Genre: Drama

‘The Villagers’ is a fine action-thriller, tackling darker themes while still being able to weave in humour and pathos. Highly recommended.

As much a twisty-turny drama as an all out action flick, ‘The Villainess’ overdoes both its noble attempts at gritty drama and action technical wizardry.

Lam certainly throws a lot in and the tone does vary but thanks to the confident staging and the unrelenting momentum it all works for the most part.

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.

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.

‘The Water Margin’ is the kind of grandiose masterwork that is enthralling and, despite the presence of three accomplished directors, has a remarkable consistency to it.

A truly beautiful tale of personal growth and self-discovery that is more than perfectly in tune with many Asian ideals of family and the implicit importance of such.

‘The Way We Are’ is a gentle production about an act of kindness flowering into a friendship and how simple events can create a long-standing link between people who are initially strangers.

‘The Way We Were’ just doesn’t know what its heritage is and squanders a good concept for needless in-jokes while Liu Kai-Chi deserves a much stronger vehicle and Fiona Sit is woefully underused.

‘The Web Of Death’ would be a four-star film but (and it is a big ‘but’!) for the preposterous sight of seeing the heroes fleeing from a green spider.

It’s a cinematic car crash, and it’s often difficult to peel your eyes away from the horrible things that are happening on-screen at any given moment.