Tsui Hark

[Mr Sausage]

Tsui Hark (1950- )



Emotion is the most essential element in my films. By taking many shots from different angles, I can bring out the emotions of a scene.

Filmography
Features (*=screenwriter)
The Butterfly Murders (1979)
We're Going to Eat You / Hell Has No Gates* (1980)
Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind / Don't Play with Fire* (1980)
All the Wrong Clues for the Right Solution* (1981)
Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983)
Search for the Gods (1983)
Shanghai Blues (1984)
Aces Go Places 3 / Mad Mission 3: Our Man from Bond Street (1984)
Working Class (1985)
Peking Opera Blues (1986)
I Love Maria / Roboforce (1988) [uncredited; co-directed with David Chung]
The Big Heat (1988) [uncredited; co-directed with Johnnie To and Kam Yeung-Wah]
A Better Tomorrow III: Love and Death in Saigon* (1989)
The Swordsman (1990) [uncredited; co-directed with King Hu, Raymond Lee, and Ching Siu-Tung]
The Raid (1991)* [co-directed with Ching Siu-Tung]
A Chinese Ghost Story III* (1991) [uncredited; co-directed with Ching Siu-Tung]
King of Chess (1991) [uncredited; co-directed with Yim Ho]
Once Upon a Time in China* (1991)
The Banquet* (1991) [co-directed with Alfred Cheung, Joe Cheung, and Clifton Ko]
Twin Dragons / Brother vs. Brother* (1992) [co-directed with Ringo Lam]
Once Upon a Time in China II* (1992)
The Master* (1992)
Once Upon a Time in China III* (1992)
Dragon Inn* (1992) [uncredited; co-directed with Raymond Lee and Ching Siu-Tung]
Green Snake* (1993)
The Lovers (1994)
Once Upon a Time in China V (1994)
The Chinese Feast (1995)
Love in the Time of Twilight (1995)
The Blade (1995)
Tristar* (1996)
Double Team (1997)
Knock Off (1998)
Time and Tide* (2000)
The Legend of Zu / Zu Warriors* (2001)
Black Mask 2: City of Masks (2002)
Seven Swords* (2005)
Triangle* (2007) [co-directed with Ringo Lam and Johnnie To]
Missing* (2008)
All About Women* (2008)
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010)
Flying Swords of Dragon Gate* (2011)
Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon* (2013)
The Taking of Tiger Mountain* (2014)
Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back* (2017)
Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings (2018)
The Battle at Lake Changjin (2021) [co-directed with Chen Kaige and Dante Lam]
The Battle at Lake Changjin II / Water Gate Bridge (2022) [co-directed with Chen Kaige and Dante Lam]
The Legend of the Condor Heroes: The Great Hero (forthcoming)

Shorts
"Of a Cause" (2003) [segment, 1:99 Shorts]
"Conversation in Depth" (2014) [segment, Septet: the Story of Hong Kong]

Television
Spirit Chaser Aisha (1986)
"The Final Victory" — Once Upon a Time in China / Wong Fei Hung Series (1996)
"The Ideal Century" — Once Upon a Time in China / Wong Fei Hung Series (1996)

Books
The Cinema of Tsui Hark by Lisa Morton (2001)

Web Resources
2000 interview with Stephen Short, Time
2001 interview with IGN
2001 interview with Ryan Mottesheard, IndieWire
2011 interview with Grady Hendrix, Film Comment (Part 1)
2011 interview with Grady Hendrix, Film Comment (Part 2)

Forum Resources
Hong Kong Cinema
1103 Once Upon a Time in China: The Complete Films
Seven Swords (Tsui Hark, 2005)

_________

Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind (1980)

A grimy, nihilistic film about urban despair, terrorism, and sociopathy. Three bored kids set off bombs in public places for fun. A cruel young woman witnesses it and blackmails them into further antisocial acts. Despite the bleakness of the material, there’s something transfixing about the story, its energy and degradation. The Kowloon slums are an oppressive setting, cramped, dirty, claustrophobic, and lend an atmosphere of stifling inescapability. Tho it’s claimed the film was inspired by the unrest of 1967, it’s hard to form any coherent political message or even themes from the movie. The film implies the social conditions of HK breed disaffection and antisocial behaviour among the youth, but no further connection to politics is made. From the little I know, the 1967 riots were explicitly ideological. So is Tsui accusing the 1967 rioters of being just angry young people full of antisocial fervour, their specific ideology only an outlet for a more general nihilistic desire to burn it all down? Who knows. You have to make the connections yourself. The subject and political connections seem more like a pretext to make an angry, aggressive movie about violence and destruction. Yet the energetic cynicism is fascinating and I find the film lingering with me. But I doubt I’ll ever watch it again: the film contains heinous scenes of unsimulated animal torture, and everyone involved in that is reprehensible and can go fuck themselves.


Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983)

Tsui’s huge blockbuster success, a special effects extravaganza that helped set the tone and style for wuxia films for a decade or more (helped along by Tsui’s role as producer of many such films). Here begins Tsui’s fixation on energy and momentum over narrative coherence. We whip from location to location, battle to battle, character to character with only the barest connective tissue between it all. That headlong, freewheeling energy is exactly the reason to watch. So much colour and verve, you can hardly catch your breath.

Green Snake (1993)

A lush, romantic fantasy and morality play based on an old Chinese folk tale of two snakes, one green, one white, who become human, fall in love, and learn the ways of the world. I understand the story is usually told from the older white snake’s perspective, while Tsui takes Green Snake as his central character. The movie is so committed to its naïve mode of story telling that if you can’t give yourself over to its rhythm, the whole thing is going to seem hopelessly ridiculous. Astonishing painterly compositions sit alongside early-90s music video cheese in a way I found charming and fun, but will set others’ teeth on edge. The film struck a surprisingly down note in the end: people, for all their vast systems of religion and ethics, for all their righteousness, can’t seem to figure out what they mean by “love” tho’ they go on and on about it.


The Blade (1995)

A riff on Chang Cheh’s One Armed Swordsman. Tsui abandons his usual aesthetic for something more raw and chaotic, and also more expressionistic. The shots are choppy and shaky, often using handheld pans within scenes documentary-style; the cinematography is grainy, and the colours muted and dark, tho’ sharp moments of primary colours will hit the screen to accentuate an emotion. The plot is a familiar family revenge saga: orphan discovers his father had been brutally murdered, goes nuts, looses an arm, abandons the world, is called back to it, becomes a great fighter, gets revenge on father’s murderer. Like most Tsui movies, the style is the reason to watch.

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010)

A Sherlock Holmes-style historical mystery mixed with wuxia action. A couple court functionaries suffer spontaneous human combustion, and Dee, a former investigator in prison for rebelling against the new Empress, is recalled to solve the case. The Holmesian rational mystery solving stuff sits oddly in a universe with talking deer, six-armed musicians, and roaming gods and spirits. More than a Tsui Hark film, what this most resembles is the Guy Ritchie Sherlock actioners that were coming out at the same time. The movie feels bland and mundane, not helped by the flat, overlit cinematography and stiff, overbright CGI. Considering it’s Tsui Hark, one of HKs great stylists, I’m at a loss at how visually unappealing the film is. Was it shot on digital? The film seems bleached of texture and tone; everything has the same flat, enervated look. I’m unsurprised this got no reaction even from Tsui fans—it’s bland, inoffensive entertainment, distinguishable from endless Hollywood blockbusters only by its being Chinese. Also, one of the characters is named Donkey Wang. And not as a joke


Detective Dee: the Four Heavenly Kings (2018)

A prequel to the previous film. More a fantasy action cum political thriller with a mystery subplot. The future Empress plots against Dee by hiring a cadre of mercenaries with special skills to steal his magic mace, a loss that would leave him open to official censure as it was granted by the Emperor. Tsui has a fun way of conveying clues and showing Dee working out what happened entirely through visuals. Tsui’s really upped his game as a director of mysteries, which makes it somewhat a shame that he mostly abandons the detective aspect after the first act. Dee spends much of his time on the sidelines, calmly and inexplicably two steps ahead of everyone while his underlings or friends, ie. the audience surrogates, struggle to catch up. The cinematography remains consistently overbright in every scene, robbing the film of any texture, the compositions are mostly workmanlike, and the CGI is bad. And yet I had fun watching this one: it’s a more lively film, unconstrained by the mundane Guy Ritchie business of the first. Still, as with the first, it’s essentially pro-ruling class. Not full-throatedly; there is some hesitation: rulers can be mistaken, they can be misguided, even manipulated; but ultimately, rulers are good and necessary and will do the right thing, indeed are the only ones we can trust to hold civilization together. Neither movie goes as far as outright propaganda (tho’ Tsui has made some before, eg. Once Upon a Time in China II), but they are careful not to insult the ruling class while ensuring opposition is demonized.

[therewillbeblus]

Tsui seems far more eclectic than I expected after Zu! I loved that one too:

I'm a bit speechless- as if I've finally discovered a masterpiece amongst the fluff that make the rounds at the Brattle's Trash Night, only to find out that everyone was ten steps ahead of me. This schizophrenic cocktail of fun feels like Karel Zeman, Nobuhiko Obayashi, and Jim Henson fought for creative control on an Indiana Jones wuxia film, only to deliver a final product that contains the best of each diverse artist.

[Mr Sausage]

I've seen a bit over a third of the 30-something films he's made, but just going by that, Tsui Hark is the most restless and mutable filmmaker I've ever seen. He jumps from subject to subject and style to style at a moment's notice. One film is a misanthropic thumb in our collective eye, the next is a musical slapstick, the next a wuxia fantasy, and the next a traditional kung fu historical picture. In many ways I think auteurism is inadequate to describe Tsui Hark. Maybe the only consistent thing I can say about him is that he's an aestheticist, even primarily an aestheticist. Tho' he does have a love for Chinese folklore as well as an interest in gender-bending across his films as both director and producer. But even so, there're probably more of his film that don't contain those things than do.

[therewillbeblus]

Fascinating, I'd be interested in hearing which of his films are more in the vein of "musical slapstick"/"wuxia fantasy" like Zu, but also in general what your favorites are (oh and thanks for the warning on Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind, which sounds terrific except for the animal torture... I'll be debating whether or not to watch that one for a bit)

[Mr Sausage]

Fascinating, I'd be interested in hearing which of his films are more in the vein of "musical slapstick"/"wuxia fantasy" like Zu, but also in general what your favorites are (oh and thanks for the warning on Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind, which sounds terrific except for the animal torture... I'll be debating whether or not to watch that one for a bit)

If you want stuff more akin to Zu, I'd check out his work as a producer, especially Swordsman II and its sequel, The East is Red. Swordsman II in particular is one of the most interesting and affecting wuxia films I've ever seen, not just for its boundless energy and invention, but for how at its centre is a trans-romance. Brigitte Lin (who seems to specialize in gender-bending roles) plays a character who castrates himself to gain ultimate martial arts power, only to find himself actually transform slowly into a woman. She even develops a touching romance with Jet Li of all people! It's the only time I've ever seen Jet Li have an onscreen romance, and it's with a trans-woman! There's a beautiful scene of them flying through the forest with blossom petals falling around them, this lovely moment of happiness amidst all the betrayal and clan warfare. And the movie ends with two affecting mirror scenes using the same language, but with different tones: the first a moment of gay panic, the second one of melancholy and loss. It really is a great movie. The East is Red, a sequel built to capitalize on the popularity of the Brigitte Lin character, is not quite as good, but it's twice as nutty and has some fascinating gender-bending involving Lin and Joey Wong. Good stuff. They weren't directed by Tsui officially, but they bear all the hallmarks of his style (and he was a notoriously heavy-handed producer).

Tsui in a more musical comic mode is stuff like Shanghai Blues or All the Wrong Clues for the Right Solution, tho' admittedly I haven't seen them yet.

I feel insecure assigning favourites, honestly. His work is so varied, there's a lot of essential stuff I haven't seen yet, and a good chunk of what I have seen I saw back in high school. But of the films he's directed, I'd say We're Going to Eat You, Dangerous Encounters, Zu, Green Snake, and Once Upon a Time in China made the biggest impressions on me. Add to that Swordsman II and East is Red, and you have my Tsui favourites I guess.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

I've seen a bit over a third of the 30-something films he's made, but just going by that, Tsui Hark is the most restless and mutable filmmaker I've ever seen. He jumps from subject to subject and style to style at a moment's notice. One film is a misanthropic thumb in our collective eye, the next is a musical slapstick, the next a wuxia fantasy, and the next a traditional kung fu historical picture. In many ways I think auteurism is inadequate to describe Tsui Hark. Maybe the only consistent thing I can say about him is that he's an aestheticist, even primarily an aestheticist. Tho' he does have a love for Chinese folklore as well as an interest in gender-bending across his films as both director and producer. But even so, there're probably more of his film that don't contain those things than do.

I do think calling him an aestheticist is not wrong, but I do think there's a bit more. In addition to the elements of folklore and legend that's in his work, he's fascinated by Chinese history as well from his earliest work onward. I think he tries to keep a sort of pulse on what the market wants as well and keeps close to it, so it makes sense that he's now doing massive, jingoistic war epics. I do think he also has periods as well. His first three works are relentlessly grim born from his early days as an angry Marxist, then you have him working for Karl Maka and Golden Harvest which gets him to tap into his populist sensibility (I can't think of any night and day difference in style with a director more than with how Dangerous Encounters was followed by All the Wrong Clues), and then his obsession with Chinese history and folklore with his 90s work that imagine a more united China in the wake of the '97 handover. He's also one of those producers who's very hands-on with those productions (Dragon Inn, Robotrix, A Chinese Ghost Story and even newer stuff like The Climbers) and I don't think John Woo would've reached his full potential as he did with A Better Tomorrow through Hard Boiled if it wasn't for Tsui's hand helping him with those first heroic bloodshed films. That's not even mentioning the numerous films he acts in like Final Victory and Yes, Madam.

Fascinating, I'd be interested in hearing which of his films are more in the vein of "musical slapstick"/"wuxia fantasy" like Zu, but also in general what your favorites are (oh and thanks for the warning on Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind, which sounds terrific except for the animal torture... I'll be debating whether or not to watch that one for a bit)

Shanghai Blues is probably the best of his comedies. Peking Opera Blues is something between comedy slapstick and action and is one of his career peaks. Robotrix is a fun sci-fi action-comedy with a very young Tony Leung. His entry into the Aces Go Places series is the best one for sure.

Also wrote about Dangerous Encounters in the Once Upon a Time in China thread:

I've seen both cuts multiple times and have had the pleasure of seeing the theatrical cut once on 35mm. The original cut of the film is more implicit with its political undertones. The theatrical version portrays the three male youths as being sort of bumbling idiots who accidentally fall into a grave situation, while the original cut portrays them as socially disconnected bourgeois who take amusement in their destructive behavior. The biggest difference is that they're amateur terrorists detonating homemade bombs around Hong Kong, an element completely (and sort of sloppily) removed in the theatrical cut. I believe it was thanks to the editor of the film who saved a copy of the original film onto VHS that we're lucky to have that version at all and knowing how Hong Kong cinema treats archival material, I doubt the 35mm negative of the cut parts exist. I also sort of can't conceive of any label putting this film out on any format as it the original cut has THREE acts of unsimulated animal violence. I do hope someone gets around to releasing this as it's one of my favorite Tsui films and the perfect example of the cynicism that underlines his early career. After those first three incredibly grim Tsui Hark films, it's insane to think he followed this up with All the Wrong Clues, a comedy with one of the most cartoonish bar fights in any movie. It seems like his transition from his Seasonal Film Corporation to Cinema City had him abandon the Marxist undertones and adopt a much more populist sensibility.

I'm glad Mr Sausage is talking about Tsui's cinema. I'd love for this to spin into its own thread.

[Glowingwabbit]

Fascinating, I'd be interested in hearing which of his films are more in the vein of "musical slapstick"/"wuxia fantasy" like Zu, but also in general what your favorites are (oh and thanks for the warning on Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind, which sounds terrific except for the animal torture... I'll be debating whether or not to watch that one for a bit)

I think I only lasted 20-30 minutes in even though I loved what I had seen up to that point from a visual standpoint. Unfortunately the animal torture was just too much for me to continue with it. I'm usually able to overlook some animal cruelty in films as much as I hate seeing it, but it was too much for me in this case. Like Mr. Sausage said, everyone involved is an absolute piece of shit.

I'll agree with Mr. Sausage that Swordsman II is a fantastic wuxia and I second that recommendation. I'm also a big fan of his first film The Butterfly Murders which is a wuxia by way of Roger Corman and Dario Argento.

[therewillbeblus]

I actually have The Butterfly Murders on hand, which I planned to watch for the First Features project but never got around to, so it's been on deck for quite some time... all these recommendations are much appreciated, everyone!

[Mr Sausage]

Do I need to watch the first two Aces Go Places films to watch Tsui's entry? Because I'd rather not have to slog my way through two tedious Cantonese comedies just to earn another notch in an already packed filmography.

[bad future]

Robotrix is a fun sci-fi action-comedy with a very young Tony Leung.

Not sure if this would actually throw anyone off, but I think the film you're talking about here is usually known as Roboforce or I Love Maria in English, while Robotrix is a different Golden Harvest film from a few years later. Maria is really fun though, with a great comedic Tsui performance to boot!

Loving the discussion; don't have a lot to add, just appreciate hearing from those who've explored his filmography at greater depth than I have. My favorites of what I've seen so far are the "Blues"'s Shanghai and Peking Opera, and Green Snake.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

Robotrix is a fun sci-fi action-comedy with a very young Tony Leung.

Not sure if this would actually throw anyone off, but I think the film you're talking about here is usually known as Roboforce or I Love Maria in English, while Robotrix is a different Golden Harvest film from a few years later. Maria is really fun though, with a great comedic Tsui performance to boot!

Wow! Thanks for flagging that. Robotrix is VERY different than Roboforce. Hahaha! But yes, I did mean the Tsui produced film, which from accounts was probably mostly directed by him.

Do I need to watch the first two Aces Go Places films to watch Tsui's entry? Because I'd rather not have to slog my way through two tedious Cantonese comedies just to earn another notch in an already packed filmography.

You don’t need to really see the other Aces Go Places film. I went from part one straight to Tsui’s entry and didn’t feel like I needed more context. Tsui’s entry functions as a parody of James Bond films and has a bit of an anti-colonial, anti-English slant to it if I recall. The Aces Go Places films are also quite fun. I think David Bordwell has written about how much he loves the series. Instead of typical Canton comedies with bad perverted jokes and lazy slapstick, it’s pretty visually inventive with large set pieces and ostentacious design.

But if you’re looking to see Tsui as a director of straight-ahead comedy, my favorite film in that genre is Working Class. His box office hit, All the Wrong Clues, is spotty and not throughly consistent, but Working Class is consistently funny and features the frentic editing and visual imagination of his action features.

[Mr Sausage]

More Tsui Hark


Zu Warriors (2001)

Somewhere amidst the ideas of sequel, reboot, remake, and readaptation of the material lies this particular movie. A new story set within the universe of the original, but how attached to that original is hard to say. These Zu movies aren’t concerned with even their own internal coherence, let alone coherency across films. It doesn’t matter. All you need to know: good fights evil in a phantasmagoria. Tsui gets to play with CGI this time around, and while that CGI is primitive and shows it, the images are so imaginative and the cinematography so beautiful and intricate that, like the original, the dodgy FX become a part of the palette. The early 90s HK style, the greens and blues, wind and fog, fluttering silks and banners, the backlights, it’s all here at this late stage and in Tsui’s hands loses none of its freshness. This is a more apocalyptic film: catastrophic destruction resounds on both the mortal and spiritual planes; main characters die at a bewildering pace, and new ones are (re)created in their place to carry on their endless tasks in an ever more disordered world. I enjoyed this as much as the first one. Has enough energy and invention for a dozen films.


Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon (2013)

What happened in the decade between Zu Warriors and these Detective Dee films? All the visual majesty seems to’ve left Tsui. Or did he abandon it himself? He seems a canny interpreter of market forces and something of an opportunist. His latest works, the Dee films especially, have been extremely popular in China, critically and commercially, making him one of the most bankable filmmakers in that market. Perhaps Tsui hasn’t lost his touch so much as correctly seen modern Chinese tastes as favouring less manic and restless, more even-handed and Hollywood-esque blockbusters and tailored his style accordingly. I can hardly blame him. Maintaining a successful and productive film career for over 40 years in a rapidly changing foreign market is a considerable achievement and takes not just skill but a canny awareness of the industry. Perhaps Tsui just gets the current market better than most. And maybe I’m being a bit hard on Tsui, too, because while I found the other Dee’s flatly shot with flagging energy, this one has more life to it. The lighting remains overbright and flat, but Tsui can still compose a lively frame, and there is the occasional bravura camera movement amidst the more prosaic shots. Why does this, the middle film, seem to bristle with more of the old Tsui energy? Otherwise, it’s much like the first, a familiar mystery story with Chinese history and politics as a backdrop. Mostly it made me think Tsui would be perfect for a Marvel or Disney blockbuster. He could bring what remains of his style and sensibility to those mostly anonymous works. But I’d guess his time in America in the late 90s has soured him on Hollywood.


The Butterfly Murders (1979)

A fixed-setting murder mystery, an old-dark-house gothic, a giallo, a wuxia, a period drama, an ecological horror, a piece of insanity—it’s Tsui expressing the astonishing mutability and restlessness of his coming career in a single film by stuffing multiple different stories and genres into one strange whole. Inexplicable hordes of butterflies are showing up, killing people, then vanishing. To figure out what’s going on, a clan leader gathers his clan at a mysteriously abandoned castle. The body count rises, suspects proliferate, and things grow more and more confusing. Not as manic as even Tsui’s follow up, We’re Going to Eat You, but still full of nuttery and low-budget visual energy. Never seen anything like it.


Flying Swords of Dragon Gate (2011)

Not quite a remake of or sequel to the earlier remake, New Dragon Gate Inn. I can’t quite say what it is. A reimagining? It’s the same basic story transplanted some years after the original, with new characters and sub plots plus a lot of added background material. Visually, it’s of a piece with the Detective Dee films. Another Tsui attempt at steady, serious-minded commercial filmmaking. Tsui films are often over-stuffed, but they make up for it with free-wheeling momentum. The choice to film this one in the manner of a professionally crafted modern historical epic really highlights the bloat. The premise doesn’t need much to work, but Tsui throws so many complications and characters at it that he risks exhausting the viewer. On top of that, while Jet Li is always a welcome presence, and Gordon Liu has a fun cameo, the main cast is largely forgettable. A shame given the original was stuffed with talent like Maggie Cheung, Brigitte Lin, and Tony Leung Ka-Fei. It's fine, it passes a couple hours well enough, but it's unmemorable and squarely in line with Tsui's current style of conventional filmmaking.

[knives]

I do think a piece of connective tissue between the earlier and later films which nonetheless evidences your point is how he presents his humour. For example Young Detective Dee deals with the oils and juices of the body in gross ways, but unlike before he uses it casually in way that hides their transgressions.

Tsui’s whole aesthetic has seemingly evolved in that direction where he’s not doing the crazy tricks of, say, the American films and instead seems curious of how to trick them in. It’s a weird thing to say about such loud films, but there’s a sort of minimalism going on that might be better read as a Buddhist self negation with a wink.

[Mr Sausage]

Tsui Hark in the 80s.

Tsui made some brilliant films in the 80s. These are not them (with one important exception).


Peking Opera Blues (1986)

Another multi hyphenate Tsui film, this time set in the fascinating world of Peking Opera. Three women--a cross-dressing revolutionary, a travelling musician in search of a box of jewels, and the daughter of an opera house owner--find themselves thrust together in an ever more complicated plot. By turns bawdy, comic, thrilling, and sensitive, the movie’s a gem. Even the broad Cantonese comedy I’ve never been into seems to work. The film combines seamlessly a number of Tsui’s key interests: Chinese history and politics, art and artifice, and gender-bending, as well as his three main modes: comedy, tragedy, and action. The most cohesive and satisfying example of Tsui’s whiplash style of cinema. As entertaining as his grand spectacles, but with more attention to character and theme. There are moments here that are genuinely touching and beautiful, and moments so exciting and outrageous you can hardly believe it. This might well be Tsui’s best film. Why is it so unavailable? A Criterion release would be a dream.


All the Wrong Clues for the Right Solution (1981)

One of the hardest right turns in cinema history: Tsui Hark went from three aggressive, genre-busting films with a deeply pessimistic outlook to this, a wacky gangster comedy. Tsui had given hints there was something like this in him: his second film, We’re Going to Eat You, had long sections of broad Cantonese comedy and a grim slapstick sensibility. But to go from the gadfly nihilism of Dangerous Encounters to a broad crowd pleaser like this is kind of bonkers. Tsui was tired I guess of failing at the box office and wanted to court a popular audience--and he succeeded; this was a huge smash and set his career going. A notorious gangster gets out of prison and wants to kill the bumbling PI that put him there. The gags rely on the manic and the non-sequitur. I’ve never been on Tsui’s comic wavelength—he prefers a style of low-brow Cantonese comedy popular with Chinese audiences at the time and found widely throughout HK films, but one I find tedious. At its best, with Peking Opera Blues, the broad comedy works as part of the general fun. At worst, with, say, We’re Going to Eat You, it stops the film dead in its tracks for long periods. This movie has both: there are some delightful visual gags and impressive energy, but endless amounts of eye-rolling silliness. I’m happy the film furthered his career, but it’s a poor example of Tsui’s talents.


Working Class (1985)

The bumbling antics of some working class broke guys in Hong Kong. A group of friends lose their jobs at the same time for general irresponsibility and start hatching schemes to get employment despite being comically bad at living. Joey Wong is a super rich heiress who falls in love with the handsome one and pretends to be working class to get with him. Tsui Hark in humour mode is not my thing. It’s endless mugging with characters, lines, and situations that’d make more sense if everyone was 13 and not grown men. As for Joey Wong, she spent her early career playing mostly wide-eyed delicate flowers. It wasn’t until her later career that she found more intense and commanding roles to show off her talents, including other Tsui productions like Green Snake and The East is Red. Here she’s cute but forgettable, an empty object of male fulfillment without a personality of her own. Hard to believe this was only a year before the gender subversions and complex female roles of Peking Opera Blues. But really everyone’s a broad stereotype in this movie, and at least she’s not shrieking away like all the other young women in the film. I was expecting more whiz-bang visual artistry from Tsui, but the energy is all in the wacky performances and silly situations instead of the editing and camera work. Oddly, I find Tsui the most fun when he’s not trying to make me laugh.


A Better Tomorrow 3: Love and Death in Saigon (1989)

Tsui was the producer on John Woo’s breakout film, the industry shaking A Better Tomorrow. It made stars of Chow Yun-Fat and Leslie Cheung, it defined style and cool for a generation of Hong Kongers, and it established John Woo’s signature style. As fruitful as that collaboration was, it soured immediately with the sequel. Tsui’s well-known heavy handedness caused problems with Woo, a confidant and assured artist in his own right with a highly individual sensibility. The result: they edited different halves of the film separately (Woo’s half is better) and mostly parted ways. Before that, Woo had an idea for a third sequel set in Vietnam during the Vietnam war. Woo would eventually turn the idea into Bullet in the Head, while Tsui would take Woo’s idea and make his own sequel, this movie. I’d love to know why. Bullet in the Head came out the following year: did Tsui rush this sequel into production to beat Woo’s film out of spite or what? The previous two films don’t resemble Tsui movies at all—they’re pure Woo in style and tone. And this movie has its own completely different style, tone, and subject. That it’s a Better Tomorrow film at all is down entirely to the title, a character name, and a couple music cues. Change them and you’d never guess the movies were related. It functions as a prequel, showing how the Chow Yun-Fat character spent his time before becoming a gangster in Hong Kong. The movie’s a gangster romance set during the final days of the war as Saigon descended into chaos. The movie has some style—it’s Tsui after all—but flounders when it tries to copy Woo’s visual signature. Tsui does better with the frenetic and outlandish than with Woo’s ballet rhythms, so the action scenes are sluggish and ridiculous instead of exciting. More interesting is how Tsui responds to Woo’s hyper masculine cinema by placing a woman, Anita Mui, front and centre, letting her power and competence be what Chow Yun-Fat’s apex gangster ultimately models himself on in the original film. She even teaches him how to fire a gun. Beyond this, Tsui’s heart doesn’t seem in it. The movie never comes to life. The material is slackly handled, the characterization weak, and the action rarely satisfying. An odd way for Tsui to end the 80s.


Aces Go Places 3 (1984)

A spy parody rather than a caper comedy like the first, but still much the same thing: a chaotic assemblage of gags and stunts. You can see little Tui touches here and there, like the over-tuned editing that turns action nearly into a series of spatially disconnected moments within a larger piece of movement (one of Tsui’s collaborators attributes this style to Tsui’s early love of comic books), the pull-ins and -outs, characters in drag, and just an overall increased sense of hyperactivity. But mostly this resembles the Eric Tsang entries. There’s always some crazy new thing happening. One of those films with enormous amounts of plot, but little story. Basically James Bond recruits Sam Hui’s jewel thief (inexplicably named King Kong) to recover Queen Elizabeth’s stolen crown. It’s an excuse for rapid-fire parodies of everything from Bond films to Mad Max to Jaws. I found the first Aces intermittently amusing. This one’s more consistent, the madcap changeability in situations offsetting the juvenile comic sensibility. That said, the movie does stop dead a few times for some unrelated laugh-free scenes with two characters from the first movie.

[yoloswegmaster]

SpoilerShow

Tsui Hark in the 80s.

Tsui made some brilliant films in the 80s. These are not them (with one important exception).


Peking Opera Blues (1986)

Another multi hyphenate Tsui film, this time set in the fascinating world of Peking Opera. Three women--a cross-dressing revolutionary, a travelling musician in search of a box of jewels, and the daughter of an opera house owner--find themselves thrust together in an ever more complicated plot. By turns bawdy, comic, thrilling, and sensitive, the movie’s a gem. Even the broad Cantonese comedy I’ve never been into seems to work. The film combines seamlessly a number of Tsui’s key interests: Chinese history and politics, art and artifice, and gender-bending, as well as his three main modes: comedy, tragedy, and action. The most cohesive and satisfying example of Tsui’s whiplash style of cinema. As entertaining as his grand spectacles, but with more attention to character and theme. There are moments here that are genuinely touching and beautiful, and moments so exciting and outrageous you can hardly believe it. This might well be Tsui’s best film. Why is it so unavailable? A Criterion release would be a dream.


All the Wrong Clues for the Right Solution (1981)

One of the hardest right turns in cinema history: Tsui Hark went from three aggressive, genre-busting films with a deeply pessimistic outlook to this, a wacky gangster comedy. Tsui had given hints there was something like this in him: his second film, We’re Going to Eat You, had long sections of broad Cantonese comedy and a grim slapstick sensibility. But to go from the gadfly nihilism of Dangerous Encounters to a broad crowd pleaser like this is kind of bonkers. Tsui was tired I guess of failing at the box office and wanted to court a popular audience--and he succeeded; this was a huge smash and set his career going. A notorious gangster gets out of prison and wants to kill the bumbling PI that put him there. The gags rely on the manic and the non-sequitur. I’ve never been on Tsui’s comic wavelength—he prefers a style of low-brow Cantonese comedy popular with Chinese audiences at the time and found widely throughout HK films, but one I find tedious. At its best, with Peking Opera Blues, the broad comedy works as part of the general fun. At worst, with, say, We’re Going to Eat You, it stops the film dead in its tracks for long periods. This movie has both: there are some delightful visual gags and impressive energy, but endless amounts of eye-rolling silliness. I’m happy the film furthered his career, but it’s a poor example of Tsui’s talents.


Working Class (1985)

The bumbling antics of some working class broke guys in Hong Kong. A group of friends lose their jobs at the same time for general irresponsibility and start hatching schemes to get employment despite being comically bad at living. Joey Wong is a super rich heiress who falls in love with the handsome one and pretends to be working class to get with him. Tsui Hark in humour mode is not my thing. It’s endless mugging with characters, lines, and situations that’d make more sense if everyone was 13 and not grown men. As for Joey Wong, she spent her early career playing mostly wide-eyed delicate flowers. It wasn’t until her later career that she found more intense and commanding roles to show off her talents, including other Tsui productions like Green Snake and The East is Red. Here she’s cute but forgettable, an empty object of male fulfillment without a personality of her own. Hard to believe this was only a year before the gender subversions and complex female roles of Peking Opera Blues. But really everyone’s a broad stereotype in this movie, and at least she’s not shrieking away like all the other young women in the film. I was expecting more whiz-bang visual artistry from Tsui, but the energy is all in the wacky performances and silly situations instead of the editing and camera work. Oddly, I find Tsui the most fun when he’s not trying to make me laugh.


A Better Tomorrow 3: Love and Death in Saigon (1989)

Tsui was the producer on John Woo’s breakout film, the industry shaking A Better Tomorrow. It made stars of Chow Yun-Fat and Leslie Cheung, it defined style and cool for a generation of Hong Kongers, and it established John Woo’s signature style. As fruitful as that collaboration was, it soured immediately with the sequel. Tsui’s well-known heavy handedness caused problems with Woo, a confidant and assured artist in his own right with a highly individual sensibility. The result: they edited different halves of the film separately (Woo’s half is better) and mostly parted ways. Before that, Woo had an idea for a third sequel set in Vietnam during the Vietnam war. Woo would eventually turn the idea into Bullet in the Head, while Tsui would take Woo’s idea and make his own sequel, this movie. I’d love to know why. Bullet in the Head came out the following year: did Tsui rush this sequel into production to beat Woo’s film out of spite or what? The previous two films don’t resemble Tsui movies at all—they’re pure Woo in style and tone. And this movie has its own completely different style, tone, and subject. That it’s a Better Tomorrow film at all is down entirely to the title, a character name, and a couple music cues. Change them and you’d never guess the movies were related. It functions as a prequel, showing how the Chow Yun-Fat character spent his time before becoming a gangster in Hong Kong. The movie’s a gangster romance set during the final days of the war as Saigon descended into chaos. The movie has some style—it’s Tsui after all—but flounders when it tries to copy Woo’s visual signature. Tsui does better with the frenetic and outlandish than with Woo’s ballet rhythms, so the action scenes are sluggish and ridiculous instead of exciting. More interesting is how Tsui responds to Woo’s hyper masculine cinema by placing a woman, Anita Mui, front and centre, letting her power and competence be what Chow Yun-Fat’s apex gangster ultimately models himself on in the original film. She even teaches him how to fire a gun. Beyond this, Tsui’s heart doesn’t seem in it. The movie never comes to life. The material is slackly handled, the characterization weak, and the action rarely satisfying. An odd way for Tsui to end the 80s.


Aces Go Places 3 (1984)

A spy parody rather than a caper comedy like the first, but still much the same thing: a chaotic assemblage of gags and stunts. You can see little Tui touches here and there, like the over-tuned editing that turns action nearly into a series of spatially disconnected moments within a larger piece of movement (one of Tsui’s collaborators attributes this style to Tsui’s early love of comic books), the pull-ins and -outs, characters in drag, and just an overall increased sense of hyperactivity. But mostly this resembles the Eric Tsang entries. There’s always some crazy new thing happening. One of those films with enormous amounts of plot, but little story. Basically James Bond recruits Sam Hui’s jewel thief (inexplicably named King Kong) to recover Queen Elizabeth’s stolen crown. It’s an excuse for rapid-fire parodies of everything from Bond films to Mad Max to Jaws. I found the first Aces intermittently amusing. This one’s more consistent, the madcap changeability in situations offsetting the juvenile comic sensibility. That said, the movie does stop dead a few times for some unrelated laugh-free scenes with two characters from the first movie.

Peking Opera Blues is part of the Golden Princess catalogue, alongside the major John Woo titles and Ringo Lam titles. I'm glad that I'm not the only one who isn't as enamored with the third entry of the 'A Better Tomorrow' entry, as as a lot of people I know really like it and prefer it over the first 2 entries. Even as messy as the second film is due to Woo and Hark's in-fighting, the chaotic energy presented in its action scenes is more hypnotizing and tantalizing than whatever Tsui was trying to emulate in the third entry.

[Mr Sausage]

Big thanks to DarkImbecile for putting together this thread and especially all the information in that first post. Not an easy task with Tsui’s complex filmography.

[Calvin]

English-friendly Blu-Ray availability for his features, as far as I can gather:

SpoilerShow

The Butterfly Murders (1979)
We're Going to Eat You / Hell Has No Gates* (1980)
Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind / Don't Play with Fire* (1980)
All the Wrong Clues for the Right Solution* (1981) - Panorama Blu-Ray (Hong Kong)
Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983) - Eureka Blu-Ray
Search for the Gods (1983)
Shanghai Blues (1984)
Aces Go Places 3 / Mad Mission 3: Our Man from Bond Street (1984) - Kam & Ronson Blu-Ray (Hong Kong) also part of the Aces Go Places Collection
Working Class (1985) - Panorama Blu-Ray (Hong Kong)
Peking Opera Blues (1986) - Kam & Ronson Blu-Ray (Hong Kong)
I Love Maria / Roboforce (1988) [uncredited; co-directed with David Chung] - Panorama Blu-Ray (Hong Kong)
The Big Heat (1988) [uncredited; co-directed with Johnnie To and Kam Yeung-Wah]
A Better Tomorrow III: Love and Death in Saigon* (1989) - Nova Media Trilogy Blu-Ray (Korea)
The Swordsman (1990) [uncredited; co-directed with King Hu, Raymond Lee, and Ching Siu-Tung] - Nova Media Blu-Ray (Korea)
The Raid (1991)* [co-directed with Ching Siu-Tung] - CN Entertainment Blu-Ray (Hong Kong)
A Chinese Ghost Story III* (1991) [uncredited; co-directed with Ching Siu-Tung] - Nova Media Trilogy Blu-Ray (Korea)
King of Chess (1991) [uncredited; co-directed with Yim Ho]
Once Upon a Time in China* (1991) - Criterion Blu-Ray Set, Eureka Trilogy Blu-Ray
The Banquet* (1991) [co-directed with Alfred Cheung, Joe Cheung, and Clifton Ko]
Twin Dragons / Brother vs. Brother* (1992) [co-directed with Ringo Lam]
Once Upon a Time in China II* (1992) - Criterion Blu-Ray Set, Eureka Trilogy Blu-Ray
The Master* (1992) - 88 Films Blu-Ray
Once Upon a Time in China III* (1992) - Criterion Blu-Ray Set, Eureka Trilogy Blu-Ray
Dragon Inn* (1992) [uncredited; co-directed with Raymond Lee and Ching Siu-Tung] - Nova Media Blu-Ray (Korea)
Green Snake* (1993)
The Lovers (1994)
Once Upon a Time in China V (1994) - Criterion Blu-Ray Set
The Chinese Feast (1995) - CN Entertainment Blu-Ray (Hong Kong)
Love in the Time of Twilight (1995)
The Blade (1995)
Tristar* (1996) - CN Entertainment Blu-Ray (Hong Kong)
Double Team (1997) - Mill Creek Blu-Ray (US), 88 Films Blu-Ray (UK)
Knock Off (1998) - 88 Films Blu-Ray
Time and Tide* (2000) - Eureka Blu-Ray
The Legend of Zu / Zu Warriors* (2001) - Kam & Ronson Blu-Ray (Hong Kong)
Black Mask 2: City of Masks (2002) - CMS Media Blu-Ray (Hong Kong)
Seven Swords* (2005) - Dragon Dynasty Blu-Ray
Triangle* (2007) [co-directed with Ringo Lam and Johnnie To]
Missing* (2008) - Deltamac Blu-Ray (Hong Kong)
All About Women* (2008)
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010) - Shout! Factory Blu-Ray
Flying Swords of Dragon Gate* (2011) - Indomina Blu-Ray
Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon* (2013) - Well Go Blu-Ray
The Taking of Tiger Mountain* (2014) - Well Go Blu-Ray
Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back* (2017) - Sony Blu-Ray
Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings (2018) - Well Go Blu-Ray
The Battle at Lake Changjin (2021) [co-directed with Chen Kaige and Dante Lam] - Cine-Asia Blu-Ray (UK)
The Battle at Lake Changjin II / Water Gate Bridge (2022) [co-directed with Chen Kaige and Dante Lam]

[Mr Sausage]

Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back (2017)

Based on one of China’s four great classical novels, Journey to the West, the story of a monk's travels to India to retrieve Buddhist sutras. He's accompanied by three magic disciples: the trickster Monkey King, the part human, part swine Piggy, and the water/sand demon Sandy. I first encountered the story in high school, when a friend of mine would show me episodes of an extremely popular 80s tv rendition on Chinese VCDs, narrating the story for me as it had no subtitles. That experience has become the inescapable lense through which I approach this story. Tsui’s movie is a sequel to Stephen Chow’s 2014 Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons. It marks Tsui’s first collaboration with Chow. Tsui took over directing duties while Chow produced and co-wrote the script. The series seems to repurpose the classic characters as traveling exorcists. The film alternates between fantasy action and slapstick comedy and seems directed mainly at children (except for that left field massacre of an entire village). Stylistically, it’s late Tsui, with a lot of colours and stuff going on, but it all feels forced and flat, the energy tedious instead of exciting, the visuals unappealing. A dull, mediocre movie, but a huge hit for Tsui at the Chinese box office.


The Taking of Tiger Mountain (2014)

An old-fashioned patriotic war film. In the aftermath of the Japanese surrender, the People’s Liberation Army is sent to the hinterland to combat the bandits ravaging the countryside. China, meanwhile, has erupted into civil war, and the Kuomintang is looking to recruit the most powerful bandit group to join their fight against the PLA. The film’s aims are sentimental, not just in the valorizing of the PLA, but the structure that relates these historical events explicitly to modern China. There’s a framing device where a young, hip, modern Chinese man set on an ambitious career path—ie. precisely who you’d stereotype as someone for whom the country’s past means little—recalls the exploits of the PLA for us, visits important sites, and relates the PLA’s struggles to his own sense of duty and identity. It’s not quite as flatly propagandistic as my description makes out. As I said, the film is chiefly sentimental, implying that the heroic sacrifices of the past are still vital to the modern world and should be celebrated. It’s no more (or less) propagandistic than similar Hollywood war actioners. The film bears all the hallmarks of Tsui’s 2010s style, but looks significantly better than the films that surround it just for the location shooting among the snow, trees, and hills, with real wooden houses and rusted-out train tracks. The film looks cold and weather beaten. If you like war epics brimming with sincerity and hyper-violence, this is for you. The camera sweeps up and down, the music soars, bodies blow apart, and the heroes act heroic. This is Tsui making competent commercial cinema. Oh, and the film has two different endings for some reason. I’m glad it does, tho’, because the second ending sees Tsui really let loose, just flex his stuff and go nuts. It’s one of the best action scenes of its kind, all down to Tsui’s flashy, manic style. My favourite part of the movie, and it is literally superfluous—the movie had already ended!


Black Mask 2: City of Masks (2002)

I saw the first Black Mask back in high school when I was big into Jet Li. It was your basic superhero movie: Jet Li is a super soldier who escapes and uses his powers for good while the other super soldiers hunt him down. Universal Soldier, basically, only with some of the most intense fight scenes ever filmed courtesy of Yuen Woo-Ping at the height of his powers. Tsui, the producer on the first, takes over directing on the sequel. It’s the same basic plot, only with no Jet Li, a lot of poor CGI, and a real increase in nuttiness. Tsui apparently thought the original wasn’t wacky enough, so he makes the villain this time around a giant brain in a vat, outfits the enemy general in a huge pair of goggles, and has people transforming into plants and animals. There’s a low rent DTV feel to the thing that the endless dutch angles and whip pans of the movie’s “style” do nothing to hide. And the fights suck. How did Tsui go from Time and Tide and Zu Warriors, a fun and stylish pair of films, to this, the worst thing I’ve seen him make?


Twin Dragons (1992)

Co-directed with Ringo Lam. Apparently Lam was tasked with the action scenes (which makes sense, as they resemble his heroic bloodshed style) and Tsui with the special effects scenes with the two Jackie Chans. Yes, Chan plays twins separated at birth who meet up again as adults for some kung fu antics. The twins come from different countries and economic backgrounds but have some mystical connection to each other. When one plays the piano, the other’s fingers start twitching in kind; when one’s nose itches, the other sneezes. Aside for 30 seconds at the end, this fact is mostly forgotten during the fight scenes even tho’ you’d think that’s precisely what the film was saving them for. Allegedly Chan was unhappy with the finished film, mainly due to the shoddy FX. They are pretty bad; this is no Dead Ringers. Despite his reputation following Zu for being a big special effects guy, I’ve never seen a Tsui movie with VFX I’d call good, even for the time. The film has a bevy of director cameos, from Tsui and Lam to John Woo, Ann Hui, Wong Jing, Eric Tsang, Ching Siu-Tung and Lau Kar-Leung. The movie’s a mid-range Chan film, with all that entails. If you like Chan’s schtick, and I mostly do, this’ll work for you.


Seven Swords (2005)

Seven Samurai, with the conceit that each warrior has a sword with its own specific magical property and paired fighting style. This concept was meant to start off a cross-media franchise, tho’ I don’t know what became of it. Hard to imagine this film being the basis any kind of franchise, it’s so dour and brutal. Not that there isn’t an audience who’d find this entertaining; just that the kind of entertainment offered leaves you exhausted and wrung out. Hard to know what Tsui ultimately wanted. The commercial aim of the project is at variance with his desire to produce something with an ethos closer to The Blade, one where war and conflict are brutalizing and produce brutal animal responses both in the people who inhabit it and the very landscape they stand in (the landscape is spare, bleak, and often terribly cold). One of its basic themes is the same as Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain: the conflict between the Buddhist desire to abandon the world of strife vs the duty to stay and improve it. But the film is less sentimental and hopeful, the decision to help seeming more rueful resignation than profound duty. A character declares at one point that the world is indeed brutal, but it’s also our duty to find what’s beautiful in it and protect it. Yet the film gives a better sense of the world’s brutality than its beauty. The few pastoral scenes and moments of kindness in the second act aren’t enough to offset the pitiless, bloodthirsty story. As with Flying Swords of Dragon Gate, Tsui has taken a simple premise, drawn it out, over-stuffed it, and with an absence of wit or imagination made a slog of it. Hell of a finale, tho’.


The Battle at Lake Changjin (2021)

Actual state funded propaganda. The Chinese communist party commissioned this first half of a multi-film epic, the most expensive Chinese film ever made, to celebrate the party’s 100-year anniversary. Three directors, Chen Kaige, Dante Lam, and Tsui, shot two films back to back, totaling five and a half hours. The first installment broke box office records in China, becoming the second highest grossing film of 2021, the highest grossing film in China’s history, and the highest grossing non-English film of all time. It tells of a battle in the Korean war where the People’s Volunteer Army held off attacks by the superior forces of the United States near the border with China. A jingoistic war epic meant to galvanize nationalist and anti-American sentiment. Critics have pointed out that, while explicitly propagandistic, the film is not much different than war films by Michael Bay, Mel Gibson, or Clint Eastwood. They’re mostly right. But what makes this film a fascinating and uneasy experience is that the propaganda is state funded, an official expression of national ideology. This is a full-throated call to war (using ‘innocent aggressor’ rhetoric) by the government of a major country. It is, in effect, war-time propaganda…without a war going on between the countries involved. Like I said, fascinating, but troubling. In fairness, just over a year ago, anti-Chinese sentiment was an official stance of the United States government. Uneasiness or even outright offense at the propaganda here doesn’t mean one has to side with American imperialism or its government’s official racism. But with a major world power and autocratic state currently waging a brutal, destructive war in Europe backed by a massive propaganda campaign, this movie becomes an especially difficult watch. The noxious combination of historical aggrievement and victimhood combined with nationalist righteousness and a near-divine sense of duty to the homeland, something well on display in Russia’s own pro-war propaganda, is the animating principle of the whole movie. As an aesthetic experience, the movie is bad in the way propaganda tends to be: all earnest cheese and the thudding sense of overdetermination. And behind that, the worrying sense of emotions being inflamed and conflict escalated. Slickly made, tedious, exciting, banal, troubling. This was not how I was expecting to round out my dive into Tsui Hark’s filmography.

[swo17]

Thanks for your write-ups. I'd appreciate a DVD availability guide if anyone's up for doing that

[Mr Sausage]

---UPDATED March 9th, 2024


I've now seen 41 of the 42 feature films Tsui Hark has official director's credit on (and all that he's uncredited on) and both of his short films. I'm in a much better position to give my favourites now than when I was asked earlier in the thread. But rather than doing that, I thought I'd do something a bit different. With Tsui's filmography being so extensive and prolix, and his interests being so diverse and difficult to pin down, I figured I'd make something like a guide to the perplexed.

Tsui's filmography I think can be broken down into four distinct periods. Within each of those periods, I'm going to give what I think are the essential films, both from a quality perspective and also in terms of career importance. I'm also going to list Tsui's essential films as a producer, those films where Tsui's involvement was so intense that the final products bear all the marks of his visual style and personal vision even if he isn't credited as director. All together, this is my list of Tsui's essential films, the place to start for anyone looking to get into his filmography. The films within each section are in chronological order, not order of merit.


The List

Early New Wave (1979 - 1980)

• Butterfly Murders

• We're Going to Eat You

• Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind

Commercial Success (1980 - 1989)

• All the Wrong Clues for the Right Solution

• Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain

• Shanghai Blues

• Peking Opera Blues

Historical Epics (1990 - 1996)

• Once Upon a Time in China

• Green Snake

• The Lovers

• Love in the Time of Twilight

• The Blade

Post Handover (1997 - 2009)

• Time and Tide

• Legend of Zu

Contemporary Tsui (2010 - present)

• Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon

• The Taking of Tiger Mountain

As Producer

• A Chinese Ghost Story I

• Swordsman II

• The East is Red (Swordsman III)

• New Dragon Inn

• Iron Monkey

[knives]

Likewise. I will say, as well, I really preferred his journey to Chow’s original playing closer to the original text, but also being more playful. Outside the lane reusing of some of the special effects it has a nice beat going for it.

[therewillbeblus]

I'd appreciate a DVD availability guide if anyone's up for doing that

Calvin did a(n incredibly helpful) blu-ray guide a few posts up - perhaps he can shed light on English-friendly DVDs for the missing titles, if they exist at all?

(Many thanks for your post btw Calvin, meant to say so a few days ago!)

[swo17]

Oh no, I missed that because of the spoiler box I guess. That's probably sufficient unless there are certain key films available only on DVD

[knives]

I've now seen 29 of the 42 feature films Tsui Hark has official director's credit on. I'm in a much better position to give my favourites now than when I was asked earlier in the thread. But rather than doing that, I thought I'd do something a bit different. With Tsui's filmography being so extensive and prolix, and his interests being so diverse and difficult to pin down, I figured I'd make something like a guide to the perplexed.

One sort of mini-era I think you haven’t seen yet is his two American films which are delightfully strange and incredibly compelling for where his career turned to afterward.

[Mr Sausage]

I've now seen 29 of the 42 feature films Tsui Hark has official director's credit on. I'm in a much better position to give my favourites now than when I was asked earlier in the thread. But rather than doing that, I thought I'd do something a bit different. With Tsui's filmography being so extensive and prolix, and his interests being so diverse and difficult to pin down, I figured I'd make something like a guide to the perplexed.

One sort of mini-era I think you haven’t seen yet is his two American films which are delightfully strange and incredibly compelling for where his career turned to afterward.

Those actually were the first Tsui films I ever saw, back when I was newly a teenager, before I had any idea who he was. I even saw Knock Off in theatres with a friend (rented Double Team from blockbuster).