Office (2015)

The massive Hong Kong corporation Jones & Sunn is about go public. CEO Winnie Cheung (Sylvia Chang) is set to become a major shareholder after being a mistress to Chairman Ho Chung-Ping (Chow Yun-Fat) for twenty years. At the same time Winnie has been secretly romancing one of her executives, David Wong (Eason Chan) - and he has been secretly stealing company funds to play the stock market. New recruit Lee (Wang Ziyi) arrives eager to impress, and immediately falls for fellow new employee Kat (Lang Yueting), not knowing that she is actually the Chairman's daughter. This tale of corporate intrigue and romance plays out on a stylised set the size of an aircraft hangar, is shot in 3D, and is a musical. That certainly makes it one of the stranger Hong Kong film productions of recent years.

The film is directed by Johnnie To, my personal favourite filmmaker, and of course that means I arrived at the cinema with extremely high expectations. That may have been a mistake: it is a disappointing film compared to To's best, but it admittedly still a well-staged and often inventive musical - and how many musical films do you see coming out of Hong Kong anyway?

Three (2016)

Dr Tong Qian (Zhao Wei) is an overworked neurosurgeon struggling to compose herself after a surgery goes terribly wrong. Before she can leave the hospital, the police bring in the violent gangster Shun (Wallace Chung). He has been shot in the head, but miraculously remains alive and conscious. Tong wants to operate immediately to save Shun's life. Police Inspector Chan (Louis Koo) wants to interrogate Shun first. Shun bizarrely refuses medical treatment, and instead seems set on escape - but how?

Three is the latest crime thriller from Hong Kong's masterful director Johnnie To. It is set entirely inside a hospital ward, although we hear of plot developments occurring outside throughout the film. It primarily follows three key characters - a surgeon, a criminal, and a police officer - as their lives cross over and interrelate. Everything in the film builds to a noisy, chaotic climax - but is the build-up any good, and is that climax worth the wait?

Running Out of Time (1999)

A robber (Andy Lau) holds a Hong Kong finance company at gunpoint, but when police detective Ho Sheung-Sang (Lau Ching-wan) the thief seems more interested in playing a game of cat and mouse than in getting away with his money. Over the next 72 hours the game progresses, with Ho always one step behind the thief while slowly piecing together the truth behind his motives.

1999 was a great year for Hong Kong director/producer Johnnie To. His production company Milkyway Image, which he founded three years earlier, had suffered a string of commercial and critical failures. In 1999 To's one-two punch of The Mission (shot in 18 days) and Running Out of Time (shot intermittently over two years) revived Milkyway's fortunes and re-established his career as one of Hong Kong's finest and most idiosyncratic feature film directors. They cemented a specific house style for Milkyway's crime flicks and thrillers, one that highlights small moments of character and embraces the absurd in among all of the plot twists and shoot-outs. Running Out of Time specifically also re-directed the career of co-star Andy Lau, then a popular but critically unappreciated star of romantic comedies and dramas. Under To's direction Lau stretched himself considerably, and earned a Hong Kong Film Award for Best Actor as a result.

Blind Detective (2013)

Johnnie To has been pretty much the most talented and effective film director in Hong Kong since the handover. His combination of stylish gangster films and idiosyncratic comedies has made him one of the most interesting directors in the world today. While his fame hasn't really extended far beyond Hong Kong and China he does have a growing number of ardent fans in English speaking markets. I'm certainly one of those.

Blind Detective is one of his most recent films. It is a romantic comedy crossed with a mystery, released in Hong Kong and China in 2013. It re-teams actors Andy Lau and Sammi Cheng, who had previous co-starred in To's 2001 hit Love on a Diet.

Former Hong Kong police detective Johnston (Lau), rendered blind during his final assignment, now works as a private detective. When he encounters female police officer Ho (Cheng), she recognises his talents immediately and forces him to help her solve a decades-old mystery over a missing girl.

Drug War (2013)

When mid-level drug boss Timmy Choi (Louis Koo) is captured by mainland Chinese police - led by the stoic Captain Zhang (Sun Honglei) - he turns traitor on his underground empire, leading the cops into a complicated sting operation to shut down a lucrative methanphetamine ring.

I am a huge fan of Hong Kong writer/director Johnnie To. I think he's the bees knees: easily the best director working in Chinese-language cinema today and arguably one of the best who's ever directed for film ever. He is the definitive post-handover Hong Kong director: building on a foundation laid by the likes of John Woo, Tsui Hark and Dante Lam, but finding his own slightly odd idiosyncratic route through the traditional Hong Kong film landscape. He may make wacky romantic comedies, and an awful lot of semi-automatic-wielding crime thrillers, but he makes them in a way where unexpected things constantly happen, and the action is regularly punctuated by moments of messy, inconvenient realism.

Vengeance (2009)

A pitched gun battle goes on in the woods near a barbeque area. The air is thick with smoke as two rival groups of men duck and weave between the trees, firing off their handguns whenever they think they’ve got a shot. Suddenly the moon is obscured by cloud, and the forest descends into a deep darkness. Everybody stops, their backs pressed up against the trees or the ground. Everybody watches the sky. Then, as the clouds slowly roll back from the moon, and the forest is illuminated once more, all seven men turn and begin shooting once again.

It’s an unusual and striking moment of calm, a typical poetic flourish from a director whose films are peppered with such imagery. Vengeance, Johnnie To’s first English-language feature, may not be one of his finest films, but it is rich with enough moments and character to still make it a potent movie experience.

PTU: Police Tactical Unit (2003)

A police detective slips and knocks himself unconscious while pursuing a gang of young hoodlums. When he wakes up, his handgun is missing. Over one tense night, the local police tactical unit (PTU) uses every means at their disposal – both authorised and illegal – to recover the weapon before its loss must be reported.

PTU is a short, tightly made police thriller directed by Johnnie To, a man I believe to be the most talented director working in Hong Kong today. While it fails to reach the heights of To’s best works – Election, Exiled, Sparrow, and so on – it is nonetheless a captivating and memorable experience. Like many of To’s films PTU cleverly balances comedy and drama. He has a particularly odd, slightly off-kilter sense of humour that filters through many of his films. The humour has a way of sneaking up on the viewer and catching them off guard. At the same time some scenes of police brutality in this film are quite difficult to sit through, partly because of the confronting forms of violence but mainly because it’s so believable.

Exiled (2006)

Johnnie To knocks the ball out of the park once again in Exiled, a crime thriller with a delightfully off-kilter edge. Managing to tread a fine line between multiple genres – action, thriller, drama, comedy – it presents us with a stunning story, a great cast of characters and one utterly memorable and wildly enjoyable film.

It starts in Macau, on the eve of that city’s handover from Portugal to China. Two pairs of hitmen turn up awkwardly at the same address: one pair to murder a runaway from the Hong Kong underworld, the other to protect him. Embarrassingly, all four mobsters have known each other since they were young men. They wind up having dinner with their protectee/target and his wife. For at least two of them, this upsets their boss – who was previously the victim of an assassination attempt by the target. Things rapidly spiral out of control from there.

Throw Down (2004)

A man loses all of his money in an illegal gambling den. Rather than see him walk home empty-handed, his friend impulsively snatches the cash and runs for her life. They run down the street together, chased by a trio of gangsters. When the gangsters are about to catch the girl, the man leaps into their path. He submissively takes the beating of his life while she hides around the corner. When the man finally staggers around the corner to re-join her, he is missing a shoe. She walks back to the gangsters to retrieve it. And it’s one of the most romantic scenes ever committed to film.

Throw Down is a marvel: a unique film experience that blends genre so effortlessly that it becomes difficult to describe its genre at all. It is too funny to be a drama. It is too whimsical to be a thriller. It’s too sedate and meditative to be an action film. It’s too heartfelt and melancholic to be a comedy. It is, instead, simply a wonderfully told story. It is rich in visual imagery, overflowing with heart and originality, and stands head-and-shoulders above almost every Hong Kong movie ever made. It is a particular favourite of mine.

Odds'n'Sods: Nine things unrelated to the new Doctor Who

The Internerds are aflame with news that the BBC will reveal the actor playing the next Doctor in Doctor Who this Sunday. In the interests of balance, here are nine other geek/nerd news stories doing the traps at the moment.

• Avatar. I actually quite enjoyed Avatar in a mindless eye candy sort of way, although I agree with many critics of the film that it has some pretty serious issues in regards to how to treats the disabled. All that said, I've never really felt the need to watch a sequel. James Cameron doesn't agree, and he's now going to shoot three sequels in one mega-shoot, for release in 2016, 2017 and 2018. (link)
• Continuum. I haven't a single episode yet, but have many friends who recommend the Canadian science fiction TV drama Continuum. They'll be happy to hear that it's received an order for a third season. (link)
• 24. May Lynn Rajskub, aka Chloe, aka the best one, is rejoining the cast of 24 for its 12-episode ninth season, coming out on Fox next year. This pleases me. Did I mention that she's the best one? (link)
• Pacific Rim. Pacific Rim has opened strongly in China, making it a lot more likely that Warner Bros will greenlight a sequel after all. (link)
• The Cuckoo's Calling. Did you know that J.K. Rowling is donating 100% of her royalties for her pseudonymous crime novel to charity? (link)
• Don't Go Breaking My Heart. Hong Kong's best director Johnnie To has commenced shooting a sequel to his rather excellent romantic comedy Don't Go Breaking My Heart. The film is scheduled for release in Hong Kong and China in mid-2014. (link)
• X-Men: Days of Future Past. Bryan Singer has tweeted a photo of the Sentinel prop from his upcoming X-Men movie. It's rather large and appropriately purple. (link)
• Wander Over Yonder. Craig McCracken (Powerpuff Girls) has a new cartoon starting on the Disney Channel, Wander Over Yonder. Its opening titles are pretty much the happiest thing you'll see today. (link)
• Haunter. Director Vincenzo Natali (Cube, Splice) has a horror movie coming out, a trailer for which has been released onto the Internet. (link)

Don't Go Breaking My Heart

单身男女
115m. 2011, Hong Kong. Directed by Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai. Starring Louis Koo, Gao Yuanyuan, Daniel Wu, Lam Suet, Larisa Bakurova and JJ Jia.

While Johnnie To remains relatively obscure to English-speaking audiences, even among fans of Hong Kong cinema only half of his career receives the attention it deserves. He is already well known for his Triad-based thrillers and action films, but in parallel to that he has maintained a long, rich career in writing and directing romantic comedies. Don't Go Breaking My Heart is his first romantic film since 2008's drama Linger, and it comes as a refreshing surprise.