Hong Kong Cinema

[feihong]

--Mod Edit: please don't post links to copyrighted material.

Looks like another Youtube Channel, Hi Movie, has 4k versions of The Longest Nite and Expect the Unexpected in what appears to be theatrical aspect ratio (as you might recall, the Spectrum blu rays are cropped to 1.85:1). They also have Fight Back to School, and apart from those three, they have a collection of such awful-looking, anonymous contemporary movies that I wonder if any of them are real

[Never Cursed]

--Mod Edit: please don't post links to copyrighted material.

Looks like another Youtube Channel, Hi Movie, has 4k versions of The Longest Nite and Expect the Unexpected in what appears to be theatrical aspect ratio (as you might recall, the Spectrum blu rays are cropped to 1.85:1). They also have Fight Back to School, and apart from those three, they have a collection of such awful-looking, anonymous contemporary movies that I wonder if any of them are real

I had some sense of it, but I'm really happy that there's a whole industry of DTV action garbage there. The first few seconds of this one [Mod Edit: see above] made me laugh pretty hard with the specific clip/visual quotation included - fellas, who hasn't been there?

EDIT: sorry, mods. The movie is called Wolf Operation, if anyone wants to look it up themselves

[Mr Sausage]

There's a bunch of Stephen Chow stuff I don't care about, too.

Not a Stephen Chow fan?

[feihong]

I never thought Chow himself was funny. Other people in his films, like Ng Man-Tat and Sandra Ng, definitely. But he always seemed to me sort of vain and preening and trying to be above what he was doing, and the result, for me, was a lot of movies where the humor seemed really facile and detachable, or that the internal logic of his character was constantly being disrupted so he could do some exasperating "bit." I always have trouble trying to find the human center of a Steven Chow performance. I like the Hui Brothers comedy, and I've always liked Tsui Hark's more comic shenanigans in movies, and I've come to appreciate Chow Yun-Fat's comedy and even John Sham. Just in case it seems like I don't like Cantonese comedy across the board. It's just Steven Chow who I could never get on board for.

Incidentally, though, I did see him in a serious role from early in his career, and I thought he was phenomenal in it. I want to say it was John Woo's Just Heroes, but it might have been The Last Conflict or Thunder Cops, I can't remember. I just recall being really impressed by him, and wanting to see him in more serious roles.

[TechnicolorAcid]

The Made in China Project
June 1st - December 31st

Overview
Welcome everyone to this new personal project I've created to honor the films of the Chinese Republics (being China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan respectively) created out of semi-popular demand for a list like this. I’ll admit I’m not as particularly knowledgeable about this geographic area of film as I was during my Czech and/or Slovak Project so I’ll let more experienced members lead the discussion and also unfortunately, due to low turnout from that list, these lists will not be sponsored by the mods anymore. But nevertheless I’m excited to explore this area of film and I’m sure you are as well but first let’s settle some ground rules before we delve into any discussion.

The Rules
- To qualify, films must be made exclusively or mostly within the Chinese film industry and should’ve been done primarily in their national languages (for example: Mandarin, Cantonese, and of course Chinese), English dubs obviously being an exception to this rule.
- Films made by Chinese directors or featuring Chinese stars outside said industries will not count so you cannot vote for something like Face/Off even if it’s made by a Hong Kong director or Rush Hour even if Jackie Chan is a prominent star in it.
- Voters will be given between June 1st and December 17th to discuss films that they want to shout out.
- Ballots have to have somewhere between 15 to 50 films (1st place being your favorite) in order to count and will be cast between December 18th and December 24th before an Orphan Rescue List will be conducted from the 25th of December to the 31st of December.

If you wish to participate but for whatever reason can't message me or aren't an active member of this forum, please message the mods so they relay your ballots to me in the form of a Private DM.

Cheers!

[Finch]

Thank you to Mr Sausage and feihong for your tips; I bookmarked Hi Movie and watched The Longest Nite which was one of the films I've been wanting to see for a long time. I wish I liked it. It is very well made and acted but it is just too grim for me. Bullet in the Head is similarly exhausting but the humanity of Leung's character in that film made it more palatable. Woo films the violence in an operatic style which gives me a bit more distance from it; the violence in The Longest Nite feels more grounded and harder to stomach. Leung is the co-lead here as well and tortures a man within the first 15 minutes, and a woman keeps getting brutalised throughout the film. I also didn't like the visuals. The film looks like it was lit by Tony Scott in his later years: high contrast and the highlights completely blown out. Not adding it to my wishlist for a BD or 4K.

[Michael Kerpan]

feihong -- I rather enjoyed Stephen Chow in some of Johnnie To's movies featuring him -- but I seem to recall reading that Chow really disliked working with To (presumably because To wanted some control over how things were done).

[andyli]

feihong -- I rather enjoyed Stephen Chow in some of Johnnie To's movies featuring him -- but I seem to recall reading that Chow really disliked working with To (presumably because To wanted some control over how things were done).

It's more the other way round. after making The Mad Monk with Chow, To spent the following year not working pondering where his career was heading. He eventually decided he needed more artistic control over future projects if he was to continue directing. The rest is history.

[Michael Kerpan]

Thanks. Still, I liked Chow in To's films ,more than I like him in hisown.

[TechnicolorAcid]

Thought this would be a good place to share but if you haven’t seen it yet, I’m hosting a personal Lists Project where people can shoutout Hong Kong films they think others should check out before ultimately being able submit lists of their favorite Hong Kong flicks from August 18th to August 24th (alongside those from China and Taiwan too) right here on this very forum:
https://criterionforum.org/forum/viewt ... 49#p839649

[Mr Sausage]

I'm far from an expert--there are people on here who know Hong Kong films far better than I ever will--but I've seen a good chunk of HK stuff. So as a bit of fun here are my recommendations for a handful of notable auteurs that I like (EDIT: added one more):


Tsui Hark (seen all his films):

-The Butterfly Murders
-We're Going to Eat You
-Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind
-Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain
-Shanghai Blues
-Peking Opera Blues
-Once Upon a Time in China
-Green Snake
-The Lovers
-The Chinese Feast
-Love in the Time of Twilight
-The Blade


Ringo Lam (seen most of his films):

-City on Fire
-Prison on Fire
-School on Fire
-Full Contact
-Full Alert


Ann Hui (seen half of her films):

-The Secret
-Boat People
-Love in a Fallen City
-Song of the Exile
-Ordinary Heroes
-July Rhapsody
-A Simple Life
-The Way We Are


Patrick Tam (seen all his films but one):

-The Sword
-Love Massacre
-Nomad
-Love is that Eternal Rose


Johnnie To (seen maybe 14 of his vast filmography):

-Election
-Exile
-PTU
-The Mission
-Mad Detective
-Sparrow
-Vengeance
-Running Out of Time


Corey Yuen: (seen just over half):

-Yes, Madam!
-Righting Wrongs
-She Shoots Straight
-Fong Sai Yuk I & II (aka The Legend I & II)
-Ninja in the Dragon's Den
-My Father is a Hero (aka The Enforcer)


Sammo Hung: (seen just under half):

-Wheels on Meals
-Mr. Nice Guy
-Dragons Forever
-Encounters of the Spooky Kind
-Eastern Condors
-The Millionaire's Express
-The Prodigal Son
-Enter the Fat Dragon
-Pedicab Driver
-The Moon Warriors


Yuen Woo-Ping (seen a bit under half):

-Drunken Master
-Iron Monkey
-Tai-Chi Master (aka Twin Warriors)
-In the Line of Duty 4
-Dreadnaught
-Wing Chun
-Tiger Cage 2
-The Miracle Fighters


Lau Kar-Leung (seen most of his films):

-The 36th Chamber of Shaolin
-Drunken Master 2
-8 Diagram Pole Fighter
-Dirty Ho
-Heroes of the East
-Executioners From Shaolin
-Challenge of the Masters
-My Young Auntie
-Martial Club

[yoshimori]

For those with little experience of Chinese cinema ...

10 Recommendations for Mainland "festival" films:

CHEN Kaige, King of the Children (1987)
ZHANG Yimou, Raise the Red Lantern (1991)
ZHANG Yimou, Story of Qiu Ju (1992)
ZHANG Yimou, Not One Less (1999)
JIA Zhangke, The World (2004)
LOU Ye, Spring Fever (2009)
LOU Ye, Blind Massage (2014)
DIAO Yinan, Black Coal, Thin Ice (2014)
DIAO Yinan, Wild Goose Lake (2019)
ZHANG Dalei, Why Try to Change Me Now? (2023)

and 10 more, what the heck:

TIAN Zhuangzhuang, Horse Thief (1986)
JIA Zhangke, Platform (2000)
ZHANG Yimou, Hero (2002)
YANG Rui, Crossing the Mountain (2010), experimental narrative
JI Dan, When the Bough Breaks (2012), doc, much better than Wang Bing's film on the same topic from the same year
BI Gan, "Secret Goldfish" (2016)
YANG Mingmiing, Girls Always Happy (2018)
LOU Ye, Saturday Fiction (2019)
ZHANG Dalei, "Day is Done" (2020)
WEI Shujun, Only the River Flows (2022)

BooKs:

Michael Berry, Speaking in Images
Tony Rayns, King of the Children and the New Chinese Cinema

[zedz]

I think I can do fifteen in my sleep:

1. A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang, 1991)
2. The Terrorizer (Edward Yang, 1986)
3. Yi-Yi (Edward Yang, 2000)
4. Goodbye Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-Liang, 2003)
5. Goodbye, South, Goodbye (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 1996)
6. Taipei Story (Edward Yang, 1985)
7. What Time Is It There? (Tsai Ming-Liang, 2001)
8. Flowers of Shanghai (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 1998)
9. An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo, 2018)
10. Horse Thief (Tian Zhuangzhuang, 1986)
11. Platform (Jia Zhangke, 2000)
12. Long Day's Journey Into Night (Bi Gan, 2018)
13. The Hole (Tsai Ming-Liang, 1999)
14. The World (Jia Zhangke, 2004)
15. Ashes of Time (Original Version) (Wong Kar-Wai, 1994)

Yang, Hou and Tsai are simply three of the greatest modern filmmakers (and I could probably have plausibly filled all fifteen slots with their films), and the mainland Chinese filmmakers I appreciate the most tend to draw more from the allusive, literary and absurdist qualities of the Taiwanese new wave than the didacticism and spectacle of the fifth generation filmmakers or the static tropes of Chinese genre filmmaking.

[Mr Sausage]

I'll probably stick mainly to HK filmmakers for my list, because it's where my interest is these days, but also to give them something of a chance against the consciously art house Taiwan and Mainland films that I suspect appeal more to the board in general. But a Zhanke film might make it in there somewhere.

[colinr0380]

I have only seen Tian Zhuangzhuang's The Blue Kite so far but famously Scorsese chose The Horse Thief as his favourite film of the 1990s during a discussion with Roger Ebert, despite it being made in the 80s!

[thirtyframesasecond]

Farewell, My Concubine and Yellow Earth are two great Chen Kaige films, but just as good, in my view, is Temptress Moon.

Jerome Silbergeld's China Into Film is an excellent book too.

[Mr Sausage]

Brainmelting Swordplay Madness

Wild swordplay fantasies are some of my favourite kinds of movies. At their best they're animated by such wild creative ambitions and extravagant invention, while at the same time speeding past many things that would typically make a film good (like, you know, a coherent plot). They're real playgrounds of the imagination and as good an example of cinematic vitality as I can think of. Most films struggle to show you anything new, whereas a given wuxia fantasy is liable to show you some brand new image or idea every five minutes (or sometimes every five seconds, when sufficiently crazed). My favourite era for this is the early 90s, post Swordsman II, but as you can see from my viewings below, late Shaw Brothers offerings were outstanding in their own right.


All Men Are Brothers--Blood of the Leopard (Billy Chan, 1993)

An adaptation of part of The Water Margin, one of the four great classic Chinese novels. An honourable Imperial Guard Instructor becomes sworn brothers with a grumpy but loyal monk before falling afoul of the local Marshall and his entitled son. Because it’s adapting an older classic over a modern wuxia novel, there’s less fantasy and weirdness overall, and the plot, tho’ still lightning fast, has a simplicity to it. The craziness is saved for the fights, which push themselves into ever greater extravagances of flying and spinning and exploding that you come away a bit stupefied. When a wuxia hits the right note, the goofiness becomes transcendent. And the movie is genuinely funny. Ok, yes, the rapey, cackling son is unbearable. But Elvis Tsui as the scowly, dirty, drunken monk gives my favourite comic performance in a Hong Kong film. He’s a force of nature; and his competitive, affectionate relationship with Tony Leung Ka-Fei forms the backbone of the movie. The careful attention paid to developing their brotherly affection (not a little homoerotic, given they bathe together and Tony Leung repeatedly turns down sex with Joey Wong(!!!) to grapple with Elvis Tsui, sometimes on the bed) gives the movie an unexpected emotional heft. I usually don’t connect with wuxia characters—they’re never grounded in an emotional reality I can recognize, let alone share. But I was moved by the central relationship here, by how much these men cared for each other. I wouldn’t say it grounded the movie necessarily, but I did more than just stare in open-mouthed awe like with The Maidens of Heavenly Mountains and Deadful Melody. I was also touched by the warmth and humour. This movie is so much fun.


The Sword Stained with Royal Blood (Larry Cheung, 1993)

This movie’s incomprehensible even for wuxia. Not only is it hard to tell what’s going on within scenes, but there’s no way to figure out how any given scene connects with the rest. Who are these people? Why are they doing what they’re doing? There is no answer, only fighting. And plenty of wild fantasy. Bizarre images and endless plot reversals speed past. People fly, dig, spin webs, shoot poison and lasers, juggle swords, and everybody is betraying each other while hiding multiple agendas and identities. It’s giddy, but also more low rent than other, similar films. At times the style resembles an early 80s Shaw picture, zoom lense included, at others it’s classic 90s wuxia. And while it’s amusing to see Danny Lee in a full-on wuxia pian, he’s so out of place here. The movie’s fun, it hits the right spots, but it never quite ascends to that place of genius lunacy the best of this genre offers up.


Holy Flame of the Martial World (Chun Ku-Lu, 1983)

The plot is standard martial world melodrama, with competing factions, blood vendettas, siblings separated at birth, and a Holy Flame as a macguffin. Unlike the wuxias of the 90s, it’s perfectly comprehensible on a plot level, and in other hands would’ve made a straightforward action flick. Chun and co. use it instead as an excuse on which to hang reams of nutty imagery, shot straight at the viewer in rapid succession. The movie is a triumph of speed and style, an efficient delivery system for new images and conceits. It’s a terrific piece of spectacle. It was also showing its age even in 1983. Considering Tsui Hark’s Zu came out the same year, Holy Flame’s traditional Shaw Brothers aesthetics seem musty beside Tsui’s New Wave style. Indeed it’s a shock to remember they’re contemporaneous, given how Tsui’s movie comes across as a homage made a decade later. And even the craziness on display isn’t wholly novel: Yuen Woo-Ping’s terrific The Miracle Fighters, itself a parade of batshit taoist magic and novel imagery, came out the year before. So the movie isn’t quite as singular and off the wall as its reputation. And yet it remains a joyous spectacle, unpredictable in its imagery and fleet in construction. It’s a blast.


Buddha’s Palm (Taylor Wong, 1982)

You can’t describe this movie, you can only catalogue it: lightsabres, accordion legs, golden healing eggs, Neverending Story-esque flying monsters, hand-painted fire bolts and laser beams, flying buzzsaws, exploding bodies, evil monster rock bands, dungeons full of Indiana Jones traps, acid squirting pimples, Monty Python feet. What’s anchoring this? Very little. The plot, if you can call it that, is confusing and scattered, more a set of episodes involving dimly linked characters. Despite the often dark content, there’s a jaunty, comedic tone to it, especially the score and the children’s-book narration. This’d be a kid’s movie if it weren’t for all the decapitations and exploding heads! Shaw Brothers in this period was losing its audience to Golden Harvest. To recapture it, they turned to attention-grabbing weirdness and spectacle. It didn’t work—these are still Shaw productions in the familiar Shaw style, just with a fat layer of weirdness laid over top to disguise it. These movies are extravagant, even decadent last gasps of an otherwise conservative studio. But that last gasp left us baffling gems like this and Holy Flame, and they’re not to be missed.


Demon of the Lute (Tang Tak-Cheung ,1983)

A comic book style kid’s film, so the weirdness is cutesy and the violence has been toned down. A mystery man is using a magic lute to wreak destruction on the martial world. A group of fighters composed of Kara Hui’s disciple, Yuen Tak’s drunken geese herder, Chin Siu-Ho’s cave dwelling metal smith, and Philip Kwok and son as thieves, must locate the Fire Bow and Arrow to combat the titular Demon. Plenty weird--I mean, Chin Siu-Ho fights a bird man while riding a flying carpet--but maybe not as gloriously weird as the two above. Still a gleeful fun.


Bastard Swordsman (Chun Ku-Lu, 1983)

The least bizarre of the films on this list. The weirdness is saved for some mystical action during the fights, but next to the entries above, it barely rates. Mostly this is a solid, straightfoward Shaw film of warring martial clans, double crosses, hidden identities, and the like. It’s heavier on storytelling than the entries above, which mostly treat the story as something there to structure what’s really important, the imagery. But this one gains a lot of energy from its plot, which is both complicated and coherent. That said, the film could've used an extra thirty minutes. There are some plot threads set up that aren’t developed, and some characters, ie. Lo Meng, who disappear half way through and never get accounted for. But with a film this quick and this fun, you hardly notice. This is just a fantastic late Shaw entry with fewer of the extravagances of their other films at the time.

[Mr Sausage]

More Wuxia Madness


The Magic Crane (Benny Chan, 1993)

A very silly movie, even for wuxia. Benny Chan’s the director, but this is a Tsui Hark production, and it has his finger prints all over it, with the speed, tonal changes, bad special effects (the animal puppets are wonderfully crude), gender reversals, and the semi-reimagining of Dragon Gate. The movie is at once a wuxia, a romantic melodrama, a magic fantasy, and a kaiju film. Think: the creature-feature parts of A Chinese Ghost Story II mixed with the romance parts of Swordsman II and the setting of New Dragon Inn. Now throw in some wonderful actors like Anita Mui, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, and Rosamund Kwan and lots of bizarre situations, and you have The Magic Crane. There’s also a delicate beauty and romanticism here, and an artfulness to the images and compositions, that has no business in a movie so goofy (How goofy? After having unprotected sex while poisoned with a sex drug, Rosamund Kwan tells Tony Leung: “Don’t worry. My internal kung-fu will neutralize your juice.” The wuxia morning after pill?). But then that’s the magic of wuxias like this, the combination of contrary elements that somehow works. As for the plot, it starts off as one thing, the clans of the martial world meeting at an inn in the desert, unsure of who’s plotting with whom, only to drop that for a set of revenge plots among magical people. Betrayed masters, abandoned daughters, some dude who just...I don’t know, things don’t go his way in the first half so he kinda becomes a mystical villain in the second. It’s hard to describe. Yet the experience is somehow organic since the movie’s style--its sudden changes in tone, image, and situation--prepares you for mutability. Another joyous, giddy mixture of high and low art.


Holy Weapon (Wong Jing, 1993)

Wong Jing is a crazy man. He uses here the exaggerations of the magical wuxia to make something that approaches the speed and exaggeration of anime. Bugged out eyes, stretchy ears, dopey sound effects, people blowing apart left and right--it’s extreme. The plot is all patriotic xenophobia: a magic Japanese warrior wants to conquer the Chinese martial world because...that’s just what the Japanese do, the film explains. He’s defeated, promising to return in three years to finish what he started, but his Chinese rival goes insane from the special technique he used. So it’s up to a group of vastly different women to save the day (and get up to an endless parade of hijinks along the way). For a film about an all-female super team played by a cast filled to bursting with big actresses—Michelle Yeoh, Maggie Cheung, Sandra Ng, Sharla Cheung, Dodo Cheng—it sure rests on an enormous amount of misogynist comedy. From men constructing elaborate traps to murder their fiances, to black widow murderers, to beating women as a form of exorcism, to a subplot about Simon Yam raping virgins to get martial powers, to another subplot about Sandra Ng’s tomboy wanting surgery to feminize herself (when she isn't busy trying to rape men, that is). It’s endless. Yet it sits alongside quasi- (or if you’re feeling less generous, pseudo-) feminism, what with Michelle Yeoh spending her time avenging women harmed by shitty men, Sharla Cheung’s black widow character offing a rapist named Valentino as vengeance for his victims, and Dicky Cheung’s delicate lily trying to protect his virginity while various sexually confident women vie for it. And that’s not to mention the gender bending, with Michelle Yeoh and Sandra Ng both going full Rosalind while Dicky Cheung at one point uses magic to transform into a woman. I’ve no idea what to do with this bizarre mix of misogyny and gender fluidity, but it’s of a piece with this film’s Frankenstein construction. The movie is unable to decide what it wants to be, going from serious romantic drama, to crazed fantasy, to goofy sex comedy. There is little plot outside the bookending situation, so the middle is filled with a revolving door of hijinks and comedic situations that follow from nothing and lead nowhere. It’s all rapid fire set pieces with no aim beyond entertaining by whatever means necessary (including plagiarism—the thing lifts the eye gag from Evil Dead 2 wholesale). This is barely a movie. But amidst the eye-rolling cartoonishness (god, the sound effects) is so much wacky invention. A fight done atop soldiers soaring on wooden wings. A battle where seven people combine together into one giant fighter. A fight with a spider demon up and down a massive cobweb. A man who transforms into his own sword. It’s wonderfully nutty, but at the same time, deeply stupid. The movie is overbalanced, never finding that specific pitch of intensity where the nuttery becomes transcendent. A minor entry in the subgenre of wild 90s wuxia fantasies.


Last Hero in China (Wong Jing, 1993)

After disputes with Tsui Hark following Once Upon a Time in China 3, Jet Li left to make his own version with Wong Jing. Li is once again Wong Fei-Hung, here fighting corrupt government officials and a crazed religious sect that are conspiring to ship women overseas. So a combination of the religious sect plot of OUATIC 2 with the human trafficking plot from the original, plus a bit of the lion dance competition from 3. Wong Jing’s film is at once a parody and a straightforward imitation of the OUATIC series. So for example there’s an extended, sexually suggestive version of the Wong Fei-Hung theme sung by prostitutes, and a subplot where Wong’s Po Chi Lam clinic/school opens up next to a brothel run by Natalis Chan, who plays a character named Mass Tar Wong. Buck Tooth So has a pair of buck teeth so large his actor can barely move his mouth (Jacky Cheung’s were only a bit prominent in the original). And at one point Jet Li fights men in a giant centipede costume while dressed as a battle chicken. Jet Li plays his role straight, however, and the action is choreographed (and no doubt directed) by Yuen Woo-Ping at the height of his powers. The action is frequent and often astonishing, with more fantastical elements than Tsui’s versions, influenced seemingly by all the fantasy wuxias Wong Jing was making at the time. The comedy is generally intolerable, tho’, taking a regional comedy style that was already goofy and exaggerated and ramping it up to the point of hysteria (a Wong Jing habit). It’s an inconsistent movie, exciting and sometimes effectively dramatic, but burdened with Wong Jing’s bad taste and a mean-spirited, disrespectful edge (this often comes across like it’s shitting all over the originals). I think Wong Jing and Jet Li (with Corey Yuen’s help) would do a better version of this kind of thing in Legend of the Red Dragon, a film that embraces its own craziness to good effect. Last Hero in China would probably appeal to anyone who prefered the straightforward entertainment of 5 over the socio-political stories of the first three.


Kung Fu Cult Master (Wong Jing, 1993)

HK filmmakers had a perverse need to turn gigantic wuxia epics into 90 minute movies. The first four minutes alone give you a movie’s worth of plot. You don’t feel the short run time; the movie’s so dense and epic in scope it feels twice as long as it is. I don’t mean that as a criticism—it’s appropriate to the source being adapted. All you lose is any idea of what’s going on, and that’s standard for this subgenre. So this is an incoherent mini-epic adapting the last novel in Louis Cha’s Condor Heroes trilogy, a set of novels that also inspired Ashes of Time and Tsui Hark’s latest. I didn’t recognize any of the characters from those movies in this one. Instead Jet Li plays a brand new character, and a more interesting one than usual for him. He’s a destructive anti-hero whose outward displays of heroism hide a cunning, power-hungry nature. True to its brevity, the film doesn’t set up Jet Li’s psychology, or anyone’s psychology really, so his flips from heroism and righteousness to deviousness and self-regard come out of nowhere. But that abrupt yin/yang aspect is novel and allows Jet Li to stretch as a performer (I’ve always thought him a better actor than most of the big HK action stars). The movie is wild, yet Wong Jing restrains himself in one area at least: he keeps that horrendous comedy of his to a minimum while driving at a set of appropriate effects, namely epic martial grandeur. There are moments here that ape Ran with their giant colour-coodinated battle scenes full of fluttering banners (tho’ Toru Takemitsu has been replaced with a mournful cantopop ballad, lest we forget who’s at the helm). And there is of course some patented Wong Jing misogyny: a woman’s last lesson to her son is never to trust women, beautiful ones especially, and the movie tries its best to bear that wisdom out. And our comic relief characters are two eagre yet unsuccessful rapists. For all that, I enjoyed myself. Wong Jing made a fun movie with little I needed to tolerate. The movie’s failure at the box office meant a planned trilogy was cancelled, leaving us with a cliffhanger. I’ll sum up my judgment of the movie by saying I wish they’d made the other two.


The Moon Warriors (Sammo Hung, 1992)

The young emperor is deposed by his brutal younger brother and is pursued into the countryside with his retainers, where Andy Lau’s bumpkin finds himself dragged into the world of kingdoms and rulers. A magical wuxia like this is well outside of Hung’s wheelhouse as a director. He shows a more old school sensibility: the shots are wider, held for longer, and there’s even the use of trampolines sometimes over wires. The editing is less frenetic, more comprehensible. You see the influence of King Hu on Sammo’s style here (all those fight scenes in bamboo forests with the light slanting through!), enough so that this might be a conscious homage. It certainly reads more like Hu than Tsui’s Swordsman, a self-conscious Hu-film that Hu briefly directed before leaving (and consequently resembles a Tsui film). This is a gorgeous looking movie. The location photography, with sunlight slanting through the trees or the sun golden just above the horizon, has a heady beauty. There’s even a fight in a smoky cave with scattered embers drifting in the air like fireflies—it’s lovely, and true to HK form, there only for a moment. I’ve never seen Sammo make so lush a film. It’s also the first time I’ve seen him do a sentimental romance. He carries it off quite well (helped by screenwriter Alex Law and producer Mabel Cheung, undoubtedly), with just enough naivety to make it seem pure and elevated in that folktale way. Some of the best moments are quiet ones among the lovers. Few people are as good at conveying longing and desire as Maggie Cheung and Anita Mui, and the film gives them ample opportunities to show off. Sadly, the male side is played by Andy Lau and Kenny Bee, bland actors who have trouble matching the skill of their female screen partners. Still, this is one of Sammo’s best films, a less crazed, more emotionally resonant movie than this subgenre tends to have. That said, this being Sammo, you still get questionable tonal shifts and bits of bad taste (like children being executed to up the pathos). Plus the hero has a pet Orca named Sea-Wayne. It looked like they shot its scenes at Sea-World. It’s not really part of the plot, it’s just...there, baffling you.

[pistolwink]

Maybe this has been discussed before, but if so I'd missed it. In Screen Slate's discussion of the restoration of Tsui Hark's Shanghai Blues, there's this:

a re-dubbing featuring multiple Chinese dialects that match the linguistic diversity of Republic era Shanghai

I assume this will also be on the various home-video releases of the film.

I'm not entirely mad at this, since there's a valid artistic reason for it. The film is after all about Shanghai as a meeting place for people from around China—not that Shanghai Blues is necessarily aiming at City of Sadness-style realism. The original Cantonese soundtrack would have been post-synch anyhow. That said, I wonder how well the re-dubbing has been done. And above all, I hope the original soundtrack is still available, not least because it mostly features the actual cast of the film, and that Cantonese post-synch style is integral to the Hong Kong aesthetic of the era (like it or not).

[tenia]

It is on the Spectrum release, along the original soundtrack.
However, it is a new edit of the movie anyway, that removes the blackface scene.

[Mr Sausage]

The Assassin (Billy Chung, 1993)

Not Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s elliptical art house wuxia, but a cheap CAT III wuxia full of violence, torture, and misery. A man sentenced to death is taken and turned into an assassin. He embraces nihilism until one day, in an overdetermined manner, he’s awoken back to life and now must flee his former assassin brothers. There’s some creative violence, including one effect I’m not sure how they pulled off: a man speared and held off the ground, and without cuts or obvious trickery, his legs fall to the ground leaving his torso wriggling in the air. Did they use a legless man for the effect? I didn’t see how they could’ve hid an actor’s legs in the shot, and the torso didn’t look fake. Anyway, I found the whole thing dour and turgid. I prefer these films to embrace a manic joy. Anything that takes itself this seriously risks silliness, doubly so in a movie where people fly around killing people with their chi.


The Three Swordsmen (Taylor Wong, 1994)

A comic mystery wuxia that is—do I even need to say this anymore?--total narrative gibberish. Something about Andy Lau being framed for a crime he didn’t commit which brings seemingly everyone in the martial world into conflict, including way too many characters to follow. The movie is super jaunty, with all sorts of childish shenanigans and dopey music making up the bulk of the first two thirds. Yet the inciting incident is a rape and murder, and people are constantly being flayed, decapitated, or even blown apart during the fights. And the last third is nothing but brutally intense melodrama. Yet at the end of all the hacking and slashing and grand guiognol character motivations, everyone smiles, laughs, and the credits again have that jaunty keyboard score. The construction here is more indifferent than most, and the fights much briefer and more chaotically edited, no doubt because no one in the cast is a martial artist. The thing also freely lifts the scores to Last of the Mohicans and Akira, which grew increasingly distracting. But the thing’s biggest sin is that Brigitte Lin, who makes up one of the titular three swordsmen along with Andy Lau and Elvis Tsui, doesn’t show up for 35 of the 85 minute runtime. Why bury your most talented performer? Was she just not available given her ridiculous output in her final year in the industry? Of course she’s playing a man (and for once is even dubbed by one). Scattered thoughts are all I can muster. Not crazy enough to be astounding, not coherent enough to be gripping, not funny enough to make you laugh, but it has just enough of those things to be basically enjoyable. A fine but middling entry in this subgenre.


Eastern Condors (Sammo Hung, 1987)

I hadn't seen this one in years and wanted some brainless action. Vietnam was apparently a big subject at the time in HK film: Ann Hui made two films about it around this time, Boat People and The Story of Woo Viet, and both John Woo and Tsui Hark would make big Vietnam epics a few years later. Sammo, not much interested in big sociopolitical themes, sets out to overgo Rambo with a huge, brutal, wildly imaginative Vietnam action film. He’s crammed it with talent, from Yuen Biao, Yuen Wah, Lam Ching-Ying, and Joyce Godenzi in the main roles, to supporting turns from directors/choreographers Corey Yuen and Yuen Woo-Ping, plus redoubtable martial arts talent in Billy Chow, Dick Wei, Yasuaki Kurata, and even cameos from Wu Ma, Melvin Wong, Max Mok, and Hsiao Ho, all of whom are let loose in the jungle to fight it out. It’s a Dirty Dozen scenario, not a coherent one (the Americans for some reason send in a bunch of Chinese prisoners to destroy an arms cache left behind when America pulled out of Vietnam), but who cares. You’re here to watch Sammo Hung kill Vietcong soldiers with strips of grass turned into projectiles, or Yuen Biao leap from trees onto guys, or Joyce Godenzi, er, kill people by stabbing them right in the anus. Yeah, that happens. It’s maybe Sammo’s best film on a pure action level, and really shows the big American productions from the era how it’s done, and on a fraction of the budget. A lot of fun, and not as messy in tone and story as usual with Sammo, tho’ there are still plenty of moments that’ll make you go ‘the fuck?’.


In the Mood For Love (Wong Kar-Wai, 2000)

I took advantage of the 4K theatrical re-release to reacquaint myself with an art house masterpiece that never really did it for me. I watched it many times on DVD in the early 2000s, when I was in my late teens and early 20s, trying to find the magic in this one. It was beautiful to look at, delicate, artful, emotionally powerful, containing two of the greatest performances I’d ever seen on film. But my appreciation of it never caught fire, I never toppled into enthusiasm or love. I had a removed appreciation. The last time I saw it I was maybe twenty. Now, at forty, married, in a different place, would it click? This screening was the most I’d ever enjoyed the movie, yet it was exactly as I’d remembered, without surprises. It’s still ravishing: the intricate visual design is impossible not to sink into (even if dimmed by Wong’s incorrigible tinkering), and there’re so many subtle details in each of the performances to marvel at. But this remains a movie unsure of where it wants to go. It’s not a whole, it’s pieces of a movie--so carefully, artfully constructed on a moment-by-moment, scene-by-scene basis, and yet as a movie overall it’s loose. The thing doesn’t come together as a narrative; it tries, or hopes, to hang together on the level of motif and mood, and manages it...just. But the sheer care behind the visuals and performances throws into relief how undigested the material is. I felt the same way about Happy Together, another wonderful set of fragments that had no idea how to work itself into a satisfying whole. These movies, I’m guessing, are held back by Wong’s insecurities. He had such improbable success with Chunking Express coming together the way it did as if by serendipity that he’s left his subsequent movies to chance in the same way, hoping to construct them as if by magic. I think his improvisations suffer without a structure to anchor them. Movies like this one and Happy Together could go on forever, just scene after scene of the same thing. No wonder he keeps editing and editing and editing them. Whatever final shape they take is arbitrary, and Wong stops editing only because at some point he has to. It was fun to see In the Mood For Love 2001 right after, because the style is such a contrast. It’s shot in Wong’s pre-art house darling HK style, with a bristling camera, garish yet pretty neon lighting, and plenty of energy. Very different from the delicate, tasteful style he’d use for the feature.

[cantinflas]

[Mr Sausage]

So...is this a recommendation?

[GoodOldNeon]

Running Out of Time - Johnnie To (1999) - A thoroughly enjoyable cat and mouse game between charisma machine Andy Lau, starring as a master criminal with only a few weeks to live, and Lau Ching-wan, playing the role of the police inspector. It's been too long since I watched To's subsequent features like Election or Exiled, so I can't compare it to those, but I think this is definitely worth 93 minutes of anyone's time.

Running Out of Time 2 - Johnnie To & Law Wing-Cheong (2001) - Lau Ching-wan reprises his role as the police inspector in a rehash of the same premise that leans more into the comic side. Andy Lau is replaced by Ekin Cheng playing the role of a criminal magician. I found this to be more cartoonish and considerably less enjoyable then the first film, lacking the additional weight provided by the criminal's terminal illness and the motivation behind his actions.

PTU - Johnnie To (2003) - Taking place over the course of a single night, the film follows the actions of various members of the Hong Kong police as they attempt to locate a missing gun. Hong Kong at night is certainly visually attractive, but I found the build up to the final climax to be surprisingly sluggish and overlong, which is not great in a film that clocks in at just 88 minutes.

[Mr Sausage]

charisma machine Andy Lau

I've never really liked Andy Lau; I always thought he was a boring performer, resting on a shallow outward charm. But you're right, he's magnetic in Running Out of Time and really matches the great Lau Ching-Wan in scene after scene. It's maybe his best performance (followed by his more nuanced role in Ann Hui's A Simple Life). Funnily, I think Andy Lau started doing his best work post hand over, ie. post Golden Era.