shows. Suddenly everything is different... the angles are more exaggerated, the set pieces more thoughtfully constructed... Chow plays a food delivery boy who falls in love with Christy Chung. Badass kung fu guys get in the way, so he must learn kung fu from ropey cripple Ng Man Tat. Big showdown at the end. This film is a prototype for both God of Cookery (1996) and Shaolin Soccer (2001), two of Chow's bigger films. This one is pretty good though, with plenty of wigged out moments.
  • Out of the Dark (1995): Said to be Chow's biggest box office bomb, I think it's great. Kind of a Chinese Ghostbusters, except Chow dresses like Jean Reno in Leon (at one point with buck teeth), while Karen Mok dresses up like Natalie Portman in the same movie (Mok's maturity removing the paedophilic subtext of that movie, thankfully). Random hijinks and gore abound... it's all in such poor taste it's rather brilliant. Sort of like the Kingdom, except Chinese and really silly.

With these films I have now seen every film that Chow made after his breakthrough flick 'All for the Winner' - well, every one worth seeing. It's sad in a way, that there's nothing left but anything new he does. I can now give you the full rundown of what to see and what not to, updating my list from last July:

Highly recommended:

  • Legend of the Dragon
  • Flirting Scholar
  • Hail the Judge
  • Love on Delivery
  • From Beijing with Love
  • Forbidden City Cop
  • Out of the Dark - though not to everyone's taste
  • God of Cookery
  • King of Comedy
  • Kung Fu Hustle

Worth a look:

  • All for the Winner
  • God of Gamblers III: Back to Shanghai
  • King of Beggars
  • Royal Tramp I and II
  • Fight Back to School I-III
  • 60 Million Dollar Man
  • A Chinese Odyssey I and II
  • Shaolin Soccer
  • Mad Monk
  • All's Well Ends Well
  • The Magnificent Scoundrels

Unnecessary viewing:

  • Fist of Fury '91
  • Lawyer Lawyer
  • The Lucky Guy
  • Look out, Officer
  • My Hero
  • God of Gamblers 2
  • Love is love

Looking over the highly recommended list, it's interesting that seven of them are directed by Lee Lik Chee. It's also interesting to note that the grand total is 32. I've seen 32 of this man's movies. I don't think I've ever seen 32 of anyone else's movies. Not even Bud Spencer's and Terence Hill's. Jesus.

Posted by stuart at March 24, 2007 4:20 PM