Amid screens flooded with robots, superheroes, ghouls, broad (often infantile) so-called comedy, and talking animals there are a few brave and crazy theater owners primed to take a walk on the dark side. That's right, it's counter-programming to the rescue for those among us that would like to work the brain as well as escape the 35 degree heat. Until September 15, the Hong Kong International Film Festival Society will be presenting its annual Summer Pops program, and offering up something a little different from the seasonal norm.

The most notable of this year's 33 entries are the opening Ocean Flame, Francis Ford Coppola's Youth Without Youth, the animated Dragon Hunters, and Bangkok Dangerous. Ocean Flame is the product of the Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum, held during HKIFF, which culls film projects from submissions made by independent directors. Produced by actor Simon Yam (Sparrow), it was directed by Liu Fendou and stars Liao Fan, Monica Mak, and Hai Yi Tian. Following a screening at Cannes' Un Certain Regard in May, the film is based on iconic writer Wang Shuo's novel and is a complex, tragic love story about a petty criminal and an innocent but strong-willed waitress - and it proves that Liao's last film, the little seen but oddly mesmerizing Green Hat, was no fluke.

Not to be confused with Danny and Oxide Pang's (The Eye) 1999 thriller of the same name, Bangkok Dangerous is Danny and Oxide Pang's loose re-imagining of their own material. This time starring Nicolas Cage as professional assassin Joe, who's sent to Thailand with a mission to carry out four killings. He's double crossed by his boss, Surat, just as he finds himself falling under the spell of the neon-drenched city and a local shopgirl. More than anything, this version of Bangkok Dangerous is about a man at a crossroads who is trying to figure out where his life is going and what exactly it means.

Coppola (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now) was one of the great American directors to come to the fore in the 1970s. Along with Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Martin Scorsese, he had a hand in dramatically altering the landscape of Vietnam-era American cinema. After almost a decade as a producer, Coppola returns to the director's chair with the wildly divisive Youth Without Youth. The Hollywood Reporter called the film a "muddled fantasy", and The Guardian made a note of the "unfashionable boldness of its engagement with ideas". The story revolves around a suicidal elderly man, miserable that his life's work in linguistics will never be completed and will end in solitude. After he is struck by lightening, however, a remarkable and regenerative change occurs and he regains his youth. With renewed vigor, he picks up his research and finds himself an enigma in his own life. Unapologetically metaphysical and lushly photographed, the film may not be to everyone's tastes, but it's an exemplar of what Coppola has always done best: Demand the audience's attention under all circumstances.

But it's not all heavy-going existential angst this year (just mostly). Based on the popular television series created by Arthur Qwak, Dragon Hunters is its long-awaited 3D feature adaptation. Zoe is on a quest to help her uncle, Lord Arnold, rid their town of a dragon called the World Eater. Her heroes of choice are the faux-hunters Gwizdo and Lian-chu, a pair of con artists that succeed only in tricking naive villagers out of their money. If you're tired of talking pandas and post-modern irony as spouted by fish, this could be the animated tonic for you.

Though Bollywood Fever may be a selection of only four films, they are four good ones that are going a long way to changing the perception of Bollywood among non-Indians. The sampling here boasts pre-eminent choreographer Farah Khan's Om Shanti Om, sports-as-life parable Chak De! India (starring the Bollywood Brad Pitt, Shahrukh Khan), the romantic-comedy Jab We Met, and most notably, Vishal Bharadwaj's Omkara - a reworking of Othello (Bharadwaj's previous film was an Indian spin on Macbeth). Set in modern Uttar Pradesh, Omkara is a gangster tragedy that never loses sight of its source material while simultaneously making it wholly Indian. It's also a great start for Bollywood newcomers.

Last but not the least are the filmmaker spotlights on Ichikawa Kon and Ingmar Bergman. It's a treat when the chance arises to see some of history's most important films on a screen the way they were meant to be seen. Of the total thirteen films by the pair, several stand out, but two more than others. At the top of that list are Bergman's The Magician, a meditation on the necessity of illusion and fantasy and the thematic counterpoint to his earlier The Seventh Seal (also screening), and Ichikawa's devastating Fires on the Plain, about how easily mankind can fall into abject inhumanity. True, true, watching a dying soldier struggle with suicide may not be everyone's idea of a good time, but it's nice to be reminded that there's more to movies than explosions. Even in the summertime.

The Hong Kong International Film Festival Society's Summer Pops runs from August 8 to September 15. (www.hkiff.org.hk)

(HK Edition 07/10/2008 page4)