Chinese Cinema(s) Police Story [Jackie Chan] is an auteur for the masses, the greatest action star in the history of the silver screen, and arguably our greatest global entertainer.
Offscreen Three Canadian Films from Toronto International Film Festival 2025 A dispatch with reviews of Youngblood, 100 Sunset, and Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery
End of Year Lists The 10 Best Films of 2025 2025 was exactly like every year in the history of cinema in its quality. The only variable every year is whether or not one watched the best the year had to offer.
Chinese Cinema(s) Yi Yi It’s an impossible task to summarize human life in three hours. And that’s why Yi Yi is often considered one of the greatest films ever made: because Edward Yang tests the impossible.
Chinese Cinema(s) A Touch of Sin (Exiting Through the 2010s) A podcast appearance about Jia Zhangke's A Touch of Sin
Chinese Cinema(s) REVIEW: Caught by the Tides (2024) dir. Jia Zhangke I am unaware of a director anywhere in the world who has more thoroughly and philosophically navigated the complicated contradictions of the contemporary world than Jia Zhangke.
Chinese Cinema(s) Striking Rescue — Siyu Cheng [Review] Striking Rescue cinematographer Ai Yanjie loses sight of much of the action and regrettably tempers the blows of the stunt team.
Reviews Death Education Chinese teacher introduces the topic of death education to his students... by experiencing it firsthand - poetic documentary premiered at Sundance
Reviews GO TO: Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (2024) dir. Soi Cheang And Soi Cheang’s Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, the star-studded crime actioner, is the most culturally relevant film to originate from Hong Kong last year.
Reviews Contact Lens The contacts work as metaphors for both seeing the world differently and the imprisoning cycle of routine.
Essays The 28th Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival BIFAN’s embrace of sexuality is one example of its willingness to reach for something extra.
Reviews BUFF Review: Fatal Termination (1990) dir. Andrew Kam Most movies have warts. But not all warts are made equal.
Essays Year Ender: Top Ten Films of 2023 The best films of the year creatively resist the studio destruction of art and suppression of vision with bold statements of visual-sonic distinction
Reviews White River — Ma Xue As we enter the last release wave of true Covid films — those titles both produced during and concerned with the real-world crisis — first-time director Ma Xue introduces a new sort of pandemic film in her debut White River.
Essays Observations on What Made Jackie Chan the Greatest Jackie Chan, at his peak, was our greatest entertainer.
Reviews The Career of Alan Mak and The Procurator The career of Alan Mak makes for an interesting case study. Apart from the Infernal Affairs trilogy, which he co-directed with Andrew Lau (and was later remade by Martin Scorsese as The Departed), his filmography has been a bit lackluster. If it weren’t for the trilogy—and particularly the
Essays Some Changes… As you may have noticed, I rebranded my personal film website from Transcendent Cinema to No Gods Left: Toward A Millennium of Cinema. That’s because I have something else in store for that project and that URL, which will be evolving into a team effort with a globally and
Reviews Chang Cheh’s Five Shaolin Masters: A Favorite of None It’s not one of Chang’s best, that’s for sure.
Reviews Don't Go Breaking My Heart Is Sports Genre as a Love Triangle Johnnie To is well known in the West for his action and crime films but, the populist that he is, he’s also a prolific director of romances and musicals. Entire books have been written on To’s filmmaking focusing on the likes of The Mission (1999), PTU (2003), and
![Striking Rescue — Siyu Cheng [Review]](/content/images/size/w600/2025/05/strikingrescue_wellgousa_still01.jpg)
