Showing posts with label louis koo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label louis koo. Show all posts

11 July 2014

EIFF 2014 Review : Aberdeen( Heung gong jai,2014)

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Genre:
Drama, World Cinema
Rating: 15
Screened:
20, 22nd June 2014(EIFF)
Director:
Ho-Cheung Pang
Cast:
Miriam Yeung, Louis Koo, Gigi Leung, Eric Tsang, Ng Man-tat, Carrie Ng

Though Pang Ho-cheung’s Aberdeen is very much a Chinese film about Hong Kong, it refuses to alienate its audience by making its focus specific issues of Chinese life. Aberdeen is essentially a film about relationships in the contemporary world told through the parallel and intertwining lives of the people in one family. On each level of the family’s infrastructure the camera picks out key details: a lonesome daughter’s midnight snacks, a father’s gender-centric obsessing, an uncle’s indifferent cheating, and a grandfather’s bliss in later life. Here the family is its own source of anxiety and its own salvation.

Ho-cheung’s Hong Kong is one of colours and life, a buzzing hive of activity where events collide and erupt to produce new scenarios. Here, family life spirals out of control and is ,time and time again wrenched close to some kind of epiphany only for life to inevitably stumble in the way. All of this is shown in a gorgeous Technicolor palate which, along with the fantastic pace of the story, produces an odd travel documentary feel to some of the film. At other points the camera floats through a miniature of Hong Kong shot in hues of purple, red, orange and green, a weird dreamscape where the camera retreats at points of transition. As with most details in the film, even this space plays an important narrative role later in the film.  Ho-cheung utilizes a zany sense of fate to keep all events integral to the story at some point or another.

In the end the film proves it has some slightly backwards ideas about its resolution, yet overall it’s a heart-warming story of life, love, and family. Ho-cheung seems to want the audience, like the family, to understand that equilibrium is an impossibility but that’s not a bad thing at all.

A ponderous cross-section of life in contemporary Hong Kong, spinning through the realities of everyday life whilst tackling some hefty ideas on what family means. Aberdeen is clean and colourful, inquisitive, and honest to the end.

★★★1/2

Scott Clark


14 March 2013

Watch New Violent Trailer For Johnnie To's Drug War

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Hong Kong cinema has made a name for itself as a worldwide leader in action thrillers, a market that's delivered by the likes of John Woo,Shaw Brothers, Dante Lam, Tsui Hark. Even cinephiles worldwide who may not be overall fans of the genre they can say they have at least 1 hong kong thriller amongst their collections. Johnnie To is another fine Hong Kong based director who has contributed many great films down the years and next month Drug War (Du Zhan) will be released and tonight we have a brand new English subbed trailer.

If your looking for something gritty, violent Drug War will supply your needs. With the film been filmed on mainland China, there was a sense of doubt the violence as well as To's signature style the film would get the certificate due to China's strict regulations however everything has got the thumbs up now! The film was the secret film at the recent Rome Film festival which it left  some great reviews which is probably why now we have a new trailer with English subs! We don't know yet if (or when) Drug War will arrive in UK&Ireland, USA there is a distributor however no release date has been set.

Drug War (Du Zhan) is set for a 2nd April Chinese/Hong Kong Release and stars Sun Honglei, Louis Koo, Honglei Sun, Michelle Ye, and Yi Huang.



Synopsis

Set in Jinshan, China, Timmy Choi, a cold-hearted drug dealer, crashes his car into a convenient store after the exposure of his drug factory. In saving his own life, he locks his wife and brother-in-law inside the factory. Police officer Lei, extremely smart and careful, tries to track down drug criminals by offering an opportunity for Ming to reduce the penalty. Choi helps out by betraying all his brothers, until the last minute when he turns back...

source:Twitch