Vancouver International Film Festival 2007

Review by Sunny Oh.

In her experimental documentary One Way Street on a Turntable, Anson Mak explores the places near her home, Mei Foo Sun Cheun, one of the most densely populated areas not only in Hong Kong but in the world.

Anson Mak mixes clips from 1960s and 1970s British Hong Kong Government films with black and white Super 8 footage of herself in her neighbourhood. Both sources concentrate on the shapes of space and the movement of people around these places: crisscrossing escalators carrying people up and down, hundreds of apartments projecting upward with people milling below, broad vistas with people funneled into sidewalks. Against this backdrop, Anson watches alone.

Onto the various images, Anson adds quotations from German cultural critic Walter Benjamin, her own writings, and an audio thicket of voices and sounds all painstakingly cited. One Way Street on a Turntable offers an audio-visual mash-up of the busy streets of Hong Kong.

One Way Street on a Turntable
Anson Mak | Hong Kong | 2006 | 74min

Mon. Oct. 1 | 1:30pm | Empire Granville Theatre
Thur. Oct. 4 | 7:00pm | Pacific Cinematheque

Review by gloria wong.

Mad Detective is the kind of unique, high-concept film that often ends up getting remade into a neutered Hollywood piece of shite, to a chorus of internet-based whining. Funnily enough in the case of Mad Detective, a remake might not be a terrible idea, since this fun little cop thriller is just short of great.

The latest collaboration from Johnny To (the prolific director who made Heroic Trio) and Wai Ka-Fai centres around Inspector Bun, a brillant (and possibly insane) 'method' detective. Bun sets the tone of the film in the first five minutes; investigating the murder of a young girl, he orders his awed assistant to zip him into a suitcase and throw it down two flights of stairs. At the bottom, after being freed from the suitcase, Bun declares, "it was the ice cream shop owner". Bun may or may not be 'blessed' with the very unique ability to see people's true selves; that, coupled with his phenomenal sense of intution, helps Bun to solve seemingly uncrackable crimes. Unfortunately (and inevitably), Bun's eccentric behaviour leads to his early 'retirement' despite his brilliance. Even more true to formula, he gets called back in a number of years later by an ambitious young cop to consult on a case that no one else can solve.

Fortunately, as in most decent genre films, formula is just a shortcut for laying groundwork to set up our expectations, only to confound them later. This setup involves a cop who's been missing for a year and a half and the brutal crime spree that the cop's gun has been linked to. The resolution to that mystery, unlike the answer to the question of whether or not Bun is delusional, gifted or both, will keep most people guessing til the end. Flawed but entertaining.

Mad Detective
Johnny To/To Kei-fung & Wai Ka-Fai | Hong Kong | 2007 | 89min

Fri. Sept. 28 | 9:30pm | Ridge
Sun. Sept. 30 | 4:00pm | Empire Granville Theatre
Tue. Oct. 2 | 7:00pm | Empire Granville Theatre