All Film Reviews

‘Eight Taels Of Gold’ rewards those not looking for emotional fireworks or melodramatic denouements.

‘Elixir Of Love’ passes the time adequately, but there’s little doubt that it fails to stretch Riley Yip’s creative excellence and doesn’t even rank as one of Miriam Yeung’s best.

‘Embrace Your Shadow’ manages to be moving while sticking doggedly to established clichés, perhaps an oxymoron, but an achievement nonetheless.

Martial arts, magic and bizarre creatures are blended together seamlessly, with expert direction.

‘Enter the Dragon’ is a campy and extremely entertaining action romp that is successful because of two important ingredients – Bruce Lee and Martial Arts.

This is an excellent action flick in the vein of Yuen Kwai’s 80’s actioners such as ‘Yes, Madam’ and ‘Righting Wrongs’ and is certainly a class above more recent efforts from the HK action circuit.

‘Enter the Fat Dragon’ is a warm homage to the man who popularised martial arts cinema around the world.

Most of the film’s jokes are lame and the plot would be familiar to those who have seen more than a couple of 80s’ Hong Kong movies.

‘Escape from Brothel’ may sound like it would a wild trashy romp but is in fact a grimy and often depressive trip through Hong Kong sleaze.

Searing blockbuster thrills based on true events where diplomats from both South and North Korea become stranded in the fallen city of Mogadishu during a rebel uprising in Somalia.

‘Escape of Shark’ is a remake of Australian thriller ‘Bait’ which, while not a masterpiece either, is several notches above this effort.

Unfortunately for Jingle Ma, ‘Europe Raiders’ is dated in a way that the nearly twenty years old ‘Tokyo Raiders’ isn’t, a production old before its time despite the 2018 bells and whistles.

There is just so much effort and talent involved that I think it earns itself a hearty recommendation.

‘Everything Under Control’ brings together a few members of popular Cantopop group Mirror and the ever quirky Ivana Wong for a suitably amusing and defiantly odd Hong Kong comedy.

‘Executioners’ carries over the comic book vibe of the previous instalment but ladens on the seriousness and melodramatics this time around.

This masterful kung-fu drama shows how quickly Liang found his own way of conveying his thoughts to the audience.

‘Exiled’ is a riveting portrayal of a group of friends sticking by one another as their once chosen profession threatens to kill them all.

It works perfectly with these protagonists and Lee Sang-Geun throws every cinematic trick and cliché out of the bag to put these two through the wringer.

As long as you don’t expect too much, there is enough interesting action, and impressive choreography on show to entertain you.

While it’s not always cohesive in tone and execution, ‘Extreme Crisis’ is nevertheless a solid action film and ideal for those looking for some simple action thrills.

What starts as an amusing, quirky action comedy goes off the rails around the hour mark, the makers falling foul of the obscure law of Korean blockbusters that means that they MUST have a duration of two hours or over.

It may not be refreshing, it may not be especially exciting, yet ‘Eye For an Eye’ has a few aces up its sleeve.

Watchable, slickly made, potboiler with a dash of decent action, ‘Eye for an Eye’ may not set the genre on fire but is an unfussy and mostly entertaining quick fix of blind warrior swordplay action.

‘Fairy Tale Killer’ tries so hard to be an intelligent thriller that it forgets to be thrilling or exciting.