An Empress and the Warriors (2008)

A film about duty, freedom, ambition, yadda yadda. There’s also a half-assed romantic love triangle thrown in for good measure. It’s all very efficient and safe, which is why it’s so boring. I don’t watch a Ching Siu-tung film to see safe. Where were the wild ideas and genre-breaking adventures that sometimes fall flat on their ass but impress with majestic flights of imagination while doing it? Absent, muted and suppressed.
Anyone fresh from film school could've made this formulaic crap.
I’m struggling to find something positive to say; the elaborate costumes were good, I guess, and Donie Yen almost managed to emote.

2 much hot air out of 5

A Chinese Ghost Story: The Tsui Hark Animation (1997)

aka: Xiao Qian

Animated version of this. The basic plot is the same but the location has changed. It's now in a town very like Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away, which it predates by four years!
It’s full of inventive creatures that would have been impossible to do in live action. The live action is much better. Still, it has the honour of being the first ever Chinese animated feature from Hong Kong.

2 death liners and tree demons out of 5