This was internationally famous Jackie Chan's breakthrough action film, the work that got him past the ethnic boundaries of Hong Kong and into competition at the New York Film Festival in 1986. It also got him into the hospital after performing a stunt in which he fell through a glass canopy -- and stopped breathing. The story itself is not ...
Even for viewers who can take or leave martial-arts films, the work of Jackie Chan bears special attention. Chan is quite simply the hardest-working movie star in the world, regularly participating in the sort of death-defying stuntwork which would make most American action heroes cringe in fear. Combining his daredevil heroics with an almost ...
For his first film since the 1997 Hong Kong handover, auteur filmmaker Wong Kar-wai directs this moody period drama about unrequited love that, like his earlier work, swoons with romantic melancholy. Set in a Shanghaiese enclave in Hong Kong in 1962, the film centers on two young couples who rent adjacent rooms in a cramped and crowded tenement. ...
Written and directed by Olivier Assayas, Irma Vep tells the story of has-been French filmmaker René Vidal (Jean-Pierre Léaud). In an attempt to reinvigorate his career, Vidal decides to remake Les Vampires, the classic silent serial featuring the adventures of jewel thief Irma Vep. Playing herself, actress Maggie Cheung is cast as the lead, ...
In this cartoonish live-action martial arts feature, three female super-heroes battle the forces of evil in the form of a woman who has hatched a plot to create China's next ruler. Over the years, she has stolen over a dozen children from their families. She hopes to raise them in a way that will make them into ruthless supermen. Among other ...
A woman throws herself into a last-ditch struggle to conquer her demons in this gritty drama from director Olivier Assayas. Lee Hauser (James Johnston) is a faded rock star who lives with his wife, Emily Wang (Maggie Cheung), the former host of a European music video show, in a small town in Western Canada. Both Lee and Emily have been battling ...
In this crime drama, set in Hong Kong, police officers begin a city-wide search for a psychotic killer. Along the way, they must also deal with their own personal and professional issues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Hero is two-time Academy Award nominee Zhang Yimou's directorial attempt at exploring the concept of a Chinese hero. During the peak of their Warring States period, China was divided into seven kingdoms all fighting for supremacy. Most determined to dominate China was the kingdom of Qin, whose king (Chen Daoming) was wholly obsessed with becoming ...
Snakes and special effects abound as human and mythical worlds collide in this lavish variation of an old Chinese fable about a learned man who falls under the spell of two snake women. After 1,000 years of practice, White Snake is finally able to take on a completely human form. Hsu Hsien, the scholar, falls in love with the lovely White Snake. ...
Master Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai directed this lyrical, dream-like martial arts epic. A famously troubled shoot, the film took two years and 40 million dollars to produce (a shocking sum for a national cinema populated with low-budget quickies) and features a virtual who's-who of the Hong Kong film world. Conceived as a prequel to the ...
This slapstick martial arts film is often regarded as superior to the original Project A. Dragon (Jackie Chan) runs against the pirates he defeated in the first film and also gets in trouble with corrupt cops, and a revolutionary group that includes popular Hong Kong actress Michelle Cheung. Many of the acrobatic fight sequences in this ...
Following up on his debut As Tears Go By, master filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai directs this dark, brooding tale about identity and unrequited love. Set in 1960, the film center of the young, boyishly handsome Yuddy (Leslie Cheung), who learns from the drunken ex-prostitute who raised him that she is not his real mother. Hoping to hold onto him, she ...
In 1969, while Hong Kong is undergoing its own localized chaos -- fallout from the Cultural Revolution on the Chinese mainland -- taxi driver Ah-chung is hard-pressed to juggle the two women in his life and his ambition to own his own cab. One of the women is a wealthy socialite who pays for his intimate attentions. The other is his real ...
Hong Kong emigrant Wayne Wang directed and co-wrote (with Paul Theroux, Jean-Claude Carriere and Larry Gross) this story set in "the Pearl of the Orient" as the British government prepared to hand over the city to China in 1997. John (Jeremy Irons) is an English journalist who has lived in the city for some time; while in some ways he still feels ...
In the 1930s, in China, there was a woman film-actress who was tagged as "the Chinese Garbo." She was a wildly popular performer who made her first film at age 16 and died by her own hand at age 25. Ironically, she was famous for playing tragic heroines, and her own life mirrored the kinds of situations she portrayed onscreen. In this biopic, Ruan ...
International action star Jackie Chan stars opposite knockabout comedy sensation Jackie Chan in this story about identical twins separated in childhood who are unexpectedly reunited years later. While on the run from a Hong Kong hospital, an escaped convict takes an infant hostage, leaving the baby's identical twin brother behind. While the ...
Raymond Lee Wai-man remakes King Hu's 1966 masterpiece about revenge and intrigue between imperial eunuchs during the Ming Dynasty. At the film's outset, the villainous Eunuch Tsao (Donnie Yen Chi-tan) has assassinated one of his primary court rivals and is looking to take out his former rival's right-hand man Chow Wai-on (Tony Leung Kar-fai). ...
Master Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai directed this lyrical, dream-like martial arts epic. A famously troubled shoot, the film took two years and 40 million dollars to produce (a shocking sum for a national cinema populated with low-budget quickies) and features a virtual who's who of the Hong Kong film world. Conceived as a prequel to the ...
Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-wai makes his feature film debut with this gritty romantic crime-drama inspired by Scorsese's Mean Streets. The film opens with young gangster Wah (Andy Lau) getting a visit for the day from his beautiful cousin Ah-Ngor (Maggie Cheung), who is coming into Kowloon from the remote outlying Lantau island to receive medical ...
One of Asia's most popular screen stars, Maggie Cheung stars in this romance about two Chinese 30-somethings living in California. Ellen (Cheung) is a single mother who works as a cabby; Mike (Cantonese pop star Leon Lai) is a computer genius who owns a struggling dot com. The two exchange glances at a bar one day, and later, when Ellen spots Mike ...
One misunderstanding after another seems to plague the efforts of Fred, Silver, and Tony in this romantic comedy. Away on vacation, the three run into two beautiful young women named Agnes and Maggie who are strolling down the beach and, by all appearances, seem quite wealthy. All three men are enamored with the ladies and a poker game gives Fred ...
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