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Edmund Lee
Edmund Lee
Hong Kong
@thatEdmundLee
Film Editor
Edmund Lee is the film editor of the Post. Before joining the Culture desk in 2013, he was the arts and culture editor of Time Out Hong Kong. Since he graduated in English and Comparative Literature, Edmund has also studied law and written an MPhil thesis on Hirokazu Koreeda. He is on a masochistic mission to review every Hong Kong film being released.

The meaning of home and family when one is kept apart from them by a pandemic is a big theme of Tsang Tsui-shan’s film about once-a-decade festivities in rural Hong Kong for which emigrants cannot return.

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We Are Family, Hong Kong comic Eric Tsang’s film about rent-a-families, starts off as a farcical showbiz satire before taking viewers on an emotional roller coaster, and ends as a poignant tear-jerker.

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A charismatic Chung Suet-ying stars in coming-of-age comedy The Lyricist Wannabe as a woman who tries – and continually fails – to become a Cantopop songwriter.

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Comedy sequel Table for Six 2, The Moon Thieves – a heist thriller starring Mirror boy band idols – and darkly comic Aaron Kwok crime caper Rob N Roll: the Post film editor’s views of Lunar New Year releases.

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In Rob N Roll, Lam Ka-tung and Richie Jen play two middle-aged losers who get caught up in the fall-out from an armed robbery led by Aaron Kwok’s former pro wrestler. It’s well acted, but convoluted.

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Table for Six 2, the sequel to the Hong Kong Lunar New Year comedy sensation, is a satisfyingly chaotic ensemble comedy with Louis Cheung and Stephy Tang that explores family and romantic relationships.

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This year’s Hong Kong Film Awards are completely dominated by the same five front runners, although one – In Broad Daylight – stands out from the pack with 16 nominations.

Mirror’s Anson Lo, Keung To and Edan Lui star in a by-the-numbers crime thriller about a Tokyo watch heist that entertains with slick visuals and charismatic performances by all but one of the main cast.

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The latest instalment in the most inept crime thriller series in Hong Kong cinema in the past 10 years, Crypto Storm, with its young, good-looking cast, is watchable if you forget how farcical its story is.

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In Hong Kong director Patrick Kong’s latest romance movie, Mandy Tam plays a young woman who falls for Edward Chen’s rich young man. The story starts off passably, but deteriorates at the end.

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Director Kelvin Shum’s debut film, Deliverance, while atmospheric and visually striking, is undone by its highly unrealistic screenplay – we might give this one a miss.

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Directed by Soi Cheang, Mad Fate has been voted the best Hong Kong film of 2023 in the latest Hong Kong Film Critics Society Awards, with Wu Kang-ren and Jennifer Yu winning acting prizes.

Drive My Car director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s latest film, and a Korean historical epic, lead the field in the 17th Asian Film Awards. Two Hong Kong films each have nominations in three categories.

Andy Lau’s drug lord in crime thriller I Did It My Way comes off as unreasonable to the point of being comic, and confusing writing and a superficial depiction of Asia’s dark web only add to the farce.

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We rank the 37 Hong Kong films that were released locally in 2023, from greats like A Guilty Conscience – the city’s highest-grossing local film ever – and Lost Love to stinkers like Prison Flowers.

Infernal Affairs co-stars Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Andy Lau play a con man and an ICAC investigator, respectively, in The Goldfinger, based on Hong Kong’s real-life 1980s Carrian property empire scandal.

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Nick Cheung, William Chan and Isabella Leong star in Bursting Point, Dante Lam’s first Hong Kong crime thriller in years and one packed with enough violence to warrant an adults-only rating.

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Featuring stand-out performances from Michelle Wai and Elaine Jin, Ready or Rot is a pleasant and touching romantic drama that is a vast improvement on its prequel, 2021’s Ready or Knot.

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Ann Hui’s Elegies, a documentary about Hong Kong’s contemporary poetry scene, focuses on interviews with Hong Kong poets Huang Canran and Liu Waitong – and obliquely touches on the city’s ‘situation’.

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Starring Wallace Chung, Francis Ng and Eddie Cheung, Chinese crime thriller Death Stranding, the latest film from Hong Kong’s Danny Pang, is a dull and illogical tale of corruption and revenge.

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Hong Kong’s First Feature Film Initiative was founded in 2013 to spot new directing talent and help fund their first features. We look at the performance of the 13 films funded in the FFFI’s first 10 years.

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Hong Kong family drama Time Still Turns the Pages, by writer-director Nick Cheuk, uses student suicides as the cue for a poignant tale of emotional torture, regret and redemption.

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Cantopop star Michael Cheung’s first feature film is a madcap comedy about mortuary thieves, vengeful gang members and a supernatural live stream. Poorly written, it wastes a good set-up.

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Based on a true story, In Broad Daylight follows a journalist, played by Jennifer Yu, who works undercover at a Hong Kong care home for the disabled to expose abuse and mistreatment.

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Cantopop star Kay Tse plays a struggling musician who forms a band with her dysfunctional Hong Kong family in Band Four, a movie about forgiveness and the power of music to bring people together.

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Hong Kong’s entry for best international feature film at the 2024 Oscars is A Light Never Goes Out. We recall other entries from the past 10 years, from Better Days to Zero to Hero and Port of Call.

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Terry Ng’s Hong Kong gangster drama The Brotherhood of Rebel, starring Bosco Wong, Louis Cheung and Carlos Chan, charts the downfalls of flawed gang members navigating the criminal underworld.

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Time Still Turns The Pages leads Hong Kong contenders at the 2023 Golden Horse Awards, a Taiwan showpiece film event that has been boycotted by mainland China for the fifth year running.

Lonely Eighteen, partly based on the life and career of its co-star, Hong Kong actress Irene Wan, charts the contrasting fortunes of a pair of actresses. While the film is sincere, it ultimately has no emotional pay-off.

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Anson Kong of Cantopop group Mirror stars in Back Home, a supernatural horror that is chilling enough, but will probably be more appreciated as a thinly veiled critique of Hong Kong’s sociopolitical environment.

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