Top five films to watch in Hong Kong this week (November 9-15), from Loving Vincent to The Empty Hands
A portrait of a Dutch master in oils, tennis star Billie Jean King takes on older champion and sexist Bobby Riggs, a Hong Kong karate drama, Tim Burton’s bio of director Ed Wood, and a Japanese youth romcom are this week’s picks
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 09 November, 2017, 8:00am
UPDATED : Thursday, 09 November, 2017, 8:00am
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Click on film titles to read SCMP.com reviews
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)
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)
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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![The epic ‘Asura’, with a production budget of 750 million yuan (US$112 million), reported 49 million yuan (US$7.3 million) in ticket sales during its opening weekend]( "The epic ‘Asura’, with a production budget of 750 million yuan (US$112 million), reported 49 million yuan (US$7.3 million) in ticket sales during its opening weekend")
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![How ‘Asura’’s record budget produced an epic box office flop]()
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![There was only one Bruce Lee, but when he died Hong Kong’s film industry sought a replacement. Jackie Chan didn’t work out, but Ho Chung-tao, who looked the part and acted as ‘Bruce Li’ and ‘Bruce Le’, made several rip-off films]( "There was only one Bruce Lee, but when he died Hong Kong’s film industry sought a replacement. Jackie Chan didn’t work out, but Ho Chung-tao, who looked the part and acted as ‘Bruce Li’ and ‘Bruce Le’, made several rip-off films")
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![Cohen persuaded US politicians to call for ‘Kinderguardians’ – armed toddlers – and baffled Bernie Sanders with nonsense economic talk]( "Cohen persuaded US politicians to call for ‘Kinderguardians’ – armed toddlers – and baffled Bernie Sanders with nonsense economic talk")
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![James Franciscus and Bruce Lee in the American TV series Longstreet (1971). Lee played martial arts expert Li Tsung and Franciscus his blind pupil.]( "James Franciscus and Bruce Lee in the American TV series Longstreet (1971). Lee played martial arts expert Li Tsung and Franciscus his blind pupil.")
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