https://www.scmp.com/rss/3911/feed Clarence Tsui, a Hong Kong film critic and programmer, was the South China Morning Post’s Film Editor (2005-2012). en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Clarence Tsui Clarence Tsui In with the new: this seemed the key takeaway from the Chinese films that appeared at the San Sebastian International Film Festival in Spain this year. Throughout the nine-day event, which ran from September 19 to 27, debate whirled around documentary-maker Qin Xiaoyu’s first fictional feature, Her Heart Beats in Its Cage. Its non-professional leading actress, Zhao Xiaohong, won a prize for her turn as a woman trying to reconcile with her son after serving a 10-year prison sentence. Meanwhile,... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3327589/why-was-ashima-pioneering-chinese-musical-film-shelved-years-its-release?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3327589/why-was-ashima-pioneering-chinese-musical-film-shelved-years-its-release?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 04 Oct 2025 09:15:08 +0000 Clarence Tsui Clarence Tsui 3/5 stars Eight years on from his critically acclaimed Long Day’s Journey Into Night, a commercial flop, Chinese auteur filmmaker Bi Gan, 35, is back at the Cannes Film Festival with an even more audacious and potentially divisive film. Dedicated to the French film historian and critic Pierre Rissient, Resurrection is a film made by, and for, hardcore cinephiles. For those who appreciate early 20th century silent movies and German expressionist cinema, and are into the sport of counting the... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3311466/cannes-2025-resurrection-movie-review-shu-qi-jackson-yee-bi-gans-ambitious-drama?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3311466/cannes-2025-resurrection-movie-review-shu-qi-jackson-yee-bi-gans-ambitious-drama?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 23 May 2025 02:19:47 +0000 Clarence Tsui Clarence Tsui 4/5 stars In It Was Just An Accident, women in Iran can choose to appear and work in public without headscarves, and wear Western-style bridal dresses in the open. Modern bookshops do brisk business, and – perhaps most strikingly – paroled dissidents can rebuild their lives without hassle from the authorities. In contrast to his previous films, the twice imprisoned Jafar Panahi – who is now allowed to work and travel freely after having his convictions overturned by Iranian courts – seems to... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3311148/cannes-2025-it-was-just-accident-movie-review-jafar-panahis-take-irans-psyche?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3311148/cannes-2025-it-was-just-accident-movie-review-jafar-panahis-take-irans-psyche?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 21 May 2025 02:13:58 +0000 Clarence Tsui Clarence Tsui For someone who barely slept a wink the previous night, Juno Mak Chun-lung seems to be in surprisingly high spirits. Then again, how could he not be, having just seen his latest movie making its bow at the most important film festival in the world? The premiere of Sons of the Neon Night at Cannes on May 16 was the culmination of nearly eight years of work, says the 41-year-old Hong Kong musician-filmmaker, and he was relieved to see the film play at the Lumiere Theatre, the main venue of the... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3310938/why-sons-neon-night-new-hong-kong-crime-movie-juno-mak-took-8-years-make?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3310938/why-sons-neon-night-new-hong-kong-crime-movie-juno-mak-took-8-years-make?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 19 May 2025 23:15:07 +0000 Clarence Tsui Clarence Tsui 3/5 stars It’s hardly every day that a novelist-turned-filmmaker will follow up an award-winning, genial family drama with a live-action adaptation of a video game. Appropriating images and ideas aplenty from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, Genki Kawamura has turned a simple premise – in which a player is made to run repeatedly down a short underground passage to search for a way out – into a psychological thriller exploring a man’s guilt and redemption. For those who haven’t played The Exit 8,... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3310965/cannes-2025-exit-8-movie-review-live-action-adaptation-walking-simulator-video-game?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3310965/cannes-2025-exit-8-movie-review-live-action-adaptation-walking-simulator-video-game?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 19 May 2025 14:25:08 +0000 Clarence Tsui Clarence Tsui 4.5/5 stars The Cannes Film Festival may be hosting yet another virtual-reality programme this year, but the most immersive event on the Croisette in the French seaside city so far has been the premiere of an old-school, two-dimensional, three-hour movie filmed in the classic 4:3 aspect ratio. Revolving around its titular Portuguese explorer’s expeditions to Southeast Asia in the early 16th century, Magellan is relentlessly engrossing – an epic in which viewers witness the distress, death and... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3310808/cannes-2025-magellan-movie-review-gael-garcia-bernal-plays-explorer-engrossing-epic?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3310808/cannes-2025-magellan-movie-review-gael-garcia-bernal-plays-explorer-engrossing-epic?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 18 May 2025 23:36:07 +0000 Clarence Tsui Clarence Tsui 4/5 stars In Renoir, hardly anybody cries. Its eerily calm characters shed barely a tear even when caring for the dying, mourning the dead or struggling with their lifeless marriages. Yet Chie Hayakawa’s second feature isn’t set in the kind of dystopia seen in her debut film Plan 75, in which the elderly are encouraged to participate in a state-sponsored euthanasia programme to make the country young again. Set in Japan in the 1980s and revolving around the life of a schoolgirl whose father lies... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3310774/cannes-2025-renoir-movie-review-plan-75s-chie-hayakawa-considers-amorality-japan?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3310774/cannes-2025-renoir-movie-review-plan-75s-chie-hayakawa-considers-amorality-japan?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 17 May 2025 15:31:54 +0000 Clarence Tsui Clarence Tsui 3.5/5 stars Towards the end of Kei Ishikawa’s visually captivating new film A Pale View of Hills, Niki (Camilla Aiko) tells her mother, Etsuko (Yoh Yoshida), she shouldn’t feel guilty about leaving Japan for Britain after the second world war. “We all need to change,” she says. For Etsuko, that comment rings very true: trapped by both the trauma of war and the tyranny of patriarchy, reinvention was perhaps Etsuko’s only option to attain a more rewarding life. But some of Ishikawa’s changes to... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3310534/cannes-2025-pale-view-hills-movie-review-suzu-hirose-fumi-nikaido-lead-adaptation?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3310534/cannes-2025-pale-view-hills-movie-review-suzu-hirose-fumi-nikaido-lead-adaptation?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 15 May 2025 15:08:26 +0000 True to its title, TVB’s Superstar Specials featured A-list Hong Kong movie stars making their first forays on television. The series, comprising 15 stand-alone 45-minute episodes, premiered 50 years ago this week, at a time when Hong Kong’s terrestrial TV industry was on the cusp of a revolution. The series’ opening episode stars Roy Chiao, then mostly known for playing po-faced swordsmen in King Hu’s films A Touch of Zen and The Valiant Ones. Titled simply Roy Chiao – but since renamed... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3301901/how-tvbs-superstar-specials-changed-hong-kong-tv-70s-its-big-screen-aesthetic?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3301901/how-tvbs-superstar-specials-changed-hong-kong-tv-70s-its-big-screen-aesthetic?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 11 Mar 2025 23:15:08 +0000 Clarence Tsui Clarence Tsui 3/5 stars Girls on Wire is first and foremost a showcase of Wen Qi’s versatility. In the film, the Taiwanese actress originally known as Vicky Chen Wen-chi gets to emote as a maternal big sister, brood like an embittered avenger and go airborne and underwater as a swordswoman; she also switches between Sichuanese dialect and Mandarin with aplomb. But what perks up Wen’s performance creates pitfalls for the film’s director, Vivian Qu. Trading in tropes drawn from family melodramas, film noir and... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3299044/berlin-2025-girls-wire-movie-review-wen-qi-stars-vivian-qus-uneven-genre-blender?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3299044/berlin-2025-girls-wire-movie-review-wen-qi-stars-vivian-qus-uneven-genre-blender?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 17 Feb 2025 14:30:08 +0000 4.5/5 stars Contemporary Chinese cinema is littered with decades-spanning epics designed to chronicle the country’s changing fortunes in the 20th century. With Living the Land, which won the best director award at the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival, Huo Meng has achieved the same objective with a film unfolding across merely a year. Revolving around a clan of impoverished farmers in Henan province, central China, in 1991, Huo’s second feature is a visually captivating, studiously... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3298712/berlin-2025-living-land-movie-review-searing-account-chinas-rural-poor?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3298712/berlin-2025-living-land-movie-review-searing-account-chinas-rural-poor?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 14 Feb 2025 14:15:09 +0000 Television is no longer the place where film stars wind down their twilight years. Rather, the small screen is where former A-listers experience a late-career renaissance, often by playing against type. If we take a look at the acting nominations for the 2025 Golden Globes, we see Harrison Ford, 82, receiving acclaim for his turn as a grumpy therapist in Shrinking; and Kevin Kline, 77, for playing a vengeful widower in the psychological thriller miniseries Disclaimer. Their crossover success... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3290993/hong-kong-crossover-stars-who-played-movie-villains-then-nice-guy-roles-tv-shows?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3290993/hong-kong-crossover-stars-who-played-movie-villains-then-nice-guy-roles-tv-shows?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 17 Dec 2024 23:15:06 +0000 At 7.55pm on July 2, 1978, a piece of Hong Kong television history was made. That was when the first episode of The Gold Dagger Romance was broadcast, on Hong Kong’s Commercial Television (CTV). It was an unorthodox martial arts series. For a start, it did not open with a theme song. After two shots of a wintry and eerily empty landscape, a swordsman appears, treading alone across the snow. He stops, closes his oilpaper umbrella and observes two assassins emerging into view. Cue a machine-gun... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3284614/how-tsui-harks-gold-dagger-romance-changed-hong-kongs-tv-and-movie-scene?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3284614/how-tsui-harks-gold-dagger-romance-changed-hong-kongs-tv-and-movie-scene?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 03 Nov 2024 03:15:07 +0000 Lately, a vintage video clip has been doing the rounds on social media of Chow Yun-fat taking part in an athletic meet. No surprises, you might say: well-known for his love of outdoor sports, the actor has frequently made the news during the past year for his near-professional performances in Hong Kong races. That is not the Chow we see in the newly unearthed clip, however. Here, the gangly, shaggy-haired Chow is seen running barefoot on a muddy track, emerging a very unlikely victor in a... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3277149/chow-yun-fat-tony-leung-and-stephen-chow-were-all-80s-hong-kong-tv-show?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3277149/chow-yun-fat-tony-leung-and-stephen-chow-were-all-80s-hong-kong-tv-show?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 05 Sep 2024 23:15:06 +0000 As this year’s Hungry Ghost Festival approaches, picture this: you are on the sofa and the television is showing an advertisement. Suddenly, everything goes silent and the screen turns black and white. Against a backdrop of barely legible calligraphy, a fuzzy, faceless figure inches into view and a scroll unspools from its outstretched arm. Ring, I heard you scream – and indeed it does bear an uncanny resemblance to the cursed videotape from the seminal 1998 Japanese horror film. This, however,... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3272454/when-paranormal-series-life-after-life-and-my-date-vampire-lit-hong-kongs-atv?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3272454/when-paranormal-series-life-after-life-and-my-date-vampire-lit-hong-kongs-atv?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 31 Jul 2024 10:15:12 +0000 4/5 stars In an age in which filmmakers tend to follow box-office blockbusters with sequels that provide ever diminishing returns, South Korean filmmaker Ryoo Seung-wan has bucked the trend by making a brainier and brawnier follow-up to his 2015 hit Veteran. Upping the stakes from the first instalment in nearly every department, I, the Executioner is a crowd-pleasing juggernaut that warns against the perils of populism, takes violence to task – and takes viewers on a white-knuckle roller coaster... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/k-pop/k-movies/article/3263587/cannes-2024-i-executioner-veteran-2-movie-review-hwang-jung-min-jung-hae-lead-superior-thriller?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/k-pop/k-movies/article/3263587/cannes-2024-i-executioner-veteran-2-movie-review-hwang-jung-min-jung-hae-lead-superior-thriller?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 22 May 2024 03:51:38 +0000 4/5 stars Rarely has figure skating been shown as so pure, poetic and sensual than in My Sunshine, Hiroshi Okuyama’s feature about two young ice dancers and their coach over one winter in a small town in Hokkaido, in Japan. Following his award-winning 2018 debut Jesus, which revolves around the way a series of absurd apparitions changed a lonely boy’s life, the 29-year-old filmmaker has again made a simple premise go a very long way through an understated screenplay and intriguing mise-en-scène... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3263325/cannes-2024-my-sunshine-movie-review-sensual-ice-dancing-japanese-director-hiroshi-okuyamas-follow?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3263325/cannes-2024-my-sunshine-movie-review-sensual-ice-dancing-japanese-director-hiroshi-okuyamas-follow?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 20 May 2024 06:45:14 +0000 3/5 stars Mainland Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke’s on-screen cameo as a ragged, chain-smoking mobster in Guan Hu’s Black Dog ranks as one the biggest surprises at the Cannes Film Festival this year. The same cannot be said for his own film screening at Cannes, however. Charting a couple’s on-off relationship in China across the past two or so decades, Caught by the Tides is very much a replica of the director’s previous feature Ash is the Purest White, which also premiered in competition at... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3263236/cannes-2024-caught-tides-movie-review-chinese-auteur-jia-zhangke-launches-another-nostalgia-tinged?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3263236/cannes-2024-caught-tides-movie-review-chinese-auteur-jia-zhangke-launches-another-nostalgia-tinged?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 19 May 2024 04:45:48 +0000 2.5/5 stars Black Dog begins with all the trappings of a revenge Western. Set in a godforsaken town where bad guys roam around with impunity, it revolves around a reticent man returning home after a decade-long absence to confront his sworn enemies. It also seems to have everything in place for a political allegory. Juxtaposing images of crumbling tenements with incessant radio news bulletins about the Beijing Olympics, the story, set in 2008, could offer commentary about the clash of reality... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3263190/cannes-2024-black-dog-movie-review-chinese-director-guan-hu-debuts-un-certain-regard-relationship?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3263190/cannes-2024-black-dog-movie-review-chinese-director-guan-hu-debuts-un-certain-regard-relationship?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 18 May 2024 11:01:08 +0000 4/5 stars Set mostly within a fenced-off hotel in Wuhan during the Chinese city’s three-month, Covid-induced lockdown in early 2020, An Unfinished Film is chaotic in its form and stuttering in its storytelling. What would have been fatal flaws in other movies, however, turn out to be the strongest parts of mainland Chinese director Lou Ye’s latest production. Premiering out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday, An Unfinished Film is a mind-boggling mix of melodrama and... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3262941/cannes-2024-unfinished-film-review-chinese-director-lou-yes-chaotic-yet-powerful-drama-about-covid?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3262941/cannes-2024-unfinished-film-review-chinese-director-lou-yes-chaotic-yet-powerful-drama-about-covid?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 16 May 2024 15:46:08 +0000 3/5 stars Those who revel in the sound of knuckles crashing into faces, rejoice: South Korean master puncher Ma Dong-seok (aka Don Lee) has returned with The Roundup: Punishment, in which his no-nonsense, po-faced police officer again gets to thrash an endless stream of thugs in backstreet alleys, cramped toilets and the business-class cabin of an aeroplane. Now into the fourth instalment of the series and with stunt coordinator Heo Myeong-haeng (Badland Hunters) taking the helm, the story has... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/k-pop/k-movies/article/3252915/berlin-2024-roundup-punishment-korean-hard-man-ma-dong-seok-po-faced-punching-machine-hong-kong?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/k-pop/k-movies/article/3252915/berlin-2024-roundup-punishment-korean-hard-man-ma-dong-seok-po-faced-punching-machine-hong-kong?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 23 Feb 2024 14:30:10 +0000 3.5/5 stars Chinese filmmaker Wang Xiaoshuai has dedicated a lot of his career to hard-hitting dramas about the drastic social and historical changes of his country. Who would have thought his latest film would lead to comparisons with Christopher Nolan’s blockbusters? But that’s what Above the Dust entails, as its young protagonist’s dreams take the shape of an Inception-like journey through his recently deceased grandfather’s long-submerged, guilt-ridden memories of his life – including a key... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3252934/berlin-2024-above-dust-chinese-director-wang-xiaoshuai-evokes-christopher-nolan-history-minded-rural?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3252934/berlin-2024-above-dust-chinese-director-wang-xiaoshuai-evokes-christopher-nolan-history-minded-rural?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 23 Feb 2024 11:15:09 +0000 2/5 stars Down the years, many a documentary has been made about the African diaspora in China – Mans Mansson’s Stranded in Canton, for example, or Christiane Badgley’s Guangzhou Dream Factory – but they were made by non-African filmmakers. Anticipations were high, therefore, when award-winning Mauritanian filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako (Waiting for Happiness, Timbuktu) was revealed to have made a fictional feature about the subject with Black Tea, which premiered in competition at the Berlin... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3252704/berlin-2024-black-tea-movie-review-first-film-about-african-diaspora-china-directed-african-massive?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3252704/berlin-2024-black-tea-movie-review-first-film-about-african-diaspora-china-directed-african-massive?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 21 Feb 2024 21:30:27 +0000 4/5 stars Seven years after he won the best short film award at the Cannes Film Festival with A Gentle Night, Melbourne-educated Chinese filmmaker Qiu Yang has released his first feature film. It is substantial and stylish and revolves around a woman weighed down by the ever-widening cracks within her family, and her long-suppressed doubts about her desires in her comfortable middle-class life. Anchored by Yu Aier’s remarkably nuanced turn as the woman careering towards a complete breakdown,... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3252449/berlin-2024-some-rain-must-fall-movie-review-chinese-drama-cannes-best-short-film-winner-qiu-yang?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3252449/berlin-2024-some-rain-must-fall-movie-review-chinese-drama-cannes-best-short-film-winner-qiu-yang?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 19 Feb 2024 12:00:18 +0000 2/5 stars Project Silence’s writer-director Kim Tae-gon is perhaps being ironic by calling his film’s monsters the “Echoes”. Revolving around the stand-off between a pack of mutant dogs and a group of unarmed humans drawn from various levels of society, this extremely loud disaster movie repeats territory well-trodden in classics such as The Host, Train to Busan and Tidal Wave. Unfortunately, Project Silence ends up a bad cover version of these originals. Its suggestions of deep-state meddling... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/k-pop/k-movies/article/3221486/cannes-2023-project-silence-movie-review-lee-sun-kyun-ju-ji-hoon-fend-mutant-dogs-korean-monster?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/k-pop/k-movies/article/3221486/cannes-2023-project-silence-movie-review-lee-sun-kyun-ju-ji-hoon-fend-mutant-dogs-korean-monster?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 23 May 2023 03:45:11 +0000 3/5 stars The northeastern Chinese borderlands of Yanbian have never been portrayed as so pristine as in The Breaking Ice, Hong Kong-based Singaporean filmmaker Anthony Chen’s first foray into mainland China. Bolstered by flowing camerawork and a dynamic performance from Zhou Dongyu, the film is an enjoyable if somewhat lightweight drama about three young people trying to drink and frolic away their physical and psychological traumas. Set largely in Yanji, a city well known for its proximity to... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3221345/cannes-2023-breaking-ice-movie-review-zhou-dongyu-liu-haoran-face-their-traumas-singaporean-director?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3221345/cannes-2023-breaking-ice-movie-review-zhou-dongyu-liu-haoran-face-their-traumas-singaporean-director?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 22 May 2023 02:03:08 +0000 4/5 stars Once a trailblazing and taboo-smashing genre that set the international film festival circuit alight, Chinese neo-noir has yielded increasingly diminishing returns in recent years. Fatalist films probing the country’s dark underbelly have largely been replaced by overblown spectacles in which style trumps substance. Only the River Flows is poised to buck that trend. An adaptation of Yu Hua’s absurdist short story from 1987, Wei Shujun’s third feature offers a mix of dead-end detective... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3221169/cannes-2023-only-river-flows-movie-review-chinese-neo-noir-makes-triumphant-comeback-wei-shujuns?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3221169/cannes-2023-only-river-flows-movie-review-chinese-neo-noir-makes-triumphant-comeback-wei-shujuns?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 20 May 2023 11:00:20 +0000 4/5 stars “This place is hell. Everybody bullies me. There isn’t a single moment of peace.” So says a garment worker in Youth (Spring), Chinese filmmaker Wang Bing’s documentary set in a collection of children’s clothing factories in a town in China’s Zhejiang province. The comment is hardly surprising, given the many reports throughout the years about the inhumane working conditions in sweatshops in China. But that line is delivered in full jest here, with the young man talking happily about... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3221082/cannes-2023-youth-spring-movie-review-young-factory-workers-china-are-focus-chinese-director-wang?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3221082/cannes-2023-youth-spring-movie-review-young-factory-workers-china-are-focus-chinese-director-wang?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 19 May 2023 04:00:16 +0000 2.5/5 stars Banished to the wilderness by the authorities in China for nearly five years for tax evasion, A-list Chinese actress Fan Bingbing is back in the limelight with her appearance in Green Night. Premiering at the Berlin International Film Festival, the film features Fan as a down-and-out migrant worker who is exploited, throttled and raped before turning into a hard-as-hell avenger who beats up one of her assailants and sets fire to another. Packed with all this and much more – including... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/k-pop/k-movies/article/3211053/berlin-2023-green-night-movie-review-chinese-actress-fan-bingbing-makes-audacious-return-after-tax?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/k-pop/k-movies/article/3211053/berlin-2023-green-night-movie-review-chinese-actress-fan-bingbing-makes-audacious-return-after-tax?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 23 Feb 2023 21:00:10 +0000 4/5 stars In 2014, July Jung jolted audiences at the Cannes Film Festival (and then elsewhere) with A Girl at My Door, a gritty social drama in which alcoholics and bullies of all shapes and sizes run amok in a small town in South Korea. Returning to Cannes with her latest film, she presents villains in an even wider spectrum in society. Revolving around a student called Sohee and her spiralling life as a call centre worker, Next Sohee is a full-throated condemnation of the exploitation and... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/k-pop/k-movies/article/3178901/cannes-2022-next-sohee-movie-review-kim-si-eun-bae-doona?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/k-pop/k-movies/article/3178901/cannes-2022-next-sohee-movie-review-kim-si-eun-bae-doona?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 25 May 2022 11:15:08 +0000 2/5 stars Hunt will be remembered for a film which would count history junkies and hardcore action-movie fans as its aficionados. Only them, that is: everybody else would probably find South Korean actor and Squid Game star Lee Jung-jae’s espionage thriller excessively bombastic and muddled. Serving as his own producer and top-billing star, Lee seems hell-bent in throwing all the historical references, deafening pyrotechnics or narrative twists he could get onto the screen and seeing what will... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/k-pop/k-movies/article/3178766/cannes-2022-hunt-movie-review-korean-spy-thriller-directed?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/k-pop/k-movies/article/3178766/cannes-2022-hunt-movie-review-korean-spy-thriller-directed?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 23 May 2022 05:00:15 +0000 4/5 stars French director Davy Chou’s third feature was, even a week before its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on May 22, still called All the People I’ll Never Be. While it’s not as snappy as its new title Return to Seoul, maybe, it is perhaps more accurate. Chou’s film goes beyond its basic premise of a French woman’s meetings with her biological parents in South Korea – it is a broader tale about his protagonist’s attempt to search for her own place in the world. Return to Seoul... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3178523/cannes-2022-return-seoul-movie-review-adopted-south-korea?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3178523/cannes-2022-return-seoul-movie-review-adopted-south-korea?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 22 May 2022 11:15:15 +0000 4/5 stars A subgenre of films has long existed about the murder of old people as an act of social control: Michael Anderson’s Logan’s Run (1976), for example, or the two versions of The Ballad of Narayama by Keisuke Kinoshita (1957) and Shohei Imamura (1983). But Plan 75 offers something different. Eschewing the settings of a dystopic future or a distant past, Japanese director Chie Hayakawa’s first feature unfolds in a very recognisable and relatable here and now, as pensioners are coaxed into... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3178314/cannes-2022-plan-75-movie-review-japans-ageist-social-mores?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3178314/cannes-2022-plan-75-movie-review-japans-ageist-social-mores?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 20 May 2022 14:00:17 +0000 In an ideal world, Vanja Kaludjercic would be out and about on the streets of Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, introducing film directors and actors at sold-out screenings and catching up with producers and the press over coffee. The artistic director of the International Film Festival Rotterdam would find a hectic schedule like that something of a relief after last year, when the festival had to be held online because of the coronavirus pandemic. None of that, however, has come to... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3164613/rotterdam-and-berlin-film-festival-organisers-pros-and-cons?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3164613/rotterdam-and-berlin-film-festival-organisers-pros-and-cons?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 27 Jan 2022 11:45:19 +0000 All good things must come to an end. An overused sentimental saying, true, but it’s something that resonates with film buffs in Macau as they bid adieu to the Audiovisual CUT Association, operator of the city’s sole art house cinema. Since 2017, CUT has transformed Cinematheque Passion – based in a once abandoned colonial-era mansion just around the corner from the tourist landmark The Ruins of St Paul’s – into a film hub with a level of innovation and dynamism on a par with its regional... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3092506/macaus-cinematheque-passion-became-art-house?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3092506/macaus-cinematheque-passion-became-art-house?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 11 Jul 2020 07:30:17 +0000 In 1973, Taiwanese writer Huang Chun-ming signed up with a state-owned television channel to direct episodes of Fragrant Formosa, a documentary series on the island’s cultural diversity. Travelling through the country­side on his motorcycle, Huang examined the rituals practised by people in far-flung communities. Among them was a religious pageant held near Taichung in which believers would carry a statue of a sea goddess from one coastal village to another over eight days. With cameraman Chang... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3089194/can-cinema-stop-taiwans-cultural-diversity?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3089194/can-cinema-stop-taiwans-cultural-diversity?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 16 Jun 2020 03:15:05 +0000 After his deadly crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in Gwangju, in May 1980, South Korean dictator Chun Doo-hwan was desperate to quell the dissent sweeping across the country. Taking his cue from the “sex, screen and sports” policy used by the United States military to distract the Japanese population from its presence after the second world war, Washington-backed Chun encouraged the production of sexploitation movies to divert public attention from the crimes of his regime – which... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3086277/korean-film-festivals-commemorate-gwangju?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3086277/korean-film-festivals-commemorate-gwangju?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 02 Jun 2020 07:15:45 +0000 The coronavirus pandemic may have begun to ease in this part of the world but the fate of finished and yet-to-be released films remains uncertain. How will Christopher Nolan’s Tenet and Disney’s new take on Mulan perform at the box office if – and that’s a very big “if” – they stick to their July release dates? What about the Chinese blockbusters that were sche­duled to make a killing during the usually lucrative Lunar New Year holiday but didn’t open? These commercial concerns are short term... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3084352/hollywood-china-how-will-current-covid-19-crisis?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3084352/hollywood-china-how-will-current-covid-19-crisis?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 19 May 2020 06:30:13 +0000 In March 2011, Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi shot a documentary entirely within the confines of his home with just a camcorder and a mobile phone. It was a practical rather than an aesthetic choice as he was under house arrest at the time, slapped with a filmmaking ban for his support of pro-democracy movement Green Wave, which the Iranian authorities had brutally quashed two years earlier. This Is Not a Film premiered in Cannes two months later to rave reviews. Film­makers and critics lauded... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3083754/isolation-cinema-filmmakers-under-lockdown?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3083754/isolation-cinema-filmmakers-under-lockdown?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 11 May 2020 04:45:06 +0000 As I write, the Hong Kong government has extended the closure of cinemas in the city for another two weeks as part of its efforts to combat the pandemic. While this is bad news for local operators, business was hardly booming before the initial two-week ban announced on March 27. Prior to the suspension of public enter­tain­ment last month, when the notion of social distancing became mainstream, Hong Kong cinemas were already seating customers on alternate rows, people being wary of spending two... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3080153/are-hong-kong-filmmakers-out-touch-their?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3080153/are-hong-kong-filmmakers-out-touch-their?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 21 Apr 2020 00:30:18 +0000 A spectre is haunting cinemas around the world. Looming over theatre owners is not only the coronavirus pandemic but something unleashed with it – that wild and uncontrol­lable beast called streaming. Its popularity has surged as cinephiles and casual cinema-goers alike, subject to state-sanctioned lockdowns, find themselves resorting to watching films at home. The debate about the merits and pitfalls of making content available online has been raging for years among film industry executives and... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3078143/straight-streaming-will-coronavirus-pandemic?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3078143/straight-streaming-will-coronavirus-pandemic?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 05 Apr 2020 02:00:10 +0000 When Austrian filmmaker Constanze Ruhm signed up to Living Archive, a project in which artists are encouraged to appropriate and rework the films and footage stored in the vaults of the Berlin cinematheque Arsenal, one title caught her eye. Having spent her career exploring representations of women in cinema, she was drawn to Anna, a 1975 documentary about a fragile teenager in Rome, Italy. While Ruhm considers Alberto Grifi and Massimo Sarchielli’s documentary a mas­ter­ful work of art, she... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3074599/filmmaker-remakes-classic-documentary-about?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3074599/filmmaker-remakes-classic-documentary-about?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 14 Mar 2020 09:30:12 +0000 Horsemen, cattle, natives, settlers – Teboho Edkins’ Days of Cannibalism has all the trappings of a traditional cowboy flick. Except that it is set in rural Lesotho, one of the poorest countries in Africa, and instead of white men riding into town, we have Chinese migrants arriving, ready to snap up land and open grocery stores with money amassed back home. “I always wanted the story to look like a Western – because it’s about frontier spaces,” Edkins recently told me in Berlin, where the... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3065135/documentary-takes-unflinching-look-chinese?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3065135/documentary-takes-unflinching-look-chinese?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 07 Mar 2020 10:00:08 +0000 “A toast to the exploited: for the termination of the exploiters,” the narrator says, as the camera zooms in on actor Jason Pai Piao. He strikes a pose, then performs a dizzying array of kung fu moves – a thinly veiled allusion to his athletic prowess, unfettered masculinity and action-hero credentials – as he gets set to give some baddies a thrashing. So far, so predictable for a martial arts flick. Then comes the unexpected. “He looks like a jerk, it’s true,” continues the narrator, as Pai... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3051564/how-anti-maoist-french-film-director-hijacked?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3051564/how-anti-maoist-french-film-director-hijacked?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 22 Feb 2020 05:30:06 +0000 Chinese filmmakers who travel the world to showcase their work often spend their time answering questions about China’s political and social situation. At film festivals, I’ve witnessed these directors being asked for their views on the damage caused by China’s rush towards capitalism, especially if their works were set in the pre-boom 1990s. I’ve also seen filmmakers being bom­barded with queries about the mistreat­ment of ethnic minor­ities in China. Some directors are eager to expand on... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3049267/hong-kong-filmmakers-politics-and-protests-are?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3049267/hong-kong-filmmakers-politics-and-protests-are?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 11 Feb 2020 05:00:09 +0000 “Faster, higher, stronger” was the title of the Paris-based Centre Pompidou’s showcase of sports films last autumn. Comprising 64 movies produced throughout the 20th century and the past two decades, the programme was designed to highlight how filmmakers documented what curator Julien Farenc described as the “cinematic spectacle of bodies in motion”. It is important to acknowledge, after all, that the precursor of the cinema was chro­no­photography, a technique that physio­logists such as... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3048027/why-some-sports-films-are-more-about-propaganda?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3048027/why-some-sports-films-are-more-about-propaganda?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 01 Feb 2020 06:30:11 +0000 China’s consumer class is always looking for the latest, most cutting-edge smartphone app or the most talked-about viral video. Who would have predicted, then, that a 21-year-old movie would take Chinese cinema by storm over the past few weeks? What’s incredible is that The Legend of 1900 was hardly a classic in the first place.  Revolving around a piano prodigy, played by Tim Roth, who had spent his entire life on board an ocean liner, the movie received mixed reviews on its release in 1998,... https://www.scmp.com/arts/tim-roth-movie-1998-going-gangbusters-china/article/3041400?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/arts/tim-roth-movie-1998-going-gangbusters-china/article/3041400?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 10 Dec 2019 11:24:27 +0000 China’s consumer class is always looking for the latest, most cutting-edge smartphone app or the most talked-about viral video. Who would have predicted, then, that a 21-year-old movie would take Chinese cinema by storm over the past few weeks? What’s incredible is that The Legend of 1900 was hardly a classic in the first place. Revolving around a piano prodigy (played by Tim Roth) who has spent his entire life on board an ocean liner, the movie received mixed reviews on its release in 1998,... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3040504/why-forgotten-21-year-old-film-flop-has-taken?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3040504/why-forgotten-21-year-old-film-flop-has-taken?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 08 Dec 2019 18:00:06 +0000 The Murders of Oiso is a modest movie about modest lives. Revolving around four young small-town Japanese men trying to find meaning in their mundane existence, the delicately crafted drama is driven by subtle stylistic gestures. But Takuya Misawa’s second feature – coming five years after the 32-year-old director’s critically acclaimed debut Chigasaki Story – has received scant attention at home, with the Japanese press largely overlooking its premiere at last month’s Busan International Film... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3038701/mainland-china-not-only-option-hong-kongs?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3038701/mainland-china-not-only-option-hong-kongs?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 26 Nov 2019 01:30:10 +0000 Given the Chinese authorities’ recent appetite for high-octane, patriotic blockbusters, American war film Midway doesn’t sound like the kind of movie China’s censors would approve for release. Recounting a United States naval fleet’s triumph over its Japanese counterpart in a four-day battle in the Pacific in June 1942, during World War II, Roland Emmerich’s latest outing is being marketed as a celebration of America changing “the fate of the world”. This narrative would appear at odds with the... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3036575/how-american-war-film-midway-got-past-chinese?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3036575/how-american-war-film-midway-got-past-chinese?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 06 Nov 2019 22:00:10 +0000