Country: China

After being subjected to western productions where kids are annoyingly precocious and completely uninteresting, ‘The Story Of Xiaoyan’ reminds us that there are valid stories about youth to tell.

It’s a languid, leisurely swordplay film that advances at a glacial pace and is defiant in doing so. Yet that is, along with the crisp cinematography, its greatest strength.

From the opening frames to the denouement, this is a production that sucks you into its strange universe, style dripping out of every shot.

‘The Tai Chi Master’ has all the components you expect – an impressive budget, a handful of beautiful actresses, and plenty of action – but never quite convinces.

While the episodic narrative fails to engage, the short vignettes of the Dai culture and the stunning cinematography make ‘The Taste of Rice Flower’ a more bearable experience.

‘The Unity of Heroes’ is a slipshod update of the Wong Fei-Hung myth, a film wholly lacking in not only chemistry but also everything else that made the Tsui Hark chapters so influential.

‘The Village Of No Return’ is stuck between two stools – too disjointed to appeal to the mainstream, but too flat to be considered anything particularly out of the ordinary.

Despite a rushed prologue setting up what is going on and the issues Liu and his son have, the filmmakers have still created an incredible futuristic and lived in world with a combination of slick CGI and colossal sets.

‘The Wandering Earth II’ is a marvel from a technical point of view and solid hard sci-fi that this time around manages to flesh out characters and story, all the while delivering epic scaled action.

Despite a solid start and the production values to do events justice, ‘The War of Loong’ just misses out on being overly memorable.

This is not a flashy costume drama or a CGI enhanced flight of fancy but rather a gritty, grimy and quite often, an in your face epic.

A worthy addition to any avid kung fu fan’s DVD library as it hits all the right beats, benefits from some impressive photography and features some interesting, well staged and even downright barmy fighting styles.