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Richard James Havis
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.
An assassins’ weapon that removed heads, the fictional ‘flying guillotine’ was featured in a number of Hong Kong wuxia films.
Oxide and Danny Pang’s supernatural thriller The Eye established their reputation as horror directors; two equally good sequels followed.
Wong Jing set Hong Kong’s gambling movie genre in motion in 1989. We recall three of the best, including a parody that saw the most success.
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Derek Yee Tung-sing’s crime films One Nite in Mongkok, Protégé and Triple Tap were gritty and realistic, and refused to glamorise the underworld and crime. We unpack these three classics.
Pacita Abad’s political fabric art was dismissed as folksy in her lifetime, much of it spent in the US. Now, 20 years after her death, it is the subject of a major retrospective at New York’s MoMA PS1.
Lively, with slapstick humour and full of romcom tropes, Shanghai Blues remains one of Tsui Hark’s favourite films; 40 years after its release, it was screened at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
John Woo’s Bullet in the Head, loved by critics and fans alike, is an anti-war film centred around male friendship, a frequent theme for the director, and a political commentary on Hong Kong of its era.
A team of neuroscientists who studied jazz guitarists find common factors in how they achieved a flow state and what their brains have done to help flow arise more easily.
With echoes of Clint Eastwood’s spaghetti Westerns, fight scenes featuring some cool weapons, and a great ending, The Avenging Eagle was part of Shaw Brothers’ ‘last hurrah’, film producer Frank Djeng says.
From a deeply upsetting movie about a necrophiliac to a ‘mentally scarring’ film about black magic, an expert on Hong Kong cinema picks his five favourite horror movies produced in the city.
From launching Jackie Chan’s career with kung fu comedies to helping end big studios’ stranglehold on filming, Ng See-yuen has had a huge influence on Hong Kong cinema.
From a Tony Leung Chiu-wai crime thriller to a stylised hit-girl drama to a weird triad fantasy, we revisit and rate the first five films from Milkyway Image, formed by producer-directors Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai.
Chor Yuen’s 1973 film The House of 72 Tenants took in more money than Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon in Hong Kong, and making it in Cantonese, not Mandarin Chinese, proved a turning point for the industry.
Taiwanese actress-director Sylvia Chang has spoken to the Post on many subjects, from saying no to Hollywood and Asian stereotypes to making films on women. We recall her most quotable quotes.
We look beyond the dangerous stunts and innovative action sequences, and martial arts stars like Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, to discover why Hong Kong films have often travelled so well.
Health-centric technologies are being used to make self-care ‘a cornerstone of modern living spaces’ – think smart mattresses, and interactive art that can ‘transform you based on your movement, heartbeat or mood’.
The Valiant Ones, King Hu’s 1975 martial arts drama, was rediscovered after being ‘lost’ for two decades. A film critic tells the Post why it stands out from the director’s other films.
Adults-only and mainstream crime films, sex films, and serious dramas with Alex Law and Ann Hui – Simon Yam has done them all. Good-looking and with an expressive face, he has a work ethic second to none.
Gordon Liu, who sneaked off to learn kung fu behind his parents’ backs as a child, has had a career that spanned decades. Notably, he appeared as two different characters in the Kill Bill films.
Shuang Li grew up in Fujian listening to discarded CDs of American band My Chemical Romance. Her favourite band inspires the art in her New York exhibition I’m Not.
Hit 2010 film Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, starring Andy Lau, had many of the hallmarks of Tsui Hark’s earlier wuxia films. Sammo Hung choreographed the action. Two more films followed.
Fruit Chan Gor’s Made in Hong Kong, The Longest Summer and Little Cheung depict Hong Kong working-class life at the time of the handover from British to Chinese rule, and the start of cultural change.
Inspired casting, with Andy Lau facing off against Maggie Q and Sammo Hung narrating, helped Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon succeed. Martial arts scenes light up God of War, some involving Hung.
The New York Met’s exhibition of Harlem Renaissance art features 160 works, most by black artists, that depict daily life in black communities such as Harlem from the 1920s to 1940s.
Infernal Affairs, the 2002 psychological Hong Kong cop drama starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Andy Lau, was a box-office hit, but proved a hard act to follow when the studio asked for two more films.
The wellness industry is waking up to men’s needs the way it has done to women’s – with emotional support groups and bonding retreats, rather than just exercises in physical strength and extreme mastery.
In 1975’s The Man from Hong Kong, Jimmy Wang Yu thought he had found the vehicle that would propel him to Bruce Lee-level international fame – but the James Bond-like film did not click with viewers.
Hold You Tight and Lan Yu were daring films for their time. The first stars Chingmy Yau, then an actress in adults-only films, as a bored wife who has an affair, while the latter is a stylish gay drama.
In 1998, Rush Hour shot Jackie Chan to international fame. But after making the film with Chris Tucker, Chan ultimately decided not to abandon Hong Kong, and continued to make films in both places.
