Actor · 1958

Jack Kao

5: briefs
13:00: average
65 min: in total

On film.briefs5

Throw Down

Johnnie To · 2004

Johnnie To’s 2004 film Throw Down follows a former judo champion, Sze-to Bo, whose failing vision forces him to confront his past, his mentor, and two rivals — not for glory, but for fidelity to craft. Shot with deliberate restraint by Cheng Siu-keung and scored with quiet precision by Peter Kam, it locates tension in stillness, meaning in repetition, and dignity in limitation. Though its subplot involving a singer feels grafted, the film’s central inquiry — what it means to act when perception unravels — lands with cumulative force.

13:00

Flowers of Shanghai

Hou Hsiao-Hsien · 1998

Set in 1884 Shanghai’s elite brothels, Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Flowers of Shanghai adapts Han Bangqing’s novel via Eileen Chang’s translation. Shot entirely on Taiwanese soundstages under candlelight, it unfolds across thirty-eight long takes, tracing the constrained lives and negotiated intimacies of ‘flower girls’ and their patrons. With no outdoor scenes, minimal dialogue, and fades replacing cuts, it constructs a world governed by ritual, debt, and quiet endurance—not historical recreation, but emotional archaeology.

13:00

A City of Sadness

Hou Hsiao-Hsien · 1989

Hou Hsiao-hsien’s 1989 Golden Lion winner follows a Taiwanese family in Jiufen during the turbulent years after Japan’s surrender, the February 28 Incident, and the onset of the White Terror. Using long takes, multilingual dialogue, and a muted, observational style, it renders political trauma through domestic detail — photographs, trains, staircases, silences — rather than exposition or polemic. Starring Tony Leung, Li Tian-lu, and Jack Kao, it is the first Taiwanese film to confront state violence openly, and remains a landmark of the New Taiwanese Cinema movement.

13:00

Good Men, Good Women

Hou Hsiao-Hsien · 1995

Hou Hsiao-hsien’s 1995 drama interweaves the true story of resistance activist Chiang Bi-yu with the contemporary rehearsal process of an actress playing her. Shot in Taiwanese Hokkien with restrained cinematography and elliptical editing, it explores memory, gender, and political erasure across three temporal layers — not to resolve history, but to inhabit its lingering weight.

13:00

Millennium Mambo

Hou Hsiao-Hsien · 2001

Millennium Mambo is a 2001 Taiwanese arthouse romance directed by Hou Hsiao-Hsien, following Vicky (Shu Qi) as she reflects on her early twenties in Taipei at the turn of the millennium. Structured as a hazy, non-linear recollection, it prioritises atmosphere over exposition — lingering on neon-lit bars, subway platforms, and quiet apartments — with Shu Qi’s restrained performance and Mark Lee Ping Bin’s soft-focus cinematography anchoring its meditative pace. Awarded the Technical Grand Prize at Cannes for sound design, it is a study in temporal drift, where romance serves less as plot than as ambient pressure.