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Rosa

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It doesn’t really matter if 1986’s Rosa is considered a comedy with elements of intense action or an action film with elements of broad comedy. Hong Kong audiences were eating up this particular brand of genre mashup during the industry’s golden era, blending established martial arts stars with crowd-pleasing comedians to offer up a little bit of everything on the cinematic menu. Produced by Sammo Hung’s Bo Ho Film Company, the savvy veteran gave his brother-in-arms Yuen Biao a rare leading role and a chance to reinvent himself in the modern HK martial arts mold. Accidental partners “Little Monster” (Biao) and Lui Kung (Lowell Lo) are assigned to track down a missing roll of film that will put a ruthless band of counterfeiters behind bars. Their strategy involves getting close to a petty gangster’s former girlfriend, the titular Rosa, in hopes that the criminal element takes the bait. But, in Lui’s case, preferably not before he gets Rosa between the sheets...while Little Monster’...
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The Island Closest to Heaven

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Structured like a teenage fairytale, Nobuhiko Obayashi’s The Island Closest to Heaven  (1984)is a dreamy coming-of-age postcard that intentionally echoes the sweeping cinematic cliches of a 1940’s Hollywood melodrama. That’s a lot to pack into one sentence…and one movie. But somehow the film’s episodic nature breezily jumps from one seaside encounter to the next without the exhaustion – or predictability – of a too familiar guided tour. Like the best vacations, it sneaks up on you with moments that feel small at the time but become special in hindsight. Mari (played with unaffected charm by teen icon Tomoyo Harada) travels outside her comfort zone on a trip to New Caledonia where she hopes to reconnect with the memory of her late father who described the island as “heaven on earth.” Instead, she’s greeted by the flat reality of a tourist trap. But the sincerity of her search inspires various strangers to suggest alternatives, leading to plane trips, boat rides and off-road exc...
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Shawscore: Volume Four

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As gleefully entertaining as Shaw Brothers films can be, those box-set collections can get a little, well, repetitive. Kick, punch, jump, repeat. It’s like button mashing on Super Street Fighter and hoping to be surprised with the results. But Arrow’s Shawscope Volume Four gathers films outside of the studio’s typical martial arts wheelhouse; odd detours into kid-friendly superhero territory, South Asian black magic, evil sorcerers and slimy vigilantes. And with sixteen – count ‘em, sixteen! – movies of steadily increasing weirdness, this limited edition is essential stuff for kung-fu and horror fans. Look, no one wants to read a play by play of each film. Besides, that would spoil the fun of what (for most people) would be “first contact” with movies that are so much more enjoyable going in blind. Things start off with the Ultraman -inspired Super Inframan , which sends a bunch of Ice Age Monsters topside in a series of Power Rangers -style face-offs. But the majority of the...
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Triple Threat: Three Films with Sammo Hung

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As one of the most important figures in Hong Kong cinema, a study of Sammo Hung’s career is a study of the HK film industry itself.  And that’s exactly the case with  Triple Threat: Three Films with Sammo Hung  which captures his talents as a performer and fight choreographer in various stages of development.  Never content to simply play “pudgy villain number 2,” Hung worked his way up from a Shaw Brothers role player to the golden boy of Golden Harvest, leaning into the fat jokes for laughs and turning himself into the most unlikely of superstars. The Manchu Boxer  (1974) walks a well-trodden path of ‘70s kung fu flicks:  a wandering fighter, a town in trouble and a band of thugs in need of a beat-down.  Shot using cut-rate sets in the freezing cold (you can see the actors’ breath in every scene), this is pretty much as far from the well-oiled machinery of a Shaw Brothers production as you can get.  But Hung’s presence, ...
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The House with Laughing Windows

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What’s a giallo without copious amounts of blood, gratuitous nudity and acrobatic camerawork? 1976’s The House with Laughing Windows manages to avoid all that but still fit comfortably in a genre known more for its excessive exclamation marks than actual narrative coherence. Director Pupi Avati creates a giallo more by implication than definition, leaning into Gothic cliches and an almost puritanical approach to sexuality…until he doesn’t. Hired to restore a disturbing fresco in a quiet country village, Stefano receives disturbing anonymous phone calls warning him to back off. But curiosity leads him to uncover the artist’s history, revealing a sadomasochist-incestuous past with ties to the local citizenry who have pledged a vow of silence. The answers lie buried in the bricks and mortar of the decaying tourist town that would prefer its dead stay buried. Avati seems determined to prove he can make a “respectable” giallo. The pieces are all there: ominous artwork ( Deep Red ), my...
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Wicked Games: Three Films by Robert Hossein

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Criterion is the Mt. Everest of boutique labels. Its body of work – going as far back as the laserdisc days – includes some of the most important, most influential and most collectible films of all time. In an era when just being able to watch a classic film in its correct aspect ratio, they expanded to include commentary tracks, interviews, storyboards and alternate scenes before those special features were even a glint in the traditional studio marketer's eye. But, just like Everest, the boutique mountaintop has become a bit more crowded since then. And no one seems to be carrying the torch for introducing audiences to obscure, invigorating and adventurous cinema more than Radiance Films, the specialty label that released its first titles in 2023. Since then, their ratio of hits to misses has been nothing short of jaw-dropping, including their latest: three films from French actor-director Robert Hossein collected under the title Wicked Games . Hossein, probably best known i...
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The Ogre of Athens

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Thanks to WW2 and a lengthy civil war, Greek cinema was always lagging behind other European countries. But as waves of Italian neorealism, film noir and screwball comedies passed through, filmmakers picked up the baton and began incorporating popular genres into their own productions. Beginning in the ‘50s, this golden age spawned hits from the major studio, Finos Film, but also gave birth of independents whose influence wasn’t felt until decades later. That, in a nutshell, exemplifies The Ogre of Athens (1956) a socio-political, film-noir, musical comedy that truly fits the description all of the above. Thomas, a meek and lonely bank clerk, is mistaken for a notorious criminal after a photo in the newspaper matches his description. On the run from police, he stumbles into sketchy club full of showgirls and gangsters, the latter of whom also mistake him for the Ogre and force him to participate in their latest heist. Fearful but flattered, Thomas begins to embrace his role as a...
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