——Born Invincible——

(B+)

This Joseph Kuo movie like all his others has amazing fights, but it also has a pretty tame plot. A white haired Tai Chi master kills a school’s master and pretty much the rest of the film is taken up by the students trying to figure out how to kill him (several of them die at his hands in the process). The Tai Chi master is hilarious and there are some pretty sweet fights, but not really one of Joseph Kuo’s best in my opinion.

——Kanto Wanderer——

(A-)

Seijun Suzuki takes yet another Japanese genre convention and turns it on its head, and while this movie doesn’t have as kinetic an ending as Tattooed Life or as bizarre a style as Branded to Kill and Tokyo Drifter, it does have his trademark explosive visual style in spades. The story follows a yakuza who is more interested in the old ways and an older woman than he is in the changing ways of Japan, or the younger girls who seem to have a whole lot more fun that him breaking all of the rules. He’s sensitive and more interested in love and tradition than the rough life of the underworld. Suzuki once again tips a genre on its head, this movie being in stark contrast to the manly gangster tales it was based on. There are plenty of pretty visuals too, the most striking being the scene where the hero kills two men with two strokes, and then the walls fall down to reveal a bright red backdrop. Not his most exciting film, but definitely a very interesting one.

——Ten Tigers from Kwangtung——

(C)

This is the most confusing movie. I have a feeling it was butchered somewhere along the way, but as is it is just a confusing mess. The story is told mainly in flashback by a younger generation, who then finish the fight in the end. The film rarely stays on course though, because in trying to introduce all of the main characters (there are a hell of a lot more than ten, that’s for sure) the movie dips into comic interludes that don’t really go with its serious tone. And then the final fight comes down to characters that aren’t even part of the story, and ends abruptly with someone kicking someone’s head off. Awesome, yes, but it also makes no sense whatsoever. The fights are the only highlight here. The rest of this movie sucks.

——Van Helsing——

(D+)

This movie is the biggest hunk of crap ever. If ever there was a better example of what is wrong with the bloated Hollywood summer blockbuster I don’t know what it could be, other than this. Everything is done to the extreme. Instead of talking, people yell. Instead of one monster, there are three (main ones…and countless other minor ones). Instead of a few choice big action sequences, every action sequence is huge. Instead of a sappy ending, we get an EXTREMELY sappy ending. If you can sit through it with a straight face, hey, more power to you. I mean hell, where most movies would end, this movie goes on for ANOTHER HOUR. It’s ridiculous. If something needs to be explained, it either isn’t or is conveniently solved with a snap of the fingers. How are they going to get out of this situation? Simple, they are going to do what even the impossible has a hard time believing. What a piece of shit. (Why no F? Well, it is funny as all hell to watch.)

——Django——

(A-)

Sergio Corbucci isn’t happy just tinkering with conventions, he has to go completely against them. Django is a man who drags his own coffin behind him, which just happens to be carrying in it a machine gun he wields like the Terminator when he feels it necessary. He walks into the movie like Eastwood’s Man with No Name, but it doesn’t take long before we realize that he is just a money grubbing opportunist bastard. Which ironically, in Corbucci’s world, is what Django is trying to run from. He’s just trying to con a bag of gold out of some bastards, and kill some other bastards while doing it, and yet real life isn’t the movies, and things don’t work out for Django like they do in the movies. The girl dies, the money falls in a sinkhole, and Django’s hands get crushed by horses’ hooves. He does manage to kill the bad guy in the end (a raciest KKK like figure who’s gang wears red hoods) but the conclusion takes place in a graveyard, symbolic of the fact that Django has much less than what he started with, and reminds us of the fact that we first saw him dragging around his own coffin.

——If You Live, Shoot!——

(B)

While I really respect this movie for being so different, (it resembles a Bunuel movie more than anything Ford or Hawks did) I didn’t find it particularly fun to watch. It was more fun to find all of the social and religious metaphors in it than it was to cheer for the main character at all. The whole thing is rather surreal, and yet not so much so that it becomes something sublime. Just something surreal enough to set it apart from the pack. It’s a cult film in a cult genre, and a well made one, just not my cup o’ tea.

——Lady Snowblood——

(A+)

Nothing could have prepared me for how freakin’ cool this movie is. I sat down expecting an above average grind house movie with some good action and lots of blood. And I got that, but oh so much more. The production values in this movie are amazing. The script is tight, interesting, surprising and unique. This movie was most definitely the main inspiration for Kill Bill, and after watching this what Tarantino did isn’t quite as special anymore. The story is told in chapters, slightly out of sequence and the story unravels in layers, important information being revealed only when necessary. The film uses filter lenses and mixed media superbly, and even “he’s my father!” moments that would normally be hokey in any other film actually improve this film, tying up loose ends and helping everything make sense. This movie is hardcore, it takes no prisoners and doesn’t sacrifice quality for spectacle at any time.

The story revolves around a mother whose husband and son are killed because of mistaken identity by four criminals, who then gets tortured and raped by them and left for dead. She tracks down one of them who doesn’t remember her and kills them in bed, O-Ren style. Unfortunately she is then caught and sent to prison for life. There she sleeps with every man available, in the hopes of getting pregnant, so that the child can carry on her crusade. She doesn’t have a boy like she wanted though, and dies shortly after giving birth to a girl who then studies under the cruel tutelage of a priest, who trains her to kill. When she turns twenty, Lady Snowblood goes out to finish off the three remaining villains for a mother and family she never knew.

The movie isn’t just a simple revenge tale though. Each of the three remaining is unique in their own way, and although the tales of their deaths are told in separate chapters the effects of one chapter bleed into the next. I believe the movie is based off of a manga, and if so this is indeed one of the greatest adaptations of a work I’ve ever seen. You can just tell all of the complexity of that story made it into the film, and in an easily digestible form that tells you all you need to know while fitting into the format the story desires at the same time. Couple that with the fact that this film has easily the best and most complete subtitles of any foreign film I’ve ever seen, and you’re in for a good ride. I can’t recommend this movie enough.