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Clarence Tsui
Clarence Tsui
Clarence Tsui, a Hong Kong film critic and programmer, was the South China Morning Post’s Film Editor (2005-2012).

Many future stars appeared in TVB’s comedy series Angels and Devils, including Chow Yun-fat, Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Stephen Chow, but it was the former who stole the show with his screwball antics.

Humans in space, aliens crash-landing on Earth, people stuck in the same karmic cycle lifetime after lifetime – Hong Kong broadcaster ATV’s 1980s series about the paranormal were a class apart.

Rough-edged detective Do-cheol (Hwang Jung-min) returns in I, The Executioner, in which he and his team, including Jung Hae-in’s new recruit, must protect a paroled thug from a vigilante justice warrior.

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dreamy colours, heartfelt performances and economical storytelling characterise My Sunshine, Japanese director Hiroshi Okuyama’s film following two young ice dancers and their coach.

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2001 videos of his hometown, outtakes from past films, and scenes of a thinly sketched romance make up Caught by the Tides, a nostalgia trip set in towns soon to be drowned by China’s Three Gorges Dam.

Is it a Western? is it a political allegory? In a film of two halves with a stunning opening, Eddie Peng’s wayward man returns home after a decade away, bonds with a dog and reconciles with one and all.

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Premiering out of competition at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, An Unfinished Film, from Chinese director Lou Ye, delivers a powerful message in its story of Covid-induced lockdown in Wuhan.

The Roundup: Punishment, which premiered at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, sees Korean hard man Ma Dong-seok return as a no-nonsense cop who punches his way through a gang of internet scammers.

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Above the Dust follows a 10-year-old boy in China who dreams of owning a water pistol, and who goes on a journey through his grandfather’s memories of the 1950s and his terrible misdeeds at the time.

Debuting at Berlin 2024, Black Tea, the first film about Africans in China made by an African filmmaker, exhibits a tone-deaf understanding of what the diaspora’s experience is like in the country.

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Director Qiu Yang’s Some Rain Must Fall centres on a well-off woman whose family fragments after an accident, in a critique on damaging dysfunctions present in the lives of China’s middle class.

Premiering at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and starring Parasite’s Lee Sun-kyun and Along with the Gods’ Ju Ji-hoon, Project Silence is a clanging catastrophe that shows limited invention.

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Premiering at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, The Breaking Ice stars Zhou Dongyu and Liu Haoran in Hong Kong-based Singaporean filmmaker Anthony Chen’s first foray into mainland China.

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Wei Shujun’s adaptation of Yu Hua’s short story is a vividly shot whodunit that bucks the recent trend of disappointing Chinese neo-noir films and cements the director’s status as one of China’s best filmmakers.

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Youth (Spring), by Chinese director Wang Bing, follows young factory workers in China as they toil, love and live their lives within the confines of workshops that offer them little pay.

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Fan Bingbing makes an audacious comeback after nearly five years out of the limelight for tax evasion in Green Night. Thelma & Louise meets Blue is the Warmest Colour in a flashy but flawed film.

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A film by A Girl at My Door director July Jung, Next Sohee condemns the exploitation and abandonment of young people in South Korea by employers, schools and the authorities alike.

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Directed by Squid Game star Lee Jung-jae, this spy thriller, set during South Korea’s turbulent 1980s and ’90s, draws on real events, but ends up a confused mess.

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A woman adopted from South Korea when she was a baby and raised in France discovers she cares a lot more about her roots than she realises after meeting her biological father in Seoul.

Director Chie Hayakawa’s harrowing look at Japan’s ageist social mores has done the country’s cinema proud as the only Japan-set film to feature at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.

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International film festivals in Berlin and Rotterdam are the latest to move screenings partly or fully online; it’s not all bad, but there’s no substitute for film fans and professionals meeting at in-person events, organisers say.

From Hollywood to China, the coronavirus is reshaping the film world, making a raft of pandemic-themed movies, be they comedy capers, action and adventure, or patriotic salutes to unsung heroes, almost inevitable.

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Straight-to-streaming blockbusters and free online art-house films may be pragmatic and generous during the coronavirus lockdown, but will the public expect this to continue after the pandemic has passed?

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