——Master of the Flying Guillotine——

(A-)

This movie doesn’t have the best kung fu I’ve ever seen, but it is probably the most hip, most unpredictable kung fu movie you’ll ever see. Writer/director/star Jimmy Yu Wang has created a movie that twisted the genre conventions in such a way that hid his weaknesses (he wasn’t a very good martial artist) and exploited his strengths (he was a much better filmmaker).

The Flying Guillotine is the real star of the film, as it is just about the coolest movie weapon, well ever, and its appearance is heralded by one of the coolest electronic scores ever. It sounds something like an Iron Maiden song played slow with the lead vocalist being a dragon. It’s bitchin’. (So cool that it makes an appearance in Kill Bill.) The Flying Guillotine works like a hat with a buzz saw around the rim thrown on a chain like a yo-yo; when the hat lands on your head a veil thing falls down to your neck and then the master pulls it back, loping your head off. You’ve really got to see this thing in action.

The plot is that the Master’s pupils have been killed by the One-armed Boxer (as seen in The One-armed Boxer), so he goes out with his Flying Guillotine to exact vengeance. However, he’s blind, so he rips the head off of every one-armed man until he finds the right guy. Meanwhile a tournament is going on where we find our other main characters, most notably a Thai boxer and a Yoga master who can lengthen his arms. Both of them have some pretty awesome fights.

As I said, Jimmy Yu Wang makes up for the fact that he isn’t a very great fighter with some great direction and some even better set pieces that won’t be forgotten. The movie is filled with surprises all the way to the finish, and this is such a great cult movie that you’ve got to check it out.

——Shiri——

(C-)

This is a Korean spy thriller that apparently won a lot of awards in South Korean when it came out, but it is hard to tell why since it is such a generic and confusing contribution to the spy genre. In it there are a lot of those double crosses and people not being who you thought they were, which would be fine except for the fact that I couldn’t tell who was who before all the switch ups. I could have sworn the same guy died three times. Nope, it is just that all of the main actors and actresses look exactly the same with nothing physical (appearance or behavior-wise) to differentiate them. I was so damn lost. Meanwhile, the plot was identical to the 90 million American spy thrillers out there and offered nearly nothing new to a fan of the genre. That combined with the fact that it takes someone with a lot of creativity and a quick memory to figure out what the hell is happening in the gun fights makes this a movie I totally don’t recommend to anyone.

——Five Deadly Venoms——

(A-)

Kung Fu movies are notoriously light on the plot, making this film an actually pretty interesting addition to the genre. A dying Kung Fu master teaches a new student as much as he can about the five deadly venom schools because he fears that his pupils will use their superior kung fu for ill gain. Unfortunately though, the master doesn’t have enough time to teach the student everything he knows, so student not only has to discover the identities of the Five Deadly Venoms (which is unknown to even the master) but he also has to align himself with one of them to fight the others since he cannot defeat them by himself. Thus, although there is unfortunately not too much action until the awesome climax, there is a nice mystery narrative throughout the film as the Venoms take up sides (with the identity and motivations of the Scorpion being a mystery until the very end), discover each other’s identities and then take each other on. Another great soundtrack to a great film (Tarantino borrows from this film too) that’s worth picking up (although probably on a better quality DVD than the one I own).

——The Legend of Drunken Master——

(A)

This is one of my all time favorite kung fu movies. The story is pretty good and really funny, but more importantly it features some of the most amazing fight choreography to come out of not just Jackie Chan, but of Hong Kong as a whole. Jackie really went above and beyond for this movie. Honestly I find most of the fights in this film much more impressive than anything that was in Revolutions, because you can’t fake these fights. So damn cool.

——Chaos——

(A-)

A Japanese mystery/thriller from the director of Ringu (I believe this one is being remade too, probably to horrible results just like the Ring). The plot is about a kidnapping plot that becomes more complex and deep as we learn more about what actually happened through appropriately placed flashbacks that reveal only what we need to know at that point and time. The whole thing is quite well done, the only bad thing about the movie being a little flawed logic here and there that doesn’t really distract from the film as a whole unless you are a really nitpicky person. All and all, if you like this sort of movie I recommend you check it out.

——Chinese Super Ninjas——

(A-)

Now when you pick up a movie with the title Chinese Super Ninjas you know you are in for a good ride, but you probably won’t expect to have SUCH a good time as you do with this kung fu mini-epic. This is directed by Chang Cheh and stars the Venoms, and they just seem to out do themselves yet again in the awesome department.

The story starts with a tournament between two different kung fu schools. The one is obviously much better than the other, but for their last fighter the inferior school brings in a Japanese samurai. The samurai is defeated, but before he commits sepukku he manages to not only poison their master, but also call in a ninja school to defeat the superior school. The ninjas use five elements in their fighting (gold, wood, water, fire, and earth) and lure the different students into combat where the ninjas easily defeat them with trickery. (It should be noted, as this is something I just recently realized, is that if you have a Japanese person in a Hong Kong movie 99 times out of 100 the Japanese person is the bad guy. Usually a REALLY bad guy. The Chinese were still a little bitter over World War II.)

Then the ninjas sneak a female ninja into their school to scout everything out for the other ninjas. The one brother falls for her but the other doesn’t really buy it, but unfortunately he does nothing because of his brother and the ninjas come in and kill everyone, including their master. Only the smart brother (who just happens to have learned a few ninja skills along the way) is able to escape, and he goes back to the master who taught him the ninja skills to complete his training with three brothers. The four of them then get revenge against the elements in back to back fights of stunning absurdity. Definitely the rule in this movie is style over practicality, as the brothers have a special weapon that they disassemble after each fight to make a new weapon that they use against the next element. It’s all pretty sweet. There is so much awesome action in this movie, and a pretty decent (if campy) story to go behind it.

——The Hunted——

(C+)

While there are some good sequences in this film, it still can’t escape the fact that it is just a B-movie pretending to be a big important Hollywood A-movie. The plot of this is straight out of the straight-to-video bin, and it is only because of the high profile people on board (Tommy Lee Jones, Benicio Del Toro, William Friedkin, although what has he really done since the 70’s?) that this movie can pretend to be anything more than that. The knife fights are pretty cool, but then to get to them you have to sit through lame side plots involving the woman and child Benicio goes to see. Who are the mother and girl? They aren’t his family, he’s only known them for like 8 months. Then there is the mother’s horrible acting. Throwing in an “ain’t” every once and a while doesn’t hide the fact that this actress is well-educated and doesn’t really try real hard to hide that fact. Benicio is goes totally off the deep end for most of the film, most disturbingly when he is outside showing the little girl how to track squirrels. Would it have hurt to get a little deeper into what drove him mad?

The one saving grace in this film for me was Tommy Lee Jones. I haven’t really liked him too much in a lot of the films that he’s made recently, as I always feel that he is playing the same character he always plays, and going way too far off the deep end with it. This time though I was pleasantly surprised to see a more restrained Tommy Lee, harkening back to the earlier days of his career when he was hot shit in Hollywood. I liked that. Let’s hope he stays that restrained when he plays another tracker in The Missing.

——The Fast Runner——

(B)

I really wish this had been shot on film. Film would have given it a little more respectability and confidence than the digital video does, making the film look more like a home movie shot by a group of friends on the weekend. The digital video just draws attention to the weaknesses in Zacharias Kunuk’s directing and some of the amateur actors, which is a shame and I think shooting it on film might have minimized those inadequacies.

Although the film starts off a little confusing (I was only half there through the first half of the film) the second half is actually quite engaging because of some great storytelling. It reminded me a lot of a Viking Saga (with a little splash of Homer’s Odyssey there at the end) where the story starts long before we are introduced to our main character because in a small close nit community the actions of the previous generation have a way making their way into the next. I didn’t like the way that I was just dropped into this world, but once I had a handle on all of the key players the story became quite interesting. The film has some flaws, but overall I found it pretty enjoyable.

——Tokyo Drifter——

(A)

The plot of this 1966 Seijun Suzuki film is almost incomprehensible, and yet the director is having so much fun ripping up genre conventions and painting the screen with vivid colors that all of that doesn’t really matter. Tokyo Drifter is a lot like what would happen if you made a gritty French New Wave film-noir in the style of a Technicolor MGM musical. The main character is even so cool that he sings his own theme song. I’m not exactly sure why but I enjoyed this film from start to finish, maybe because it is just so damn ballsy a film. The soundtrack is excellent and humor seems to worm its way into the film in ways you never would have expected. At one point the main character enters a saloon themed bar and as his plot unravels a little bit more a riot erupts for no other apparent reason other than the fact that that is something that happens all of the time in saloons. The color is amazing, most notably in the scene where right before someone is shot the screen behind him flashes red, or in the final scene where the main character enters a bar that looks more like a musical set that was once all yellow, is now all black, but as the shooting erupts changes all white. It’s really hard to describe why this movie is so great, you really just have to see it for yourself.