Recommend Martial Arts Movies

the idea of foreign powers (often acting through chinese intermediates like warlords etc.) being the driving force behind keeping china divided is the basic background (generally taken completely for granted) of a million hong kong melodramas and action films that otherwise don't have a political thought in their minds.

of course i'm excepting mao-era PRC propaganda films in which the nationalists /and/ the japanese are often equally insidious, and pre-1980s taiwanese films in which the communists are the bad guys.

i know that's true, but in the last couple years i've been catching up on a lot of kung fu movies and gooooooood it gets tiresome. often seems like the higher the budget, the more they have to shoehorn in this stuff...

new re-release of Dragon Inn is Friday in NYC

To whoever recommended Sammo Hung's "Pedicab Driver" way upthread: Thank You!Thank You!Thank You!
Managed to track down a very murky quality rip of this on a torrent and laughed my ass off watching it last night. Completely off the wall film.

that was me. yeah, it's nutty in the best hong kong tradition.

maybe i'll rewatch it tonight, or maybe i'll watch "dragons forever"

Finished A Touch Of Zen and all its extras. I like it far more than Dragon Inn. Dragon Inn's "end boss" might be more impressive but this has many more great images, much better locations, the heroine diving across the forest with her sword, the main character laughing after the battle for a ridiculously long time, the psychedelic monk stuff.
It is far too long but the photography of the settings are head and shoulders above any wuxia film I've seen.

Bring on more King Hu.

SPOILER ALERT

dragon inn has that remarkable climax where the bad guy is dispatched almost offhandedly, in extreme long shot. i remember that as being literally breath-taking.

and yeah the choreography of camera and actors in king hu's film is virtuoso and miles above what almost any other director was doing in the early 1970s

filmS

Anyone seen the Detective Dee films?

Big thank you to Amateurist for recommending both these films.

PEDICAB DRIVER was fun. I can't say anything about it was particularly unusual but it feels like an odd mixture nonetheless. Got the new DVD version of this.

THE BLADE reminds me of a lot of the things that made Asian film attractive in the 90s for a lot of people including myself: it's mad, energetic, stylish and dark in a specific way I really like. I really miss stuff like this and it's always a pleasure to find more. Great soundtrack, so many good visual flourishes, a lot of it confused me but it's quite bizarre and beautiful. I doubt anyone's making anything like this today. Unfortunately I got an older DVD copy that wasn't the best quality so I might even seek out the newest version.

it's definitely a little bit confusing as a story -- very elliptical at times. but it's so visually dynamic that i never minded much. glad you enjoyed the movies... have you seen tsui hark's peking opera blues or shanghai blues?

I haven't seen those but I've seen Zu Warriors From The Magic Mountain, Green Snake, Chinese Ghost Story trilogy and Iron Monkey. I know he's only listed as producer on the latter 4 but I've heard he basically co-directs anything he produces.

I didn't like Green Snake much (didn't matter that it isn't really a martial arts film) but the rest are great.

I've seen that some martial arts fans resent his influence and think he's a hypocrite for complaining that Hong Kong films have become too Hollywood blockbustery.

well he was known as the "spielberg of hong kong" in the 1980s/early 1990s -- i think that tsui at his best is better than spielberg, but he's not always at his best, esp. not since the mid-late 1990s.

the two i mentioned aren't martial arts films, either, btw. but they are a lot of fun.

yeah i'm kind of mixed on him tbh

I'm going to watch his first Detective Dee film soon. I thought people didn't like his newer films at all but some people seem to love Seven Swords (2005) as much as his earlier stuff.

I got an hour into Detective Dee: Mystery Of The Phantom Flame and just fast forwarded the rest. It's pretty much as I feared. Just an excess of gloss, cgi (including a talking deer and other fighting deers) and slow motion. Even ten minutes in I was getting really bored and its 2 hours long. Oddly there's quite a few action scenes where the frame rate seems to change and it just doesn't look right. There's a lot of good costume and location design but it's wasted on this.

There was a whole bunch of Cine-Asia trailers and most of it looked unappealing in the same way (I might give Chocolate a try). I'm surprised these films still use slow motion so extensively. I hope this trend dies off because I don't remember it ever working.
I'm generally not into blockbuster films anyway but I'm surprised this approach seems to be so commercially successful (or is it?).

I sadly believe that the slow motion thing will never die

Some favorites of mine I haven't seen anyone mention yet

7 Grandmasters
The gold standard of martial arts as hardcore genre filmmaking, at least as far as the indie/no-name flicks go. Real generous with action, I remember almost half the movie being very well choreographed fight scenes. The other half is totally standard but likeable characterization set to constant shots of beautiful Taiwanese countryside.

Born Invincible
If you've ever seen Kung Pow, this is like the old unintentional version of that. The sets and costumes, the implausible weapons, the sloppy editing, the terrible dubbed voice acting, the dialogue, all sources of unending laughter. Perfect cheese. Nice action too, although the first fight blows everything else in the movie out of the water.

The Young Master
One of Jackie Chan's top 5 movies, for sure. Avoid the hacked up Western dvd releases and find the original, which features a grueling half hour final fight against some Taekwondo master who accidentally broke one of Jackie's bones during the shooting.

Elimination Pursuit
The Lost Swordship
Virtually lost films at one point. Low low budget wuxia, but ironically just like in the pure kf genre, the low budget stuff is more pleasing to the eye than a lot of Shaw Brothers/GH stuff because they had to use real landscapes instead of sets. Psychedelic and strangely fascinating in how their ambition exceeds their technical scope. Better viewed as ambling visual poems/parables than as stories.

The Magnificent Butcher
Sammo + Yuen Woo-ping = almost too good to be true. Typically broad Cantohumor is the only thing keeping this ridiculously fun effort from being perfect.

Snake in the Monkey's Shadow
Blatant ripoff of Jackie's film with the same title except "eagle" in place of "monkey." Probably a better movie though.

Human Lanterns
Wuxia meets Hammer horror.

Dance of the Drunk Mantis
The "original" sequel to Drunken Master, released just a year or so after the first. Disappoints people because Jackie isn't in it, but hard to go wrong with Yuen clan choreography and Hwang Jang Lee playing the bad guy. Be prepared for cringeworthy comedy.

After a while explaining what's good about these is an exercise in repeating yourself, it's all part of the same pool of cliches and grainy ambience, but anyway, these are also well above average
Buddhist Fist
Invincible Armour
Crystal Fist (AKA Jade Claw)
Secret Rivals

I guess apart from Young Master and Magnificent Butcher, all these are hard to get on disc?

Nope, they're all on the US market non-bootlegged. (Dunno about outside region 1 though.) Some sorta rare, some on incredibly common multi-disc sets.

Ironically the Jackie Chan movie is the hardest one to find a good version of.

Can someone give me a rundown of the quality of each film in the Police Story, Once Upon A Time In China and The Legend Of Fong Sai Yuk series? I still haven't seen any of them.

Bought Police Story, Once Upon A Time In China Trilogy, Human Lanterns, Born Invincible, 7 Grandmasters.

No affordable Police Story box sets in English subtitles.

Human Lanterns is pretty messy but I mostly liked it for the well designed packed sets and the villain's costume (which would be really great as an actual monster). I didn't realise the Shaw Brothers studio could be this nasty with all the rape and gore. There is a lot of comedy in the film but I'm not always sure what isn't supposed to be funny; like the wounded rival of the main character being carried into action on a stretcher was very funny but it looks like it's played straight. I think a lot of the drama and horror was supposed to be straight but it's impossible to take any of it seriously.

Born Invincible
If you've ever seen Kung Pow, this is like the old unintentional version of that. The sets and costumes, the implausible weapons, the sloppy editing, the terrible dubbed voice acting, the dialogue, all sources of unending laughter. Perfect cheese. Nice action too, although the first fight blows everything else in the movie out of the water.

This was actually better than I expected. The sloppy editing and bad wigs didn't inspire much confidence but what I loved was how eager this was to keep moving onto the next fight. Some of the music was great. The steel ball spitting was fun. The bad English dubbing was irritating just as often as it was funny, the dubbing guys clearly weren't taking their job seriously. Recognised the big guy Carter Wong from Big Trouble In Little China quite quickly.

Not much to be said of 7 Grandmasters. It's just a good film in the genre.

Main character has a lovely face
http://www.hkcinemagic.com/en/people.asp?id=1906

Police Story was a bit flabby in places and for a while I thought it was going to disappoint but the end really makes up for it.

All the main action scenes are great, especially the bus and supermarket scenes, which I'd already seen parts of in documentaries.

Eagle's Claw. I'm not sure what to make of the fights in this, they're well composed but seem a bit slow sometimes, as if they're afraid of hitting each other too hard. The British English dubbing is probably the worst dubbing I've ever heard and it's funny for the accents and awkwardness.

That's not gonna be nearly as good as The Avenging Eagle, is it

I haven't seen Avenging Eagle but Eagle's Claw looks very cheap compared to it.

Watched the Once Upon A Time In China trilogy (there are six films though, with changing stars and directors). It's fine but the sometimes amazing action lacks the impact it should have had, there's a lot of cutting and slow motion and the camera is often a bit too distant from the fights.
The first is usually considered the best (it has the famous ladder fight) but I thought the other two seemed more focused.
The second film has some really beautiful scenes where the glow of the sun saturates everything.

Was trying to think of way to describe Rosamund Kwan. She posted an image of Audrey Tautou as Amelie on her instagram and she is quite like her.

I've heard that some directors have trouble with Jet Li because his smile is too cute for playing more serious characters (this character is serious even though there is lots of comedy). I much prefer him when he's not playing a serious character.

Attack Of The Joyful Goddess. I've seen some people say it's a gem but most say it's appallingly bad but I was very intrigued by the favourable reviews. It was so boring I ended up skipping around the film with fast forward. The English dubbing on the disc I got was a patchwork of different dubbing jobs and some of them were among the worst I've ever heard. But some of the fight scenes are bizarre and striking, like a vampire woman with a long tongue fighting a living doll. It's all set around Chinese opera so there's lots of fancy costumes. With a remaster some of it might look really good but perhaps I should have made do with the clips on youtube. The ending fights is where all the good parts seem to be at.

Kill Zone 2 - so-so movie, but damned if it doesn't some of the best modern fight choreography outside of the Raid films.

Didn't know about this series. Did you see it on cinema?

Nope, it's on Netflix. Haven't seen the original, but it came out ten years earlier and supposedly it's a sequel in name-only.

Note the one I'm talking about has Tony Jaa and Jin Zhang (fun actor who was recently the antagonists of The Grandmaster and Ip Man 3), and Louis Koo in really weird makeup. Simon Yam and Jing Wu "return" from the original Kill Zone in completely different roles, apparently.

Just saw Headshot at the the cinema, featuring The Raid stars Iko Uwais and Julie Estelle. It's not bad. The directors previously done horror films and it shows in the violence which is pretty nasty for a martial arts film (or maybe this is becoming normal?). Rather than saving the violence for a few shock moments, it's pretty violent throughout.

Call of Heroes and Once Upon a Time in Shanghai are both fun.

BESOURO/THE ASSAILANT

Brazilian historical fantasy film about a legendary Capoeirista in a time after slavery was officially over but black people were still treated like slaves. It's very nicely shot, has a touch of psychedelia and there's quite a lot of African mythology. Very unusual and pretty good.

DRAGONS FOREVER

Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao, Yuen Wah. Chan and Hung are dishonest creeps to begin with, Biao just has mental problems. It's a romantic comedy crossed with drug crime and martial arts. Contains offensive bits. Yuen Wah is really good with the physical comedy, I'm growing pretty fond of him. There's some funny deleted scenes they really should have left in that focus on Biao.

MILLIONAIRE EXPRESS

Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao and a large cast of familiar faces. It's kind of a western with lots of chases, funny mix-ups, railway action, Japanese ninjas with swords and Cynthia Rothrock. They pack so much into it and Yuen Biao is great in it. One of the best Hong Kong action comedies I've seen.

Looks like Warner Bros didn't go any further with those Golden Harvest releases?

Most of the martial arts dvds I get are from the Hong Kong Legends label. Here's a list challenge.

http://www.listchallenges.com/list-of-hong-kong-legends-films-released-on-dvd

I just scored 22 of 101.

I seen the trailer for Scorpion King. It looks so odd, the star looks like he's from the early Human League days.

CHOCOLATE

Jeeja Yanin plays a heavily autistic girl who learns to fight from watching films, she even fights a boy with tourettes whose style revolves around his unpredictably (the film is dedicated to "special children").
Quite an amateurish film in some respects but it makes up for it in the fight scenes, particularly the ending, which looked really dangerous and indeed people got hurt making it. Yanin uses her knees, elbows and flips quite a lot, so I thought her moves were quite distinctive (but maybe this is more normal in Thai films?).

THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR

Story is dime a dozen fluff but it's a great looking film (especially the pool scenes), there's quite a bunch of these Hong Kong films from the early 90s: drenched in blue light, quite misty, characters gliding across the screen a lot (which I like but it can get tiresome easily, seeming like a substitute type of action for actors who aren't martial arts specialists), sometimes there's a romance and supernatural elements.
Not a lot of them on western disc releases and when they are they can be very poor quality prints. This is the worst Tartan dvd I've ever seen, for some reason it's a windowboxed/postage stamp small screen which is incredibly difficult to get along with or change the ratio to make it more watchable. I'm avoiding the sequel from Tartan in case it's also windowboxed. Would be nice to see some of this subgenre on Bluray because they really are some of the prettiest films, I guess Ashes Of Time might be my only option right now.

RAINING IN THE MOUNTAIN

My fourth King Hu, with even less fight scenes than the others (Come Drink With Me, Dragon Inn, Touch Of Zen). This is more focused on Buddhism, scheming, thievery and stealth. It's pretty good but there's not as many standout moments as the others.

Didn't plan to but I coincidently seen two films about Chinese vs Japanese warriors: Five Element Ninjas and Duel To Death. They're only a year, maybe months apart (1982-1983) but the latter is way way more modern, much better looking, with cool theme music and a level of over-the-topness that seems ahead of its time, which is fun but Five Element Ninjas is more satisfying overall, with a good ending.

Five Element Ninjas is fuckin' awesome. I've heard good things about Duel to the Death and have been meaning to see it

i haven't watched duel to the death for a long time but i remember digging it

i'll have to check out five element ninjas

THE BANQUET/LEGEND OF THE BLACK SCORPION

The best looking modern wuxia film I've seen, although I haven't cared to see many after the trailers.

The excessive slow motion is still there but this pulls it off way better than most, apart from a rape scene that looks troublingly graceful and the rape victim ends up happy after the really nasty part is not shown.

There's not any really noticeable cgi apart from a short cityscape scene.

I wasn't very intrigued by the story but the ending is good.

Lots of Zhang Ziyi and Zhou Xun whispering.

Might regret it but I bought Chinese Ghost Story (2011), Painted Skin (2008) and Painted Skin: Resurrection. They're very cgi heavy and I doubt the action is much fun but there's still some cool looking stuff in there.

I've seen all of the original Chinese Ghost Story trilogy (they're patchy but well worth seeing) but never seen King Hu's Painted Skin.