vonboise

There's something about movies that are produced by, directed by, and staring the same person. Maybe it stifles the rest of the cast and crew from giving any honest input. It would have been helpful if someone would have spoke up and mentioned the totally unrealistic gun fights were a bit much. Gunfights can be cool, but please, even the most squeamish pacifist would understand guns need to be reloaded from time to time. Shotguns don't hold 100 shells nor do 9mm hand gun clips provide that kind of firepower. Also, bullets follow a straight trajectory and don't do their best to avoid the target.

This is the type of film that leaves one wondering if the producer-director-actor thinks the audience is so mental as to take the movie seriously. I ended up giving this film a 4/10 because it had it's moments. Annie Wu did a decent job with what was available. She was even able to sprint, without favoring her bad leg, minutes after being shot in the thigh. It could have been a decent film with a bit more character development and shorter, more realistic gun fights. I could only recommend viewing to have a few chuckles.

This movie has different story line, coupled with good acting, make it a true gem. A family purchases a girl from the mainland to help out with chores on the fishing junk. Her intentions are to get to Hong Kong and find a past love. She and Lau Ching Wan, whose parents own the fishing boat, are the main actors and carry the story. The supporting cast (all are excellent) and their interweaving into the films fabric make this a highly enjoyable movie. One I can comfortably recommend to everyone.

A good ghost story with solid acting, especially by Wu Chien-lien, whose character is the primary focus. Unfortunately, I had an early dvd print which was horrible and reduced viewing pleasure, especially in some night scenes. The story line unfolded nicely and was original enough to keep ones attention. It put goose-bumps on me more than once. Would love to see this movie again from a decent print.

The first Thundercops was a supernatural spoof...cops vs ghosts. Sandra Ng is the only tie between the two movies, but as a different character. Whereas one was a comedy, two is deadly serious. At least the first half is. Fortunately, the appearance of Stephen Chow in the second half is just what this film needed. His character and witty performance save this movie from it's nose dive into mediocrity.

Sandra Ng comes on the scene as a meter maid and puts herself into an ongoing stakeout....crime....bust with disastrous results. To make amends and seek revenge she joins the regular police force. Sadly her character lacks an ounce of common sense, as her costars disappear faster than their names appear on the credits.

There are some very good fight scenes. One involving Sandra Ng's partner was quite enjoyable. Stephen Chow is the brother of one of Sandra Ng's targets. While not ranked with the better HK cop movies, I'd recommend it.

An excellent all around movie entwined with supernatural bindings. Picked this DVD up because Anita Yuen was in it. Expected a light hearted, or slap stick, supernatural comedy. Even the jacket cover depicts this image. Not so. The comic side was primarily well written dialog, pitting the mother-in-law and son-in-law against each other. Each actor carried off a believable performance.....from the office tease to the Philippine maid.

Anita Yuen, who is pregnant, lives in the country with her husband (who works in the city), two children and a Philippine maid. The home is jointly owned by Yuen and her mother, who has just arrived at the HK airport after being away for several years. Shortly after she moves in, a spirit who committed suicide while pregnant wishes to take over Yuen's body. The mother has a near fatal accident and because of this can now see spirits.....and the battle to save her daughter is on. A plus for me was the director didn't opt for cheesy treatment of the supernatural side.....no unnecessary gore or silly props that bring down an otherwise good effort.

This is a millennium, New Years Eve spoof, whose only value may be in offering insomniacs some relief. The special effects may have started out as a kindergarten project......possibly the worst I've even seen in a movie. There were a few funny (for those still awake) scenes, but were milked from a smile into a yawn. Guess this was necessary to come up with 85 minutes of film.

The script may have read well, but failed to transfer in this low budget film. Each of the characters has an insurmountable personal problem that brought them to the brink of suicide. All were drawn to a beach area where an earlier murder was being investigated by the police and a newspaper woman. The acting was terrible and none of the actors made their characters interesting enough to make you care what happened to them. The only redeeming part of this movie was it's length.....82 minutes.

A third of the dialog consisted of screams. Sound familiar.....actors look at each other, eyes bulging, mouth wide open and then emit screams that seem to go on forever. Actually, in this movie, they do go on forever and by the end of the movie you may be joining them. Not because the movie is frightening, but because of the realization that you sat through it to the end.

The one plus is Monica Chan who is the only person in this movie who can act. Besides her, this movie is void of a script, director, or supporting cast. It's another example of HK going Hollywood. The ghosts have been turned into ghouls, as in Night of the Living Dead, to justify additional unneeded gore. It attempts to be a comedy/horror film, but isn't funny or scary. Would rank this movie at the bottom of the dozens of HK supernatural films I've viewed.

Annie Wu plays the most irritating woman I've ever seen on the screen. Part of the movies attraction was waiting to see if she would meet an untimely death.....alas, no, since this is a comedy.

It's a story of two couples. One, in a lengthy relationship going nowhere, whose male partner takes off, unbeknown to his partner, shaves his head and joins a monastery on a religious retreat. The other couple, engaged, but harboring doubts. All four end up at the monastery in what turns out to be a pleasant, easy going comedy.

Wrappings are similar to Tales from the Dark Side. Several stories boxed between the beginning and end of another. Actors were solid in support of a well written script, but the English title belies the story flow, as this isn't a comedy. Some of the stories unfold over familiar ground and may seem predictable, but there are enough twists and turns to allow a oops.....didn't see that coming.

The story evolves around the personal lives of funeral homeworkers. Stephen Chow fans will recognize an ambulance chaser, from a competing funeral home, as the nose picker(not in drag) from several of his films.

Our funeral director visits the hospital to latch onto families with recently departed kin. The story weaves through the greed or romances of the employees. Sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, but never frightening. A so-so movie to kill a couple hours. Not the best from this series.

Stolen Nazi atomic bomb secrets are in hot demand. Meant to be delivered to an American spy, they end up with a Chinese collaborator who intends to give them to the Japanese. A private detective (George Lam) is hired to insure delivery to the American. Brigitte Lin is his ex-girlfriend who is now with the collaborator.

Comedy is what comedy does and this movie didn't do it for me. The film is pure corn and slapstick all the way through. My partner laughed continuously while it was all I could do to stay awake. Don't remember seeing anything original, as the gags seemed to be copied or reworked from earlier movies. An example is when Lam, hired to pass along atomic secrets, stops to pour a glass of milk. He spends a minute (seemed like an eternity) pouring from a large full pitcher into a small glass, only to end up with an empty glass.

On the positive side this movie has Brigitte Lin. I found myself paying much more attention after she appeared wearing a black form fitting outfit. A welcome addition and with a different leading actor this could have been a much better movie. She dominated each scene she appeared in......especially the ones where she used a whip.

This movie may not be for everyone, but you can't go wrong if you enjoy a heavy mix of silliness with your comedy. Also, this movie is a must for Brigitte Lin fans. Besides being a joy to watch, she seemed to be having tremendous fun cutting loose. I've never seen her laugh or smile so much in a movie.

The movie's theme evolves around a professional gambler. Didn't much care for the character's early on, but that changed as the story evolved. Starts with our lead and accomplices setting someone up in a card game and winning a large sum. This sham causes the triad to enter the picture and with the usual arm twisting convince the group to work for them.

As the story unfolds our gambler falls for a blind girl who is saving up for an eye operation. Her father, an addicted gambler, would pinch her seeing eye dog if she had one. Not many surprises in this movie, as it seems to follow the normal format for a gambling movie. The plus was on the acting side and even though familiar, they kept story interesting.

An average couple are the foundation for this murder mystery. The husband launders Thai drug money and the wife is an unscrupulous lawyer. She thrives on graft, kickbacks, and cheating her clients for profit. She discovers a large sum of cash from her husbands laundering business. Believing her husband was cheating her out of a share, she hides the cash.

The story unfolds around the wife who develops amnesia. The husband who has been having an affair with a clients wife and is desperate to recover the hidden money. A nurse who was cheated by the lawyer and is hired by the husband to care for her. She delights in this opportunity for a little payback. There's also a detective (Colombo style) who is to clever for his own good.

A well acted and engrossing gangster movie shot in Thailand. Younger brother from HK visits older brother, who is a mid-level mobster in Thailand. He is looking to recoup money the brother took from the family when he fled HK 15 years earlier. His pesky girlfriend, refusing to stay in HK, learns the hard way that there's more to Thailand than elephant rides.

The elder brother is caught up in an internal struggle within the mob. Someone is injecting drugs into their gambling operation. His search leads to a tug of war, with the brother and girlfriend caught in the middle. Plenty of action and an excellent story line. Highly recommended for those who enjoy this type of film.

A delightful comedy. An unorthodox policeman's new boss, a female inspector, has Christy Chung as her secret significant other. The story line evolves from his finding out, but not using this information for his benefit. A fun movie to watch as the characters develop interpersonal friendships. Lau Ching Wan's (policeman) mother is a perfect addition to the story. Desirous of her son to find a wife, she quickly befriends his boss, not realizing she is an unlikely companion.

Except for a minor criminal subplot, to bind the actors together, this movie was pure good natured comedy to the end.

The beginning of the Troublesome Night series. A mildly entertaining movie with several stories entwined. Not serious enough to give one goose bumps, but worth a watch on a slow night.

First story involves a group of campers who tented on the beach near a cemetery. The victim seemed to choose the nude swimmer emerging from water over those he was camping with. Good choice. Christy Chung is a wife headed to an anniversary dinner in the second story. Her husband, a real estate agent, is attempting to take a client to view a house. A couple more stories follow making this an interesting and fun movie to watch. May not be the best from the series, but it started everything off.

Not an easy story to follow, as it unfolds with a current/flashback story line throughout, and you aren't always aware of which medium you're in. Watching this film with someone was helpful(for me) in trying to piece together the story. Yet our combined version differs with the synopsis on the video box.

A movie different from any HK movies I've viewed before. Action begins in a gay sauna.....and I mean action. From there it mellows out, but the movie has a gay theme, so you're forewarned. The movie weaves between (1) pursuit of a widower(?) by a real estate salesman; (2) the husbands recollections of his wife; (3) the swimming trainers affair with the wife; and (4-5) which would give too much away.

Thought the acting and story line were quite good. The movie certainly keeps you attempting to put the puzzling pieces together. Mentioned my interpretation differed from the box synopsis...probably just put more intrigue into the movie, but if you see this movie, remember where the swimming trainer was from and the lack of clarification as to how or when an affair started.

It may have been a so-so horror flick, except for Sam Lee who had me laughing in almost every scene he was in.

The movie starts with an experiment, to produce super-human's by injecting a bacterium into the blood stream, gone bad. The patient ends up on the cutting room floor, but not before biting our agent.....who heads off to Hong Kong. This is in the first couple minutes, then there is the character development. Sam Lee who is a member of the local triad. Steven Fung who is a policeman assigned to a rural station, his girlfriend, her sister.....who is the ex-girlfriend of Benny Lai (the infected agent).

Most of the action takes place in the police station. Police round up the gang members who are fighting with Benny Lai and place them in jail. There's some laughs and gore up to this point, but here the movie starts rolling. Sam Lee and the gang are in a connecting cell to the agent, who is doing a Night of the Living Dead imitation on his cell mates.

Those bitten or injured also turn into zombie like creatures. Some of the funniest scenes are of Sam Lee pretending he is one of the zombie's. The movie isn't without faults. Anyone who's ever seen Night of the Living Dead knows you shoot them in the head.....destroy the brain. No matter how loud or often I shouted, no one listened. A movie to watch for laughs and easy viewing. Not for anyone who is bothered by a lower budgeted horror films special effects.

A twin receives a package from her sister who was visiting a remote village in Mainland China. She begins to have visions of the sister being in danger and heads to the village herself. On the way, she teams up with 4 others doing a documentary on the worshiping practices of a local cult. They all stay at an old inn and one by one, including some other guests and villagers, disappear.

The plot isn't new, as it mirrors some Hollywood movies of the past. It could have been better with a little less sex (really) and more intrigue. Some of the individual acting wasn't too bad, but the cult was a definite minus. Fortunately, they were only used as a reason for the film crew to be there and not given much camera time.

Don't remember what I thought of this movie back in 1960. Whatever, it failed to register a positive enough memory to entice me into a second viewing....until this week when I saw the dvd version at our library. A Hollywood rip from the excellent Japanese movie, The Seven Samurai, fails horribly as a copy or as a Western.

The film has a number of actors I've always enjoyed watching. The failure, as I see it, must sit with the script and direction. It is full of Hollywood style, social commentary, that borders on the ridiculous, at least for a Western.

Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen team up early on to help transport a coffin to boot hill. Seems some of the town folk are preventing the burial because they don't want an Indian buried with the whites. Sure, and this Indian was lying dead in the street before some benevolent traveling salesman gave the undertaker $20 for a proper burial. This is a border town where temperatures do get into the hundreds. Bodies aren't left out in the noonday sun, like road kill, regardless of their racial makeup. Our two heroes volunteer to take the hearse up to boot hill. McQueen is given a "scatter gun" and rides shotgun on the hearse. Along the way (two blocks) he shoots someone (we guess) from a distance that a sawed-off shotgun wouldn't have been effective. We don't see who gets shot, but Brynner points out the window, which is open, thus making it suspicious. I could see the open window being suspicious in 1960, with the air-conditioning running, not during the movies period. They arrive at boot hill and the road block dissolves with one bigot being shot in the hand, another in the arm. The movie goes downhill from there.

I do enjoy good Westerns. I didn't enjoy this film at all. Expect it could be rented more for laughs, which wasn't my purpose.