South China Morning Post - Film & TV

3/5 stars To understand how a modestly staged feature like Unidentified Murder manages to charm the socks off so many Hong Kong critics – despite doing only a passable job of tackling its subjects of male friendship, shoddy scams and grass-roots filmmaking – one must first acknowledge the depressing state of local comedy. When the Hong Kong Film Critics Society gave the best scr...

Renny Harlin is in tears. The Finnish director behind 1990s blockbusters such as Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger presented his new thriller, Deep Water, at the fourth edition of the Mediterrane Film Festival in Malta on June 26, and two days later is pouring his heart out in an interview with the South China Morning Post in the bar of his boutique seafront hotel. “What I think really...

A quiet end to spring makes way for a very busy start to summer, with July’s K-drama schedules packed with something for everyone. Read on to find out what to catch over the next month. 1. Love in Sync Lead cast: Kim Myung-soo, Kang Min-ah Kim Myung-soo, also known as L of the K-pop outfit Infinite, shares the screen with Kang Min-ah (True Beauty) in this romantic comedy. Kim ...

4/5 stars Lead cast: Shun Oguri, Yu Aoi, Suzu Hirose, Kento Hayashi When a respected scientist explodes live on national television, it launches a wave of terror that sweeps Japan, masterminded by a mysterious serial killer who can seemingly vanish into thin air. Marking the first collaboration between Netflix and Toho Studios, Human Vapor is the latest creation from Yeon Sang-h...

The 2003 film Running on Karma is an eccentric blend of police procedural, spirituality and mysticism that marks Hong Kong film director Johnnie To Kei-fung and frequent collaborator Wai Ka-fai’s first foray into self-consciously “artistic” cinema – and it remains an engrossing watch today. While the storyline is less esoteric than Throw Down (2004), it remains an ambitious proj...