HCF Review - Time Warrior

A SAMURAI IN TIME (2023)

The idea of yet another time travel movie with a fish out of water protagonist isn’t exactly the most exciting prospect. Even the electricity which sends the hero from the past to the present is a very familiar visual trope. However, Junichi Yasuda's A Samurai in Time isn’t another action movie like The Iceman Cometh. The biggest surprise is that it’s not really a straight up comedy either. It’s still a silly premise, and there are indeed sword fight sequences, as well as plenty of laughs. But there’s a subtle touch at work that means that it’s often more of a drama than the synopsis would suggest.

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HCF Review - Collaboration

HONG KONG 1941 (1984)

In the early 1980s Sammo Hung and Dickson Poon formed the company D&B Films. It’s another one of those names and logos that will be well known to action movie fans. But the first of their projects to be released would be a period drama about the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, with some romance and class conflict for good measure. In 1984 the UK government began the process of the territory’s handover, and so perhaps the last time it left British control was on the minds of screenwriters. It’s also the breakout role of rising star Chow Yun-Fat; though it’s not his first movie part it was his first awards win. Let’s take a look at how all of these enticing elements hold up today.

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Review Roundup - Time Tunnel

BEYOND THE INFINITE TWO MINUTES (2020)

Time for a brief excursion into the sub-genre of Japanese causality loop movies. Which seems like an oddly specific thing to exist but something that's impossible not to be absorbed by with films like Fish Story and Summer Time Machine Blues. The latter is of particular interest here since it has the same writer, someone clearly interested in the most mundane and quirky time travel stories possible. However, while Blues had a breezy after school club vibe, making it well worth seeing, this shares the ultra low budget single-take feel of One Cut of the Dead. Which is also well worth seeing, spoiler free. How does this particular movie fair against so many other strange goings on?

HCF Review - A Dish Eaten Cold

THE ADVENTURERS (1995)

In the early ’90s various film-makers planned to take their talents from Hong Kong to Hollywood, including Ringo Lam. Interestingly he’s one of several directors that wound up working on action vehicles starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, but that’s a story for another time. In this case it’s that final project, the one right before the big move to North America, that’s up for consideration. Which means that it’s an exciting prospect; is the film one last mega-blowout like John Woo’s opus Hard Boiled or are the results a mixed bag? Are their still shades of Lam’s grimy excesses from Full Contact or is it closer to the heroic bloodshed in City on Fire? Let’s take a look and see what undercover thrills are on offer.

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Review Roundup - King Rat

NOSFERATU (2024)

It's been a while since the days of the old Drac vs. Drac vampire movie blog, in fact more years than I'd like to admit, but here we are back with that old creep once again. Since there have been not one but two recent Bram Stoker adaptations the comparison was inevitable. Of course because true evil never dies (in studio board rooms and on the big screen) there are always plenty of films like this around, but stories taking direct inspiration are always an interesting prospect. There's always a chance for creativity, and there's always a chance someone will do an accurate version of the original book. Which unfortunately is only partly true in both cases here.