Sun Yueh Movies

This tense Hong Kong crime thriller is known best as the film upon which Quentin Tarantino borrowed heavily for his 1992 debut, Reservoir Dogs. Those who criticized the American director for lack of originality have perhaps missed the point. In the highly commercialized, formulaic crime genre of Hong Kong, very few thrillers are truly original, and innovation comes in the form of style, action choreography, and dramatic tension. City on Fire, directed by Ringo Lam, is no exception. The story, told in a more traditional narrative form than Reservoir Dogs, follows Chow Yun-Fat as Ko Chow, an undercover cop who infiltrates a ring of jewel thieves. When a heist goes wrong, Chow is wounded, and tension among the robbers escalates as they begin to suspect a traitor among their ranks. ~ Jonathan E. Laxamana, Rovi

In this heartwarming tale of an older man's strength in combatting loneliness, director Li Yu-ning has created a compassionate and sympathetic story, though one that may still raise the shackles of feminists (and not without reason). Old Muo (Sun Yueh) has been discharged from military service only to find that his wife and son have died in Mainland China, and his foster son is away in America, married, and of no mind to return home to see his foster father. Muo is unbearably lonely and depressed, with no friends, except one, to alleviate his sadness. That one friend, in fact, has just arranged a marriage for himself by simply buying a teenage woman belonging to an ethnic minority, and the two seem to be happy together. Following the lead of his friend, Muo soon does the same thing but finds that adjustments to living with a stranger, and a much younger stranger at that, are more demanding that he could have imagined. Eventually, some of the bigger problems get resolved and the originally ill-at-ease couple start to settle into a more companionable existence. When Muo's young wife gets pregnant, their love of family and children finds a mutual expression, suggesting that Muo's "second spring" may yet blossom.
~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

A traditional Chinese legend comes in for lavish treatment in this (relatively) big-budget Hong Kong film. In the story, Ho is a scholar in Sung Dynasty (11th century) China. He has been given the task of making a finished copy of a religious text. It is a tantric sutra, and he is warned that evil spirits will attempt to steal the finished copy from him. One day, he encounters Lady Chuan and his lively daughter Cloud, and has a delightful love affair. In the end, he is appalled to discover that he has been consorting with ghosts. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi