March 9th, 2009
Love Stinks
So I was just coming out of a movie a week and a half ago at the Dynasty Theater here in Hong Kong when I was knocked at the back of my head with a glass bottle. The last thing I remember and the only thing I heard was someone yelling “this is for not voting a Gold Label film for Best Picture at the Lovehkfilm Awards!” before he ran off towards Yau Ma Tei. Since then, I’ve been trying to wander home, and finally made it back tonight.
Just kidding, I’ve just been very busy with work and life stuff, so I haven’t been able to find time to post here. Since Sanney over at his blog did a news post, I figured I’d take a break from that and actually do a real post about movies.
As avid fans of the site may know, Hong Kong has been showered by movies with the word “love” in it, and believe or not, all of those movies actually came out after Valentine’s Day (though one did get sneak preview showings on Valentine’s, but that’s a techicality), and with the exception of Equation of Love and Death, they all actually sucked.
Disclaimer: I’m not counting Equation of Love and Death because it premiered in Hong Kong before already, and besides, it’s actually a decent movie, so that would kill this whole post.
Give Love - Ineptly directed with a barely working script, the Joe Ma-Leefire collaboration makes me want to apologize to everyone on the behalf of the Hong Kong government, who shelled out money for this film to be made. Even though the stars were perfectly capable of doing what they were told to do, the directions were totally off the mark, resulting in one weird, yawn-inducing bore. Even the rumble seats at the theater couldn’t liven things up.
Love Connected - I already used over 1000 words to explain how I feel, so I won’t repeat it here.
Basic Love - I really appreciate director Oxide Pang trying to do something outside of horror and ghost movies, I really do, but did he really have to do it with this? Employing an aspiring glossy look where at least half the frame is out of focus, the film takes a thin plot worthy only of a 45-minute film and stretches it to an excruxiating 98 minutes of meaningless conversations and melodramatic twists that come about 10 miles away. Yes, at least it was consistent, but it just makes it…..more consistent.
L-O-V-E - How did this movie suck? Let me count the ways: The first film’s twist is moderately clever and actually kind of touching, but the film as a whole is marred by a dragged-out melodramatic ending.
The second film (by lyricist Vincent Fang) has bad acting and is altogether unremarkable. It also has the worst movie MTV ever.
The third film is mildly decent, with interesting moments. Honestly, it’s the best film of this bunch.
Then the fourth film, with all of its silly Taiwanese pop culture reference and all, was annoyingly eccentric for eccentricity’s sake.
Overall, L-O-V-E is a sad bunch of short films that’s only on the big screen because it’s made by famous people who are better off sticking to what they were doing in the first place.
And so, a disappointing set of films ended February in Hong Kong cinemas. I went to the cinemas to watch all of these, but I can guarantee that watching all four will bound to make you put off watching any Chinese-language romance films and will pretty much make your significant other doubt your sanity. Let’s face it, the only reason I watched all of these is because I like to inflict mental anguish on myself. Consider yourself warned.