Movies
Interesting film by King Hu and two other compatriots. The setup is pretty identical to Hou's Three Times, the only real difference is that each short is handled by a different director. That makes it a little more varied, while also a little less coherent. Neither the cast nor the directors manage to best Tsai's masterpiece though. Hu's entry is by far the most accomplished of the three. The other two are decent too, but they're clearly handled by less talented- directors. I'm not quite sure if the setup made a lot of sense or added something of value, but it's fun to see the three leads returning in very different stories. A solid film.Read all
A classic Taiwanese drama. Like Hong Kong, Taiwan used to a be a nation specialized in genre cinema. It's not that there weren't any dramas being made, but the lack of subtlety made them into an acquired taste and difficult to export. A film like Execution is Autumn is a pretty good example of this. The performances are decent, but not very spectacular. The cinematography is rather basic and the drama quite slow. It's the music that is extremely overdone and makes this film overly sentimental. It becomes difficult to care for the characters and since that's really all there is to this film, it's not a big success.Read all
Chinese classic that offers little more than a long-winded narrative. Stylistically there's absolutely nothing happening, the actors are loud and obnoxious and the plot is hardly worth a second glance. It's mind-boggling how they managed to get 120 minutes of material out of it.