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This is an area of film that I've only recently gotten into (since around May) but have liked quite a few a lot. My favorites are easilly The Blade, and Once Upon a Time in China, two great and totally different movies from Tsui Hark. The Prodigal Son (Sammo Hung) is another one that's pretty high on my list. Other memorable ones include Dragons Forever, Operation Condor, The Drunken Master (as well as the '94 sequel), Police Story (1&3), Iron Monkey and many, many others besides.
For comedies the best I've seen are Project A 1 and 2. Not really a martial arts movie per se, but Richard Ng's fighting in the classic Winners and Sinners is one of my favorite single moments in a martial arts movie for the genre.
Another subgenre that's held a few of my favorite films from Hong Kong is the 'Horror/Comedy' category, with Encounters of the Spooky Kind and Mr. Vampire being the two most noteable one's I've seen.
Martial arts fantasy is a subgenre I need to explore more. So far I've only seen two - The Bride With White Hair and Zu, Warriors of the Magic Mountain. Zu was inconsistent, varrying from beginning to end between "a constant stream of cinematic revelation" and "convoluted mess", and Bride did nothing for me at all. Some nice Images mixed in with some really horrendous ones and a not so great story.
I dont really know enough of the important names to make a comprehensive list yet, but so far I've really loved Yuen Biao (Prodigal Son, Once Upon a Time in China, Project A, Operation Condor, Dragons Forever, Zu) and Lam Ching Ying (Prodigal Son, Mr. Vampire) in some of their roles. Lam Ching Ying's 'chinese opera diva', from Prodigal Son is a high point of cinema -- chinese or other -- for me, and Yuen Biao was fantastic in Zu and particularly in Once Upon a Time in China, where he was sadly replaced in the lesser sequels by lesser actor Siu Chung Mok.