Top 5 films to watch in Hong Kong this week: November 3-9
Marvel’s CGI spectacular, a meditation on grief and memory, a dissection of female friendship, the death penalty considered from the executioner’s viewpoint, and a Korean horror are this week’s picks
It’s a good question for Hong Kong audiences to ponder: is Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange channelling Stephen Chow’s time-travelling heroics in A Chinese Odyssey here? Either way, this CGI spectacle is one of the most unpredictably witty offerings that Marvel has offered.
(Now showing)
After portraying the title role in Kabei – Our Mother (2008), acclaimed Japanese actress Sayuri Yoshinaga again teams up with director Yoji Yamada for another post-war family drama, this time as the grieving mother of a son who died in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
(Opens today)
3. Soul Mate
The film’s seven nominations in this month’s prestigious Golden Horse Awards are no fluke. Produced by Peter Chan, this solo directorial debut by Hong Kong actor Derek Tsang takes a teen love triangle and turns it into a relentlessly melancholy meditation on female friendship.
(Now showing)
Singaporean filmmaker Boo Junfeng’s slow-burning second film muses on the death penalty system from the executioner’s perspective. Both Wan Hanafi Su and Fir Rahman, respectively as the hangman and his protégé, are superb in expressing the story’s psychological nuances.
(Now showing)
5. The Wailing
After excelling in the crime thriller genre with The Chaser (2008) and The Yellow Sea (2010), South Korean writer-director Na Hong-jin shifts gear for this nightmarish horror, which imagines the serial murderer terrorising a rural village as a demonic presence.
(Opens today)
