Goddamned Asura [該死的阿修羅] (2022)

Raising similar issues to the recent Terrorizers, this movie is an interesting, if ultimately somewhat flawed, take on the lives of young people in a hyper-modern Taipei. Like the earlier film, it is based around a violent attack (inspired by real-life events), is set in chapters (three in this case) and focuses on an ensemble…

Swimming in the Dark [悄悄告訴她] (2022)

An excellent (30 minute) short from director Chen Pinru. Set in Taiwan, Wen Qi and Xiao An are two young women who are close friends and are involved in the swimming team in their high school. As a swimming competition approaches, the pressures of competition places a strain on the relationship between the girls which…

Chicken Poets [像鸡毛一样飞] (2002)

A surreal, subversive and very humorous film from 2002 which seems to have passed the outside world by (137 votes on IMDB) but gets a very respectable 7.6 on Douban from over 10,000 votes. We first meet poet Ouyang Yunfei [Chen Jianbin] being questioned by police in Beijing airport as he has, by mistake, taken…

Fagara [花椒之味] (2019)

Ha Rushu (Acacia) [Sammi Cheng] is an office worker in a Hong Kong travel agency. She is busy organizing trips for cheating businessmen and fending off unsolicited phone calls when she gets a call to say that her hotpot restauranteur father - Ha Leung [Kenny Bee] - is in hospital. At first she assumes this…

Everlasting Regret [长恨歌] (2005)

This is a neglected classic of Chinese cinema. It is arguably the most Sirkian film from the most Sirkian of Chinese directors Stanley Kwan (although there is not much competition for the title and Sirk is only one of Kwan's many influences). Set in Shanghai, the film opens in the mid 1940s when a teenage…