This Weekend at LACMA: Hard Boiled Hong Kong

November 12, 2010

In addition to the many exhibitions currently on view, the weekend at LACMA is bookended, as usual, by two free concerts—tonight, the Littleton Brothers perform for Jazz at LACMA, and on Sunday pianist Gonzalo Farias will take the stage in our Sundays Live series.

In between, bring your bulletproof vest to the Bing Theater for the start of our latest film series, Hard Boiled Hong Kong, unfolding over the next three weekends. The series looks at four pillars of the gangster genre in Hong Kong—John Woo, Johnnie To, Tsui Hark, and Wong Kar-wai—and includes their classic sagas as well as the LA premiere, later this month, of Woo's newest epic, Red Cliff.

The series begins with four classics of the genre. Tonight, John Woo's breakout 1988 film The Killer, starring Chow Yun-fat, followed by Wong Kar-wai's 1988 film As Tears Go By. Tomorrow, Johnnie To's The Mission will screen at the special time of 5:30 pm, for the special price of just $5, followed by Woo's other classic collaboration with Chow Yun-fat, Hard Boiled. Check out the trailers for each of these films—though I should warn you that they're all pretty violent.

Scott Tennent