Known for the Infernal Affairs trilogy and Young and Dangerous films, Andrew Lau’s output is wide-ranging. We recall some lesser known films.
9 Feb 2025 - 11:15AM videocam
Sword-fighting films were popular in the 1960s and 1990s. Tsui Hark and Derek Yee were among directors who reinvented the genre this century.
2 Feb 2025 - 11:15AM videocam
Anthropologist Alice Roberts describes how secrets of diseases can be uncovered from old skeletons building workers and archaeologists find.
31 Jan 2025 - 8:14AM videocam
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.
26 Jan 2025 - 4:15PM videocam
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.
22 Jan 2025 - 8:32AM videocam
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.
19 Jan 2025 - 11:15AM videocam
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.
12 Jan 2025 - 10:10AM videocam
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.
10 Jan 2025 - 12:09PM videocam
A professor uses ‘anomalistic psychology’ to try to understand belief in phenomena that lack scientific support, such as psychics or ghosts.
29 Dec 2024 - 6:15PM videocam
Hong Kong filmmaking underwent successive evolutions thanks to films like Fist of Fury, Infernal Affairs and John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow.
10 Jan 2025 - 12:08PM videocam
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.
10 Jan 2025 - 12:08PM videocam
A psychologist who helped develop an award-winning meditation app explains how the practice can lower stress, boost concentration and more.
15 Dec 2024 - 7:45AM videocam
Known for lowbrow comedies and playing the underdog, Chow was successfully recast as a suave hero, playing a cop undercover as a schoolboy.
10 Jan 2025 - 12:07PM videocam
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.
10 Jan 2025 - 12:06PM videocam
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.
10 Jan 2025 - 12:05PM videocam
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.
10 Jan 2025 - 12:04PM videocam
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.
10 Jan 2025 - 12:04PM videocam
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.
10 Jan 2025 - 12:03PM videocam
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.
28 Oct 2024 - 4:17PM videocam
Tsui Hark’s film series that originally starred Jet Li as martial arts legend Wong Fei-hung spawned several knock-offs, such as Kickboxer.
21 Oct 2024 - 1:10PM videocam
Anita Mui’s remarkable versatility made her characters captivating to watch in films that co-starred names like Jackie Chan and Chow Yun-fat.
13 Oct 2024 - 4:15PM videocam
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.
6 Oct 2024 - 4:15PM videocam
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.
29 Sep 2024 - 9:17AM videocam
An assassins’ weapon that removed heads, the fictional ‘flying guillotine’ was featured in a number of Hong Kong wuxia films.
22 Sep 2024 - 7:45AM videocam
Oxide and Danny Pang’s supernatural thriller The Eye established their reputation as horror directors; two equally good sequels followed.
15 Sep 2024 - 7:45AM videocam
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.
8 Sep 2024 - 10:24AM videocam
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.
1 Sep 2024 - 7:45AM videocam
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.
25 Aug 2024 - 7:53AM videocam