Hold the Fort review – gory goings-on at the neighbours association get-together

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A couple move from the city to a seemingly clean-cut suburb in this enjoyable comedy-horror that breezes through the grisly deaths of characters you won’t care about In this short, sharp, comedy-horror-siege movie, youngish couple Jenny (Haley Leary) and Lucas (Chris Mayers) are the newcomers in a clean-cut – or is it? – suburban neighbourhood, having moved away from the big city. Lucas is a world-class red-flag-ignorer, while in contrast, Jenny is adept at spotting the signs that something is off. When the perky moustachioed head of the local homeowners’ association Jerry (Julian Smith) invites the pair to a party celebrating the equinox, he assures them “it’s to DIE for!” in the tone of voice Ned Flanders might use in a Simpsons Halloween special. Jenny immediately asks the reasonable question: “Why would you say it like that?” Roles are soon reversed at said homeowners’ association party, as an ample helping of the local moonshine blunts Jenny’s natural caution, leaving Lucas to not...
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The Narrow Road review – tough times for the downtrodden in pandemic Hong Kong

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After deciding it’s time to seek help with his cleaning business, despairing Chak meets the zanily upbeat Candy

Set in Hong Kong during the early days of the pandemic, Lam Sum’s tender drama pictures a city haunted by economic and political uncertainty. Storefronts are plastered with foreclosure and bankruptcy notices, while talk of moving abroad hovers amid everyday conversations. Plagued by faulty equipment, the one-man sanitary service operated by world-weary Chak (played by Cantopop star Louis Cheung) is on the verge of breaking down. When asked by his ailing mother if God is telling him to give up the business, Chak self-deprecatingly describes himself as a speck of dust, so tiny that even the deities would not take notice.

Reluctantly hired as an extra pair of helping hands on his cleaning rounds, single-mom Candy (Angela Yuen) enters Chak’s life like a whirlwind of chaos. With her impossibly sunny attitude and colourful fashion sense, Candy could have come off as a manic pixie archetype; Yuen instead manages to lend an emotional weight to the character’s capricious quirkiness. A particularly devastating sequence finds the pair scrubbing the human-shaped stain left by a nameless soul who has died alone in squalor, another speck of dust forgotten by the outside world.

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