Acclaimed director feng xiaogang and superstar fan bingbing team up for this razor-sharp, intriguing tale of a wronged woman fighting for justice against her duplicitous husband and the government itself. when li xuelian (fan bingbing) and her husband qin yuhe (li zonghan) stage a fake divorce to secure a second apartment reserved by the government for single people, all seems to go to plan. six months later, qin remarries, as agreed but to a different woman. furious, li files a lawsuit with the county court, but loses the case after the judge remains convinced the divorce papers are in order. refusing to accept the court's findings, li appeals to the chief justice, the county chief, and even the mayor, but fails at every turn. she decides that only qin can give her peace of mind, if he will just acknowledge that the divorce was fake. instead, he publicly accuses her of being a promiscuous woman - an accusation that drives li back to the courts, and to the capital, to redeem her reputation once and for all shot partly in a circular aspect ratio, mirroring the literati paintings of the song dynasty, i am not madame bovary offers a powerful, compelling and hilarious social satire, which transcends all cultures in uniquely stylish fashion.
Kiss Of The Dragon China's top secret agent Liu Jian (Jet Li) visits Paris on a pleasure trip only to encounter government espionage at the highest level. Accused of a murder he did not commit and on the run in a city he doesn't know Liu befriends an American woman Jessica (Bridget Fonda) and makes a promise that could compromise his career and even cost him his life... Bulletproof Monk 'Bulletproof Monk' begins in the 1940s as a Tibetan Buddhist monk charged with protecting an ancient scroll passes on his legacy to his pupil. As the student receives the power to safeguard the scroll his aging process is halted and he gives up his name only to be known as the Monk (Chow Yun-Fat). Suddenly the monastery is raided by Nazis led by the ruthless Strucker (Karl Roden). As they attempt to seize the relic the Monk is shot and falls off a cliff taking the scroll with him... However six decades later the Monk appears in America and crosses paths with Kar (Seann William Scott) a tough city kid with a talent for picking pockets. Together the unlikely duo must contend with the forces of the now-elderly Strucker still determined to possess the mystical scroll. As Strucker's granddaughter Nina (Victoria Smurfit) leads his thugs to track down Kar and the Monk the two heroes receive help from the mysterious Jade (James King)... Marked For Death Just retired from the Drug Enforcement agency John Hatcher (Seagal) returns to his hometown and quickly discovers that drugs have infiltrated his old neighbourhood. Determined to drive the dealers out Hatcher crosses paths with a ferocious Jamaican druglord who vows that Hatcher and his family are now marked for death...
Miss Julie is a claustrophobic class study set within a 19th-century Count's kitchen. It chronicles the events of one midsummer night when the housemistress--an obstinate and confused Julie (Saffron Burrows)--is beaten in a round of sexual gaming with footman Peter Mullan. Based on the play by August Strindberg, the film maintains a constant sense of theatre by only having three speaking parts (the other coming from Maria Doyle Kennedy as Christine, the long-suffering cook and fiancée), just one set and a penchant for hand-held camerawork by director Mike Figgis. Known for his experimental approach to storytelling, this is technically a predecessor to Figgis' Timecode, since the all-important rape scene is conveyed through a disorientating split-screen technique. He'd worked with fellow Brit Burrows before on The Loss of Sexual Innocence and One Night Stand, but gives the gal with the outsized cheekbones top billing here and is rewarded with a thoroughly rounded performance. Backed by the director's own musical score, this melodrama has a very personal feel to it. --Paul Tonks
When a 13-year-old violin prodigy moves with his father to Beijing, he realizes how he truly feels about music and comes to understand the strength of his father's love.
Jia Zhang Ke's ambitious film follows the lives of four friends over a turbulent 10 year period of Chinese history from 1979 to 1989. In the small town of Fenyang in the remote western province of Shanxi the teenage members of a state theatre troupe stage propoganda plays in praise of Mao. But as the country opens up to the free market and implements wide-ranging reform their lives are irrevocably changed as the world around them is transformed by the music fashions and other cul
Evil vs. Good as the outlaw bandits try to destroy the only people able to protect a small village. However the young challengers use their abilities to fight bravely and keep their town from these brutal thieves.
In a remote mountain village, the teacher must leave for a month, and the mayor can find only a 13-year old girl, Wei Minzhi, to substitute.
Once upon a time in China & America' is one of the biggest budget Hong Kong movies of all time taking over million at the box office and combines the talents of Director Sammo Hung and Producer Tsui Hark together with a heady mix of gunplay and Kung Fu action with Jet Li proving that the fastest guns in the West are no match for the fastest hands in the East. Wong Fei Hung (Jet Li) together with his fiancee (Rosamund Kwan) and devoted sidekick Seven (Yueng Pan Pan) find themselves in the Wild West in search of new horizons. However an early confrontation with Native American Indians renders Jet unconcious and parted from his group. When he comes to he finds he has lost his memory but the one thing that is still clear in his mind is the ability to fight with lightening speed. The warriors of the tribe are amazed at his unique abilities and offer him respect and friendship. Unable to communicate he manages through sign language to persuade them to help him find his true identity leading to countless action packed encounters on his path to be reunited with his friends.
Jet Li stars in Fist of Legend, a 1994 remake of The Chinese Connection (also known as Fists of Fury, which starred the greatest martial arts legend of them all, Bruce Lee). This film is set in 1937, when Shanghai was occupied by the Japanese and racial tensions were high. Jet Li is Chen Zhen, who returns to Shanghai to avenge the death of his master, whom he learns was poisoned. His popular freestyle fighting technique and Japanese girlfriend do not endear him to his former friend, now his master's successor at the martial arts school. If Jackie Chan is inspired by Buster Keaton, Li seems to be channelling Steve McQueen here. He speaks softly and carries a big kick, and like Steven Seagal, even when he is under siege by a horde of attackers, no one can lay a finger on him. The dialogue and dubbing are atrocious, but the fight sequences are incredible (they were choreographed by Woo-ping Yuen, who lent his expertise to The Matrix). Perhaps most memorable is a bout between Chen and his girlfriend's uncle during which the combatants wear blindfolds. This is essential viewing for martial arts buffs and Li's growing legion of fans. --Donald Liebenson, Amazon.com
Chang a Kung Fu expert becomes the sheriff of a town ruled by bandits.His prime target is to wipe these bandits out. With the help of seven serving prisoners picked from his jail he begins his mission. Will they succeed or will the price of victory be too high?An action packed film filled with drama suspense and humanity. It's certainly one of Bruce Li's greatest starring roles.
Beijing Bicycle kicks off like an updated Chinese reworking of the 1948 Italian neo-realist classic Bicycle Thieves: a worker, dependent on his bike for his job, has it stolen and doggedly sets out to get it back. But pretty soon Wang Xiaoshuai's film mutates into something more elemental: a battle of wills between peasant lad Guei, original owner of the bike, and Jian, a surly urban schoolkid who claims to have bought it second-hand. For both the bike is status: for Guei it secures him his job as a courier, while for Jian it lets him keep up with his peers and chat up the girl he fancies. Each sees himself as the rightful owner and neither will give way, so the bike swaps hands back and forth, stolen and re-stolen, as the duel waxes increasingly personal. There's a diverting subplot about a beautiful, stylishly dressed girl glimpsed by Guei who turns out be something other than she seems, but essentially the battle over the bike is the meat of the film. The fascination of Beijing Bicycle--perhaps especially for non-Chinese viewers--is its portrait of present-day Beijing as a buzzing, high-pressure, neo-capitalist boomtown, impersonal and seemingly as lawless as any Wild West frontier burg. At no point, in all the thefts and counter-thefts and mounting violence, does anyone think to call the police--everyone is left to fight his own battles. Wang, one can't help suspecting, is slipping in a hint of social criticism in this vision of an uncaring society where possessions are all that matter. On the DVD: Beijing Bicycle on disc has the original theatrical trailer (the French version, oddly enough), filmographies for the director and four of his lead actors, notes on the film by Nick Bradshaw and trailers for other Metro Tartan foreign-language DVD releases. The transfer's in the full anamorphic widescreen of the original, with good Dolby Digital sound. --Philip Kemp
Chow Yun Fat stars as Francis Li a maverick and notoriously lazy HK police sergeant who is partnered with ""by the book"" rookie cop Michael Tso (martial arts legend Conan Lee). Their investigations into a drug trafficking operation lead them to a beautiful aerobics instructor Marydonna (Nina Li Chi) the sister of one of the gangsters under suspicion. When her brother is murdered by his associates for attempting to double-cross them Marydonna finds herself being sought by the same
Since bursting onto the martial arts film scene in 1973 Jackie Chan has become one of the world's most popular stars. His movies - in which he acts performs his own stunts for and often directs - have earned millions at the box office. In Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin he plays Hsu Yin Fung a young warrior falsely accused of killing the Shaolin Masters after they developed a new martial arts technique called Snake and Crane at Hua Mountain. After Hsu's fellow warriors ostracize him he tries to clear his name. To do this he receives aid from two women who are in love with him. After one of the brave ladies is killed and the other warriors realize that Hsu wasn't responsible for the murders they join him for a trip to the Shaolin Temple to find Master Tse Kung. And it's there that they find the real killer. In the film's thrilling climax Hsu having secretly mastered the deadly martial arts style of Snake and Crane faces the murderer one-on-one.
In The Mood For Love (2 Disc Edition Within The Set): Hong Kong 1962. Chow (Tony Leung) is a junior newspaper editor with an elusive wife. His new neighbour Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung) is a secretary whose husband seems to spend all his time on business trips. They become friends making the lonely evenings more bearable. As their relationship develops they make a discovery that changes their lives forever... In this sumptuous exploration of desire internationally acclaimed director Wong Kar-Wai creates a world of sensuality and longing that will leave you breathless. 'In the Mood for Love' has seduced audiences and critics alike winning awards at Cannes 2000 for best actor cinematography and editing. As Tears Go By: Low-level triad ""big brother"" Wah (Andy Lau) has a hot-tempered ""little brother"" Fly (Jacky Cheung) who can't keep out of trouble and consequently is in constant need of being bailed out by his protector. Wah is super cool but lacks the ambition to rise in the ranks of the triad societies and once he meets his cousin (Maggie Cheung) and falls in love with her he decides he wants to leave ""the life"". But it turns out that he has to bail out Fly one more time. And this time Fly may have gone too far.... Days Of Being Wild: Hong Kong 1960. In a sweltering hot summer York (Leslie Cheung) an amoral disillusioned and cruel young man is kept in luxury by his foster mother a retired courtesan who gives him everything but the one thing he needs to know; the identity of his natural mother. A self-obsessed man desperately seeking his true identity York plays carelessly with his lovers a lonely submissive bargirl (Maggie Cheung) and a beautiful club hostess/dancer (Carina Lau) and his friends before leaving them all for Taiwan in search of the truth that has been denied and may ultimately destroy him...
Originally made in 1983, Shaolin vs Lama is an example of the kung fu movie at its most cultish. The story is largely unimportant but concerns Yu Ting and his search for a kung fu master, a search that leads him into conflict with the Flying Eagle gang and their leader, Golden Wheel Lama. This is as far as it goes plotwise, not that that really matters. The focus of the film is, of course, the fight sequences and breathtaking they are too, though the whole film is given unmistakable aura of campness by its comical English dubbing. Still, it would be churlish to argue with the glowing recommendation of the Wu Tang Clan's Rza (a man who knows his kung fu stuff) of Shaolin vs Lama as one of the giants of the genre. On the DVD: filmed in a rather basic manner, Shaolin vs Lama is a colourful visual experience but not one that particularly shines on DVD. The 2.0 Dolby Digital sound gives the fight sequences an added bite but, as is so often the case, the potential of the format is frustratingly underused. There is no attempt to provide any sort of background to the film or the kung fu genre in general, instead leaving us with scene selection and the original theatrical trailer. --Phil Udell
Jackie Chan portrays one of two men worldwide proficient with a special secret weapon earning him the name Killer Meteor. He is on a mission to find the thief of some palace treasures and in the process is hired by the Immortal Wa to kill Wa's wife as he believes she has poisoned him. However she is guarded by a small army which means the Meteor may have a bit of trouble.
Lucky for Eddie Murphy he got hold of the rights to this 1963 Jerry Lewis classic before Jim Carrey did. Murphy had a comeback of sorts with his Jeckyll-and-Hyde-derived fable of awkward chemistry professor Sherman Klump (Murphy), who discovers a potion that transforms him into the suave, cocky lady-killer Buddy Love (also Murphy). The big difference between the two versions is that Murphy's Sherman is not only a nerdy intellectual but is also grossly obese, which provides the opportunity for some hilarious digital transformation effects, as well as some gentle satire of our culture's attitudes toward fat people. As he did in the hit Coming to America, Murphy plays multiple roles, and the scenes at the Klump family dinner table, in which he plays everybody, are brilliantly funny. (Murphy won the National Society of Film Critics' award for best actor of 1996 for these performances.) Lewis based his Buddy Love on the 1960s ideal of cool exemplified by Sinatra and the Rat Pack; Murphy stumbles a bit by playing up the oily phoniness of his latter-day Love a little too soon, but for the most part The Nutty Professor represents a welcome return to form for Eddie Murphy. --Jim Emerson
In the last Big Boss Cheng Chao-On was arrested after killing Hsiao Mi ""The Big Boss"". In this sequel his brother Cheng Chao-Chun visits his brother in Thailand. He then finds a job as an ice factory worker at the same ice factory that his brother worked at. While the previous film never explained why Chao An promised never to fight again it was actually due to the fact that their father was killed in a fight. However the villain in this film is the man who was responsible for th
Jackie Chan in his first American film takes on heavy-hitting 1930's mobsters in the ultimate street-fighting competition. A young Chinese American takes part in 'The Brawl' - a gigantic knock-down drag-out street fight in which the toughest roughest and meanest fighters gather to pound each other into the dust for a huge cash prize.
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