Chinese Cinema

Having done various breezy documentaries on off-beat cinema stories including video nasties (2004's Ban the Sadist Videos), Dan Curtis (2019's Master of Dark Shadows), Al Adamson (2019's Blood and Flesh), Nottingham lad David Gregory and…

A lobster lies atop a skillet while kettles of boiling water are poured over it. Its limbs stop writhing and it is split in preparation. Han Jiangyu (Lee Kang-Sheng) later asks his boss, Chen Kai (Ren Ke), if he thinks lobsters have souls.…

The idea of a “genre mashup” is a lot less surprising these days than it used to be, though some (like the superhero/comedy style of Takiki Watiti’s Thor movies) still raise a few eyebrows. Genres, though, are a purely cultural phenomena.…

Netflix users at the beginning of 2021 were justifiably confused when they noticed two new movies, both Chinese fantasy films, and both with almost identical names. One was The Yin Yang Master, while the other was The Yin-Yang Master:…

In a moment of frustration, the protagonist of The Cloud In Her Room, 22-year-old Muzi (Jin Jing), takes out her frustration with her relationships by stamping on a stray plastic bottle she encounters on a Hangzhou street. This hints at the…