Hello and welcome to Day 174 of our year-long look at the Top 100 Hong Kong Movies of the Nineties, as voted upon by actual LoveHKFilm readers who had the time and the generosity to compile their lists of favorite nineties films and send them in. On our end, we compiled the results using five irritable monkees who live on the balcony of my apartment. I think they did a good job.

This guy is still waiting for his first appearance on this list:

“I can’t believe nobody has voted for my films!
I’m going to wear regular glasses to hide my shame.”

As usual, if you’re just joining us today you should really check out the previous lists so that you don’t ruin the surprise and/or aggravation of seeing what shows up:
Numbers 100-81
Numbers 80-61
Numbers 60-41
Numbers 40-31

Today’s list covers numbers 30-21 of the Top 100. At this time I should thank the numerous readers who sent in their lists with comments added, as I can reprint them here to enhance the film blurbs AND spare myself a little time copywriting. You know who you are, and since your names get listed with your comments, now everybody else does too. Thanks a lot!

Hit the jump to get started!

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Welcome to the latest edition of the Top 100 Hong Kong Films of the Nineties. Now that we’re past the halfway point, we’re slowing down a bit, with this entry revealing numbers 40-31 of the Top 100. We’ll do ten more a day until the very end, when we’ll slow to maybe five per day. If we feel like dragging it out even longer, we’ll move to only one a day. Nobody can stop us.

“God, this site is so annoying.”

Sorry, Charlene. We also apologize because it’s impossible for you to have any movies on this list. Most of the time you were in junior high, anyway.

Anyway, if you’ve just tuned in, we highly suggest that you check out previous entries to make it even more exciting/frustrating:
Numbers 100-81
Numbers 80-61
Numbers 60-41

Will Stephen Chow see even more domination? What about Wong Jing? Hit the jump to see Numbers 40-31!

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It’s the third in our 23-part series of the Top 100 Hong Kong Films of the Nineties, as decided upon by actual LoveHKFilm Readers. This time, we’re revealing numbers 60-41 of our Top 100. Most likely, you won’t find THE FRUIT IS SWELLING here.

If you’ve just joined us, we highly suggest that you check out previous updates first:
Numbers 100-81
Numbers 80-61

For those keeping score: thus far Tsui Hark had something to do with 5 films, Leslie Cheung has appeared in 6, and Stephen Chow has starred in 7. Johnnie To clocks in at only 4 films. Wong Jing? He’s involved in a whopping 9 out of a possible 40 films. We sense domination.

“I’ve got aces in my pants, too!”

Hit the jump to see what shows up!

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Welcome to second installment in our countdown of the Top 100 Hong Kong Films of the Nineties. Sorry for the two day gap but we were busy. Life’s like that.

Today, we’ll be looking at Numbers 80-61 of our Top 100, all determined by actual LoveHKFilm.com Readers. Yes, they do exist.

Previous updates:
Numbers 100-81

In case you’re following along, each film has a link to an existing review at LoveHKFilm.com, if not the film’s entry at the Hong Kong Movie Database. When putting this whole thing together, I took the opportunity to read some of the earliest reviews on this website. There are over 15 years of film reviews stored here, and if the later reviews qualify as solid writing, than the earliest are juvenile chicken scratch. I’m actually embarrassed to link to them. However, as Confucius said, “Only by sampling our vomit may we cook a dish that is palatable.”

Okay, maybe he didn’t say that.

“Someone’s bullsh*tting using my name again.”

Hit the jump to find the list!

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No, we didn’t forget. It’s time for another countdown from a LoveHKFilm Reader Vote! Simon Yam and pals are excited:

“Oh boy! We gotta get to a computer to check out the results!”

After a couple of weeks of tallying and formatting, we’re counting down the Top 100 Hong Kong Films of the Nineties, as voted upon by LoveHKFilm.com’s readers. Response was pretty good; we received over 130 entries and over 250 total films were nominated. We barely got any sleep over here.

First of all, an apology: a lot of good stuff didn’t make the cut, but that’s to be expected. This vote is a totally subjective thing, so if you disagree with the results — well, that’s your problem. Next time you can participate to help sway the vote.

Also, our apologies to everyone who voted for GOD OF GAMBLERS and A CHINESE GHOST STORY, but both those films actually came out in the eighties. You’ll have to vote for them another time.

This entry lists Numbers 81-100 of the Top 100. We’ll follow next time with 20 more, before getting really annoying and cutting it back to 10 or even 5 per entry as things progress. We’ll try to add a new entry every 1-2 days, but that’s not a promise.

Let’s get started:

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Happy Lunar New Year! This photo is from last year, but Stephy Tang wants to wish you a great Year of the Ox Tiger.

“This year, I want to play a smart person!”

She can do it! You go, Stephy!

Anyway, there’s a lot coming up for Hong Kong movies and LoveHKFilm.com this year, but we’ll start by partying like it’s 1999. Late last year, we completed a reader vote for the Top 50 Hong Kong Films of the Aughts. Even though it’s only February 2010, we’re going to be running yet another reader vote.

“Really, again? Can’t you try
something a little more original?”

We pretty much like to run things into the ground around here. Sorry, Fiona.

In the second of LoveHKFilm.com’s intermittent, poorly scheduled reader votes we’re asking for site readers to help select the Top 50 Hong Kong Films of the Nineties. By readers, we mean everyone: teenagers, sixty year-old retirees, single mothers, agoraphobic technophiles, and even Donnie Yen. You all have an equal say.

“You’re going to vote for all my movies, right?
Don’t forget about COME FLY THE DRAGON!”

We’ll run this vote in a much more relaxed fashion than the last one, as timeliness is not an issue. It’s not like the nineties are going anywhere. To participate, please follow these handy rules:

1. Use the LoveHKFilm.com Contact Form to send a list of your top films from the years 1990-1999.
2. You may list either 10 or 20 films* on your vote, and order them with #1 being the top-rated film and #10 or #20 being at back of the pack.
3. Please print in the subject line of your email “TOP 90s MOVIES”.
4. It’s optional, but you can write a few sentences or words about your faves. We may end up using them when the results are published.
5. Send in your votes by end of day on February 28th. I’m not pushing the whole GMT, PST, EST thing so there’s some leeway. As long as I don’t get your vote on March 2nd, you’l be fine.

*The big asterisk is here to explain why we’re letting you rank 10 or 20 films for your list. Simply put, a ton of movies came out during the nineties, and people may want to list more than just 10. If that’s your deal, go ahead and list 20.

However, please note that this WILL make a difference for the points that your films get. If you vote for only 10, then #1 gets 10 points and #10 gets 1 point. However, if you vote for 20 films, then #1 gets 10 points, #2 gets 9.5 points, and so on. To illustrate, a #10 film gets 5.5 points, and #20 gets 0.5 points. Voting for 20 films means 1/2 point steps between each films, as opposed to the 1 point step between each film.

Are you getting this? Probably not, but rest assured it’s all being done to make this vote even more complex for me to run. I’m all about doing things the hard way.

“I know you’re voting for my films,
so I won’t even act like I care. I shouldn’t
even bother to make movies. Just hand me cash
and we can cut out the middleman.”

Now, which films qualify? During the last vote, the question “What is a Hong Kong film?” was quite tricky. There were foreign co-productions, Pan-Asian casts, movies with Jude Law, etc. It got kind of messy.

However, identifying qualifying films is much easier for this vote as the nineties were a simpler time. Aside from more appearances by Michael Wong and Chingmy Yau, few if any films from the nineties qualified as foreign co-productions. Here are the simplified rules:

1. The film has to be from Hong Kong and released theatrically during the years 1990-1999.
2. Not a single Zhang Yimou film qualifies for this vote. Sorry.
3. If Chen Kaige is your 5th generation director of choice, you may only vote for TEMPRESS MOON.
4. RUSH HOUR, THE REPLACEMENT KILLERS, and any John Woo film after 1992 do not count.
5. Is Jean-Claude Van Damme in the movie? Then it doesn’t count.
6. All series can only be voted for via their individual entries, e.g. the YOUNG AND DANGEROUS movies do not count as a vote. You have to vote for YOUNG AND DANGEROUS, YOUNG AND DANGEROUS 2, and SEXY AND DANGEROUS as separate films. The exception: CHINESE ODYSSEY 1 and CHINESE ODYSSEY 2 can count as a single film.
7. If you’re curious if a film qualifies or not, feel free to ask in the blog comments. I’ll say “yes”, “no” or “nice try, buddy.”

There, totally simple. The most important rule is this one, though: HAVE FUN. You don’t have to select the most award-worthy or acclaimed films - you can just choose movies that you enjoy. As such, I expect to see appearances on this vote from BOYS ARE EASY, SATAN RETURNS, I’M YOUR BIRTHDAY CAKE and, of course, GIRLS UNBUTTON. Loletta Lee fans, this is your time.

This is the only Loletta Lee picture on my
hard drive where she’s wearing clothes.

If you can’t figure out what movies came out when, uh, sorry. There are some online resources that you can use, however, including a downloadable PDF from the Hong Kong Film Archive which lists every film up to 2006. The nineties comprise 99 out of 749 pages, so happy reading. Thanks to Tim Youngs and Kevin Ma for pointing me in its direction!

Alternately, you can use the Awards Archives on LoveHKFilm.com to jog your memory of films released during the nineties. Also, you can visit the handy database at Hong Kong Cinemagic, where you can sort by year to figure out what came out when.

Results will be up sometime in March! I’m hoping for a similar turnout to last time. However, if the results are as diverse as I hope they are, I may expand this whole Top 50 thing to a full Top 100.  As usual, tell your friends and enemies to participate to make it this a more comprehensive, interesting and/or exciting vote. Hopefully, the results will better introduce people to recommended films than the incredible denseness of the site review archive. That would be nice anyway.

Vote early to support nineties-era Ekin!

During the nineties, Ekin Cheng was
more popular than this stuffed bunny.
Now the reverse is true.