Reviews

A LONG AND EPIC MOVING ART.

Okay, this is a long one and a masterpiece. This is the first time I watched a movie with over 3+ hour runtime. It's basically a 4-hour movie (3hrs and 50mins to be exact). At first, I hesitated because I am not fond of watching a film that too long. But I promise, It's worth your time.

This is a story of 4 different people that struggles in their depressing town each experiencing a depressing life. Each has story of its own. A boy has an abusive father and had a problem in their school after having an accident caused by him. A girl who has a negligent mother and having an affair to the vice dean of their school. An old man with nowhere to go after forcing him to leave out at his apartment by her family for financial reasons. And a middle age man, who has a family issue and having an affair to his best friend's wife.

I like every seconds of this movie especially to have a style of long and floating shots. Its very quiet, not too much dialogue but the emotions of the main leads deliver the story so perfectly. They all have very sad faces and as you look in their eyes, it's like they are telling us that there has no meaning in "living". The cinematography is also soothing, every shot is worth it.

I really love this movie and maybe my favorite movie recently. Even the story is depressing, I see hope in the ending.

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No holds barred fun!

Flash Point is a good old fashioned Hong Kong crime drama with plenty of shoot-outs and hand-to-hand combat between cops and bad guys. The story is paper thin and the writers didn't worry about using almost every trope from the genre. What sells this movie is the fight choreography---your enjoyment will be determined on how much you appreciate watching Donnie Yen and Collin Chou fight in their prime.

Donnie plays a detective who is always being disciplined for being too aggressive with perps in his job. The upper white shirts allow it because he's so good at closing cases. His latest case involves his partner, Louis Koo as Wilson, who has gone undercover with three vicious Vietnamese smugglers and their gang. The first half of the movie has a modicum of action, it takes the time for us to build empathy for Wilson who is not the brightest UC cop and Donnie whose only motivation in life is bringing down criminals. It also shows just how violent the three brothers are so that we can wait with anticipation for Donnie to clean the floor with them. As the officers close in on the bad guys and appear to have a strong case with numerous witnesses, the witnesses are murdered one by one until Wilson is the lone person to be able to testify. Character building time is over children, now the blood letting begins. I started thinking of Wilson as Timex, he took a licking and kept on ticking, it almost became comical how many times he was injured. Don't expect much from the basic plot because it had as many holes as a paper practice dummy.

The high point of this film was in the final act as the bodies started stacking up. Even something as simple as jumping a fence became a chance for doing something more creative. During one brutal battle, Donnie's character loses control and the blood lust overtakes him leaving him shaken. The final extended fight between Donnie and Chou was worth the price of admission for this movie. It was vicious, fast, and well-choreographed combining a number of styles and looking more like MMA than kung fu. While there were a few "movie moves", for the most part the brawling seemed fairly realistic. And brawling it was as the two not only kicked and punched but grappled on the ground with bones breaking. Donnie won a Hong Kong Film Award and a Golden Horse Award for Best Action Choreography and he earned it. The stunt guys who did the more dangerous work are to be commended as well.

The loose cannon cop who doesn't play by the rules and the bad guy who can get to anyone has been done a hundred times over and this film certainly didn't break any new ground. The entertainment value for people who love Hong Kong crime and action films lies in the ferocious tension filled confrontations. You may groan at some of the idiotic mistakes the police make but you may also hold your breath in wonder at how fast and limber Donnie and Chou were and remind yourself it may just be acting but these cats were fast as lightning.

3/1/23

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Dud in the Desert

Duel in the Desert is what you get when you mix a convoluted story, bad direction, poor martial arts choreography, and almost no Angela Mao---few duels and more duds.

The story starts with everyone converging on the inn Angela's family runs to find a place to stay so that they can take part in a horse race with a 500 gold tael purse. And that's the end of that storyline. Pai Ying and Hsieh Han, along with Wan Chung Shan are looking to make money on a deal regarding 3 treasure chests full of Imperial jewels. Unfortunately for them so are a lot of other people. Theft, revenge, subterfuge, a murder case, betrayal, a secret letter (there's always a secret letter or book!), deals and double dealings, hidden identities, and undercover police officers are shuffled together in hopes of finding a story.

To make matters worse there were few fights and even those weren't very good. Most of them were of the grab, lock, pose kind. Don Wong and Ling Yun had a fight that moved faster and didn't seem as posed. In many of the other fights you could see how far people missed their hits and kicks. Angela is always a delight to watch but she only had a short fight at the one hour mark and in the final couple minutes of the movie. Even her kicks, fierce gaze, and snake kung fu couldn't save this film.

The version I watched was dubbed which might have been fortunate. The film was faded and badly cropped, subtitles would have been hard to read and run off the screen. People's faces were almost completely cut out of some scenes due to the cropping.

If there had been some good fights and more Angela it might have made up for the ridiculous story and all the people running around trying to either steal the jewels or save the jewels. Either way, this is a film only for lovers of 70's Taiwanese kung fu movies and Angela Mao and even then it might require a great deal of patience on the viewer's part.

3/1/23

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watch this short masterpiece (on GagaOOLala)

Beautiful, realistic, brilliant. I don't even have words to say how well done this short film is but I'll try without spoiling anything. This story and characters felt extremely realistic and relatable, these are people I could meet in real life. All three/four of the actors did an amazing job, it was especially great to see Huang Chun Chih again (lead in HIStory 3: Make Our Days Count). This is an exemplar of how to do a short film well. You have a narrow plot/idea that you want to convey with only a few characters/locations.

My only complaint is that it's too short and we need a whole series or a full length movie to really delve into the glimpses that we got here. Watched on GagaOOLala.

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I did not expect to have my brain cells in gear

At the time of writing this review, I am currently on a quest of watching all of Lee Joon Gi. This is among the most accessible ones and diving into it I had no idea what I was getting into. I might be calling this a masterpiece for how much it took me off guard, since I was on an impression of a light-hearted, 2-hour immersion. Maybe it's good to not let titles fool you, just as they say to not judge the book by its cover (hah). Out of all the things this movie might impress you by, I'd say with how well the script is written it is the crème de la crème, and only the best acting gives justice to this level of writing. Overall, it inspired me to write this review to say I now understand why Lee Joon Gi became who he is after this film. But of course, everyone in the film has levelled with him (superb acting). Watched it for him, I definitely got more than what I expected.

P.S. all the awards this film amassed was well-deserved.
P.P.S just wanted to add it's a film ahead of its time for its theme, and one that is timeless.

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Beautiful and gentle

I absolutely loved this, and it gets better and I see more each time I re-watch (3 times now!). The story is very very simple, yet it is never boring as the young actors bring an incredible level of authentic feeling, expressed through both words and through the deliberately awkward pauses, laughter, facial expressions and gestures that are so well done. They really rose to the occasion here I felt, and credit must go to the Director and the helpers they had to achieve this result.
Overall, it felt like a very real and adorable scenario as two people meet and share various 'First times' with each other. It is left in a way that allows me to believe that they might have many more 'Firsts' together ahead of them, and I have to admit - I love a probably-happy ending!

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"Why hadn't I been kinder?"

Kurosawa Akira tackled Dostoyevsky when he gave his interpretation of the novel The Idiot. The story was a morality tale of what happened to an innocent lamb in a den of wolves, even when friendship and love had been professed by all.

Kameda had been accused of a war crime and was about to be executed when he received a reprieve. He was summarily acquitted, but the damage had been done. He developed what the film called epileptic dementia. Kameda was reborn a kind man with a pure spirit. He had developed the ability to look into people's eyes and see into their soul, their kindness, their sorrow, their rage. After spending time recuperating in an asylum, he chose to travel to his last known relative.

On the train to Hokkaido, Kameda made friends with Akama. Akama was as brutish as Kameda was serene but the rough man took a liking to the gentle one. Akama was on his way to Sapporo to marry Taeko, a sad, beautiful woman who had been Tohata's mistress since she was fourteen. Tohata had decided to dismiss her and was offering a 600,000 yen dowry to whoever would marry her. With the death of his overbearing father Akama had received an inheritance and he was prepared to pay to have Taeko be his. Kameda also had received and inheritance, but what he didn't know was his relatives had already taken possession of his property.

Kameda met Taeko and found a lost and kindred spirit. He saw a pure soul in her buried under the shame and suffering. Taeko's exterior was as frozen as the ice-covered statues outside, but melted when for once someone respected her and she fell immediately for Kameda. Akama burst onto the scene with 1 million yen and was not looking to take no for an answer. Taeko threw the money into the fireplace and chose Akama. She knew that if she went with Kameda she would ruin him, Akama was the kind of man that even if she ruined him, it would not matter. As Kameda would later observe, she destroyed everything good that came into her life.

Afterwards, Kameda and his relative's daughter, Ayako, began to see each other. Jealous and conflicted, Ayako oscillated between love and hate for Kameda and his friendship with Taeko. Akama suffered the same fate except with a hotter hate and jealousy toward both Kameda and Taeko. Akama turned abusive toward Taeko because he knew she didn't love him and he harbored murderous thoughts for his friend Kameda.

For nearly the whole film, blowing snow pelted the characters. Piles of snow flanked the sides of the road and covered the roofs. The dark, cold world perfectly fit the mood of this film. Eventually, the buried feelings would explode with the heat of the flickering fire in Akama's wood stove leading to a tense, emotional scene as Kurosawa marched them in circles ever closer and closer to the long-awaited culmination.

Akama and Kameda were like the devil and the angel on Taeko's shoulders whispering which way she should go. Kameda didn't have any business sense or desire for wealth. He did, however, face every person and problem with kindness and understanding which earned him the name Idiot. Though he had been in an asylum for treatment, other characters would display for more frightening madness than he ever could. He showed compassion, others showed deadly obsession, envy, and dangerous emotional swings.

Mori Masayuki gave Kameda an almost angelic bearing, a difficult character to play. Some scenes he was more successful than others in breathing life into Kameda. Mifune Toshiro and his animalistic energy surged against the calmness of Mori's performance. Hara Setsuko playing against type with her often sunny performances, plumbed the depth of the darkness of Taeko. The youngest of the love square, Kuga Yoshiko, did what she could with the complex character of manic Ayako whose emotions flipped back and forth almost in the same breath. Mori was 20 years older than Kuga in real life, who was only 20 years old when the movie came out, and they looked an odd age match, made even odder since she was a relative in the story.

At the beginning of the film there were dozens of characters, but only Kameda, Akama, Taeko, and Ayako truly mattered, the rest were simply the chorus explaining why people thought Kameda was an idiot and giving voice to their concerns about him and finally understanding that he was too beautiful for a cruel world.

The pacing could be odd at times. The use of intertitles was very disrupting but that was not Kurosawa's fault. Initially, the film was going to have two parts, with a run time over 260 minutes. The production company cut 100 minutes from the film and summed up some of the first act with the intertitles. In all honesty, it might have been for the best. I really don't see how this film could have remained remotely compelling at 4 ½ hours even with adding more fully developed backstories. Nearly three hours was enough for me.

The Idiot can require some patience with its slow, melodramatic journey through what felt like an eternal and unrelenting winter. The only warmth and light came from Kameda loving the unlovable, forgiving the unforgivable, and facing a cruel and treacherous world with an open heart. In the end, those who remained came to realize the real idiots were the ones whose love included hate.

He was a "…genuinely good man. It may seem ironic choosing a young idiot as his hero, but in this world, goodness and idiocy are often equated. This story tells of the destruction of a pure soul by a faithless world." (The Idiot intertitle)

2/28/23

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What is it with Zhou Xun starring with... Zhou Xun?

This is maybe the 4th time I've seen the amazing Zhou Xun co-starring with herself. I bet it's killing Meryl Streep it never occurred to her to do the same.

This film is a watch if you enjoy Zhou Xun. It's not her best, it's not her worst. It's pretty good. She's a pleasure to watch and so YAY if she plays two characters even. The shortcoming here is the story.

This Courtroom drama has a rushed feeling to it and we learn why 2/3rds of the way through when it concludes: there's an extra 35 minutes which reveals a handful of secrets. It's a GOTCHA surprise TWIST that, like all such gotchas makes you first say HUH? and the re-examine everything you just saw to understand it a 2nd way.

I've frankly grown weary of these type of stories because it's so tedious to re-examine EVERYTHING and see how the hidden story may have been there all along. Usually these type of stories come off as more contrived than clever and this one is unnecessarily confusing as well.

The twist reveal eats up so much of this tale, wasting time I'd rather see with Zhou Xun fleshing out 3 other characters.

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Spoiler-free review since there are no others and more people should watch this

What I liked:

1) The action scenes! They were phenomenal and amazing to watch. Kudos to the choreographer or the person who was coming up with the moves since the fighting scenes felt fresh and not over the top.

2) The comedy! I wasn't expecting this movie to make me laugh but it did. There were awesome situational jokes and also a few running gags and I loved all of them. "The emperor wants me to go buy him onions!" was one of my favourites (it doesn't make any sense but watch it and it will :D).

3) The detective trio! They were all strong and it was nice to see a sword-fighting woman in this. Also the case actually made a lot of sense as there were clues scattered throughut the movie.

4) The OST! Honestly, I wasn't paying much attention to the music but during the credits, there is a great catchy song that is supposed to be sung by the characters of the movie and is so much in their characters, I loved it.

What I disliked:

1) The CGI was... weird at the best, but it was only there for around ten seconds so all good (and on the other hand, the make-up effects were great!)

(Next paragraph is slightly spoiler-ish but nothing major about the plot, most of this happens within the first ten minutes of the movie.)

2) There was a female sect of really cool ladies at the beginning but they all died within the first five minutes. :/ Also the FL was a strong woman, who could protect herself, but her biggest motivation troughout the movie was to marry the ML so... I wish we could see more sides of her. And this is a nitpick but I think she was dubbed as she had this over the top pitchy and whiny voice.

***
This movie earned 8.5/10 rating from me and I hope for a sequel!

Fun fact: This movie first caught my attention due to its long title, not this offical one but one of the names of this movie is "The Brocade Mouse Royal Cat Nine Deep Blood Wolf". Yes, there are no commas. No, I have no idea where the the word "nine" comes from since the word "wolf" is singular and it makes no sense either if if belongs to the "Royal Cat".

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Technology is a scary factor

New Korean content on Netflix, Unlocked, is an interesting and thought provoking movie about being heavily consumed by smartphones these days. While this is not the first movie to tackle this subject, it did a good job in delivering a realistic wake up call about the dangers of social media without any sugarcoating.

The pacing was good and the story delivered an unexpected twist in the end. It was suspenseful, it was urgent, and it was generally well made. Si-wan as the antagonist was convincing, although I felt that the thrill could have been more given it's genre. If you’re looking for a thrilling watch instead of a bubbly rom-com this February, Unlocked is one to turn your attention to.



My Rating : 7/10

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Subtle parody of 'Samurai' films

Sanjuro is considered a sequel to 'Yojimbo', but their storylines are independent. The titular character Sanjuro, we presume, is the same in both. This is a great film, but it is strongly recommended to watch Yojimbo first. The experience of watching Sanjuro is also enhanced if one has watched many of the more 'serious' classic samurai films including ones by Akira Kurosawa. Sanjuro, both the character and film, take us on a comedic journey of the world of lord, lady, gentleman warrior, and an outcast savant warrior.

Compared to Yojimbo, Sanjuro's plot is less developed and achieved more quickly in pace and runtime. The main feast of the film is in the characters, mainly Sanjuro and the contrasting group of 9 men he, by serendipity, 'mentors' from the path of foolish death. To win in a socially ordered world of the samurai, one must think obliquely, act unruly even, to accomplish one's aims. The chamberlain, Mutsuta, the one with a long horse face, is another one of these people on the fringe of social acceptance, but is very clever in achieving aims through subtle strategy, and not the chivalrous wave a sword around methods. It seems Kurosawa is poking fun at socially ordered rules and brotherhoods.

Many of the role characters are terrific. The prisoner 'spy' adds much to the comedic presence of the main ensemble. The chamberlain's wife is full of witty dialogue and regard for this 'interesting' Sanjuro. The henchmen play their roles quite well. The plot exists, it seems, for Kurosawa to display the nuances and parodies of these familiar character types.

The music in the film is strong and includes some of the familiar music of Yojimbo. There is a heroic fanfare that is clearly a theme of parody/comedy. It's easily recognized.

This film is a treat for the veteran Kurosawa and/or classic Japanese cinema viewers.

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