Rene Liu Movies

Hong Kong cinema star Andy Lau stars in director Feng Xiaogang's crime story about two married con artists who attempt to turn away from the grift but give in to temptation after boarding a train that's overflowing with shady characters. ~ Matthew Tobey, Rovi

Directed by former critic Chen Kuo-fu, Shuang Tong (Double Vision) is a Taiwanese effort at combining various aspects of the crime and horror genres with the excitement of martial arts. Led by detective Li Feng-po (Leon Dai), a group of detectives use physical violence to get a confession from a suspected criminal. Meanwhile, several murders are occuring--a business man is found drowned in his office; a politicians mistress Chiang Hui-hui) is burnt to death in her apartment, and an American clerk (Geo Gerstein) is eviscerated in his own church. Without a background in finding serial killers, the Taiwan authorties see fit to call the FBI. Agent Kevin Richter (David Morse) teams up with foreign affairs officer Huang Huo-tu (Tony Leung Kar-fai), and the pair sets off on a surreal trail which leads them through psychedelic fungus and a strange Taoist cult fun by former-businessmen. Eventually, Huang's (Leung Kar-fai) own inner demons are exposed and turned against him in a violent conclusion. ~ Tracie Cooper, Rovi

Although billed as a gay-themed drama in some places, Mei-Li Zai Changge is more an examination of life, family ties, female bonding and the rapid changes occurring in Taiwanese society as presented via the stories of two very different young women who at first share only the same name, but then come together to share something far more intimate. Chen Mei-Li represents the middle class and lives with her unhappily-married long-suffering parents and her busy, materialistic siblings in an urban high-rise. Lin Mei-Li lives outside of the city in a ramshackle home with her working-class father and widowed grandmother, who when not ruling the roost, pines for the happy days when her husband was alive. Much of the film is spent drawing parallels between the young women's lives. After about an hour, the two meet when they get a job working in the box office of a local movie theater. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Two young women find themselves unable to deal with the realities of their contemporary existence and so retreat into the colorful world of a classical Chinese opera from the Ming Dynasty, The Peony Pavilion to find solace in this Taiwanese drama. The film chronicles each woman's story separately. The first story centers on a teen-age virgin in her senior year of high school. Du is a hard worker who is inexorably being forced into the arms of a classmate. Meanwhile her sexuality begins to blossom. Unfortunately, she is not allowed to express this and so begins to fantasize that she is the heroine in the popular opera. In the story the girl is the sheltered daughter of an official who frequently wanders a beautiful garden dreaming of making love to a handsome scholar. Soon Du is totally obsessed with the heroine. She convinces herself that if she kills herself she will finally be able to meet the scholar in the afterlife and so hurls herself from a rooftop. In the second tale, pop singer Liu attempts to cope with her disintegrating career. She also deals with her producer-lover who is quickly drawing away from her. Liu also begins to daydream about the opera. She relates to the scholar and like the girl before her, soon finds herself obsessively becoming the character. Nothing and no one can stop her. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi