Monga; 艋舺

Gangster themes are contemporary Hong Kong and 1920-1940 era Shanghai period drama perennials. Every few years a new one emerges. Monga, however, is a Taiwanese endeavor and it is quite brilliant and so watchable.
"Monga" is a Taiwanese aboriginal pronunciation.  It loosely means a place where small boats gather and used to be the name of an old town district in Taipei. Adjacent to 西门町, a tourism hot spot today. This cluster is where the 1970-1980ish early commercial development began.
For this type of movie you can almost imagine the mosaic of colorful characters and how they lived lives blurring the thin line between right and wrong. However, this movie is directed by Niu Chenze (钮承泽), the child actor-turned director whose acting we have seen in this blog: Growing Up. Allegedly he has himself lived a quasi-gangster life at one point in his youth. Seemingly volatile and jumpy (having even earned a well-deserved honorific Bean/Beanie), Niu is by all means a passionate director excels at using modern cinematic phrasing and maneuvering ensemble casts. In recent years nobody seems to have surpassed his attempt in telling the contemporary urban tales.
He might just become the Scorsese of Taiwan.
The movie is a true homage to youth, adventure, ambition and loyalty. I really liked all of the characters, from the formidable mafia boss who dons a shower cap to cook to your average blessed-by-ignorance ruffians.
Featuring some of the the most promising Taiwanese actors today: Ruan Jintian, 阮经天 (middle) as Dragon, the scarily disciplined number two and the real Meyer Lansky of the group; Zhao Youting 赵又廷 (second from right) as Mosquito, the fatherless new kid who valiantly and comically fought school bullies over a piece of chicken leg in the movie's much-acclaimed long opening scene;  Huang Denghui, 黄镫辉 (first from left) as the rash chubby guy of the group and Chen Handian, 陈汉典 (not pictured here) as the opposing gang's miserable gadfly who got his orifices glue-shut, literally. Huang and Chen are also very cool improv actors all over Taiwanese TV shows.
The only part I found less satisfying was the theatrically far-fetched subplot in which a frequent patron of Mosquito's mom's hair salon, another gangster figure and played by the director himself, turned out to be Mosquito's long-lost father.

Chinese subtitles; Enjoy the movie

A Chinese Ghost Story; 倩女幽魂

If you have a morbid fear towards ghost stories like I do, let me assure you that A Chinese Ghost Story will make you laugh! Few movies are the perfect blend of comedy, romance, action, period drama, and yes, ghosts.
A branch of the Chinese culture has always been dominated by ghosts, reincarnation, Yin-Yang divide and the after-world as they are important themes in both Buddhism and Taoism. Ghost stories as a movie genre have flourished as well.
The story was adapted from a short story out of a collection of 491, all ghost-themed, called 聊斋志异. So well-known is this book that in China it would be almost impossible to locate a person who has never heard of it. You will run into plenty of Chinese movies based on stories out of this book. Unfortunately the original author was prolific but highly unsuccessful during his lifetime in Qing dynasty.
Here's the gist of the movie: A lovely bookworm (宁采臣) took a nasty job as a debt collector. While seeking shelter in a deserted thousand-year old temple, he ran into whom he thought was an otherworldly beautiful girl. She was in fact, from another world: a ghost spirit in the "Yin" domain waiting to gather enough "Yang" essence by trapping and sapping healthy young males, in order to reincarnate back into physical existence. The bookworm, clueless of her scheme, foolhardily tried to rescue her out of the temple and her controlling grandma, a hermaphrodite ghost sort of, and a monster tree ghost, running a quasi female ghost brothels so that a cut of the "Yang" essence the girls sapped can be supplied to support her own transformation away from the afterworld.
If you are interested in ancient Chinese culture, I highly recommend this movie. The dialogues, choreographed actions, costume design, special effects and acting are all superior. Some even said that this movie reinvigorated the Hong Kong film industry, in a doldrum at the time, with a newly charged form of period drama.
This movie, made nearly 30 years ago, remains a classic.
The male lead was played by the one-and-only Leslie Cheung (张国荣). Cheung, before his untimely 2003 death due to severe depression, had achieved almost every highest honor in every possible field an Asian entertainer could've attempted. I will introduce more of his films in the near future. 

Chinese subtitles. Enjoy the movie.