News

Film Review: Spring Night 봄밤 Bombam (2024) - South Korea Rating: 7/10 Reviewed at Hong Kong Filmart 2025 2025 Review Count - 52 Support my goal of writing one film review per day in 2025 - https://www.patreon.com/neofilmreviews Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critics Circle of Australia) Tagline: This isn’t a film about love saving anyone. It’s about love “witnessing” and in that act, finding a kind of bruised grace. Kang Mi-ja’s “Spring Night” feels like a whispered confession—a film that aches with loneliness yet resists the urge to console. Seventeen years since her last feature, Kang returns with a story...

Film Review: Anora 阿諾拉 (2024) - USA Rating: 7.5/10 2025 Review Count - 51 Support my goal of writing one film review per day in 2025 - https://www.patreon.com/neofilmreviews Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critics Circle of Australia) Sean Baker’s “Anora” is a film that lingers in the liminal space between fairy tale and cautionary fable, where love is both a transaction and a rebellion. With his signature unflinching eye for marginalized lives, Baker invites us into the neon-lit world of Anora “Ani” Mikheeva (Mikey Madison), a Brooklyn stripper whose whirlwind marriage to the wayward oligarch heir Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn) becomes...

Film Review: Invincible Swordsman 笑傲江湖 (2025) - China Rating - 5/10 2025 Review Count - 50 Support my goal of writing one film review per day in 2025 - https://www.patreon.com/neofilmreviews Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critics Circle of Australia) The curse of the remake haunts “Invincible Swordsman”, a film that lunges at the legacy of “The Swordsman II” (1992) with all the grace of a novice stumbling through their first sword form. Directed by novice Luo Yiwei and shepherded by producer Wong Jing—a name synonymous with Hong Kong cinema’s vibrant excess—this reimagining of “The Smiling, Proud Wanderer” saga feels less...

Film Review: The H.K. Triad O記三合會檔案 (1999) - Hong Kong Rating: 6/10 2025 Review Count - 49 Support my goal of writing one film review per day in 2025 - https://www.patreon.com/neofilmreviews Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critics Circle of Australia) The late Clarence Fok’s “The H.K. Triad” opens with a promise of moral rot, a Hong Kong underworld parable where loyalty is a currency as fleeting as a triad boss’s reign. Fok, no stranger to lurid excess (“Naked Killer”), teams with producer Wong Jing to craft a tale that aspires to the operatic grit of Scorsese’s “Goodfellas”, but stumbles under...

Film Review: A Killer's Expiry Date (殺手再培訓) (1998) - Hong Kong Rating: 6/10 2025 Review Count - 48 Support my goal of writing one film review per day in 2025 - https://www.patreon.com/neofilmreviews Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critics Circle of Australia) Tagline: A middling but earnest entry in Hong Kong’s crime canon, worth watching for Lai’s performance and its haunting snapshot of a city—and a man—caught between eras. Yeung Yat-Tak’s “A Killer’s Expiry Date” is a film that flirts with poignancy but never fully commits to it—a crime drama caught between the grit of Hong Kong’s underworld and the sentimental...