This is apparently director Susie Au's debut and before she was a music video director. That definitely shows. There's also a lot of Wong Kar Wai going on here. But in all honesty? I liked it. It was entertaining, Zhou Xun was gorgeous, Daniel Wu was hot, and the whole thing was just nice to look at and attention-grabbing, not to mention keeping.

Essentially there's this superchick named Ming Ming (Zhou Xun). She has a thing for D (Wu), apparently some kind of mob enforcer. He wants to go to Harbin with 5 million. So she steals this money and a box from Brother Cat. In comes Tu, whom she hands the money to. And takes off running. He eventually meets another Zhou Xun in the form of an orange-haired girl named Nana. He thinks she's Ming Ming. Most of the movie is them running from Cat's cronies, with Ming Ming making occasional appearances to shoot her black balls at people. Eventually D comes back into it, and the true theme of the story is his story and what he wanted to go to Harbin for.

If that sounds convoluted, it kinda is, but I didn't find it as extremely so as some of the other reviews indicate. I found the style of the film extremely cool, and that by itself kept me into it. Zhou Xun did an excellent job in two roles and I was pretty surprised to realize that she was speaking Cantonese and not being dubbed. In fact, it seemed everyone was, which is weird because none of the stars are HK stars. But the director is, and I guess that's why.

Anyway, enough babbling. I really liked this movie.

Mood blah Music Dear jane – 穿梭機 Tags: action, daniel wu, zhou xun

Odd, jilted-lover revenge flick starring Gillian Chung, Daniel Wu and some other chick I don't know. The plot seems simple. Daniel Wu is a jerk and posted nude pictures of former girlfriend Gillian Chung online, and then the latter enlists his current girlfriend to help her retrieve them from his computer.

The problem is, nothing much happens. There are random sex scenes that reveal nothing, a chase scene that isn't all that exciting, and lots of scenes of the girls making eyes at one another. The ending was a little too contrived for my liking, and not entirely believable. Also, I hate when people purposely destroy electronics. In the pro column, there's some really cool French Italian music throughout, and tbh my first thought afterwards was hmm, I might save this for the music.

Then I said, nah.

Mood blah Music Hilcrhyme – LAMP LIGHT Tags: daniel wu, drama, gillian chung

Even though the ratio of good to bad movies from China/Hong Kong is quite a bit higher than average, every now and then you get a movie like this. Above a 7 on IMDB, check, two of my favorite acting peoples, check....but somehow this still sucked. For one thing, it took an interminable amount of time to get going. For another, it had so many things going on, that they simply didn't have time to explain them all. At the end, I sort of gathered that the chick in the full body cast or wtvr, was Daniel Wu's girlfriend, but was either the daughter of, or married to the main cop.

The story...ugh. God, it was so full of holes I don't even know where to start in explaining it. But essentially Daniel Wu is a killer...at least, that's what they'd like you to believe. He seems to actually be some random guy from a backwoods village whom they would like you to believe is uneducated, but somehow is really sneaky, good at beating people up, and knows a double-cross when he sees one. It just didn't make sense. I mean, why hire a guy like that to kill someone anyway?

And somehow the cops in this story get wind of a killer being sent for some gang boss, and they...actually care??? Oh yes. They turn Mongkok upside down looking for this unidentified guy. Then, while you're fighting boredom and trying to suspend your disbelief, you have to believe that Cecilia Cheung's character would actually come back to the brothel at the end of the night where the guy that was trying to beat her at the start was. I mean, sure to get her stuff. But then they STAYED. There wasn't even all that much violence until the end, when they felt the need to ~shock!~ you with some buckets of fake blood.

It was really just the most ludicrous (and boring!) thing ever and I think about 30 minutes from the end I really didn't know why I was even watching it anymore. Except that I wanted my download of the second half of 'Look For A Star' to get a good headstart.

Ish. Needless to say, NOT recommended.

Mood frustrated Tags: action, cecilia cheung, daniel wu, drama