Author: Andrew Saroch

The cast is not without charm, the idea not without potential, but ‘The Real Iron Monkey’ is a certified dud.

The result is every bit as slick as viewers have come to expect from the film-makers, but severely lacking in genre staples like tension or excitement.

What could have been an amusing film sprinkled with a bit of action is more like a woefully over-exaggerated piece of fluff that wastes a good cast.

‘The Grand Grandmaster’ barely has enough good material for a TikTok clip though and it should be noted that this drudgery goes on for a full two hours.

‘Crocodile Island’ is deadly earnest which doesn’t quite work when characters are facing spiders the size of a shire horse.

‘A City Called Dragon’ is one of many 70s Taiwanese action films that deserve a wider audience and hopefully modest reviews like this can help.

Overall this is an interesting, thoughtful collection of stories that shows promise. Yet it is once again a film whose historical significance leaves more of an impression than the material therein.

Far East Films talks to Hong Kong writer and director, Norris Wong (黃綺琳).

Tackling familiar pressures that face young couples – especially women – in modern Hong Kong, Wong favours an understated, low-fi style that suits the material very well.

Too early for the post-‘Once Upon A Time In China’ boom and too late for the post-‘Shaolin Temple’ frenzy in 1981, ‘Zen Master 6’ is perhaps better appreciated all of these years later.

‘Skyfire’ is a suitably big and brash disaster epic that mimics the bombastic Hollywood productions that reached their apex in the 1970s.

It’s a solid study of the strains that sudden fame has on friendship, especially when the screaming girls and management team are favouring two members over the whole five.