Actors & Directors
- Grace Yip
- Benny Chan
- Eric Tsang
- Sam Lee (III)
- Stephen Fung
- Nicholas Tse
Run time: 113 min.
List Price: $14.95
Price: $29.90
Review Gen-X Cops / Sony Pictures:This is what The Mod Squad wanted to be. Chan (Eric Tsang), a cop on the fringe of the force, assembles a team of loose-cannon cadets-the Gen-X Cops-to infiltrate the mobs of Hong Kong, and they find a stolen shipment of explosive rocket fuel. Dressed in skin-tight leather and vinyl, hip to the point of being ridiculous, our heroes (named Jack, Alien, and Match) have to fight not only ultraviolent criminals but also hostile factions within the police as they track down a supercool Japanese gangster with no fear of death. The clichés fly fast and thick, and the plot is at times incomprehensible, but the action is pretty much nonstop. A shootout in a surfboard factory is particularly spectacular but is only one of several rapidly edited, stunt-filled sequences. The dubbing is better than usual (though subtitles would still be preferable), and there's some unfortunate homophobia, but the actors are all good-looking, the rock soundtrack is loud, the colors are bright, and the attitude is intense. Gen-X Cops even features a cameo by Jackie Chan, who's somehow involved with presenting the film. A slick, silly, and very entertaining movie. -Bret Fetzer.
Actors & Directors
- Koreya Senda
- Ishirô Honda
- Kenji Sahara
- Yumi Shirakawa
- Makoto Satô
- Akihiko Hirata
Run time: 79 min.
List Price: $19.98
Price: $99.99
Review The H-Man / RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video:
Release date: 1999-09-28
Run time: 100 min.
List Price: $19.98
Price: $29.95
Review Tokyo Blue: Case 1 / Adv Films:Mika and Rin don't have anything in common. Except they're dynamite to look at. For instance, Mika fires a huge Magnum. Rin prefers a smaller gun. Mika's looking for the perfect man. To Rin, perfect means breathing. But when the Japanese government learns that a former convict might flee the country with perfect counterfeiting film for US $100 dollar bills, Mika and Rin get the case. They may get off on the wrong foot, but these ladies don't pussyfoot around. Justice has never been this tempting.
Actors & Directors
- Shinpachiro Asaka
- Kenji Mizoguchi
- Seiichi Takegawa
- Isuzu Yamada
- Benkei Shiganoya
- Chiyoko Okura
Run time: 71 min.
Price: $29.95
Review Osaka Elegy / Homevision:From one of the world's greatest directors of women comes a candid and revealing look at discrimination against women in 1930's Japan. The highly acclaimed film chronicles the heartbreaking fall of a young telephone operator who consents to become her boss' mistress in order to support her alcoholic father and put her brother through school. Isuzu Yamada is tremendous as the tough heroine condemned by society for behavior that would have been tolerated if she were a man.
Actors & Directors
- Eijirô Tono
- Michiyo Aratama
- Toshirô Mifune
- Yûnosuke Itô
- Kihachi Okamoto
- Keiju Kobayashi
Run time: 122 min.
List Price: $29.98
Price: $30.00
Review Samurai Assassin / Animeigo:
Actors & Directors
- Waise Lee
- Adam Cheng
- Tony Leung Ka Fai
- Kirk Wong
- Elizabeth Lee
- Kam-Kong Wong
Run time: 87 min.
Price: $19.95
Review Gunmen / Tai Seng:
Actors & Directors
- Mike Browne
- Oliver Tan
- Jamie Luk
- T.L. Mark
Price: $39.99
Review Crossline / Tai Seng Video:
Release date: 1997-09-30
Price: $160.00
Review 0 Lone Wolf and Cub - A Pack of Wolves / Animeigo:
Actors & Directors
- Rina Kitahara
- Tetsuo Kurata
- Chisato Naruse
- Yuka Ohnishi
- Miho Nomoto
- Masara Tsushima
Run time: 90 min.
Price: $19.98
Review Lady Ninja: Reflections of Darkness (Ws Dub) / Manga Video:A butt-kicking quartet of female ninja assassins are hired by a ruthless magistrate to silence his past conquests. Three former courtesans could ruin his chaste reputation and discredit his bid for political glory, so he puts a contract out on them. A hearty hedonist who despises the sanctimonious hypocrite sends his own supernaturally powered thugs to capture the women, and they battle in an erotic series of superhero skirmishes that mix martial arts and magic spells, where the sexy ninja warriors repeatedly sacrifice their clothes for the greater glory of duty. They meet their equal in a feisty blonde Mata Hari who creates Japan's first blue movie when she displays the magistrate's sexual shenanigans across the sky like a heavenly drive-in film. The film straddles the line between spirited spoof and misguided action adventure, which the tongue-in-cheek English dubbing ably undercuts with painful puns and innuendo, but it never loses its outrageous sense of low-budget spectacle. Full of audacious violence and gratuitous nudity and logic-bending twists, it's wacky and weird and nearly incomprehensible, but it's never dull. -Sean Axmaker.
Actors & Directors
- Bill Tung
- Stephen Ho
- Victor Hon
- Deborah Dik
- Ronny Yu
- Loletta Lee
Price: $39.99
Review Bless This House / Tai Seng Video:
Release date: 1999-07-14
Price: $39.99
Review Millions in My Account / Tai Seng Video:
Actors & Directors
- Chia Hui Liu
- Po Tai
- Norman Chu
- Yuen Chor
- Hark-On Fung
- Wilson Tong
List Price: $39.98
Price: $37.98
Review A Bloody Fight / Tai Seng:
Actors & Directors
- Kenji Misumi
- Raizô Ichikawa
- Kô Nishimura
- Sanae Nakahara
- Ryuzo Shimada
- Tamao Nakamura
Run time: 83 min.
Price: $29.95
Review Sleepy Eyes of Death - Sword of Fire / Animeigo:
Actors & Directors
- Richard Ng
- Frankie Chan
- Deannie Yip
- Lung Chan
- Biao Yuen
Price: $39.99
Review Carry On Pickpocket / Tai Seng Video:Carry On Pickpocket is a tedious action comedy about lovable sneak thieves who team up with the cops to entrap some mobsters who are making life tough for everyday decent crooks. Sammo Hung (TV's Martial Law does his standard wistful fat-nebbish number-until he's either dancing or fighting, when the joke becomes how surprisingly graceful he is. (Thugs in HK movies have been saying "Hey, fatty" to him, and then paying dearly for it, for quite a few years now. ) Some of the pickpocketing scenes, and the later full-bore action stuff, are almost up to Hung's mature standard (Eastern Condors), and for a supposed comedy the movie is often startlingly vicious. For completists only. -David Chute.
Actors & Directors
- Jeanne Kuo Chang
- Ang Lee
- Paul Chen
- Winston Chao
- May Chin
- Dion Birney
Review The Wedding Banquet:This 1993 international hit by Ang Lee is a funny and poignant story of a gay, Taiwanese-American man who goes to some lengths to fool his visiting family that he's actually straight. The results are far more complicated and entertaining than anyone could have guessed. The film seems all the more rich now since Lee has become a major Hollywood director: that same sensitivity and mild bemusement he brought to such stories of manners as Sense and Sensibility and The Ice Storm in recent years are in full bloom in this earlier work. -Tom Keogh.
Actors & Directors
- Eisei Amamoto
- Yasuyo Shiroshima
- Ren Osugi
- Takashi Sumida
- Tomoaki Hosoyama
- Issei Sagawa
Run time: 84 min.
List Price: $29.99
Price: $29.98
Review Weather Woman / Asian Pulp Cinema:
Actors & Directors
- Clarence Fok Yiu-leung
- Fui-On Shing
- Chingmy Yau
- Dean Shek
- Ann Bridgewater
- Ching-Ching Yeung
Price: $39.99
Review They Came to Rob Hong Kong / Tai Seng Video:
Actors & Directors
- Vincent Kok
- Stephen Chow
- Clarence Hui
- Christy Chung
- Stephen Au
- Stephen Chow
Run time: 90 min.
Price: $19.95
Review God of Cookery / Tai Seng Video Marketing:
Actors & Directors
- Richard Ng
- James Tien
- Wan-Si Wong
- Hoi Mang
- Kenny Bee
Price: $39.99
Review My Cousin the Ghost / Tai Seng Video:
Actors & Directors
- Soumitra Chatterjee
- Satyajit Ray
- Sharmila Tagore
- Chhabi Biswas
- Purnendu Mukherjee
- Karuna Bannerjee
Run time: 93 min.
List Price: $19.95
Price: $129.99
Review Devi / Sony Pictures:In this 1960 Satyajit Ray film, Kalikinkar Roy (Chhabi Biswas, who also appeared in Jalsaghar) has a revelation that his daughter-in-law, Doyamoyee (Sharmila Tagore), is the incarnation of the goddess Kali. When his son Umaprasad (Soumitra Chatterjee, The World of Apu) returns from university in Calcutta, he is appalled to find that his wife has been made a virtual prisoner of his father's obsession. Doyamoyee is decorated as a living goddess and forced to sit all day in the temple where people come to offer her prayers. When an impoverished man brings his only son to this reluctant goddess and he is cured, everyone believes that she has performed a miracle. Then her beloved nephew Khoka gets sick. Will another miracle happen? Or is simply believing not enough? Dark and brooding, this is another powerful human portrait by the Svengali of Bengali filmmaking. Ray exposes the underbelly of twisted human desire and the overwhelming compulsion to rob others of the right to control their own destiny. Based on the story Devi by Prabhart Kumar Mukherjee, the film is 93 minutes long and is shot in black and white. The music is by Ali Akbar Khan. -Luanne Brown.
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Gen-X Cops, The H-Man, Tokyo Blue: Case 1, Osaka Elegy, Samurai Assassin, Gunmen, Crossline, 0 Lone Wolf and Cub - A Pack of Wolves, Lady Ninja: Reflections of Darkness (Ws Dub), Bless This House, Millions in My Account, A Bloody Fight, Sleepy Eyes of Death - Sword of Fire, Carry On Pickpocket, The Wedding Banquet, Weather Woman, They Came to Rob Hong Kong, God of Cookery, My Cousin the Ghost, DeviTop headlines: Skip storage! Wear summer garb in fall: Fashion is leaving its fickle nature behind as some of the fall's biggest trends are blurring the boundaries between seasons. TODAY style editor Bobbie Thomas offers tips for attaining a seasonless and chic look. ›19:25 4 Sep, Thu Growing older, staying married longer: In "September Songs," journalist Maggie Scarf shares the findings of her extensive interviews with aging couples, revealing how a longer life span affects marriage. 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Dr. Gail Saltz advises one reader who obliviously took advantage of her sister-in-law and now hopes to repair the strained relationship. ›20:55 4 Sep, Thu America's best beer festivals: We toast ten of the country's most popular and important beer festivals, including the Great American Beer Festival, Great Taste of the Midwest and the American Craft Beer Fest. ›18:22 3 Sep, Wed Wise answers to old wives' tales: In Jennet Conant's new book, "The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington," she explores the time the classic author was assigned to be a diplomat in Washington, D.C., and in charge of a secret mission, as well as Dahl's relationship with the great British spymaster William Stephenson. An excerpt. ›13:44 3 Sep, Wed Breaking Ramadan's fast in Ramallah: You know this country is in the midst of a housing crisis, but do you know what to do if you find yourself in a trouble? TODAY's Jean Chatzky offers tips for homeowners facing housing problems. ›21:02 29 Aug, Fri Leading geneticist to pen book on disease: Even as evidence mounts that Florida toddler Caylee Anthony is dead, her grandmother insisted Tuesday that the 3-year-old is alive and that the childs mother is only guilty of poor judgment and lying. ›13:48 2 Sep, Tue Couple wed at funeral home: On Sept. 9, the U.S. publisher of "Harry Potter" will premiere "The 39 Clues," a highly ambitious series with a mystery ending for readers and a couple of puzzlers for the industry: How big is the market for a multimedia story and can a phenomenon be conceived by a publisher rather than created by the public? ›13:27 2 Sep, Tue Q&A: Shawn Hornbecks Parents: The parents of kidnap victim Shawn Hornbeck speak out on the sentencing of their sons tormentor and the status of the boys recovery. ›20:50 12 Oct, Fri Let your babies grow up to be globe-trotters: Even by taking one trip abroad each year, parents can instill in their children an appreciation for languages, food, history and cultural traditions. ›15:07 3 Sep, Wed Keep your kids happy with healthy snacks: It's football season, and time for dedicated fans to show their team spiritthrough age-old cheers, judicious application of body paint, and pregame celebrations in stadium parking lots. Epicurious' Pableaux Johnson coaches you to pregame victory with these eight classic recipes, 11 must-have tools and tips for getting it all done. ›19:42 27 Aug, Wed 'War and Peace': New Versions Worth the Read: 'War and Peace' has been the Everest of literature for more than 150 years. Two new English versions remind us why Tolstoy's tome is still worth the climb. ›22:06 6 Oct, Sat Books Q&A: The Real Charles Schulz: 'Peanuts' creator Charles Schulz emerges as insecure and an emotionally distant father and husband in a new biography and documentary. ›22:32 9 Oct, Tue |
