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Posts Tagged ‘Andy Lau’

Firestorm (2013)

Thursday, May 4th, 2017

FIRESTORM, the Hong Kong movie from 2013, is unfortunately not a remake of the 1998 firefighter action vehicle starring Howie Long. But it’s a good movie. Andy Lau (INFERNAL AFFAIRS, HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS, THE GREAT WALL) plays Inspector Lui, a by-the-book cop trying to catch a gang of brazen thieves. He’s there when they literally lift an armored car with a crane, and he hopes to be there (but more prepared) the next time they strike.

This is not the Hong Kong I know from other movies, with all the bustle and boats and steam coming off of outdoor markets. This is clean, professional downtown Hong Kong. Tall buildings, office clothes. That robbery happens in broad daylight, the gunmen wearing scary fencing type masks. It’s got a realistic feel but it’s this outlandish action spectacle, like HEAT meets more of a DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE world. (read the rest of this shit…)

The Great Wall

Monday, February 20th, 2017

THE GREAT WALL fulfills two different personal moviegoing habits of mine:

1) trying to see some of the higher profile Asian imports that play at the AMC theater here

2) going to lightly attended afternoon shows of almost every fantasy sword-dude movie that comes out

Maybe you can’t call this an import, because it’s produced by Universal and Legendary, it’s mostly in English and its star Matt Damon (SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON) is an American white in my opinion. And maybe you can’t call it a fantasy sword-dude movie either, because it’s more in a fantasy bow-and-arrow-dude vein. But it is from the great Chinese director of lush historical epics Zhang Yimou (RAISE THE RED LANTERN, HERO, HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS), it’s the most expensive movie ever filmed entirely in China ($135 million), and it was released there two months ago and had already made $224.5 million worldwide by the time it came to us. So it’s close enough to these two categories that it piqued my interest.
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Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame

Tuesday, September 6th, 2011

tn_detectivedeeDETECTIVE DEE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE PHANTOM FLAME is the latest directorial work from Mr. Tsui Hark. Yeah, admittedly I still mainly love him for the Van Damme/Rodman/Rourke picture DOUBLE TEAM, but he’s actually a respectable director too. This was nominated for best picture in last year’s Hong Kong Film Awards. It lost to GALLANTS but #1 I personally liked this better than GALLANTS and #2 Tsui won best director anyway. Like Soderbergh over Ridley Scott. Take that, GALLANTS.

DETECTIVE DEE is playing in American theaters now so check it out, but it’s also come out on legit UK blu-ray so that’s how I saw it.
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