Exiled and Once Upon a Time in China

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art will screen Johnnie To's 2006 film Exiled and Tsui Hark's 1991 film Once Upon a Time in China as a part of their Hard Boiled Hong Kong Weekend Series.

Exiled
Saturday, November 20 | 5 pm
The gang's all here. Joining forces once more with the ice-cool ensemble from The Mission, To crafts a smoldering urban western about—what else—a reunited mercenary outfit trying to pull off one final job. Set in final days of Macao's Portuguese rule and coursing with elegiac camaraderie, Exiled is a tour-de-force of Scope staging, ambient tension and Zen precision. The film was Hong Kong's official foreign-language Oscar submission in 2006. "This flamboyant, Peckinpah-ish ode to male bonding has a melancholy, fin de siècle splendor…The balletic set pieces, filled with Mexican standoffs, billowing curtains and slo-mo bloodletting, pay tribute to Sergio Leone. To blends sentimentality, shoot-outs and cool humor into a bewitchingly entertaining brew."—David Ansen, Newsweek.
2006/color/113 min./Scope | Scr: Szeto Tam Yuen, Yip Tin Shing; dir: Johnnie To; w/ Anthony Wong, Francis Ng, Roy Cheung, Lam Suet, Simon Yam.
Bing Theater | $5 admission

FILM PROGRAM
Weekend Series: Hard Boiled Hong Kong
Once Upon a Time in China
Saturday, November 20 | 7:30 pm
Tsui Hark made Jet Li a superstar in this larger-than-life period adventure. He plays real-life folk hero Wong Fei-hung, an acupuncturist and martial arts master who commands a local militia against colonizers of every stripe—English, French, and American; slave traders, opium runners and Jesuit missionaries. The first and best installment of a subsequent six-film cycle; Once Upon a Time in China boasts extravagant brawls, luxuriant pageantry, show-stopping acrobatics, slapstick antics and a boundless supply of matchless action sequences all done without digital effects. "In one scene [Li] turns an umbrella into a miraculous combination of sword, shield, parachute and human-meat hook… In the film's most spectacular duel, he and an adversary face each other across a scaffold of entangled ladders, which they treat as a kind of seesaw, flinging each other high into the air. These aerial ballets are presented as nostalgic set pieces in a witty, extravagantly picturesque homage to Sergio Leone."—Stephen Holden, The New York Times.
1991/color/134 min./Panavision | Scr: Tsui Hark, Leung Yiu-ming, Tang Pik-yin, Yun Kai-chi; dir: Tsui Hark; w/ Jet Li, Yuen Biao, Jacky Cheung, Rosamund Kwan.
Bing Theater | $10 general admission. $7 museum members, seniors (62+), students with valid ID.