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Yvonne Teh
The story of Youn Duk-soo is a tribute to the little guys who kept their country and their families together through Korea's turbulent modern history.
Lantau Island's Chi Ma Wan Country Trail takes hikers up to the top of 301-metre-high Miu Tsai Tun and 303-metre-high Lo Yan Shan, through an area known as "Rock Wonder" (because of the interestingly shaped granite formations found there) and past the small but pretty Shap Long Irrigation Reservoir.
This is the first Studio Ghibli title produced without company co-founders Hayao Miyazaki or Isao Takahata, but it retains some of the hallmarks of the highly respected animators.
Lau Ho-leung's directorial debut rides on the star power of Francis Ng and Simon Yam.
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Fourteen years after his two-year-old son was abducted, Anhui farmer Lei Zekuan (Andy Lau Tak-wah) is still doggedly searching the length and breadth of China for him.
This year's Hong Kong International Film Festival features a mix of art house dramas, big-budget crowd-pleasers, local fare and rarely seen classics.
Its English title makes it sound like a kung fu movie, but Little Big Master is actually the sort of "inspired by a true story" drama imbued with positive vibes and messages that you'd expect from Adrian Kwan Shun-fai, whose first three films are titled Sometimes, Miracles Do Happen, Life is a Miracle and If U Care ...
On July 2, 1964, the US Congress passed the Civil Rights Act outlawing discrimination based on race, colour, religion, sex, or national origin. Three months later, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jnr was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Not so long ago, Lunar New Year celebrations would not have felt complete for Hong Kong film fans without taking in a festive Jackie Chan movie (think 1992's Twin Dragons or 1995's Rumble in the Bronx).
Based on blood ties and merit, Peter Pau Tak-hei is a member of Hong Kong cinema royalty. The son of famous actor Bao Fong and brother of award-winning actress Nina Paw Hee-ching (The Way We Are), he lifted the best cinematography Oscar in 2001 for his work on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Still, Pau didn't envisage that when the time came to have a distinguished-looking older man play the Jade Emperor in Zhong Kui: Snow Girl and the Dark Crystal, opening this week, he would be the choice of producer Ann An Xiao-fen and co-director Zhao Tianyu.
There's plenty to appreciate in Andrey Zvyagintsev's account of a man in northern Russia battling against state corruption to save his home, though the storytelling is circuitous.
Charlene Choi Cheuk-yin portrays a victim of child sexual abuse who, with the help of an older lover, gains an education and a career in which she tries to help victims of sexual exploitation.
Solo Sunny, a 1980 drama about a pop singer touring small-town East Germany, offers fascinating and invaluable insights on life in the communist republic.
Israeli director Talya Lavie's debut feature tells three loosely connected stories about the life of women soldiers in a film that's part soap opera, part absurdist comedy.
From Vegas to Macau II reunites director-scriptwriter Wong Jing with top-billed actor Chow Yun-fat in a glossy action comedy. There's an all-star cast, and some farcical comedy, but the film tries to cover too much ground.
Many of the key ingredients associated with a classic Lunar New Year Hong Kong film are present in An Inspector Calls: it's star-studded, cameo-filled and often visually outrageous.
A gentleman spy with more style than most James Bonds, and a mix of ultra-violent action, tragedy, drama and comedy, make a winning combination.
Reese Witherspoon is not entirely convincing as the novice hiker who crosses the United States weighed down by a giant rucksack - and by psychological baggage. Laura Dern is the bigger star of a film that doesn't show as much scenic beauty as you might expect.
English actor Jude Law affects an Aberdonian accent and glams down to play a grizzled seadog in Scotsman Kevin Macdonald's Black Sea. Much of the action in this underwater adventure thriller takes place in a rickety submarine that few sane people would be willing to spend any amount of time in.
None of the many Catholic saints named Vincent — including St Vincent de Paul, dubbed the "great apostle of charity", and the patron saint of Lisbon and Valencia, Vincent of Saragossa — are the subject of this feel-good comedy with a heart of gold.
It has scenes that make good use of locations in places such as Yau Ma Tei and Shek O, and accords prominent screen time to Wang Leehom and Tang Wei, but there’s still no mistaking the fact Michael Mann’s Blackhat is a Hollywood blockbuster at heart.
Director's intelligent treatment of reality-based child abduction drama leaves lasting impression.
Like Kathryn Bigelow's multiple Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker, Clint Eastwood's American Sniper tells the story of an American military man who distinguished himself in Iraq but found the going more trying back in the US. And as with Peter Berg's Lone Survivor, this action drama draws upon an autobiography written by a Navy SEAL who took part in a war where children and adults alike were looked upon as likely enemy combatants.
This Patrick Kong Pak-leung scripted and co-produced (with Shirley Yung Sau-lan) comedy-drama sounds all right as a concept: make a film about four people with very different views of sex.
Truth can be stranger than fiction. And if you don't believe this, consider the outrageous tale, told in Tim Burton's first biopic since 1994's Ed Wood, of the artist behind the sentimental portraits of saucer-eyed children that were ubiquitous in suburban American homes of the mid-20th century.
