Tag: Shu Qi

Year of Shu Qi?

October 9, 2025

I’d been doing some mental leaps this past year when it comes to Taiwanese superstar Shu Qi’s film and TV projects. I knew that she wrote and directed her debut Girl, which recently won her Best Director at the Busan International Film Festival, and that she was starring in a Netflix series entitled The Resurrected, which released today. I did not put together that she was also starring in a movie entitled Resurrection, which opened at Cannes. That’s confusing! All three are really interesting, though; Resurrection appears to be some kind of avant garde sci-fi movie. And she’s spoken about Girl being a first for her, encouraged by longtime creative collaborator Hou Hsiao-hsien. … More Year of Shu Qi?

Battle of the Sexes | My Wife is a Gangster 3 (2006) Review

June 20, 2021

There’s a tropey thing in movies where the badass hero guy goes big-league, demonstrating killer skills outside his usual environment. Maybe it’s Ray Liotta pistol-whipping the guy in Goodfellas, or Jason Statham beating up the basketball court in The Expendables. We know they deal with bigger threats, so this one’s just for fun — applied badass. I went looking through the Goodfellas listing on TV Tropes and didn’t find anything, though the scene is considered, among others, an example of their trope “All Girls Want Bad Boys.” True enough, in both cases, the badass application makes audience of a woman (“I gotta admit, It turned me on,” says Karen Hill). … More Battle of the Sexes | My Wife is a Gangster 3 (2006) Review

Kicking Ass and Breaking My Heart | So Close (2002) Review

October 18, 2020

I’m a talker. I talk to movies, I talk at the screen. It’s weird, but I do it. I was fully expecting to come into a review of So Close focused on how it’s the guiltiest guilty pleasure, how its predictability is disarming on purpose and that purpose is just north of lurid, but then it pulls a turn with 30 minutes on the clock that had me shouting. The climax plays out and I’m sitting there with “Here she comes.” “This is where she comes in.” “She’s coming back.” “Could they really…?” and then the credits roll and I am just “What the fuck?” “Are you fucking kidding me?” “What the fuck?” It’s the next morning as I write this [diary entry] and the sting resounds still. … More Kicking Ass and Breaking My Heart | So Close (2002) Review