Favorite films

Pinned reviews

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  A Guilty Conscience 2023

  ★★★★ Watched 21 Jan 2023 6

  The best HK film I have seen in recent years - I like it more than the warm, educational To my 19 Years Old Self. Very dramatic, packed with punch and cheekiness. Dayo Wong is often box office poison. But he's great in here. Also great cinematography (lots of panorama shots). It's like the HK cinema we used to enjoy.

  The film director Jack Ng has written scripts for many veteran filmmakers, and he's an actor himself. So he is…

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  Fight Back to School 1991

  ★★★★ Rewatched 21 Apr 2020 32

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  Hong Kong cinema when it was still carefully crafted. Chow's films intertextual references (like the maze here echoing Chow's fave kungfu star Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon) and allegorical cues (like the communist graffiti on the walls of the abandoned building during the opening sequences) are brilliant.

  Part of 2020 Stephen Chow's marathon. Very good one but not his best.

  I want to write a book on Hong Kong comedy.

Recent reviews

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  Rose 1986

  ★★★ Watched 23 Sep 2023 8

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  I am a fan of the novelist of the original novel that got adapted into this film. Yonfan's Last Romance, a tale about sisterhood and also starring Maggie Cheung, was also adapted from Yishu's novel. You can understand her style as characterising strong, independent woman with a fragile side who ended up growing up and standing on their own feet, quite a stark contrast with another "melodrama queen" of the same period, the Taiwanese Qiong Yao. Here, Chow Yun-fat was…

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  Stand Up Story 2023

  ★★★ Watched 19 Sep 2023

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  2.5 stars for the great performance of the leading actor Ben Yuen and the supporting actor Ng Siu-hin, who plays the son and carer of his father with mild down syndrome. Made with a small budget, Stand Up Story epitomises Hongkongers’ resilient spirit in difficult times, be it during a pandemic or poverty, or something else …

  The message is straightforward - laughing in bitter times. I coedited a special issue of a journal on this theme in East Asian…

Popular reviews

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  The God of Cookery 1996

  ★★★★★ Watched 28 May 2021 33

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  Rewatching the God of Cookery, I was amazed by its ingenuity. Yet this time I was both saddened and relieved that the iconic landmark Tai Pak Floating Restaurant's nearly mythical interior has been well-preserved by this film amply, as it has been closed on 1st March, 2020 until further notice. After watching this film, I also recalled how Stephen Chow's comedies have a similar "formula" as Michael Hui - just add a bit of mo lei tau (nonsensical humour). Both…

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  Barbie 2023

  ★★★★★ Watched 20 Jul 2023 11

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  I realise male audiences and female audiences might have different takes on this - the civilised male audiences might admire this as a powerful film that is surprising because it synthesises feminism for a seeming bimbo story. But they like it because it's so entertaining. Less civilised, misogynistic male critics may dismiss it as a plastic, camp, too politically correct flick that wastes their time. But when I, sitting among a huge theatre with many international schools' teenage girls from…