Hong Kong!
Chinese New Year affords the Gene Siskel Film Center the opportunity to celebrate the year 4704, the Year of the Pig, with our annual festival Hong Kong!, February 2 through 28. Hong Kong! is made possible in part through the support of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, New York. This year’s festival presents a selection of new films screening in Chicago premieres, along with a retrospective of the recent films of Johnnie To, a director of wide-ranging abilities who has increasingly made the gangster genre his own. We are especially pleased to present a sneak preview premiere of To’s latest feature EXILED for one screening only on Saturday, February 17.
Johnnie To’s Heroes
Like most established Hong Kong directors, Johnnie To is prolific. Since 1980, he’s completed more than 40 features, and the Gene Siskel Film Center has exhibited close to 30 of them over the years. To is versatile enough to turn out polished romantic comedies and period action films, but his international reputation has been made in the gangster and policier genres with films like THE MISSION (1999) and FULLTIME KILLER (2001).
Johnnie To inherited John Woo’s mantle as Hong Kong’s premier auteur and purveyor of the cinematic underworld mythology unique to the territory, but his style is very different. His heroes are more flawed, more prone to human weakness. The city he depicts is rife with corruption and broken dreams. To’s action sequences kinetically punctuate stories characterized by a waiting game, by the intricate maneuvering of men jockeying for power in darkened rooms. His heroes are often destroyed by ambition and venal impulses. To’s increasing emphasis on large ensemble casts in films including ELECTION, TRIAD ELECTION, and now EXILED, deepens the “big picture” quality of his work, and makes effective use of some of Hong Kong’s finest acting talent.
-- Barbara Scharres
feature films
Chicago premiere!
49 DAYS
(SAI CHIU)
2006, Lam Kin-lung and Tsui Siu-ming, Hong Kong/China, 93 min.
With Stephen Fung, Gillian Chung
Halfway between horror and high camp, this atmospheric period ghost story takes place within the 49 days, according to Buddhist belief, between a person’s death and his next reincarnation. On the verge of beheading for a crime he didn’t commit, a provincial herbalist is reprieved to return home. He finds his homestead a veritable haunted house, his wife in a zombie state, and his daughter like a wild animal. And then there is the mysteriously beautiful woman who seems to want to be more than his lawyer… In Cantonese with English subtitles. 35mm widescreen. (BS)
Friday, February 2, 8:15 pm
Sunday, February 4, 3:00 pm
Chicago premiere!
ISABELLA
2006, Pang Ho-cheung, Hong Kong/China, 99 min.
With Chapman To, Isabella Leong
“Beautifully lensed widescreen elegy to times past and chances lost.”--Derek Elley, Variety
Shing, a brutal, womanizing Macau cop, drunkenly succumbs to the advances of a bar girl for an anonymous shag. To his shock, the impossibly tenacious and clearly underage girl continues to stalk him before delivering her blackmailing coup de grace: she is his daughter. Director Pang (MEN SUDDENLY IN BLACK) turns the oddball match into a story that is part buddy movie, part taboo romance. ISABELLA screened in competition in the 2006 Berlin Film Festival, and was awarded the Silver Bear for Best Music. In Cantonese with English subtitles. 35mm widescreen. (BS)
Friday, February 9, 8:15 pm
Sunday, February 11, 3:00 pm
MOONLIGHT IN TOKYO
(CHING YI NGOR SUM GI)
2005, Alan Mak and Felix Chong, Hong Kong/China, 94 min.
With Leon Lai, Chapman To
“RAINMAN meets MIDNIGHT COWBOY…[an] offbeat and surprisingly dark buddy comedy.”--Kozo, LoveHKFilm.com
Jun (Lai), a simple-minded Hong Kong man ditched by his family in the heart of Tokyo, finds a reluctant savior in Hoi (To), a street hustler down on his luck. Hoi thinks to pay his urgent gambling debts by pimping his childlike sidekick as a gigolo, and Jun soon demonstrates a mysterious and wondrous talent. Two of the three INFERNAL AFFAIRS writers team up as writer/directors for a surreal, decidedly unusual story, featuring strong performances by two stars cast against type. In Cantonese with English subtitles. 35mm widescreen. (BS)
Friday, February 16, 8:30 pm
Sunday, February 18, 3:00 pm
Chicago sneak preview premiere!
EXILED
(FONG JUK)
2006, Johnnie To, Hong Kong/China, 100 min.
With Francis Ng, Anthony Wong, Simon Yam
“Plunges straight into Sergio Leone territory.”--Derek Elley, Variety
A film that may stand as one of To’s greatest, EXILED masterfully treats themes of blood brotherhood and gangland chivalry in a world where honor is a debased currency. Set in the offshore outpost of Macau on the eve of the island’s return to Chinese sovereignty, the story revolves around the bittersweet and ultimately violent reunion of five Triad hoods, friends from childhood, over an unpaid debt. The star-studded ensemble cast is sublime, and the audacious mix of pathos, humor, and intricately choreographed gunplay makes EXILED the most soulful gangster film since John Woo left Hong Kong. In Cantonese with English subtitles. 35mm widescreen. (BS)
Saturday, February 17, 8:00 pm
Chicago premiere!
BREAKING NEWS
(DAAI SI GIN)
2004, Johnny To, Hong Kong/China, 90 min.
With Richie Ren, Kelly Chen
“A slam-dunk of an opener in a film filled with terrifically choreographed action.”--Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
A newsman’s camera catches a bungled police raid that downs two cops, and the image-conscious commissioner (Chen ) goes ballistic at the department’s public humiliation. Hiring a clutch of spin doctors and a film director, she launches a risky media circus around the next big operation, a high-stakes cat-and-mouse game in which the perps turn out to be every bit as media savvy as the good guys. In Cantonese with English subtitles. 35mm. (BS)
Friday, February 23, 6:00 pm
Sunday, February 25, 3:15 pm
ELECTION
(HAK SE WUI)
2005, Johnnie To, Hong Kong/China, 101 min
With Simon Yam, Tony Leung Ka-fai
A story of disputed leadership in a Triad society brings a whiff of THE GODFATHER, but is purely, stunningly Hong Kong in the execution. Intrigues hatched in dark and smoky rooms lead to darker deeds in broad daylight as Lok (Yam) and Big D (Leung) battle for the right to claim the ancient carved totem that is the Wo Shing Society’s symbol of power. The precious totem itself is missing, in the first of the twists Johnnie To spins en route to a killer (literally and figuratively) finale. In Cantonese with English subtitles. 35mm widescreen. (BS)
Saturday, February 3, 3:00 pm
Monday, February 5, 8:15 pm
TRIAD ELECTION
(aka ELECTION II)
(HAK SE WUI: YI WO WAI KWAI)
2006, Johnnie To, Hong Kong/China, 92 min.
With Louis Koo, Simon Yam
The Chinese title translates as “Harmony is a virtue,” a message both ominous and ironic in Johnnie To’s hands. Two years following the conclusion of ELECTION, outgoing Wo Shing Society chairman Lok (Yam in a powerful performance) duplicitously backs more than one of his “godsons” to succeed him. Ruthless self-interest and corruption reign supreme as one trust after another is cynically and violently betrayed. In Cantonese with English subtitles. 35mm widescreen. (BS)
Saturday, February 3, 5:00 pm
Wednesday, February 7, 8:15 pm
FULLTIME KILLER
(CHUEN JIK SAT SAU)
2001, Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai, Hong Kong/China, 102 min.
With Andy Lau, Takashi Sorimachi, Simon Yam
“Captured in dizzying dolly shots and featuring massive body counts, bodily fluids a-spraying, enormous guns, and super-slick action sequences, Johnnie To’s latest gonzo hitmen epic FULLTIME KILLER is a real thrill.”--Max Messier, Filmcritic.com
Johnnie To inherited John Woo’s mantle as Hong Kong’s premier action director in the early ‘90s and set about putting his own mark on the genre. The underworld code of honor dictates the ethics of FULLTIME KILLER, but To’s heroes--reckless, flashy Tok (Lau) and methodical perfectionist O (Sorimachi)¬--are less gun-toting knights of the old Hong Kong than pragmatic, image-conscious hustlers for the new. Rivals for dominance of their erstwhile profession and rivals for the love of the same woman, only one of them will win. In Cantonese with English subtitles. 35mm. (BS)
Saturday, February 10, 6:00 pm
Monday, February 12, 6:00 pm
RUNNING ON KARMA
(DAAI CHEK LIU)
2003, Johnnie To, Hong Kong/China, 93 min.
With Andy Lau, Cecilia Cheung
“Even by Hong Kong cinema’s colorful standards, RUNNING ON KARMA ranks as one of the looniest high concepts to date: a monk-turned-steroidal body-builder with magical powers teams with a rookie femme cop to catch a killer and save her soul.”--Derek Elley, Variety
Big (superstar Andy Lau in a prosthetic bodysuit), a defrocked Buddhist monk, earns his living as a male stripper until busted by the woman he had mistakenly taken for his most obsessed fan. Director To darkly twists what first appears to be a comedy into a noir action drama with a spiritual streak that stretches from here to nirvana. It seems that Big can also “read” a person’s karma. The horrific vision of past lives he intuits in policewoman Lee is about to transform her future and his. In Cantonese with English subtitles. 35mm widescreen. (BS)
Monday, February 19, 6:00 pm
Wednesday, February 21, 6:00 pm
THROW DOWN
(YAU DOH LUNG FU BONG)
2004, Johnnie To, Hong Kong/China, 95 min.
With Louis Koo, Aaron Kwok
The lives of three loners, a martial arts champion-turned-club owner, an aspiring chanteuse, and an aggressive judo student, converge in a film director Johnnie To dedicates to Akira Kurosawa. Dimly lit bars, gambling joints, and vacant nighttime streets provide the background to this poetic but action-packed story of Hong Kong underdogs who dream the big dream and often lose. One of Hong Kong’s few remaining auteurs, To makes evocative use of pop music and paces his set pieces like darkly eccentric dance numbers. In Cantonese with English subtitles. 35mm. (BS)
