This fairly incomprehensible historical kung-fu romance comedy manages to capture everything that is both endearing and stupid about the kung fu movies of the period. The humor is broadly slapstick and pretty silly and overindulgent; the kung fu is phony and obligatory; the story has something to do with a gal joining the 18 bronze-painted girls (who have been admitted to the famous Shaolin Temple to learn a unique style of kung fu) in order to gain revenge on the evil monk who killed off her family. Or something. Characters come and go so fast it's hard to keep track of who's who or what's what and how they connect to each other--but the ride can be fun.
It's not a bad film, although it's not well made, and the humor is a bit too cartoony (emphasized by a pervasive cartoony musical score relishing in all manner of oddball sounds and noises) for audiences not familiar with this style of Cantonese humor. The 18 Bronze Girls have some fun fighting moments (especially when they stack themselves one on top of the other to become gleaning golden girl bludgeons!).
A remarkable and effective, if uneven and a tad overlong, dark fantasy from Korea that takes the Hansel and Gretel fairytale, grafts it into the essence of the “It’s A Good Life” TWILIGHT ZONE episode, and takes a look at the plight of children in the modern world.
In the midst of abuse – parental and pedophile alike – three young kids are given a way out: via the gift of imagination that actually alters their reality, but poses great danger to the adults who come into their midst. Instead of a pair of siblings stumbling onto the home of a witch, who then captures them for her supper, we have the three kids (marvelously performed, especially the youngest one who really invested a lot of personal emotion into her role – or at least had it prompted out of her at the right moments) who lure lost adults into their home in the woods and make them stay in an attempt to gain loving parents. The protagonist is a soon-to-be father who crashes his car in the woods and is “rescued” by one of the kids; only to find he can never leave and that the other adults who come into the kids’ midst encounter devastating ends.
The story progresses smoothly and interestingly, enhanced by a beautifully evocative score by Lee Byeong-Woo (THE HOST), and runs a satisfactory line between dark fantasy and horror linked by the characterization and plight of the children. The protagonist must manage to survive, keep from getting the kids angry at him (or risk being turned into a doll or an oak tree), and escape back to his reality while at the same time developing a sympathetic bond with the kids (oh, and save the kids from a serial killer preacher who stumbles on the cottage).
The story is multi-layered and develops a good bit of sympathy towards its characters and storyline. Beautifully filmed , performed, and scored, this is a unique little thriller with a lot of heart and creativity.
Shinobi No Mono (product link) Martial Arts / Action/Adventure The first popular ninja movie. This is an exacting and entertaining action film, showing the reality of ninja activities and abilities as a result of training and experience rather than the near-magical abilities shown in more recent ninja fare. As much of a character study as an action film, the movie focuses on Goemon, a newly trained but not completely competent ninja whose assignment proves to be a duplicitous one with all manner of betrayals, including one or more of his own. Interesting and likable drama.
Utterly incomprehensible and ineptly directed martial arts fantasy. The silly story has something to do with a battle between villagers and the local evil warlord, named The Devil, with a young girl raised by wolves who rises to confront the wicked warlord. But the film is so poorly executed that even the cheerful, entertaining silliness of 1980s era kung fu movies can redeem it. Much of this film is clearly intended as camp but it's not even enjoyable on that level. The storyline is sheer idiocy; the acting is awful and the English dubbing makes it even worse. Ling Chan's direction consists mainly of repeating quick zooms and endless recurring cuts (i.e., the wolf attack early on in the film consists of wolves running toward the camera and then dozens of shots of wolves lunging past; even the kung fu fights are obscured by incomprehensible cut-aways, repeat images, shots aimed at nothing, and badly performed reactions from the cast. The enjoyable silliness of many kung fu fantasies of the era are often wonderfully entertaining and enjoyable, but this one was just awful.
Extremely entertaining and also very funny third film in this series; but unlike the first two, which followed a consistent storyline, this is an entirely new story with new characters and cast. Shu Qi is excellent as the daughter of a prominent Hong Kong gangster, and much more feminine in her performance than Eun-Jin who played the title role in the first two films (and who I liked very much, but Shu Qi’s ability to soften the role is extremely effective). When she’s framed for killing a rival gang leader who offended her, she is sent to Korea where she is taken care of by an incompetent by kindhearted gangster (very nicely played by Lee Bum Soo) and his gang. But they don’t speak Cantonese and Shu Qi doesn’t speak Korean, which leads to much hilarity as they hire a translator (excellent portrayed by a very talented actress named Yeong Hyeon who was very funny in a very delicately layered role) who frequently mistranslates in order to gain some power in the gangster hierarchy. A gang of assassins eventually discovers Shu Qi and come to take care out for the murder in Hong Kong, leading to some great action scenes, but the film is essentially a comedy due to the interaction of the HK and Korean personalities. While Shu Qi and Lee Bum Soo never really have a convincing chemistry as a couple, their love story eventually completes the mixture. Add to the film an excellent Morricone-esque score and very nice direction and you have a very entertaining, stylish, and elegant action comedy.
The Bullet Train (product link) Action/Adventure / Thriller Japanese action thriller that was the basis for the hit movie SPEED. A bomber plans a bomb on a bullet train that will blow up if the train slows below 80 kmh. Ok film, but inept editing, bad English dubbing, and very inconsistent pacing really marred the film. Sonny Chiba puts in an appearance as the train engineer.
The Secret Rivals / The Secret Rivals 2 [2-Pack] (product link) Martial Arts / Action/Adventure This is a poorly made and terribly acted 1970s era indie kung fu movie (first effort from Seasonal Pictures). It has an interesting story about rival factions and mixed allegiances, but the directorial style and carelessness of the editing and photography really mars the film, which remains quite interesting for some fantastic fight scenes, especially involving kicking and one of the characters’ use of nunchakus. Typical for 1970s kung fu movies, all the film music except for a heroic Chinese theme near the end is ripped off from Italian Westerns (Morricone’s BIG GUNDOWN, mostly).
Pan's Labyrinth (product link) Fantasy / Science Fiction Guillermo Del Toro’s elaborate wartime fantasy is a provocative exploration of reality and fantasy, left just ambiguous enough to make its point. A young girl is brought by her mom to live with mom’s new husband, a cruel and vicious Captain in charge of some outpost in Fascist World War II Spain; girl discovers a secret lair of fauns and fairies which serve to distract her from the cruelties of wartime, while she befriends her step-dad’s housekeeper, while the latter also feeds intelligence and support to the hillside guerilla rebels. Film is sumptuously elegant and maintains a persuasive storyline throughout, supported by excellent performances and a very nice musical score. Film’s culmination may either be considered a tragic loss of innocence proving the uselessness of childhood fantasies, or a victory of an otherworld reality over a tragic existence on the upper world.
Entertaining martial arts film with the intoxicating Cheng Pei-Pei as a master swordfighter known for her deadly skill wielding a powerful whip. While the fights between swords and whip may seem a little far-fetched, the film wields a compelling story of vengeance and past crimes, invoking as much a mystery as an action story. Typical for Shaw Bros films, the sets are magnificent and the color photography is beautiful... The setting is snowy northern China so we have interesting scenes on horseback in the snow and ancient icicled fortresses, and Cheng is equally compelling in a white fur cap and winter outfit. The musical score, also typical of Shaw Bros films of the era, is needle-dropped from John Barry’s James Bond scores, except for original opening and closing title music, attributed to Wang Fook-Ling. A very enjoyable revenge thriller/crime mystery set in ancient China with beautifully designed group fights and an interesting conception in its whip-versus-sword, despite a proclivity toward some pretty unconvincing flying/soaring through the air moments.
Way cool Shaw Bros martial arts fest. The plot is slightly confusing, trying to figure out all the characters’ various loyalties, but it’s a good story about warring clans and individual martial artists – superbly played by Gordon Liu, Chia-Hui, Liu Chia-Liang, and the delightfully cute Kara Hui. The magic of this film, like most of the Shaw Bros pix of the 70s and 80s, lies in its wonderful set design and the compelling hues of its color photography – oh, and of course, the stupendous martial arts sequences. In this one, the film climaxes with an amazing battle between two opposing brothers, demonstrating their skills with the 18 legendary weapons in one of the most amazingly choreographed 30 minutes of martial arts fighting ever committed to celluloid. The film is also a comedy and has some hilarious moments, the best of which is a kung-fu fight between a man whose body is being controlled by the villain’s poppet, who manipulates his fighting, until the man’s friends grab the poppet and the ensuing free-for-all is very funny. Along with MASTER OF THE FLYING GUILLOTINE, THE 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN, and a few others, this has become one of my favorites of the Shaw Bros era.
Colorful martial arts saga; director Lo Wei’s last film for Shaw Bros. It begins as a standard revenge story complicated by elements of regret and forgiveness, and turns into a quest fantasy as a crippled kung-fu mistress out to get her parents murderers, only to be offered to have her injured legs cured by one of them in a healing fountain in a distant snow field. Various political disputes between the factions involved in the original murder – which have to do with a rare jade sword owned by her family, and now used by the crippled girl – complicate the quest. I wasn’t impressed by the acting and much of the dialog seemed very unrealistic; as the film opens it features a standard plot element in early martial arts films, about a heroine disguised as a man simply by wearing men’s clothing – and nobody can seem to recognize that it’s a girl despite obvious facial features and other feminine attributes, which always tends to destroy a story’s internal logic for me. Much of the characters’ behavior in the first half of the film also tended to stretch believability, but the film came around once the quest got going and the final confrontation is a wonderful, epic showdown atop the snowy mountain. As with most Shaw Bros films, the sets are gorgeous, large fight scenes beautifully staged (often from a static long shot, displaying excellent choreography as multiple fighters interact, although at the same time the long shots keep the viewer mostly at a distance), and the use of color is amazing. Released by Celestial in a beautifully restored uncut print in subtitled Mandarin (which spares us the horrible dubbing of the 1971 US release, this is a very enjoyable martial arts film that, despite some initial drawbacks, develops into an effective multi-layered story with a moving resolution.
I very much enjoyed this film despite some of its shortcomings (noticeably poor CGI highest among them); the drama of the piece was quite compelling.
Cecilia Cheung, once again, is a stolen princess who in her youth made a Faustian bargain with a Chinese goddess and lives lavishly at the expense of true love. The mythic storyline follows Cheung, the General she falls in love with after he rescues her from a former king who imprisoned her, the General's slave who is actually the one who rescued her while wearing the General's armor, a mysterious cloaked stranger who knows the secrets of the slave's past, the general's enemy who has his own connection to both Cheung's character and that of the cloaked stranger, and a goddess who appears from time to time to wage futures on the characters' actions.
The film is full of overblown wire-fu action scenes, lots of flying and racing (the slave's character is of a people who can "outrun time"), but all of this works within the context of its story and the story's internal mythology. Cheung especially brings the characterizations and their interactions to life, and this is the heart of the piece, the pathos that shines right through the film's visual drawbacks and the occasional inconsistency of its plotline. Wrapped in a cloak of gorgeous photography and colorful epic vistas (marred occasionally by that mediocre CGI) and a full blooded score by Klaus Badelt, I found this film to be very engaging and moving.
Spectacular violent action film from Kinji Fukasaku (BATTLES WITHOUT HONOR OR HUMANITY) that is as mesmerizing as it is disturbing.
Set in the near future, in response to rampant youth violence, the Japanese government each year selects one 8th grade class and maroons them in an isolated island for 3 days, where they must kill each other in order to survive.
The idea is appalling - but it's how the film explores it that makes the film as compelling as it is. How the various teenagers react to the predicament sets the tone for an unforgettable story. The original Kinji Fukasaki novel expands upon some of the issues that were necessarily abridged in the film, and the film abbreviates a lot while retaining the same essential formula and impact. The film expands the character of the lead government man running the Battle, which is effective, and the film also adds an intoxicatingly cute Japanese girl who introduces the Battle Royale students to the rules of the game via an enthusiastic and cutesy-putesy TV show segment.
In Thailand in the near future, women outnumber men so that men become hot commodities, sparking a vicious war between wives and mistresses as they fight over their men. The film takes this somewhat silly plot and makes a very entertaining and stylish, if noticeably uneven, film out of it. The plethora of gunfight sequences owe everything to John Woo, THE MATRIX, and KILL BILL (even to the point of the umpteenth rip-off of KB's "Battles Without Honor And Humanity" march-into-the-restaurant scene). The gunfight scenes are choreographed to the point of unreality, but remain extremely effective even so, and occupy the film's best moments. The gunfights are designed as dances, carefully choreographed tangos in which bullets fly freely (and almost always miss their targets, who have an amazing knack for dodging bullets, EQUILIBRIUM/Gun Kata style; while guns never need reloading until somebody's weapon needs to run out at a dramatic moment), but the effect is a sumptuous visual feast of operatic and balletic interplay.
The storyline, such as it is, is pretty hard to follow [and not just because the subtitle translation on the Thai DVD leaves a lot to be desired]: it's written haphazardly and much of whatever logic exists doesn't translate well - but as a fantasy tale it makes up for lack of substance with lots of slick visual style. There is little backstory given to the characters, and even the lead wife, Jittra (Nussaba Punnakan), despite having a sister whose pining for her missing husband becomes a major sublot, and the lead mistress, Maya (Methinee Kingpayome), nor the older women who founded the competing "First Class Wife International" and "Economy Wife International" (aka mistresses) associations are given much depth of character. But, in the end, for this film, none of that really matters, since it's all about the dance, all about the style, anyway - a deadly dance in which the true culprits - the men - are given their due in the film's pleasing resolution. It's a very watchable film, even though the pacing is very uneven and for every gorgeously filmed action scene there are innumerable static dialog scenes that slow the film in its tracks.
Entertaining and unusual Jackie Chan saga - he plays a modern day archeologist seeking answers to a possible past life; where Chan also plays a Qin Dynasty general. Directed by Stanley Tong (who directed Chan's first big international hit, RUMBLE IN THE BRONX), the film combines the flavor of Chan's martial arts films (and their sense of fun and comedy) with the contemporary feel of the large scale costume epic (HERO, SEVEN SWORDS, etc). The combination is at times a little hokey, as is the plot, but the film is lots of fun. Korean actress Hee-seon Kim plays the Qin era princess that Chan's general is bound to keep safe (and of course a romance ensues, although he's getting a little old to play a convincing suitor of 20-ish heroinne's like Kim); and Bollywood sexpot Mallika Sherawat turns all sorts of heads in a short but very provocative role as the Indian princess that modern day Chan meets in India (hints of a romance ensue but never develop).
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No Way is this in the same category as Seven Swords or Hero!!! It is on the level of Medallion, need I say more?
Spirited Killer (product link) Martial Arts / Action/Adventure Enjoyable--if low-budget and very raw--Thai martial arts film, noted mostly for introducing the world to the amazing Tony Jaa (ONG BAK), who has a small role in one of the fight scenes.
The story has to do with the ghost of a witch doctor who terrorizes the visitors to an ancient Thai village. Fights ensue. Many die. There's suddenly a mystical sword that allows the good guys to vanquish some of the bad dudes. Maybe.
Badly directed, with mismatched film stock throughout (scenes change color, go from sharp to faded and tinted red, etc), ripped off soundtracks from American epic films. It's a chore to watch but remains interesting for its use of martial arts and the prevalence on film of director/martial artist Panna Rittikrai.
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