Recommend Martial Arts Movies

Pluck the Needle from the Bottom of the Sea!

Jade Lady Works the Loom's Shuttle!

Snake Creeping on the Ground!

(fwiw, these really are some faves of mine)

Anyway, for sheer spectacle - if not coherence or depth - I gotta recommend it.

If it's true that after the balletic fighting and heroic, tragic gore the main charm of these things is the extravagantly terrible dubbing, this might be an alltime winner.

Also, do not see "No Blood, No Tears."

I watched "Dynamite Warrior" last night, do not repeat my mistake. It tries to combine "Ong Bak" and "Kungfu Hustle" but fails to replicate any of the virtues of either, while also failing to bring in any original virtues of its own. The choreography sucks, the fx are weak, the jokes are dull, and the plot is too convoluted to follow or care about. There are several germs of good ideas in here, but none are developed in an interesting way at all.

I heard something about Tony Jaa being cast as a villain in the next Bond picture, though. That would be something worth seeing.

am i the only one who doesn't like Ong Bak much? i think its admirable that he avoided wire fu but too much of the action was one-sided and the story was much much dumber than usual. i liked some of the visuals but there's much better.

my choices:

king boxer (aka five fingers of death)
tai chi master
The Big Boss
Fists of Fury
Game of Death (despite the horrible crap they did w/ the Lee standins)
The 36th Chamber of Shaolin/Return to the 36th Chamber
five deadly venoms
enter the dragon
crouching tiger, hidden dragon
fearless
hero
bloodsport

legend of the wolf!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WnaQgQwGa4

i would advise against watching the entire movie though, its ~2/3rds filler, 1/3rd non-stop beat-em-up showdown. the donnie yen / wilson yip collabs are v nice too imo.

yay, my Fist of the White Lotus dvd arrived.

the Octagon is on Showtime right now

the out-loud echoing whispered thoughts of Chuck are delicious

NINJA Ninja ninja

hard to decide what recreational drug would be the best one on which to watch this movie - they'd all have their advantages

Just watched:

Crippled Avengers--I know the alternate title is "Return of the Five Deadly Venoms", but I for the life of me can't tell why, as it doesn't seem to have any noticeable link to that movie that I could see. I was enjoying what I saw of it then got sleepy and had to turn it off -- I hate when that happens!

Heroes of the East--A lot of fun. It felt more like a documentary on the differences/similtarities between Japanese/Chinese martial arts, but it was still a lot of fun.

Fist of the White Lotus--So incredibly BORING. Bought it as it had the famous Pai Mei character, AND, Gordon Liu, but after a fantastic opening this went nowhere fast. I mean it had good martial arts but the training sequences were meh.

The Mystery of Chessboxing--I bought it because of the Wu connection. And I didn't like it. The storyline wasn't terribly interesting and they threw the Ghostface Killer in your face with no real explanation within seconds of the movie's opening, which was quite confusing.

The Kid with the Golden Arm--Loved this. Not only did it have great fighting sequences, I enjoyed the storyline, the unique concept of the four different styles. Although I clearly got a bootleg and the entire movie is available with subtitles on Youtube (in much higher quality than what I got).

Also arrived/arriving in the mail:

Bloodsport (saw this when I was 8 -- regardless of whether Dux is a liar or not, can't wait to see this again)
Disciples of the Master Killer (aka Disciples of the 36th Chamber)
8-Diagram Pole Fighter

Disciples of the Master Killer: Clearly the worst in the series, and not a very good film at all. Gordon Liu barely appears until the second half, and the story is a pointless waste. An insubordinate kid who is no better at the end than he was at the beginning?

The last 20 minutes are fairly exciting, but I was so exhausted from boredom from the first 70 minutes that it didn't matter. Oh well.

Five Element Ninjas is highly recommended by me. holy fuck.

oh and finally got around to seeing Police Story with Jackie Chan. by far the most entertaining thing of his I've seen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Mkl9rtttog
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gTkUcXGF_Q

"Duel of the Iron Fist" or the duel now playing in widescreen on youtube. David Chiang is fucking cutting motherfuckers.

This is a bad video copy of the trailer, go halfway through to the knife fights.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moRBZVZKn3U

this is part two of just some fighting here. intrigue and violence etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRwgb0fyWDI&feature=related

Um can I just say The flag of Iron is badass?

The end fight has some jawdropping choreography.

I'll rep for Ip Man too.

Trailer for Tsui Hark's latest: http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/detectivedee/

looks bonkers!

CROUCHING TIGER MEETS SHERLOCK HOMES!

Also I think there is a sequence where a deer gets flying kicked.

can anybody recommend some Shaw Brothers movies not previously named itt. there's so many of them...

not sure if it is your cup of tea but i enjoyed a bunch of chu yuan's wuxia stuff, e.g. the sentimental swordsman, which stars di long as alcoholic guy who wanders the country and is chased around by people trying to do away with him for some mysterious reason

also some of the later ones have some really entertainingly bizarre sequences-- bloody parrot, portrait in crystal, demon of the lute

also remember soul of the sword being good...one of those ones that presents an ambivalent take on the whole chasing glories in the martial world thing

Can anyone ID this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc99HcPgKmk

duel to the death.

I wonder if The Raid series and Merantau are going to have any influence on the industry? I'd prefer there was some stylistic variety if there was a renaissance.

I had a phase that lasted maybe a year but I haven't returned much to the genre...

Zu Warriors From The Magic Mountain
Knockout
Spooky Encounters (the sequel has some great moments too)
Boxers Omen
Iceman Cometh (hilarious and underrated)
Drunken Master 2 (for fight scenes only)
Snake In The Eagles Shadow
Buddha's Palm (Shaw version)
Chinese Ghost Story 1-2-3
Merantau
The Raid
Rumble In The Bronx
Master Of The Flying Guillotine

I wouldn't recommend it as a whole but Ip Man has some great fights. But even most of my recommended films have significant flaws.

Raid 2 was badass too

raid 2 had soooo much 'crime movie' stuff that I really did not find very compelling. but whenever the action started up, man, all was forgiven.

pretty strange contrast since raid 1 is notable for having next to no plot at all. but the director has said the script for raid 2 predated the first one. it's an awkward movie but I basically ended up loving it anyway since it still delivered 100% on what I was watching it for (extremely violent martial arts action)

yeah watching it go linear was strange at first but it worked IMO.

the sheer scope of the action in the 1st was tough to beat though.

Not seen it yet.

Kindle spell correct must have changed Knockabout to knockout in my previous post.

It seems like virtually every semi famous HK martial arts film is on YouTube. Maybe that's why recent martial arts DVD selections have been so poor. A lot of films are getting rare and expensive so I'm unlikely to get back into these films in a big way unless I get a streaming service with a large selection.
Though the quality of some DVDs are horrendous. I bought Green Snake last year and made sure to avoid one edition that was said to be missing a huge chunk of the film, seemingly not from editing or censorship but just a major fuckup. But the other available version had a very small screen size and poor quality picture. I didn't like it that much but I guess it wasn't really a martial arts film.

I also have to say that the fandom for martial arts films seems to have seriously dwindled, there should be tv channels devoted to them.

rented a johnnie to dvd from netflix the other weekend (the mission) and the quality was totally laughable. there was text burned into the print that was visible the whole time! and the aspect ratio was totally weird. but I just rolled with it, and tbh, the shoddiness kinda made me nostalgic for when I initially got into hk films and was getting any weird bootleg I could get my hands on.

Can't recall the name of the film but there was a DVD of a 70s film I have with English subtitles, English dubbing and some East Asian subtitles (don't know which language) and it was hilarious how different the English dubbing and subtitles were. Sometimes it was like translations of two different films.

Zu Warriors From The Magic Mountain

I went on a big wuxia kick last year and this was my favourite of the bunch. Such a great mix of schlock and epic.

Yes, I wish there was more like it. I bought quite a few films in search of something similar. There was a film called Maidens Of The Heavenly Mountains that I couldn't make head nor tail of and it wasn't that exciting, but quite pretty.
I'd strongly recommend Buddha's Palm (make sure you get the Shaw film and not the modern tv series), it is kinda similar in style and has a funny character who shouts his own name whenever he enters a scene.

I wouldn't know where to start if I got back into these films. I find a lot of the older ones a bit of a slog (sounds like blasphemy but I found some Bruce Lee films quite boring), I'm not terribly fond of the adventure style films that Jackie Chan often did and a lot of newer films are blandly slick. I guess I should probably go for the King Hu, Tsui Hark and Jackie Chan classics I haven't seen. I'm very fond of Yuen Biao and Sammo Hung so maybe getting more of their highlights would be the best way.

Imdb is really good for going to each martial artist's forums and usually there is a thread for ranking the best films for that actor. Maybe I should look over this thread again.

Just came back from Raid 2 and it probably surpassed my expectations. What surprised me was how much more cartoony this film was with videogame style characters and less realism in general.

I assume there is no further sequel to come?

Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars. This is part of a series (I've always been confused by so many Hong Kong series with similar titles but no numbering, or even lots of unrelated films with similar titles.
This film is like two in one, a crime film but also a beach holiday comedy about a lecherous group of guys. Chan and Biao don't even show up until 30 minutes in. Some of its quite funny, a bit too little fighting but a few scenes are really good but could have done with less camera cuts.

pretty strange contrast since raid 1 is notable for having next to no plot at all. but the director has said the script for raid 2 predated the first one. it's an awkward movie but I basically ended up loving it anyway since it still delivered 100% on what I was watching it for (extremely violent martial arts action)

Raid 2 is amazing. No less than a half-dozen amazing fight sequences plus one absolutely stellar car chase. Plot totally unnecessary but frankly anyone who gives a shit about that probably shouldn't be trusted.

Often I would agree that the plot should be thrown out but in this film it takes up a lot of space (yes maybe a bit too long) and even creates some real suspense.

If you were talking about Drunken Master 2 I'd totally agree. One of the best martial arts films despite the terrible weakness of the non-fight scenes.

I actually thought the plot was pretty good too and the acting was serviceable (for the most part) but even they were both total garbage when there are this many great pieces, I am deeply suspicious of anyone complaining about either one.

So Close would have been a lot better if it wasn't striving to be so modern, it's a very post-Matrix film and (songs aside) the soundtrack is completely generic action movie stuff. Still kind of liked it, I had never seen Karen Mok in anything before, she is in an action trio with Shu Qi and Zhao Wei.

I don't tend to enjoy what little I sample of chinese pop stars but has anyone here heard much Karen Mok? She seems to be insanely popular, one of her concerts set a world record that I don't understand.