THE MISSING (2017) review

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For her seventh film as a director, Xu Jinglei left her comfort zone of romantic comedies and relationship dramas to tackle a ticking clock thriller in which Bai Baihe plays Lin Wei, a detective whose five-year-old daughter Dian Dian has been kidnapped, and who receives a mysterious phone calls from the kidnapper (Stanley Huang), who is about to tell her where her daughter is, when his car is hit by a truck. His name is Yang Nian, and when he wakes up in a hospital room, he has no memory of his past. After being attacked  by a mysterious assassin who murdered the two cops standing guard in front of his room, the obviously highly-trained Yang escapes, with Lin Wei in hot pursuit. Now while he tries to piece back together his past, the amnesiac must escape not only the police, but also assassins sent by a mobster he seems to have been close to in his past, as well as Lin Wei, who though suspended from the case, has decided to keep looking for her daughter. Soon, she must reluctantly team up with Yang.

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THIS IS NOT WHAT I EXPECTED (2017) review

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The directing debut of editor Derek Hui, who in his relatively young career has already cut films for Derek Yee, Chen Kaige, Teddy Chan and Peter Chan (who is a producer here) among others, This Is Not What I Expected stars Takeshi Kaneshiro as Lu Jin, a filthy-rich hotel acquisition consultant with exacting expectations when it comes to accommodation, service and food in the establishments he visits. As he appraises the luxurious Rosebud Hotel, he finds much with which to be dissatisfied, until he tastes a dish prepared by young sous-chef Gu Shengnan (Zhou Dongyu). It’s a revelation for Jin, and though he keeps butting heads with Shengnan outside of the hotel, he finds himself enthralled by her culinary skill, as she keeps surpassing herself in the hopes to save the hotel from a buyout. Slowly, unexpected feelings start burgeoning between the germaphobe perfectionist and the quirky, hyperactive chef.

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LORD OF SHANGHAI (2017) review

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After Law Wing Cheong’s Iceman and John Woo’s The Crossing, the ambitious diptych format took another hit with Sherwood Hu’s Lord of Shanghai, whose box office flop has led to the release date of its second installment (known as Lord of Shanghai II or The Concubine of Shanghai) being pushed back indefinitely. Based on a 2003 novel by Hong Ying, Lord of Shanghai starts in 1905, with the city controlled by western powers and dangerous triads. Chang Lixiong (Hu Jun), charismatic head of the Hong triad, is butting heads with Commander Song (Liu Peiqi) over the arrival of revolutionary agent Huang Peiyu (Qin Hao): in the last years of the Qing dynasty, Chang has chosen the side of the revolution. Chang and Song are also adversaries in the whorehouse of Madam Xin (Bai Ling), as they both covet the same newly-arrived peasant girl, Xiao Yuegui (Li Meng, then Yu Nan after years have passed). As their feud escalates, Yuegui becomes much more important than a mere prize.

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THE GAME CHANGER (2017) review

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In 2007, director Gao Xixi had remade the classic 1980 TVB show The Bund (which made Chow Yun Fat a star in Hong Kong) into Shanghai Bund (in which Huang Xiaoming stepped in for Chow, five years before pairing up with him in another old Shanghai tale, Wong Jing’s The Last Tycoon), retaining many plot points but also changing quite a few (in the meantime, Adam Cheng had starred in a 1996 retelling, and the same year Leslie Cheung in a feature film by Poon Man Kit). Now, Gao has brought the story to the big screen, but has kept only the narrative beats from his 2007 remake, so that the similarities between the original 1980 TV show and this 2017 feature are entirely superficial, in what has been like a creative game of telephone. We hope you’ve been following.

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COOK UP A STORM (2017) review

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After three seasons of his successful cooking show “Chef Nic”, Nicholas Tse takes his passion for culinary arts to the big screen with Raymond Yip’s Cook up a Storm, in which he plays Sky Ko, an Cantonese street cook whose well-loved restaurant in a picturesque alley of Hong Kong is threatened by property developers. Now, Michelin-starred chef Paul Ahn (Jung Yong Hwa) is opening a high-end restaurant right opposite Sky’s modest but welcoming diner. The two start butting heads, and soon they find themselves pitted against each other in a TV culinary competition. Whoever wins will get to go head to head with the “God of Cookery” Mountain Ko (Anthony Wong), who’s none other than Sky’s selfish and driven father, having left him at a young age in the hands of his friend Seven (Ge You), a wise and kind chef. Sky loses to Paul, who in turn is betrayed by his girlfriend and sous-chef Mayo (Michelle Bai), and thus the two initially hostile chefs but join forces to claim the title of “God of Cookery”.

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BUDDIES IN INDIA (2017) review

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With the flood of Monkey King film adaptations in recent and coming years, it is refreshing to see one attempting a radical spin: Wang Baoqiang’s directorial debut Buddies in India transposes the myth to nowadays, following an agile and mischievous monkey trainer called, of course, Wu Kong (Wang Baoqiang) who refuses to sell his house to make way for a vast urban construction project. As Tang Zong, the chairman of the group in charge of the project, feels his end is near after a serious heart attack, he instructs his son Tang Sen (Bai Ke), a lonely geek, to go get his will in Nandu Gaun, India. At the same time, he asks Wu Kong to accompany Sen as a bodyguard, in exchange for which his house will remain untouched. Wu agrees, and the two set off for India, where they are helped by Zhu Tianpeng (Yue Yunpeng), cross paths with Wu Jing (Ada Liu), a woman once scorned by Sen, and are hunted by two Chinese assassins hired by Tang Sen’s devious uncle Chasu (Huang Bo), who wants to inherit the group instead of his nephew.

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