These are heady days for Ip Man — not bad for a guy who died more than 40 years ago. Over the past several years, the celebrated kung fu teacher whose students included Bruce Lee has been in the midst of a sort of revival with his exploits having been fictionalized in a handful of […]
martial
Posted inArts & Culture
Flying Fists of Kung Fu / Kickin’ It Shaolin Style
After about the third or fourth film I watched — either 5 Pattern Dragon Claws or 18 Fatal Strikes, I can’t be sure — I noticed how similar the movies were to another. I wasn’t exactly surprised, having digesting so many of these cheap chopsocky efforts over the years, but never in such close proximity. Basically, each […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Guillotines
Not necessarily. The guillotines of The Guillotines are of the shimmering CGI kind, and so obvious as to be cartoons. Still, this Hong Kong pic is at its best when the guillotines spin on their scooped launchers like rabid dogs waiting to be unleashed, then zoom around the place looking for a head to latch […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Enter the Dragon: 40th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition
With this, director Robert Clouse made what is easily Bruce Lee’s finest film (and then proceeded to follow it up with a never-ending string of schlock). While Lee is technically one point of a heroic triangle — with A Nightmare on Elm Street’s John Saxon and blaxploitation icon Jim Kelly being the others — let’s […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Police Story / Police Story 2
It’s the next one that does. Fast-forward at least a decade later. In college, a friend showed me a VHS tape of an episode of The Incredibly Strange Film Show, a British documentary miniseries. Chan was that ep’s subject, and clips from 1985’s Police Story — and maybe even 1988’s Police Story 2, if memory […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Big Boss / Fist of Fury / The Way of the Dragon / Game of Death
The first two, I forever have confused and will continue to confuse with one another. Both are directed by Lo Wei and boast cartoonish credit sequences. But only one includes flying dogs, and that’s The Big Boss (also known as Fists of Fury, plural, to further complicate things). That film has him uncovering a murderous […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Dragon
The reason? Science! As a friend put it, Dragon plays like CSI: Kung Fu. I’d add a dash of Rashomon. Set in 1917, it opens with kindly papermaker/family man (Donnie Yen, Ip Man) reluctantly thwarting the robbery of a general store, leaving the two criminals dead. But how, wonders the investigating detective (Takeshi Kaneshiro, Red […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Sorcerer and the White Snake
Luckily, it’s the kind of family film that parents won’t equate to a chore. Li is a monk who specializes as a demon hunter, but the film’s focus is on Xu Xian (Raymond Lam), a young herbalist saved from drowning by the kiss of a thousand-year-old snake demon (Eva Huang, Kung Fu Hustle). She’s able […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Four
It takes a good half-hour before we begin to comprehend who’s who and who’s aligned with whom. Even then, the story — based on a presumably popular novel — is plotted with spying and more than one alliance switcheroo. Everyone seems concerned about locating a stolen coin cast, yet the object is almost a MacGuffin; […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Tai Chi Zero
In an acting debut that deliberately doesn’t require him to act much, wushu champ Yuan Xiaochao plays Lu Chan, nicknamed “The Freak” from birth because a horn-like protrusion on the side of his forehead. When pushed, his eyes go milky and, for a brief time, he hulks out with brute force until blood spurts out […]