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 […]
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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 […]
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FBI Code 98
No matter, really; I loved it all the same, so much so that I wish it had birthed a series of big-screen outings. (Instead, the idea eventually was rejiggered (sort of) into the long-running Efrem Zimbalist TV show, The FBI, and that doesn’t count.) Directed by Leslie H. Martinson (1966’s Batman: The Movie), the black-and-white, […]
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Iron Man 3
So leaden are the jokes, so scattered is its focus, it threatens to court disaster. Then, against all odds, the movie rights itself to recapture that Marvel-ous spirit of the 2008 original. It’s almost as if Shane Black (directing for only the second time, and his first since 2005’s woefully underseen Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) […]
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Burn
Detroit is burning, and the city’s fire commissioner has decided to let it burn. Thanks to a withering automotive industry and violent racial tensions that have rocked the city, Detroit’s population has diminished by half, resulting in 80,000 abandoned buildings. So many fires ravage these vacant structures that some officials have decided that if a […]
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The Bowery Boys: Volume Two
For this four-disc follow-up to 2012’s set, Warner Archive again mined its vaults for 12 of the Boys’ Poverty Row features. The best way to describe their style is that it comes from the “why I oughta!” school of comedy. I’m unsure if it ever graduated, given exchanges like “How can you read in the […]
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Revenge for Jolly!
I’ve never heard of writer/producer/star Brian Petsos, but he must have friends in high places to get such a project off the ground. He plays Harry, a self-described good guy who’s done some bad things, for which his murdered pup, Jolly, has paid the ultimate price. With no job, Harry has nothing better to do […]
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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 […]
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Upstream Color
Here’s what I think about Upstream Color nearly three weeks after seeing it: I’m unsure. I’ve not yet finished processing it. I can’t even explain the title. Screening Thursday through Sunday at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, the self-distributed film marks the belated sophomore effort of writer/director/producer/actor/editor/ composer/cinematographer/camera operator Shane Carruth, who became an […]
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Wuss!
Played by Nate Rubin (Super), Mitch Parker is a wiry little fellow, barely out of high school himself, who substitutes for a high school English class. What he’d really like to do is be a novelist, of course, yet his off-hours are spent in a state of arrested development, playing Dungeons & Dragons with his […]