Farewelling an old year and welcoming in a new is always cause for excitement. But this year the annual thrill has a sharper edge with the curtain going up on Kong Tao Hoi’s Twins Mission.

Before Feng Xiao Gang went very wrong with The Banquet, he actually made a lot of decent movies. A World Without Thieves was one of them, and those who loved Andy Lau and Ge You’s extravagant action sequences will know that choreographer Kong Tao Hoi was the man to credit. Now this Golden Horse nominee is set to release his directorial debut this Lunar New Year. We chatted with him about what it is like to be the clout behind the camera, and star Jess Cheung told us about a mysterious fashion accessory.

Kong says the most difficult part of being a director is handling the cast’s emotional changes, though he was also surprised by how much physical hard work he needed to do. Still, most memorable was an hour-and-a-half long walk through a railroad tunnel under a mountain in Chong Qing to get to a shooting location. “Every time a train approached, someone would shout ‘Lean on the wall!’ and the train whizzed pass us,” Kong says. They didn’t realize how much danger they put themselves into until shooting finished – not so much the danger of a possible accident, but from what may have lurked inside the tunnel. “After the shooting someone remembered there might be snakes, bugs or whatever inside the tunnel. And we leaned against the walls so many times!”

As the title suggests, Twins Mission will be an Indiana Jones-style adventure movie, featuring the pop duo Twins and martial-art heroes Sammo Hung and Wu Jing. However Jess Zhang plays the central character, whose sister is suffering from a fatal illness which only a dZi bead from Tibet can cure. Desperate to save her sister, Zhang uses every means possible to get the rare bead, resulting in a battle between the Gemini Clan and the guardians of the Buddhist treasure, Hung and Wu.

Kong was attracted to the script when producer Tsui Siu Ming approached him because it reminded him of his childhood. The director was born into a family of circus performers and by age seven was himself part of the troupe: two years later he was touring Asia and Europe with them. Perhaps that is why he avoids stunt doubles. “In the movie, the cast need to do the action scenes themselves as much as possible and I avoid using digital effects, because that is what the audience is looking for,” he says. Even the Twins were expected to do their own action sequences.

However, Zhang was excused – her character is quieter, more inclined to tears than high kicks as she empathizes with her sister’s sickness. But the role is not altogether tragic, and the actress says filming was actually a joyful experience. It was a pleasure to work with stars like Hung, and she got on well with the younger members of the cast like Charlene Choi and Gillian Chung with whom she had previously worked. Then she recalls a little ‘accident’ on location.

“There was a scene of me dressing elegantly for a banquet, but right before the shooting I could not find my handbag.” The production team looked for it everywhere in vain. “Then one of the staff made me a handbag out of something he found: I am not telling you what it is, you have to go watch the movie yourself,” Zhang smiles. “But I can tell you it is really nice.”

Twins Mission will be showing from Feb 13.

Starring: Sacha Baron Cohen, Ken Davitian, Pamela Anderson
Director: Larry Charles
Scheduled release: February 1

Kazakhstan has a pretty sunny disposition for what is, ostensibly, a hellhole. In the middle of this dirt patch between Russia and China, a television reporter for Kazakhstan TV toils to better his life. His name is Borat Sagdiyev, he has a moustache reserved for used car dealers, his sister is the fourth most popular prostitute in the country and he’s just landed on American shores.
Dreamt up by Sacha Baron Cohen on some lucid night, Borat is a creation of surreptitious glee. An anti-Semite to the nth degree, he badmouths the “nitwit” enemy nation of Uzbekistan, calls his pain-in-the-ass neighbour a girl for having an iPod mini instead of an iPod, and likes to make “sexy time” with his mother-in-law. This is just in Kazakhstan: America is chock full of more giddy, dangerous propositions.
Aided only by Ken Davitian (who plays his producer, Azamat), Cohen is a one-man army of prodding laughs and ingenious performance art. None of the ‘regular’ people interviewed in the film are in on the joke that this is a mockumentary and Borat is not really the yokel he pretends to be. And so every laugh delivered by this transplanted outsider slowly peels away layers of false niceties and political correctness in America: on a small motor home heading to California, three college frat boys divulge that slavery should be brought back and that women, Jews, and Muslims aren’t worth a damn.
Directed by Seinfeld writer and Curb Your Enthusiasm/Entourage alumnus Larry Charles, Borat has to be the most unapologetically crass attack on the morals and values of America since the boys of South Park took to the big screen. Even better, its laughs are never scared of their audience or their timeliness. On his way to California to capture his “virgin bride” Pamela Anderson, Borat faces scenarios that coyly bring out America’s inherent anti-Semitism and homophobic tendencies. In the film’s penultimate scene, Borat and Azamat face off in a naked wrestling match brought on by Borat catching his producer masturbating to a photo of Pamela. Replete with black bars, the two hairy bodies go into damn near every position imaginable and roll from their hotel room to a business convention on the first floor: if Cohen doesn’t coax out our fears in subtle ways, he takes drastic measures to make sure we get it.
A Cambridge scholar from a firmly Jewish family, Cohen could have probably written papers for the rest of his life (his thesis was on Jewish culture and the civil rights movement). Instead, with Borat and his other characters, he has deviously found laughter as a key to sneaking in on hypocrites and the ridiculousness of modern American culture. His obsession with the foul and perverse might make for awkward viewing for some, but you can never blame Cohen for going too far when most films barely pass the starting line. His tactless, chauvinistic alien thrown into America’s cultural hodgepodge brings new meaning to thoughtful humour and reforms satire into an open minefield rather than a target at the end of a sniper rifle. At a rodeo in the southern states, Borat is met with thunderous applause when he tells a crowd that he hopes “Premier Bush drinks the blood of every man, woman, and child in Iraq” only moments after a rodeo master tells him he hopes they hang homosexuals at the gallows. God help Americans all. Chris Cabin

Starring: Ulrich Mühe, Marina Gedeck, Sebastian Koch, Ulrich Tukur
Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Scheduled release: February 1

The debut feature from writer/director Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck has been something of a festival sensation. Since its release in Germany almost a year ago, The Lives Of Others has featured prominently in such prestigious film festivals as Toronto, Montreal, London, Pusan and Locarno, bagging awards at each event. It swept the board at the 2006 German Film Awards, winning seven ‘Lolas’ – or German Oscars – including Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Best Screenplay. So, together with its nomination for the Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar, The Lives Of Others finally reaches these shores riding a wave of success and indeed, expectation.
The story is set in East Germany during the bleak, paranoid days leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Artists of all descriptions are subject to extreme scrutiny by the ruling Stasi regime, and one couple in particular has caught the ever-suspicious eye of Minister Hempf. He assigns his best interrogator, Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe), the task of monitoring noted writer Georg Dreyman and his actress girlfriend Christa-Maria, a couple at the forefront of the bohemian counter culture associated with numerous known subversives.
As Wiesler sets up camp in the couple’s attic, it soon transpires that Hempf’s reasons for removing Dreyman amount to more than protecting the socialist cause. Hempf’s car appears in Wiesler’s surveillance footage, as the minister makes unrequited advances on Christa-Maria, forcing Wiesler to compromise his own integrity and doctor his reports to protect his superior. This sudden shift in priorities prompts the loyal and vigilant Wiesler to re-examine the cause to which he has dedicated his life, and the more time he spends monitoring the couple, the more disillusioned he becomes.
The film opens with Wiesler instructing students on interrogation techniques. During lengthy interrogation, he declares, a guilty suspect will become “calm, quiet and repetitive”, while an innocent man will grow increasingly agitated by his predicament. Wiesler begins to recognize that his own life working for the Stasi is one of quiet, repetitive calm, essentially a lie, while Dreyman and Christa-Maria lead more honest and rewarding existences, even if their actions occasionally break the law.
The cast in The Lives Of Others is uniformly excellent, but Ulrich Mühe’s multiple award-winning performance deserves special mention. His transformation from chilling government tool into sympathetic, subversive hero is a master class in minimalist acting and entirely deserving of the accolades showered upon it. Anchoring such a dramatic narrative around a character so introverted and cold, however, could have been disastrous, and would have challenged the most experienced and assured of directors. That this is Von Donnersmarck’s first film, and that the film works so well, by turns thrilling, tragic and on occasion even frightening, speaks volumes for the director’s talent and confidence behind the camera.
The Lives Of Others is a surprisingly enjoyable experience, a film not afraid to poke fun at the absurdities of the Stasi regime, while simultaneously re-enforcing how dangerous it was to be outspoken in those times. It runs a little long, but works hard for its denouement, which, when it finally comes, proves to be thoroughly rewarding. Whether or not it can beat Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth to the Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar, however, remains to be seen. James Marsh.

Starring: Krista Allen, Balthazar Getty, Navi Rawat, Jason Mewes, Henry Rollins
Director: John Gulager
Scheduled release: February 1

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s Project Greenlight, a reality programme designed to give first-time filmmakers an unprecedented shot at their dream, won a few battles but ultimately lost its war.
Over the course of three seasons, Greenlight made mountains out of molehill-sized production problems for the benefit of its drama-craving audience. The programme also took joy in vilifying bullish producer Chris Moore, a headstrong professional whose chief crime was trying to keep unfocused amateur filmmakers on track. Not surprisingly, the weekly episodes ended up being more entertaining than the theatrically released films.
Feast is the third Project Greenlight film with US ties (Damon and Affleck revamped the franchise and shifted it to Australia for a fourth season, currently in production), and is the best of the lot to date. It isn’t going to win the game for Greenlight, but it reminds us that the concept was capable of generating some fun.
Directed by newcomer John Gulager, this riotously filthy horror film owes a debt of gratitude to Alien and Evil Dead, as well as Robert Rodriguez’s Mexican gore fest From Dusk Till Dawn: swap the vampires from that movie for aliens in this one, and you pretty much know how the story goes. If Feast is your first stab at creature features, then here’s the idea: strangers holed up in a dilapidated saloon must band together to fend off the four barbaric monsters fighting to get in.
Gulager shows a tremendous understanding of the genre. He uses humorous title cards to introduce stock characters like Beer Guy (Judah Friedlander), Grandma (Eileen Ryan), Hero (Eric Dane), and the wheelchair-bound Hot Wheels (Josh Zuckerman). And each person receives a life expectancy rating, though there’s no guarantee Gulager will stick to what’s promised.
With little plot to advance, screenwriters Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton focus their energies on exploiting conventional horror clichés. They write sarcastic lines Evil Dead hero Bruce Campbell would gladly read and pour on a defiant attitude every time the story must fall back on a predictable twist. They even manage a handful of surprises that give Feast a few shocks when we had settled in for expected cheap jolts.
Gulager, meanwhile, blows his budget on severed prosthetic limbs, gallons of fake blood, and buckets of acidic alien spit. He just needs to figure out how to hold his camera still. The lens shakes so violently during alien attack scenes, I feared the creatures were gnawing on his director of photography as well. Feast has flaws, but not nearly as many as you’d expect from a first-timer. It helps that the humorous horror picture is disgusting fun.
The DVD (arriving less than a month after the film’s theatrical release) includes deleted scenes, a gag reel, commentary tracks, and making-of featurettes. Sean O’Connell

Starting: Jude Law, Juliette Binoche, Rafi Gavron, Robin Wright Penn, Martin Freeman,
Ray Winstone, Vera Farmiga, Poppy Rogers
Director: Anthony Minghella
Scheduled release: February 1

Bathed in browns and tans and coursing with pent-up socio-economic ponderings, Anthony Minghella’s gentrification hiccup Breaking and Entering tries to balance a fumbling love triangle with a plethora of misconceived notions on class structure and ends up as an intimate story that betrays the director’s loftier ambitions.
A string of robberies has plagued the ghetto of King’s Cross in London. The thievery is centred on an architecture firm (no surprise) trying to clean up and reconstruct the famed slum into something more suitable for London’s middle-class. Headed by pretty boy Will (Jude Law) and scruffy Sandy (Martin Freeman), the company is undecided whether the crimes are committed by a member of the cleaning staff (that Sandy is sweet on) or outside burglars. On a makeshift stakeout, Will spots and chases a young robber who leads him to the home of Amira (the luminous Juliette Binoche), a survivor of the horrors of Bosnia who yearns to return to Sarajevo with her son Miro (Rafi Gavron), the thief in question.
Will and Amira’s meeting results in an awkward affair: for him it’s about bourgeois guilt and escape, for her it’s a way of securing her son from the local coppers, led by the reliable Ray Winstone, and a life in jail.
Replacing regular cinematographer John Seal, the masterful Benoît Delhomme (The Proposition, What Time Is It There?) gives this panorama of class and relations an inebriated tone of mystique. That’s half the problem: visually King’s Cross has no real sense of danger or any sort of class differentiation. Catcalls of “Better watch out” or “Shouldn’t be wearing those duds round here, mate” are rather pathetic signals of danger when Will chases Miro through the underbelly of the ‘slum’. This puts a lot of stress on Binoche and Gavron: if their surroundings don’t communicate class difference, the actors have to. Binoche has become so malleable in her talents and appearance it’s often hard to categorize her. The fit, stressed mom in Michael Haneke’s superb Caché has given way to a slightly chubbier, East-European-accented mother hen with drab clothing and an overriding maternal instinct.
She is the heart of the film, and the scenery and mood matches her, ironically, up until the affair begins. Then the film’s dazed atmosphere becomes gelatinous, and the class struggle hollow. Characters’ antecedents (Liv, Will’s wife, is Scandinavian) are a point of order in the film’s context but never given enough importance to create a sense of narrative intricacy. Sandy’s yearning for and ultimate disappointment with his lower-class cleaning lady hints at a poignant bourgeois ethos, but it’s not developed past the film’s first 30 minutes. So the cultural clash is rendered in pale shades, and any sort of challenging critique of modern social strata is averted. Not quite a misdemeanor, but definitely nothing to celebrate. Chris Cabin