——Avenging Eagle——

(B)

By kung fu standards this movie has an amazingly good story and is told extremely well. Unfortunately the direction and the fight sequences aren’t quite as impressive as the plot. It’s still pretty good stuff, but I’ve definitely seen much better fight choreography before, and the direction is sometimes excellent, but mostly the camera is in the wrong place. The story is surpassingly excellent though. It actually manages to keep some mystery to the characters without keeping things from the audience, and the story is told through a series of effectively placed flashbacks that build on the story in between fights. Great stuff, not a must see movie, but definitely worth seeing.

——7 Grandmasters——

(A)

In kung fu terms you can’t do much better than this movie. The plot is fairly standard, but it is so effectively handled by Joseph Kuo (who also did Ninja Checkmate, who I’m quickly discovering is one of the greatest kung fu directors) that you can’t wait to see what happens next, even though you know how it is all going to end. And the fight sequences are just amazing. Kuo’s fighting troupe contains some of the best fighters and choreographers that I’ve ever seen.

The story goes as follows: An old kung fu master is awarded the title of greatest fighter by the king, but someone anonymously challenges that claim forcing the master to go out and fight the best fighters in China to prove his worth before he retires. Meanwhile a man’s father is killed in a fight, prompting the man to go out and learn kung fu from the master so he can take revenge. Pretty standard training plot from here on out, until the man becomes a master himself and takes on some fighter for his teacher when he becomes sick. Then a mysterious man tells him that his teacher was the one who killed his father and teaches him the Pak Mei techniques he needs to defeat his master. Turns out the mystery man is really the killer, and when they discover this the student takes him on and ultimately defeats him with the help of his teacher. Best of all he takes him out with a swift kick to the balls! Awesome.

The plot is much better than it sounds, and there are fights galore in this movie. The fights are just awesome. Must see kung fu. You don’t get much better than this movie.

——Hidalgo——

(B-)

This movie actually has a lot in common with Starsky & Hutch, in that both movies contain men women fall head over heals for, but ultimately the love of a woman can’t match the love they have for each other. Of course Hidalgo contains man/horse love, so I don’t know if that is EXACTLY the same deal, but it’s pretty close.

Anyway, this is a fairly entertaining film that suffers from some underdeveloped writing. Every character is really just a stereotype looking to fulfill its purpose in life, and once that purpose is fulfilled there is really no reason for it to any longer exist. I mean, if you’ve seen a movie before you can probably tell me exactly how this movie is going to end. The movie also focuses a little too intensely on Vigo and Hidalgo’s half-breed status without actually saying anything more than the fact that no one likes them because of their half-breed status. The screenplay is just a mess, but the movie is pretty fun despite that fact, and ultimately if this movie looked like something you would like I would still recommend you see it.

——Trading Places——

(B+)

I was surprised at how much I liked this movie despite the fact that the premise seemed pretty stupid and been there, done that. Instead there is a really great social satire here about how the poor are made bad mostly because of the fact they are poor and the rich are bad mostly because they don’t want to be poor. The quest for money can make us into horrible people, which can’t be more obvious than with the two Drake men that ruin a man’s life for a one dollar bet.

Sometimes the movie can go a little too over the top, like with Jamie Lee Curtis’ hooker with a heart of gold who’s heart must actually be filled with gold to make everyone forget she is a hooker by the end of the movie. I mean, have you ever heard of a hooker that was so well off? Whatever. Also the section of the movie on the train with the gorillas is a joke that was stretched out way beyond the point of no return, where the energy it took to set up the joke was greater than the actual laugh it gets. But whatever. Those are minor quibbles to what is actually a very good movie.

——Wet Hot American Summer——

(A-)

This is seriously one of the funniest movies I’ve seen in a long, long time. Why had no one ever told me about this before? Has anyone actually seen this movie before? If you haven’t you should, because it is fucking hilarious.

The movie takes place at a summer camp in the summer of 1981 and it is pretty much a spoof of all of the teen sex comedies/summer camp movies of the era. The movie contains every cheesy cliché you can think of from those movies, and it usually skewers them to a degree so unimaginable that you’ll be rolling with laughter and holding your head in disbelief. A great example is the scene where the counselors go into town to have a little fun. First there is that scene where some of the girls are sneaking a drag off of a cigarette. The head counselor sees them and is about to say something when she then takes the cigarette and takes a drag off of it herself. They laugh. Then a montage begins where they buy some beer, then they buy some weed, and then they buy a giant bag of cocaine in a back alley. Finally the camera floats through an abandoned building where all the counselors are strung out on heroin. Then the shot cuts to them coming back to camp an hour later perfectly normal. It is one of those Airplane! visual gags that jumps on top of you so fast that you are like, “What the FUCK!???” It’s a laugh a minute though. One warning: if you didn’t grow up on these movies you probably won’t get the joke, since the joke is usually taking one of the cliches of the genre and just blowing it up to an unfathomable degree. I LOVED the movie though. You should check it out.