SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

  • Picking up immediately after the events of Fifty Shades of Grey , the 2015 adaptation of E.L. James’ best-selling erotic novel, Fifty Shades Darker finds damaged twentysomething billionaire Christian Grey… Read More

  • Model-actress Milla Jovovich reprises her signature role for a sixth and supposedly final time in Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, once again battling the nefarious Umbrella Corporation amidst a global… Read More

  • Directed by Isao Yukisada (best known for the 2004 teen-romance tearjerker Crying Out Love, in the Centre of the World), this second title of Nikkatsu studio’s new wave of rebooted… Read More

  • An American teenager must use his online gaming skills to protect a beautiful Chinese princess in this outdated yet inoffensive fantasy adventure written and produced by Luc Besson, responsible for… Read More

  • Combining the nerve-shredding tension of Oscar winner The Hurt Locker with Dead Poets Society’s compassion for wilful adolescence, Land of Mine carefully sidesteps the clunky pun of its title to… Read More

  • Making an early bid for worst film of 2017, Chris Chow’s (Strawberry Cliff) remarkably underwhelming psycho-thriller stars Cherry Ngan as a kidnap victim reunited with her wealthy family after 12… Read More

  • Following the critical and commercial success of his surveillance thriller Cold Eyes – a remake of the Johnnie To-produced Hong Kong film Eye in the Sky – director Jo Ui-seok… Read More

  • Renowned patriot Jackie Chan reaffirms his pledge of allegiance to China in Railroad Tigers, playing Ma Yuan, a Shandong railway worker who leads a plucky band of guerilla fighters in… Read More

  • There’s no shortage of fantastical allegories in literature and film, through which children wrestle with life’s trials, and in this regard J.A. Bayona’s follow-up to his 2012 disaster drama The… Read More

  • While the Chinese film industry remains on track to become the world’s largest within the next few years, a bona fide crossover hit continues to prove elusive. Read my review Read More

  • An insipid Twilight knock-off so lame it frequently slips into unwitting parody, Fallen switches out vampires and werewolves for an assortment of banished angels. Read my review Read More

  • In the mid-1970s, Japan’s oldest studio, Nikkatsu, looked to combat dwindling box office returns with a series of softcore “Roman Pornos” (meaning “romantic pornography”) Read my review Read More

  • Almost as ubiquitous as stories about provincial country life, or tales of strained relationships between parents and their children, Japanese cinema is awash with the misadventures of struggling young musicians.… Read More

  • Following her impressive comeback in 2014’s Pale Moon , once-controversial actress Rie Miyazawa gives a heart-wrenching performance in Her Love Boils Bathwater as a terminally ill matriarch determined to reconcile… Read More

  • Epitomising Japan’s “visual kei” glam rock image, X Japan have weathered a series of tragic challenges and endured as one of the most popular heavy metal bands of the last… Read More

  • Cinema offers up so many heartwarming rags to riches stories, of ordinary people overcoming the odds to excel at their one true passion, that when presented with a staggering true… Read More

  • The covens reopen once again in the increasingly repetitive Underworld saga, dramatising the centuries-old turf war between vampires and Lycans, their werewolf rivals. Read my review Read More

  • Ten years after Apocalypto, Mel Gibson returns to directing following a decade of personal crises that threatened to sink his career. Read my review Read More