Lady Street Fighter first published by Little White Lies, as entry 145 in my Cinema Psychotronicum column After graduating from UCLA Film School in the late Sixties, director James Bryan launched his career at indie cinema’s lowest end – a strange, psychotronic zone where exploitation reigns, sleaze flows and cult emerges – his trajectory and…
Odd Couple (Bo ming dan dao duo ming qiang) first published by Movie Gazette, 8 March 2005 Once a year two elderly warriors, the King of Sabres (Sammo Hung) and the King of Spears (Lau Kar-wing), meet at Wulin Sacred Place to see whose martial art is superior – but as neither of the constantly…
Skinny Tiger and Fatty Dragon (Sau foo fei lung) first published by Movie Gazette, 26 Feb 2004 Sammo Hung is perhaps best known to Western viewers for his leading rôle in the American TV cop show Martial Law (1998-2000), but he has been a popular star in Hong Kong for decades, instantly recognisable for his…
Top Knot Detective first published by SciFiNow Do you remember Shazaam, starring comedian Sinbad (aka David Adkins) as a wish-granting genie? It is a film so quintessentially Nineties, so evocative of that decade’s DTV zeitgeist – and so similar to 1996’s Kazaam, starring Shaquille O’Neal – that even those who haven’t seen it feel as though…
Chan Chi-kit (Wu Jing) has been playing the junkie to help get close an international organ-trafficking cartel – but after an assignment goes wrong, the undercover Hong Kong cop finds himself going cold turkey in a Bangkok prison. There Chi-kit is watched closely by both corrupt warden Ko Chun (Zhang Jin) and decent local rookie…
The Raid first published in S&S Jun 2012 Review: Opening with the image of a ticking watch placed beside a gun, The Raid (Serbuan Maut) is, as those props would suggest, a tense, hyperviolent action thriller, set almost entirely in a deadly 15-story tenement that has been built as much from the tropes and cliches…