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Previews From The New York Asian Film Festival Part One – Look! It Moves! By Adi Tantimedh

Adi Tantimedh writes,

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I love the New York Asian Film Festival. The biggest hits and most fun movies from Asian every year. There's something for everyone, and I'm trying to see as many advance screenings as I can to tell you about the movies coming up. If you miss them at the festival, they might be out on DVD soon, either on a US label or an Asian label you can order online. Some of them are already out on DVD in Asia.

First, here's a rundown of the Hong Kong movies I saw in the festival, for which tickets are still available. Any movie I haven't mentioned is due to my being too busy to watch them in time to write about them, but every movie in the festival is worth seeing.

First, here's a rundown of the Hong Kong movies I saw in the festival, for which tickets are still available. Any movie I haven't mentioned is due to my being too busy to watch them in time to write about them, but every movie in the festival is worth seeing.

The Mobfathers

Herman Yau and his regular screenwriter Erica Li serve up the first major Hong Kong gangster movies in years, this time with an overt political layer. It follows a Triad underboss played with foul-mouthed manic glee by comedian Chapman To as he runs for election to replace the ailing head of the Triads, who is played by Anthony Wong, who's now arguably Hong Kong's answer to Gene Hackman. To tries to shake up the whole system by demanding all gang members should have the right to vote for their head, not leave it to a committee of old men at the top, drawing direct parallels with Hong Kong's struggle for universal suffrage against Mainland Chinese rule. Cue turf wars, back-stabbings (some literal), assassinations and tragedy as things tend to go very badly the way gangster movies do. This is reminder of the heyday of Hong Kong gangster movies, but this time as political allegory for Hong Kong's current plight.

The Mermaid

I saw this during its very limited US theatrical release, one of the oddest, funniest and most heart-wrenching blockbusters of the year. A Mainland Chinese blockbuster written and directed by Hong Kong superstar comedian Stephen Chow, who doesn't star in it, he nonetheless manages to translate his flair for wacky comedy and action into a Mainland movie with an environmental message where a mermaid is sent by her kingdom to seduce and assassinate a rich industrial before his machines kill off their ocean habitat, only for her to fall in love with him and tragedy ensues. This movie beat out Batman vs Superman in China and made over $500 million in just two weeks. It heralds the new era of Chinese blockbusters. The CGI effects may look a bit dodgy, but that's made up by comedy, action and characters you care about.

Saving Mr. Wu

I saw this a few months ago on a Hong Kong DVD. Based on a real-life kidnapping, this suspense thriller stars superstar Andy Lau as a celebrity kidnapped and held for ransom who has to use his wits to manipulate his abductors to stay alive and ultimately outsmart them long enough for the police to track them down.

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Keeper of Darkness

I wrote about this before when I watched the Hong Kong DVD, star and director Nick Cheung creates what looks like a Hong Kong take on John Constantine: Hellblazer, playing a working class psychic who investigators hauntings, possessions and exorcisms on the streets of Hong Kong who goes up against a vengeful ghost who demands to be avenged and murders any psychic who can't help him. Steeped in local street culture and with a sly sense of humour, this is one of my favourite genre movies of 2015. It feels like the equivalent of reading through an entire Vertigo miniseries in the best sense of the word.

The Bodyguard

Sammo Hung stars and directs – as well as choreographs – his first martial arts movie for ages, playing an aging former Chinese special forces cop forced into retirement when he's diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Finding his skills and memories ebbing away. He befriends a little girl whose no-good father runs afoul of some bad guys, and when they come after her, Sammo has to call on his old skills and muscle memory to save her. Age has slowed him down, and he's not as spry as he used to be at his peak, this is an elegiac meditation on aging and looking at the closing chapters of one's life.

The New York Asian Film Festival runs from June 22nd to July 9th.

Always watching at lookitmoves@gmail.com

Follow the official LOOK! IT MOVES! twitter feed at http://twitter.com/lookitmoves for thoughts and snark on media and pop culture, stuff for future columns and stuff I may never spend a whole column writing about.

Look! It Moves! © Adisakdi Tantimedh


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Rich JohnstonAbout Rich Johnston

Founder of Bleeding Cool. The longest-serving digital news reporter in the world, since 1992. Author of The Flying Friar, Holed Up, The Avengefuls, Doctor Who: Room With A Deja Vu, The Many Murders Of Miss Cranbourne, Chase Variant. Lives in South-West London, works from Blacks on Dean Street, shops at Piranha Comics. Father of two. Political cartoonist.
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