Top five films to watch in Hong Kong this week (November 9-15), from Loving Vincent to The Empty Hands

Click on film titles to read SCMP.com reviews

1. Loving Vincent

An aesthetic experiment packaged as a detective story set in 19th century France, this trailblazing animation, which claims to be the “world’s first fully-painted feature film”, pays homage to the Dutch master Vincent van Gogh – astonishingly it was completely made with oil paints, rather than computer graphics. (Opens on November 9)

2. Battle of the Sexes

It’s a shame this entertaining sports comedy hasn’t made more of a splash at the Hong Kong box office since its release on Thursday. The film offers a remarkably thoughtful take on the 1973 exhibition tennis match between feminist icon Billie Jean King and self-proclaimed male chauvinist pig Bobby Riggs. (Now showing)

3. The Empty Hands

After lingering in romcom limbo for some 15 years, former teen idol Stephy Tang Lai-yan makes her breakthrough as a former karate pupil who picks up the sport again in her 30s. With this stirring character drama, veteran actor Chapman To Man-chat also singles himself out as a writer-director to watch. (Now showing)

4. Ed Wood

It takes one idiosyncratic director to know another, and Tim Burton’s 1994 portrait of Ed Wood Jnr is easily one of the best filmmaker biopics that anyone has put on film. Johnny Depp gives an empathetic performance as the cult director – often labelled the world’s worst ever. (November 11, part of Cine Fan programme)

5. The Night is Short, Walk on Girl

Following the acclaim for their television series The Tatami Galaxy, anime director Masaaki Yuasa and novelist Tomihiko Morimi join forces again for this surreal feature, about a man who engineers chance meetings with a mystery woman he’s infatuated with. (November 10, part of the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival)

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