A zany if somewhat overzealous romp as this darkly entertaining meta-film about a struggling director (played by a fantastic Leslie Cheung) forced to make a Cat III erotic movie, features Shu Qi in a breakout role.
As much a cultural touchstone as it is an exemplar of the Huangmei opera genre, this classic of classics sucks you into its overt melodramatism and a heartrending story of everlasting love as a woman dressed as a man in order to attend university meets another man.
It’s tragic and overly melodramatic for sure, but Ann Hui’s then-controversial work about the sufferings of the Vietnamese post-Vietnam War remains a significant entry of the burgeoning Hong Kong New Wave.
The director’s cut does sometimes feel its length, but otherwise this is a solid biopic by Stanley Kwan about one of the most eminent Chinese actresses from early 20th century, played by a stunning Maggie Cheung.
To deliberately takes B-movie action preposterousness to wildly delirious levels in this work of inventive imagination and delightful campiness.
Anita Mui and Leslie Cheung star in this movie straddling between two eras with a ghost story in the mix, directed by Stanley Kwan with a strong sense of melancholy and nostalgia.
Wong’s expanded version of his short for the ‘Eros’ anthology is more erotic and fatalistic than usual, and also an aesthetic and thematic extension of the world he created with ‘In the Mood for Love’.
This early underrated work from Stanley Kwan may seem like it is all over the place in terms of tone and storytelling, but he just about pulls it off in its depiction of wasted youth and listlessness.
Stanley Kwan’s gay drama, set in 1980s Beijing, feels more impressionistic than a deeply-felt journey with its characters, though the performances are compelling enough to overcome its rather lean narrative.
To’s odd anti-action structural experiment takes too long to build up a self-contained story set in a hospital ward as doctors, cops and criminals try to outwit one another psychologically, that when the action comes, it feels like a stylistic distraction.
Eternality Tan 