Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky (1991)

A Hong Kong martial arts movie based on a Japanese manga, Riki-Oh is a strange one. It begins with the titular fighter (played by Fan Siu-Wong) being incarcerated in a privatised prison, a facility with a stylised use of space. He quickly gets on the wrong side of the prison's deadliest occupants, including a hook-handed assistant warden. However, the greater the challenge, the more determinedly the super-human Ricky rises to meet it.
The infamous level of violence in the film is over-the-top ridiculous, but it occasionally crosses the line into gorily disturbing. Happily, the simplistic plot does at least attempt to give Ricky a streak of noble sensitivity.
Fei Lit Chan's minimalist, almost Carpenter-esque music was my favourite part.

2½ chest bullets out of 5

Ip Man 2 (2010)

Ip wants to open a Wing Chun school in HK but meets opposition from the existing masters. Then all goes Rocky, in more than one sense of the word.
The combat that follows is more fantastical than was in the first film, which has the knock-on effect of lessening the impact of his struggle a little. On the plus side, Sammo gets in on the action this time!
Returning characters are wasted and too many others have little or no purpose for being there; Ip's wife and child may as well not exist.
The awful overdubs of English language actors makes it impossible to take them seriously, bringing the entire film down a notch. It's almost as if Yam was attempting to sabotage his own film simply to make them appear even bigger fools. Was he really not aware of how shitty they sounded?

3 foreign devils being assholes out of 5

A Chinese Ghost Story (2011)

Ching Siu-tung’s classic supernatural/comedy/romance re-imagined for a modern audience. It’s respectful to the original but throws in some new elements that don't feel out of place, and happily it keeps the CGI to a mostly support role; it could've been a lot worse.
With more money to play around with it’s no surprise that lighting is better, sets are larger and film stock superior, but it really can’t compare to the original in terms of emotion. The two leads (Yifei Liu and Shaoqun Yu) lack the chemistry of Joey Wong and the late, great Leslie Cheung.

2½ candy pieces out of 5

Ip Man (2008)

A film based on the life of Ip Man, a master of the Chinese Wing Chun martial art. Choreography is by the great Sammo Hung; it's grounded in reality but crosses into the fantastical just a little.
It's light-hearted fare in the first act, but soon much of the colour drains away and things turn deadly serious and deeply political. There's a very occasional slip into melodrama, but it's always brief.
Donnie's martial arts ability is flawless as always. Normally his acting is just above average, so I'm happy to say he delivers the finest performance I've ever seen him do; it too was flawless.

4½ bags of rice duly earned out of 5

The Assassin's Blade (2008)

Aka: Mo hup leung juk / The Butterfly Lovers / Jiandie

Don’t be fooled by the cover and blurb on the back like I was. TAB is a light and airy romance filled with some poor acting. A beautiful young woman dresses like a man to enter a school. The whole time she looks like a beautiful young woman dressed like a man. She ain't fooling anyone, I thought. Hmmm… never mind. It all came good by the end, but the journey to get there was bordering on teen romance. It feels like it was based on a teen manga. Here's the alternative cover, which suits the film a LOT more than the one I have.

2 butterflies and a doctor with twigs in his hair of 5