Tag: Mandarin

Per Aspera Ad Astra (星河入梦, Han Yan, 2026)

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In the not too distant future, space travel has become normal and humans can reach the furthest corners of the universe through hyper stasis. However, long years spent in cryogenic sleep eventually damaged the sleepers’ brains. A solution was found in an AI program which allowed them to dream during the journey and, therefore, keep their brains active. Han Yan’s Per Aspera ad Astra (星河入梦, Xīnghé Rùmèng) makes a villain of a rogue AI but finally seems to come down on the idea that AI should be a tool used by humans rather the other way round while refusing to condemn it outright.

One question the film only partly answers is why people would be prepared to embark on decades-long journeys meaning they’d never see their families again. Neither Tianbao (Dylan Wang) nor the ship’s captain Simeng (Victoria Song) have living family members, so perhaps it isn’t a problem for them, but still it’s a risk. Who’s to say what the world will be like after you’ve been asleep for over 60 years. To that extent, perhaps it’s strange the technology doesn’t seem to move on at all, according to news reports, save a late upgrade to try and prevent the Good Dreams AI system from becoming sentient. 

That all these people got a big ship to sail for 65 years to do farming suggests that there may be serious issues on the ground, while the fact they were sent at all either implies a desire for imperialistic expansion in space or a search for a new home for humanity after we’ve exhausted the earth. Ge Yang (Wang Duo), another crew member, hints that the world might have problems in insisting that he doesn’t want to wake up. He’s prepared to crush everyone else’s dreams to ensure he keeps his and can stay here rather than having to go back to the real world. He says he wants to create a place that’s free of abuse and exploitation where no one has to live like a dog. 

The ironic thing is that engineer Bai (Zu Feng) had deliberately chosen to be a pet dog in his dream because, according to him, dogs have more freedom. Bai’s dreams seem to be inspired by classic Hong Kong crime cinema with everyone speaking Cantonese, even Tianbao and Simeng when they land there, while they also make a brief matrix-inspired appearance to shoot up the room. Of course, Good Dreams isn’t that much different from the Matrix and the line between dream and reality becomes increasingly blurred with the pair getting caught out by dreams within dreams as they try to stop Ge Yang before he succeeds in smashing all the dreams together and killing his colleagues to create his “better” world. 

But it seems there’s something more going on than just Ge Yang’s nihilistic despair and Good Dreams may have gone rogue, preferring to create an AI-based world in which humanity is irrelevant. Tianbao also seems to know much more than he’s letting on which probably isn’t included in the standard crew member’s manual. His inappropriate way of speaking is later revealed to have a practical application, though what eventually seems to happen is that he becomes one with the system giving Good Dreams a soul and effectively taking it back into “human” hands rather than letting it run riot on its own. 

It is then slightly ironic that the film seems to feature some AI imagery, though otherwise largely shot on practical sets and featuring fantastic production design. Han zips back and forthe between dreams expressing the private aspirations and anxieties of the crew members as some relive high school exams and spend time with absent loved ones, and others trek through deserts or spend 60+ years in nightclubs. Only Tianbao apparently did not bother to customise his dream or engage with the system which is what brought him to its attention. In any case, humanity seems to be the most important component in the bonds that arise between Tianbao, the captain Simeng, and the engineer Bai as they try their best to save the ship along with their colleagues so they can complete their distant farming mission. A true visual spectacle, the film is perhaps also a testament to the power of dreams, to which the AI hallucination may pale in comparison.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Scare Out (惊蛰无声, Zhang Yimou, 2026)

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When a suspected spy gets away with some top secret information, the security services begin to suspect they may have a mole on their hands in Zhang Yimou’s slick espionage thriller, Scare Out (惊蛰无声, Jīngzhé Wúshēng). Possibly inspired by a real-life case in which information regarding a new fighter jet was leaked, the film is supervised by the security services themselves and in part a defence of China’s all powerful surveillance network and technological supremacy that allows them to neutralise threats to national security in record time.

Nevertheless, like some of Zhang’s recent work, it’s surprising that he was able to get away with the depiction of a rogue intelligence officer and potentially not quite on level actions from the security services even if they’re eventually vindicated by a final twist. When we’re first introduced to Huang (Zhu Yilong), he’s hot on the trail of foreign spy Nathan whom they assume to be receiving confidential information regarding a new stealth system for fighter jets leaked by a scientist who is desperate to leave the country (Lei Jiayin). Huang is shot in the back by an arrow, while his colleague takes one to the neck and is killed. Though they manage to arrest Nathan, he’s almost killed when the box he’s carrying spontaneously combusts burning the contents.

It’s at this point that things start to go wrong for Huang as his former colleague Zhao Hong (Song Jia) returns to lead the team and he’s one of three suspects for a possible mole alongside his second in command Yan Di (Jackson Yee), and their drone operator Chan Yi who killed the sniper either accidentally or on purpose by ramming him so that he fell from the upper levels while trying to escape. Until now, Huang had been depicted as an upright and dedicated officer who absolutely could not be the mole, but we soon discover that he in fact is, or at least that he was in the process of being turned by foreign asset Bai Fan (Yang Mi). With his marriage falling apart, he fell right into her honey trap and is now being blackmailed but theoretically still has the opportunity to turn this around if only he can hold out and find a way to do the right thing.

Then again, the film deliberately wrong-foots us by occasionally suggesting that maybe Huang isn’t the mole after all or that there may be more than one or something larger going on all together. It’s not really revealed why Bai Fan has betrayed her country to work for a foreign intelligence agency led by a Westerner living in China and with incredibly good Mandarin. The foreign agency evidently thinks this region’s important enough to be worth creating a long-term network of sleeper agents, while the way the security services discuss the stolen stealth data makes it sound as if they’re already in a war and very much don’t want “the enemy” to get hold of this information. 

The real action, however, is the interplay between accused Huang and Yan Di whose relationship takes on intensely homoerotic quality. Just as Huang is torn between his duty as an intelligence officer and the predicament he finds himself in, Yan Di is torn by the desire to protect his friend while simultaneously avoiding implicating himself. They must either betray each other, themselves, China, or all three, which isn’t an ideal set of choices. Meanwhile, the spy craft on show has a very traditional quality with smartphones secured in rubbish bins in public lavatories, dead drops, and mysterious potions that can destroy evidence, all of which suggests that there are ways in which this vast surveillance network is in fact fallible and can’t protect against every eventuality even if it’s just someone leaving a bathroom in a different outfit than they were wearing when they went in.

Though Zhang does his best to lend the city a near future gloss as a techno paradise in which there are no secrets, he opts for an unusual fast editing style which makes the narrative much more difficult to follow while encouraging an atmosphere of intense paranoia where everything moves at breakneck speed and nothing is ever certain. Like his recent films Under the Light and Article 20, however, it’s a curiously anonymous affair and bears few of the hallmarks of Zhang’s filmmaking as a fifth generation director opting instead for a fairly generic, mainstream blockbuster aesthetic. Nevertheless, in its twists and turns along with the interplay between the two leads the film nods back towards the intrigue of Infernal Affairs and a history of Heroic Bloodshed less commonly found in Mainland crime dramas.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Blades of the Guardians (镖人：风起大漠, Yuen Woo-Ping, 2026)

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“I haven’t seen moves like that in the martial world in forty years,” quips a bystander in a post-credits sequence, and this adaptation of the manhua by the legendary Yuen Woo-Ping certainly does its best to bring back some of the charm of classic wuxia. Produced by star Wu Jing, Blades of the Guardians (镖人：风起大漠, biāo rén fēng qǐ dàmò) also features a cameo appearance by Jet Li as well Nicholas Tse, Tony Leung Ka-fai, and Kara Wai, as a cynical bounty hunter rediscovers his duty towards the common people while escorting a would be revolutionary to the ancient capital of Chang’an.

A former soldier, Dao Ma (Wu Jing) now wanders the land with a child in tow in search of wanted criminals, but when he finds them, makes an offer instead. Pay him triple the bounty, and he’ll forget he ever saw them. As we’re told, this is a world of constant corruption under the oppressive rule of the Sui dynasty. Zhi Shilang (Sun Yizhou) is the famed leader of the Flower Rebellion that hopes to clear the air, which makes him the number one fugitive of the current moment. This is slightly annoying to Dao Ma in that it necessarily means he’s number two when forced on the run after killing a corrupt local governor (Jet Li) in defence of an innkeeper with a hidden martial arts background whose family the official was going to seize for the non-payment of taxes. Taking refuge in the small township of Mojia, Dao Ma is given a mission by the sympathetic Chief Mo (Tony Leung Ka-fai) who agrees to cancel all his debts if he escorts Zhi Shilang to Chang’an safely before they’re both killed by hoards of marauding bounty hunters, regular bandits, government troops including two of Dao Ma’s old friends, or the former fiancée of ally Ayuya (Chen Lijun), the self-proclaimed Khan, He Yixuan (Ci Sha).

When given the mission, Dao Ma asked why he should care about the common people or Zhi Shilang’s revolution only to be swept along as they make their way towards the capital and witness both the esteem with which Zhi Shilang seems to be held by those who believe in his cause and the venality of the bounty hunters along with the mindless cruelty of He Yexian’s minions. As is usual in these kinds of stories, Mojia is a idyllic haven of cherry trees in bloom where the people dance and sing and are kind to each other, which is to say, the seat of the real China. Though Ayuya longs to see Chang’an and harbours mild resentment towards her father for his “control” over her, Chief Mo is the moral centre of the film and not least because he cares for nothing more than his daughter’s happiness. When she decides not to marry He Yixian on account of his bloodthirsty lust for power, Mo walks barefoot through the scorched land of the desert to free her from the obligation and, after all, has trained her to become a fearsome archer rather than just someone’s wife or a pawn to be played as he sees fit. 

But as someone else says, who is not a pawn in this world? There are other shadow forces lurking behind the scenes playing a game of their own while taking advantage of the corrupt chaos of the Sui Dynasty court. Dao Ma, however, revels in his outsider status. “Not even the gods control me now,” he jokes in advocating for his freelance lifestyle loafing around as a cynical bounty hunter who can choose when to work and where to go, in contrast to his life as a soldier of the Sui forced to carry out their inhuman demands. When the innkeeper’s son tells him he wants to be a swordsman too, Dao Ma gives him a sword as a symbol of freedom and instructs him to take a horse and go wherever he wants when he’s old enough. His fate is his own, whatever his father might have said. 

If that might sound like a surprising and somewhat subversive advocation for individualism, the final message is one of solidarity, as Dao Ma rediscovers his duty to the people and various others also fall in behind Zhi Shilang, who is hilariously inept at things like riding a horse and remaining calm under fire, to take the revolution all the way to Chang’an. With stunning action sequences including an epic sandstorm battle, the film successfully marries old-school wuxia charm with a contemporary sensibility and an unexpectedly revolutionary spirit as Dao Ma and friends ride off to tackle corruption at the heart of government.

Blades of the Guardians is in US cinemas now courtesy of Well Go USA.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Dong (东, Jia Zhangke, 2006)

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“It’s all pointless anyway, so let’s just do whatever we feel up to,” according to the sometime protagonist of Dong (东), the first in what would become Jia Zhangke’s artist trilogy. Shot alongside Still Life, Jia’s profile of artist Liu Xiaodong takes him from the soon-to-be drowned world of the Three Gorges to the floating Bangkok in a seeming inversion of his artistic pursuits but also perhaps contemplating his role and significance as an artist in the face both of great change and immutable legacy. 

Liu’s primary project in the Three Gorges is to document the existence of the labourers working to dismantle the town of Fengjie prior to its drowning by means of one of his five-part paintings. He tells us that he likes to be able to see his subjects from far away to gain greater “distance and precision”, looking down on them from above as if he were standing on a wall. He is, in a sense, already elevating himself, adopting a somewhat elitist view as an all-seeing artist even as he is careful to redraw reality through advanced theatrical staging which sees the men dressed only in a pair of blue trunks as they “relax” on a rooftop with the mountains behind them. Yet we also see him as a tiny figure roaming the increasingly ruined landscape of Fengjie, lost amid its emptiness or dwarfed by the endless majesty of the Gorges. His insignificance is perhaps brought home to him when he makes a difficult journey obstructed by flooding to the home of one of his subjects who recently passed away in an accident, bringing with him fancy toys for the children and photographs for the adults but equally out of place in this man’s home, an intruder on their grief and accidental narcissist scene stealing at a funeral. 

It is perhaps this sense of displacement that sends him to Thailand where he admits he understands nothing and can only “comprehend the human face, the girls’ scantily clad bodies”. Taking his subject as a collection of local sex workers, he has not chosen a natural background for the paintings as he usually would but can only “focus on the body in its elemental form”. Yet in contrast to his depiction of the labourers, his female models are in fact not particularly scantily clad at all even as they’re painted with a detached melancholy in opposition to the cheerful camaraderie of the workers relaxing on the roof. Indeed, Liu seems to have a preference for the vigour and vitality of the male form, making a rather unexpected remark on the magnificence of one young man’s penis before launching into an explanation of his practice of martial arts as a means of self-defence against a flawed legal system. 

“If you attempt to change anything with art, it would be laughable,” he later tells us, explaining that the most he can do is try to express himself, admitting in a sense that he too exploits his subjects in turning them into art which is intended to critique their exploitation. “I wish I could give them something through my art. It’s the dignity intrinsic to all people,” he somewhat pompously adds, as if he thought them robbed of their dignity before and that it was something in his power alone to bestow before going on to lament that he resents the primacy of the Western tradition, revealing that he’s begun to admire the “visual impact of historical relics” of ancient Chinese art which has led him to value the ruined and incomplete. But then he adds, it’s all pointless anyway, you might as well do what you feel, later voicing his anxiety as an artist operating in relative freedom with no real way to assess his achievements outside of his own satisfaction. 

Even Jia perhaps loses patience with his subject’s eccentric philosophising, peeling off to follow one of the Thai models on her bus journey home where on turning on her TV set she learns of flooding in her village, neatly mirroring the villagers near Fengjie. Liu tells us that sad things are closer to reality, but Jia paradoxically returns to us to a kind of joy despite the obvious irritation of the model as waiters randomly dance in small cafes before undercutting it with complexity as a pair of blind musicians busk in a busy marketplace, trailing their song with a portable karaoke machine less for the love of it or the art or even the desire to be heard than the desire to be fed. 

Left-Handed Girl (左撇子女孩, Tsou Shih-Ching, 2025)

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A small family’s attempt to start over by moving to Taipei is frustrated by the baggage they take with them and that which was already there in Tsou Shih-Ching’s whimsical family drama, Left-Handed Girl (左撇子女孩, zuǒpiězi nǚhái). As women alone, they must contend with a patriarchal society and harsh economic environment along with a conservative culture that is often unforgiving of difference and reluctant to grant second chances to those it believes have transgressed its boundaries.

The titular left-handed girl, I-Jing (Nina Ye) describes the city as seeming like a magical place, though it’s certainly noisy and indifferent to her presence. Her mother Shu-Fen (Janel Tsai) laments that their apartment is smaller than it looked in the photo, as if signalling a sense of disappointment even before their new life has started. Oldest sister I-Ann (Ma Shih-Yuan) never finished high school and has got at a job at betel nut stand where the boss explains to a new recruit that her job is to create a sexual fantasy for the customer. I-Ann’s grandmother chastises her for her revealing outfit, warning her about “perverts and psychos” and that it’s dangerous to dress like that in the big city.

The grandparents are representative of a generation who grew up under an authoritarian regime and are fiercely traditional. Though the grandmother tells him to let it go, I-Jing’s grandfather is outraged and offended by her left-handedness. He tells her that it’s the Devil’s Hand meant only for doing the Devil’s work and bans her from using it in his home. I-Jing takes him a little literally and comes to believe that her left hand is an evil entity, but rather than being afraid, sees it as somewhat liberating in allowing her to do morally questionable things such as shoplifting. Only when an action habitually conducted with her left hand while forcing herself to draw with her right has unforeseen and tragic consequences does she begin to believe that her hand is a liability and consider cutting it off.

While her grandmother appears to be involved with some kind of human trafficking gang to make extra money, she’s reluctant to supply any more financial aid to Shu-Fen partly because of complaints from her siblings and particularly her sister. Though the grandmother had said the apartment would be left to the three of them equally, Shu-Fen knows she’s planning to leave everything to their brother whom she continues to idolise, though he’s long since moved to Shanghai and rarely visits. Awkwardly turning down another gig from her handler, she tells him her son has organised a lavish celebration for her 60th birthday. In reality, the daughters have planned everything with the son only arriving to mop up the glory. That it’s other women who perpetuate these outdated, patriarchal social codes is fully rammed home by the arrival of the wife of I-Ann’s boss with whom she has been having an affair. On learning that I-Ann is pregnant, she demands that I-Ann give the baby to them to raise if it’s a boy as they only have three girls. 

Shu-Fen, meanwhile, finds herself returning to care for her estranged husband who is dying of terminal cancer despite his abandonment and ill-treatment of her. Her decision doesn’t seem to be motivated by compassion or lingering affection so much as obligation. She feels she has to do this for him because he has no other family and she is still technically his next of kin. I-Ann in particular, along with the rest of her family, does not approve and is irritated that she’s once again allowing herself to be dragged down by a man. After he passes away, Shu-Fen is liable not only for all his medical fees but his funeral too, leaving her unable to meet her current expenses such as the rent for her pitch at a local hawker site where she supports the family with a noodle stand.

Her family also don’t seem to take to Johnny (Brando Huang), a man who seems nice and supportive, but also works as a market trader. The family appear to look down on him and implicitly on Shu-Fen for being engaged in what they see as a lowly occupation in much the same way that I-Ann becomes a figure of fun on bumping into some people from high school who are all now in university, though she left with no qualifications. Because of her betel nut store occupation, the boys treat her like a sex worker, while the boss, whom she did not know was already married, evidently never took their relationship very seriously. A desire to avoid reputational damage results in a series of destructive secrets that are abruptly blown open during the emotionally tense 60th anniversary party, but it does perhaps clear the air allowing the three women to reinforce their bond and finally begin living their own lives.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Gezhi Town (得闲谨制, Kong Sheng, 2025)

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Fleeing the Japanese, a collection of former munitions factory workers and displaced soldiers take refuge in an abandoned village in Kong Sheng’s wartime action drama Gezhi Town (得闲谨制, dé xián jǐn zhì). Another in a series of films released to mark the 80th anniversary of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War alongside Dongji Rescue and Dead to Rights, the film is much more overtly propagandistic and an old-fashioned patriotism epic in which the hero’s quest to defend his home against the Japanese is quite obviously intended as a declaration that the modern China too will defend itself from incursion.

Indeed, Dexian (Xiao Zhan) says as much when risking his life to fire the artillery gun at a Japanese tank insisting that his resistance is not just for his own wife and child but for the future generations of the Chinese people. Getting in a few digs at Chiang Kai-Shek and the KMT, the film finds the heroes on the run implicitly denied their homeland in being forced into constant retreat. “I don’t want to die, I just want to go home,” the soldiers are fond of exclaiming, though already traumatised by their experiences, they’re effectively hiding from the war while attempting to create a new homeland in Gezhi Town after deciding to settle there rather than carry on along the road.  

Captain Xiao (Peng Yuchang) might actually be the worst artillery officer in history and has a habit of making exactly the wrong decisions that put all his men in danger while fiercely defending an artillery gun he doesn’t really know how to use and has little intention of doing so anyway. A former munitions worker, Denxian was press-ganged into accompanying them to do maintenance on the guns, but Xiao has only been paying him in IOUs. Like everyone else, he just wants a home and is wary of being made “homeless” again if the Japanese turn up, so has been sharpening many of his tools and his wife’s domestic implements into makeshift weapons, much to her chagrin. Xia Cheng (Zhou Yiran) objects in part because she thinks it’s dangerous for their young son Dengxian who seems to have hearing loss as a direct result of his exposure to warfare when they were on the road.

But the problem is that when the Japanese actually arrive, the villagers are largely clueless. One challenges a Japanese soldier with a bakeshop bayonet but drops it and grins when the soldier lowers his weapon slightly. The soldier then bayonets him. Others run directly into the Japanese soldiers’s blades, while Xiao’s men randomly shoot all their bullets in one go then realise that they have no idea what to do now they’re essentially unarmed even though there are only three Japanese men in the village at this point. Only Denxian, the plucky civilian, knows what to do though even he originally gives the sensible advice to hide and wait for the Japanese soldiers to go away because they won’t have time to do an intensive search of every house.

Then again, the Japanese are quite stupid too and arrogant rather than cruel as they were in Dead to Rights even if constant references are made to Nanjing. Despite the grittiness of its storyline, the film is essentially a comedy filled with goofy humour along with Denxian’s winning hero antics as he resolves to do whatever he can to save his wife and son even if it costs his own life. When the Japanese first arrive, a kind of defeatism sweeps across the village that is only eventually broken by Denxian’s realisation that they don’t have to give in to their fate but might as well go out fighting. The film paints him as a kind of folk hero, echoed in the closing song recounting his exploits while the final title card says that he went on to use his skills in the resistance against American imperialism and the assistance of Korea. Xia Cheng fares a little less well. Despite singing a song about the new women, her role is limited to motherhood while Denxian’s love of his family is a metaphor for love of the nation as he desperately tries to reclaim a home in the wake of constant incursions. Nevertheless, the use of silent-film style intertitles and flashback scenes shot in the style of pathé news sequences add a degree of poignancy to this boy’s own adventure story.

Trailer (Simplified Chinese / English subtitles)

The 36 Deadly Styles (迷拳三十六招, Joseph Kuo, 1979)

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First you and your uncle are forced to flee for your life after getting attacked in a forest, then your uncle dies, you wake up in a monastery where you’re not a monk but the head monk keeps making you do all the chores anyway, and you still have no real idea of what is going on. That’s what happens to poor Wah-jee (Nick Cheung Lik) in Joseph Kuo’s wilfully confusing kung fu drama The 36 Deadly Styles (迷拳三十六招) which leaves us as much in the dark as the hero as he finds himself inexplicably pursued by a man with a red nose and his brothers who are each for some unexplained reason wearing ridiculous wigs. 

As much as we can gather, Wah-jee is on the run because the brother of a man his late father apparently killed by accident after messing up a kung fu move seeks vengeance against his entire family, leaving his uncles scattered and apparently unknown to him. As a young man, however, he is less than impressed with life in the monastery and often displays a comically cocky attitude, though if his torment of two of the lesser monks is intended to be comedic, it often comes off as cruel and bullying rather than just silly banter. Meanwhile, he remains clueless as to how to complete basic tasks familiar to the monks and even manages to get himself into a fight when sent to buy soy milk after forgetting he’d need to pay for it..

While all of this is going on, Kuo switches back and forth between a secondary plot strand concerning another man searching for the book of the 36 Deadly Styles before tracking down the man who’s supposed to have it only to be told he burnt the book ages ago without even reading it because it caused too much trouble in the martial arts world. It’s unclear how or if these two plot strands are intended to be connected, but they do perhaps hint at the confusing nature of personal vendettas and ironically destructive quests for full mastery over a particular style. Tsui-jee’s father (Fan Mei-Sheng) effectively splits his knowledge between Wah-jee and his daughter as a complementary pair of offence/defence partners. 

Meanwhile, Huang (Yeung Chak-Lam) and Tsui-jee’s father are also afflicted by pangs to the heart as a result of their previous battles, which can only be eased with strange medicine and herbal wine. Huang is a Buddhist monk but is seen early on skinning a live snake in order to make such a concoction. These are presumably symbolic of a bodily corruption caused by violence and the slow poisoning of the unresolved past. Wah-jee, a child at the time of his father’s transgression, is also forced to inherit this chaos of which he has little understanding and no real stake save vengeance for his familial disruption and a vindication for his father and brothers. If there is any kind of moral it seems to be in the ridiculous futility of vengeance as dictated by the codes of the martial arts world which demands that honour be satisfied even when it has lost all objective meaning. 

In any case, the narrative is largely unimportant merely connecting (or not) the various action scenes each well choreographed and expertly performed. Wah-jee undergoes a series of training sequences both at the monastery and after uniting with his second uncle who has some idiosyncratic teaching practices of his own that require Wah-jee to humble himself in order to learn. Then again, there are enough strange details to leave us wondering what is exactly is really going on such as Tsu-men suddenly turning up dressed as a woman looking for someone other than Wah-jee, eventually used for another bit of awkward comic relief as he struggles to write a letter and has to use drawings to make his point because he can’t remember the right characters. None of this makes any sense, but perhaps it never does when you live for the fight alone. 

The 7 Grandmasters (虎豹龍蛇鷹, Joseph Kuo, 1977)

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“The way of kung fu, no one is invincible. A fighter shouldn’t be arrogant and bully others,” according to one of the mini lessons given by the ageing champion at the centre of Joseph Kuo’s 7 Grandmasters (虎豹龍蛇鷹), though it has to be said there is a fair amount of cockiness in play while bullying does seem to be a part of his training programme. Arrogance is in fact what he has himself been accused of at the ceremony at which he has been honoured by the emperor and after which he planned to retire if he had not received a rude note telling him he is not a real champion and shouldn’t lay claim to the title until he’s defeated all of the other regional champions in each of their signature fighting styles. 

A 30-year veteran of the local martial arts scene, Zhang Shenguang (Jack Long) is tired and ready to pass his school on to the next generation but feels he cannot retire until he’s proved once and for all that he is the greatest kung fu master. Setting out with his daughter and three pupils, he roams around the land easily defeating his rivals and teaching them a lesson to boot. Unfortunately, however, his first target, Sha (Wong Fei-lung), ends up dying while he’s also being followed around by an over-earnest boy, Shao Ying (Li Yi Min), who insists on becoming his pupil, though Zhang is unwilling to take him on because his own master was betrayed by a bad faith student who stole the final three pages of the book he’d been given to safeguard outlining the 12 Bai Mei strikes.

Zhang is definitely all about righteousness, constantly reminding everyone about the responsibilities that come with kung fu but his own students are fairly merciless to Shao Ying firstly mocking him as he trails along behind them like a stray puppy and then continuing to bully him until he finally surpasses their own abilities. They are all also supremely confident and often resort to cocky banter during fights which it has to be admitted they usually win. The film is structured around Zhang’s quest abruptly shifting from one expertly choreographed fight sequence to another, each showing off a different style and the ways in which Zhang can overcome it while some of his opponents accept defeat gracefully and others not. In one town they are ambushed by goons working for the local master who wanted to avoid potentially losing his title by underhandedly taking Zhang out first but as Zhang puts it losing his good name instead. The final challenger meanwhile refuses to Zhang directly because he can see Zhang is already ill and it wouldn’t be fair so has their students square off instead. 

Nevertheless, Zhang is not permitted to exit the world of kung fu until dealing with the left over baggage of the three missing strikes of Bai Mei, Shao Ying eventually becoming its inheritor after a twist of fate connects him with Zhang’s past while causing him a paradoxical dilemma in temporarily becoming Zhang’s enemy in order to avenge the death of his father as his code dictates. Like Zhang however he is perhaps only trying to make a point, never intending to harm his former mentor, at least physically, but only to close the cycle through symbolic revenge, later returning to Zhang’s side on realising he’s been used and deceived. 

Featuring top choreography from Hong Kong’s Yuen Kwai and Yuen Cheung Yan, Kuo’s low budget indie kung fu drama is pure fight fest less interested in the emotional conflicts between the men than the physical which might explain its incredibly abrupt conclusion which largely implodes the moment of catharsis achieved in the villain’s defeat. Even so, it succeeds in showcasing a series of fighting styles as Zhang continues with his quest to prove himself the ultimate grandmaster so he can finally retire while throwing in some comic relief thanks to Shao Ying’s dogged determination to become one of the gang before finally proving himself the most talented of all the students, not least because of his perseverance and willingness to learn. Shooting mainly in the open air to avoid the expense of sets, Kuo’s approach is unfussy but to the point of removing all distractions in order to showcase the immense abilities of his performers in an otherwise generic tale of rivalry and revenge. 

Useless (无用, Jia Zhangke, 2007)

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Perhaps in no other medium does the relationship of art and utility present itself quite so much as in fashion. As the primary subject of Jia Zhang-ke’s Useless (无用, wúyòng), second in a trilogy of films examining Chinese artists, points out China is the world’s largest manufacturer of textiles. Yet until she took it upon herself to found one, it had no fashion label to call its own. Travelling from the garment factories of Guangdong, to the artisan studio of Ma Ke, and bright lights of Paris Fashion Week, before arriving firmly back in Jia’s hometown of Fenyang with its independent tailors and the miners who frequent them for repairs and alterations, Jia zooms in to the modern China probing the divides of art and industry in an increasingly consumerist society. 

Jia begins with a lengthy pan across a strangely silent factory floor, seemingly a relic of a previous era. The workers dine in a quiet cafeteria they have to squeeze through a gate which remains locked to enter, and have access to an on-site doctor. They get on with their work quietly without overseers breathing down their necks and do not seem unhappy, oppressed, or exploited, at least as far as the camera is permitted to see. The camera hovers over the label of a just-completed garment which belongs to Exception, the fashion store launched Ma Ke in the mid-90s, ironically she says as a reaction against mass-produced, disposable fashion. 

Nevertheless, as she points out, you can’t be free to experiment when you’re a recognisable brand with a clear place in the market, which is why she started an artisan side label, “Wu Yong” meaning “useless”, hinting at her desire to find a purer artistic expression within the realms of fashion design. For the camera at least, Ma Ke casts an eye over her atelier like a factory foreman, though her studio space is a million miles away from the Guangdong factory, though borrowing the aesthetics of the early industrial revolution. Her employees weave by hand using antique looms, Ma Ke reflecting on the differing relationships we might have to something made by hand which necessarily carries with it the thoughts and emotions of the maker, and that made “anonymously” in a factory. Yet these designs are crafted with concerns other than the practical in mind, Ma Ke travelling to Paris to exhibit them in a living art exhibition that, in some senses, repackages the concept of Chinese industry for a Western palate. 

It’s Ma Ke, however, who guides Jia back towards Fenyang, explaining that she likes to travel to forgotten, small-town China where she describes familiarising herself with these other ways of life as akin to regaining a memory. In the dusty mining town he follows a man taking a pair of trousers to a tailor to be repaired, perhaps something unthinkable in the consumerist culture of the cities where clothing is a disposable commodity to be discarded and replaced once damaged. Jia spends the majority of the sequence in the shop of a pregnant seamstress who loses her temper with her feckless, drunken husband while seemingly supporting herself with this intensely practical art. Yet it’s in her shop that he encounters another woman also after alterations who explains to him that her husband was once also a tailor but found his business unviable and subsequently became a miner instead. Like Ma Ke he laments the effect of mass production on the market, knowing that a lone tailor cannot hope to compete with off-the-peg for cost and convenience. As we watch the miners shower, washing the soot from their flesh, we cannot help but recall Ma Ke’s avant-garde installation with its faceless, blackened figures, nor perhaps the workers at the factory visiting the doctor with their various industrial illnesses. 

Objects carry memories according to Ma Ke, they have and are history. The clothes tell a story, every stitch a new line, but they also speak of the contradictions of the modern China in the push and pull between labour and exploitation, art and industry, tradition and modernity, value and consumerism. Yet Jia leaves us with the figure of the artisan, patiently pursuing his small, functional art even as they threaten to demolish his studio around him. 

A Writer’s Odyssey 2 (刺杀小说家2, Lu Yang, 2025)

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Arriving four whole years after the previous instalment, A Writer’s Odyssey 2 (刺杀小说家2, cìshā xiǎoshuōjiā 2) is in many ways a very different film. While its predecessor was a fairly serious affair tackling some of the issues of the modern China such as child trafficking, machinations of the oligarch class, and generalised capitalistic oppression, the sequel is a typically mainstream fantasy blockbuster complete with some fairly goofy humour and the ultimate message that despotism is bad and people should work for the good of others rather than just themselves.

In that regard at least, it’s another pointed attack on authoritarians and corporate bullies like Aladdin’s Li Mu. The entire Aladdin plot is, however, jettisoned, which seems like a missed opportunity, especially as it means that Yang Mi does not reprise her role and we don’t get any answers about who the boy was with Tangerine at the end of the previous film nor whether the “death” of Redmane led to the death of Li Mu in the real world as he feared it would. In truth, even Guan Ning (Lei Jiayin) is somewhat sidelined. Six years later, he, Tangerine (Wang Shendi), and Kongwen (Dong Zijian) are living as a family running a restaurant. Though Kongwen finished his Godslayer novel, it was stolen by an influencer, Cicada (Deng Chao), who accused him of plagiarism which got Kongwen blacklisted in the publishing industry and unable to earn any money through writing. As he’d said in the previous film, it was writing that gave his life meaning so now he’s started to become hopeless and depressed. 

Meanwhile, he’s begun to dream of Ranliang and the return of Redmane who has survived but as a mortal rather than as a god and is determined to get back everything he’s lost. This means, in meta terms, that he wants to challenge “god”, or really Kongwen, whom he sees as the architect of his fate. On the one level, it seems as if he’s trying to insist on his own free will and is sick of being controlled by unseen forces, but in reality he just wants the powers of a god for himself so he can oppress people properly. Nevertheless, this means he has to come to our world in order to square off against Kongwen, the writer.

It has to be said the vision of the real world on offer this time is much glossier and devoid of the kind of darkness that haunted Guan Ning. Though they’re worried because the restaurant’s not doing so well, the trio seem to have pretty nice lives with relatively few other problems outside of Cicada who is now aligned with Redmane in place of Li Mu standing in for a venal class of confluencers. Kongwen is then fighting a war on two fronts as Redmane taunts him to come over to the dark side and turn his fantasy story of good defeating evil into one of nihilistic despair echoing the way that Kongwen feels in his life.

The meta drama of the writer pursued by his characters is resolved in a fairly unexpected way with Kongwen effectively giving up his godlike powers and allowing his characters to save themselves through “mortal courage” rather divine intervention. Though Renliang had been plunged into chaos as the power vacuum Redmane left behind saw his former allies effectively become warlords reenacting the warring states period, in the end it’s solidarity that saves them as they agree to band together to oppose Redmane while offering the possibility of forgiveness if only Redmane can give up his quest for domination and agree to work for the common good. 

Kongwen learns something similar, remembering his writing isn’t solely an economic activity, and not only about himself but giving something back to the world. Torn between the anarchic ambition of Redmane and the righteousness of Jutian (Chang Chen), modelled after his own absent father, he struggles to find meaning amid the injustices of the modern China having been unfairly cancelled by netizens after being falsely accused of plagiarism by the man who stole his story and asks himself if it’s worth sacrificing his friends in a last ditch attempt to save them through teaming up with the forces of darkness. Nevertheless, Lu frames his tale in a much more lighthearted fashion as symbolised by demonic armour Darkshade’s sudden merging with a lettuce to become unexpectedly adorable. As such, it feels like something of a missed opportunity in choosing not to build on the foundations of the first film but sidestep them completely. Even so in upping its production values and the quality of its visual effects, the sequel embraces a new sense of fun which is definitely different but possessed of its own charm.

Trailer (English subtitles)