Rating: 4.0

‘Eight Taels Of Gold’ rewards those not looking for emotional fireworks or melodramatic denouements.

‘Embrace Your Shadow’ manages to be moving while sticking doggedly to established clichés, perhaps an oxymoron, but an achievement nonetheless.

Martial arts, magic and bizarre creatures are blended together seamlessly, with expert direction.

This is an excellent action flick in the vein of Yuen Kwai’s 80’s actioners such as ‘Yes, Madam’ and ‘Righting Wrongs’ and is certainly a class above more recent efforts from the HK action circuit.

Searing blockbuster thrills based on true events where diplomats from both South and North Korea become stranded in the fallen city of Mogadishu during a rebel uprising in Somalia.

‘Everything Under Control’ brings together a few members of popular Cantopop group Mirror and the ever quirky Ivana Wong for a suitably amusing and defiantly odd Hong Kong comedy.

This masterful kung-fu drama shows how quickly Liang found his own way of conveying his thoughts to the audience.

‘Exiled’ is a riveting portrayal of a group of friends sticking by one another as their once chosen profession threatens to kill them all.

It works perfectly with these protagonists and Lee Sang-Geun throws every cinematic trick and cliché out of the bag to put these two through the wringer.

This, as you can tell from my gushing praise, is a film that has an obvious admiration and affection for the films that inspired it.

Little bursts of bone jarring violence, especially the bloody conclusion, help raise the stakes to remind you that you’re not watching ‘Pretty Woman’.

‘Fatal Needles Vs. Fatal Fists’ is not a work of Kurosawan proportions, but it’s certainly better than there’s any reason to expect.