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Film Review: In Broad Daylight 白日之下 (2023) Hong Kong 🇭🇰   Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critics Circle of Australia 🇦🇺) Socially relevant Hong Kong cinema is usually at its best when it depicts true events with real emotions and people. This is precisely what Director Lawrence Kan manages to portray the bleak state of both investigative journalism and atrocious treatment of elderly and disabled in private care homes. Both matters are dealt with quite literally and heads on, as the film is based on true events, making the film with an extra layer of heart felt emotions all the...

Film Review: The Pig, The Snake and The Pigeon (周處處三害) - Taiwan 🇹🇼  Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critics Circle of Australia 🇦🇺)   Hong Kong Director Wong Ching-Po’s first film in almost a decade comes in the form of the Taiwanese stylishly filmed crime redemption gangster thriller revenger “The Pig, The Snake and The Pigeon”. The film is clearly inspired by the fifth-century Chinese fable Zhou Chu Eradicates the Three Scourges. What makes this film unique to the usual gangster genre, is the focus on leaving a mark and legacy and as we follow the bad guy protagonist on...

Film Review: Social Distancing 电子灵 (2023) Hong Kong 🇭🇰 Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critics Circle of Australia 🇦🇺)   Inspired by the recent tragic and horrific South Korean - cyber crimes known as the “Nth rooms”, “Social Distancing” directed by Gilitte Leung (“Love Me Not”) goes for that route, but ends up trying to cross too many genres from mystery to murders to crimes to horror and eventually ends up no where. The storyline is so hard to follow with plenty of plot holes and inconsistencies making this Hong Kong film set during the pandemic, a rather difficult watch....

Film Review: Don’t Call It Mystery - The Movies 勿说是推理 (2023) Japan 🇯🇵   Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critics Circle of Australia 🇦🇺)   Adapted from the popular Japanese manga series and spin-off from the successful TV-drama of the same name, “Don’t Call it Mystery” takes the premises for the big screen debut. The result is an overlong divergent that feels like an extended episode of the mystery murder investigation series rather than an actual coherent movie. Director Hiroaki Matsuyama takes on the adaptation in a rather familiar way, the characters hardly have any introductions, as if assuming we...

Film Review: Killers of the Flower Moon 花月殺手 (2023) USA 🇺🇸 Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critics Circle of Australia 🇦🇺)Martin Scorsese once again created a masterclass of an epic film clocking over 200 minutes and yet there is not a moment to spare. “Killers of the Flower Moon” is the kind of classic, simple yet beautiful cinema that we used to see in the 70s Hollywood. Merge in the mix is the important real events of the 1920s Osage Murders where oil rich Native Americans are being murdered, killed and bombed one by one, so that the Whites can...