Famed for its poster art featuring Chingmy Yau in Marilyn Monroe mode, her iconic scene also mirrored to lame effect in the film. It also is co-written by Wong Jing which means no one should be surprised by the content that includes a character with breasts so firm they make deep imprints in doors, Michael Lai filming pornos, Deannie Yip drinking urine and Chingmy Yau in hot pants! Director Lawrence Cheng does nothing to stop this but despite this being run of the mill, early 90s crap, She Starts The Fire is also cheap, unashamed entertainment in a good way. The Firestarter connection does not make room for any horror and it's all another shameless, continuous display of Yau's beauty. Am not complaining but the real fire is provided by comediennes Deannie Yip and Carol Cheng, both, especially Yip, going out of their way to please the local comedy demand. It travels and it works. Also starring Lawrence Cheng, Chu Kong, Peter Lai, Kingdom Yuen, Damian Lau and Lee Siu-Kei.

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Ronny Yu's cooking comedy should be sorted under standard but under a sub-section concerning even execution as well. Yuen Biao plays a Mainlander who achieves success at his relative Bo's (Ng Man-Tat) restaurant and eventually hits the big time with his acrobatic cooking. Meanwhile Bo lets runaway Feng (Leon Lai) stay with him and his daughter Maggie (Maggie Shaw). Feng is breaking away from his family but seeing as he is the son of the boss (Jimmy Wang Yu) who wants to buy the land of the restaurant, conflicts will arise...

Integrating Yuen Biao's wonderful acrobatics and kung-fu skills into a select few highlight reel cooking scenes, director Yu's puts equal focus into making him and Ng Man-Tat a credible comedy team, with fairly well-honed results. Flowing into serious territory isn't a drawback for the film as Ng leads the pack in a series of felt dramatic moments but do note that it's still within a framework of a commercial comedy. While dramatically exciting to a decent degree, the fire climax tends to forget to structure itself as character closure so the end product may be even but it slips a bit at the finish line despite. Also with Leung Kar-Yan.

Produced by Jackie Chan, The Shootout by all accounts isn't quality but coming from an era where Hong Kong filmmakers still had it in them to deliver, it's a silly diversion. For the cop unit, played by Aaron Kwok, Leung Kar Yan and Lau Ching Wan, you've got Aaron as the lovesick puppy (target being Fennie Yuen) and a fun double act between Leung and Lau. Basically they all act like idiots up until the point when it's time to battle the ultra bad guys (who other to lead them but Elvis Tsui?). Action director Leung Ga-Hung here gives us cool glimpses into Hong Kong cinema acrobatic gunplay and stunts at its coolest while it's director Michael Mak that slows down the film significantly with the comedy routines. The elements still add up to a light and violent product. I like that, from an era such as this that is. As part of Elvis Tsui's gang, we see otherwise comedienne Kingdom Yuen not hamming it up for once.

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Made directly for video by Danny Lee's production company Magnum, as with many of these movies no English subtitles were ever created but Shoot To Kill is such basic entertainment anyway that it's relatively easily followed. Lo Sect On (Nick Cheung in a role he probably wouldn't accept today but he should be grateful to Danny who landed him several roles early on) is a triad gangster who is let out of prison but he hasn't realized it's bad to be bad. On the contrary, he continues to mess up his family, corrupt his younger relatives and go on a violence bender with his gang. All this is up to Danny Lee's usual crew of characters to handle then...

Rated Category III, director Wong Gam-Din plays with the video format but swiping cues from The Terminator movies and featuring a lame, stock score otherwise, his chops as a supervisor for destruction and suspense gets paid off in slight ways only. Making sure to add extra outrageousness to Cheung's psycho character via bloodshed, the violence moves the picture ahead at a brisk pace but even with subtitles, nothing grand character- or narrative-wise would probably have been revealed in Shoot To Kill. Just sit back for a mere 80 minutes and take the punishment and slight rewards. Also starring Parkman Wong, Eric Kei, Lam King-Kong and Danny Lee appear sporadically.

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Predicted at birth to not last more than 24 years of life, although he will mature on the outside quite quickly, Long-Life (Eric Tsang) has his family deviously arrange a wedding with the local but poor beauty Siao. But peeping at her taking a bath one night causes the ceiling to collapse, killing Siao but not her spirit as Long-Life literally takes her breath away containing it. It's now up to the good family of the town, Mr. Ko (Chung Fat) and his son (Ngai Sing) to get Siao reincarnated but Long-Life isn't giving up without a fight...

Lam Ching-Ying appears at the very beginning only and the remainder of Shy Spirit turns out to be rather insignificant. While the martial arts is a big component of the film, whenever it seems to go cool and creative, shoddy wirework takes over. It doesn't help that the finale contains obvious breakaway props to the max and while there's the odd fun after-life scenario, Shy Spirit never goes off. Only remains stale. Peter Chan Lung plays Eric Tsang's father (!) while Dick Wei and Stanley Fung also appear.

Despite the English directing credit saying John Chiang, Silent Love is actually Shaw Brother's star David Chiang's 7th feature as director. A social drama, Chiang plants the seed of darkness early as deaf Heung (Season Ma - The Lunatics) is imprisoned for manslaughter. What follows is the story of her and her pickpocket deaf/mute friends meeting ex-con Kelly (Lau Ching Wan in a very relaxed movie debut) and perhaps finally being encouraged to give up the lives as outlaws...

But director Chiang's story is about hopeless outcasts and as the violent act draws near, it's easy to spot that there's no true salvation in the film. The study is very much worthwhile and featuring characters relying on sign language to such a great extent is a directorial challenge Chiang does well in. The social commentary and its examination is a bit on the slight side though and Silent Love never really goes beyond interesting territory. The directing gene in brother Derek Yee was and is more prominent but Chiang proved to be a worthy behind the camera talent, none more so than in his last feature Mother of A Different Kind. Also with Fan Siu Wong, Roy Cheung and Lam Chung.

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TROY'S REVIEW: An un-credited Paulo Torcha headlines this typically daft but fun Filmark International cut & paste job as Silver Dragon; Interpol agent, ninja and judging by his headband, a man with Mitsubishi sponsorship too! To cut a long story short, Dragon and his ninja buddy (who only appears in two scenes in the entire movie) are out to bring down the evil black ninja organization which is run by Roger Kimsky, a man who has a curious propensity for giving rousing speeches to his decidedly gormless ninja cronies when he's not dipping his toes in the gun running trade. Meanwhile, in a completely separate story, i.e. a completely different movie into which the ninja scenes are edited, Alex Ho, a tough cop who doesn't play by the rules, is trying to bring down crime lord Mark. Scenes of special mention in this insane entry include, Alex going berserk with a baseball bat and taking out about twenty bad guys single-handedly and the bizarre ending in which Mark is tried for his crimes in a makeshift court of law in a multi-storey car park! Even better is the finale of the ninja segments in which Dragon's pal has a seemingly psychic warning that his friend is in trouble and subsequently goes to his aid... and is killed within about ten seconds! Luckily Silver Dragon himself fares somewhat better and eventually manages to defeat Roger by throwing his sword into him. Alas, in one last act of defiance, Roger rises from death to issue one last rousing speech proclaiming indignantly that this is just a 'physical death' and that one day he will return. Yes indeed, we look forward to that day!

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KENNETH'S REVIEW: Not as lifeless as Guy Lai's The Intellectual Trio but pretty damn close. At least it opens in an original fashion during what appears to be a breaking and entering but Pat Ha's Jenny isn't very good at it. Her plan is to elope with boyfriend Cheung (Jacky Cheung) but trying to stand in the way is his sister Kam (Carol Cheng). And when an old lady wants these people to be involved as she marries of her dead daughter, things take drastic turns. As the ghost of the daughter (embodied by Maggie Cheung) becomes visible, the marriage appears to have been done between her and Cheung. Enter rivalry...

Annoying pretty much until Maggie Cheung arrives in all her cute glory, as the comedic jabs takes place such as Pat Ha and Carol Cheng exchanging bust-jokes and Nat Chan appearing only mildly annoying, Guy Lai manages to trust Maggie Cheung to make matters bearable because nothing is otherwise funny. Criminally simple to direct her in this way.

Reasonably entertaining buddy cop cop comedy (the pairing this time is Sandra Ng and Charine Chan) from Andy Chin (Changing Partner) who usually makes reasonably entertaining films. No different here as comedy is kept unusually light (meaning not Wong Jing-esque broad outside of the Michael Chow cop character and his partner, but Michael is a pretty funny guy though) and plays to Sandra Ng's strength as an amusing comic actress. Tony Leung Siu Hung handles the action competently, giving us gritty and bloody gunplay that makes Sisters In Law a fair early 90s package. Shing Fui On and Max Mok are good in supporting roles.

Megastar does their best to ruin the movie with a horrendous 5.1 remix though.

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