Recommend Martial Arts Movies

the raid 2 was... way... too... long. eventually i got kind of numbed.

Yes, but it takes a while to single-handedly kill all the gangsters, and that's really the only way to solve complex undercover anti-corruption cases.

worked for Crockett/Tubbs iirc

xpost

yes, and settled law says you have to take them on one and a time.

one AT a time

tbf there's still a shitload of gangsters alive at the end who are probably ready to take over the city in The Raid 3
but yes I love this movie's attitude that you have to kill EVERYONE to tackle this level of systemic corruption

for an old-school head who used to have to hunt this stuff down in sketchy video stores, the YouTube/download era really is a revelation.

also every time this thread gets bumped I read it as "marital arts movies" and chuckle.

but that's just me, right?

for an old-school head who used to have to hunt this stuff down in sketchy video stores, the YouTube/download era really is a revelation.

been pretty impressed lately watching these remastered digital HD films put out by Shaw Brothers/Celestial on iTunes. just watched Challenge of the Masters the other day, good stuff

also every time this thread gets bumped I read it as "marital arts movies" and chuckle

EASTERN CONDORS

Despite the acclaim, I resisted this one for a while because I wasn't interested in the guns and grenades/military/war stuff, but there is actually a lot of proper martial arts in here too.

Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao, Joyce Godenzi, Yuen Wah and Lam Ching-Ying (who unfortunately has no fight scenes in this film).

It's all over the place in terms of seriousness/humour, so it was difficult for me to tell what was supposed to be taken seriously, but it never drags the film down because it's pretty fun.
Sammo Hung lost loads of weight because he thought his usual fatness was too funny for this film but that doesn't really make sense because even the death scenes are loaded with jokes.

I found the plot very hard to follow, the whole thing seems extremely unconvincing but even that doesn't really bother me too much because they clearly put so much effort into the action. This is a really ambitious production for Hung, with quite a few things I'm not used to seeing in Hong Kong action films.

The original trailer reveals lots of scenes that were cut from the final film. I really wish they had kept them in because they looked good. But apparently they're gone forever.

see: Heroes of the East
― Nhex, Monday, June 1, 2015

lol touché

omg, Killer Clans was so dope. I mean the last 25 minutes are so clumsy with the 3 million plot twists, but as a pseudo-wuxia it actually works (good dialogue too!). wish the fight sequences lasted longer, but they are fairly bloody which is cool.

also enjoyed Flying Guillotine (not to be confused with "Master of the Flying Guillotine") and "The Avenging Eagle".

Not sure if a lot of the titles are similar on purpose, on the Chinese end or English translation or English re-titling.

Heads up to UK readers who own a television, starting tonight in 2 hours

http://www.film4.com/whats-on/martial-arts-gold-on-film4

From Friday 15th January Film4 brings you Martial Arts gold, a season dedicated to kung fu classics from Hong Kong’s legendary Shaw Brothers studio.

Our season begins with The 36th Chamber of Shaolin and continues for the next three Friday nights, with King Boxer (featuring superstar Lieh Lo), Come Drink with Me (directed by martial arts maestro King Hu) and the original One-Armed Swordsman, from director Cheh Chang. A second season – including Five Deadly Venoms and The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter – will follow in March and April. All films are in their original aspect ratio, and original language with English subtitles.

nice

I missed 36th Chamber but King Boxer was very good. A standard plot, two dimensional characters thoroughly manipulating your emotions through horrible injustice and revenge.

New film The Assassin probably doesn't have enough fighting to be a martial arts film but has anyone seen it? First Chinese wuxia film getting a proper western release in ages, but I doubt it'll do much business.
I'm intrigued because it looks lovely, and without the overly artificial gloss I've become used to from 00s onward wuxia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxkr4wS7XqY

Keep meaning to see King Boxer, definitely on my list.
Saw a preview of Ip Man 3 last week. It was decent. Yuen Woo Ping choreography, so that was good. The villain from The Grandmaster did a really good job in his role. Thankfully the jingoism was minimal this time around, which sort of ruined it the first two for me. All those movies have good production but don't rise to the level of great.

xp oh god karl whyyyyyyyy

keep an eye out for ya, stingray!

xxxp the assassin is dope, there's some talk on the Hou Hsiao-Hsien thread.

Come Drink With Me must be the oldest martial arts film I've seen (1966). Good film, lovely in places, some singing, some surprising brutality but the fights aren't edited very smoothly, I don't know whether this is just the rough early days of complex Hong Kong fight scenes or what King Hu fans would defend as good choices?

The early days of East Asian cinema are sketchy for a lot of casual viewers but I just realised I know nothing about when Hong Kong martial arts films started or found their form. Were female main characters who can fight always there?

Watched on youtube Art Of Action: Martial Arts In The Movies (2002). It's pretty poor overall but it did fill me in on the things I wanted to know most and some of the interviews are interesting.
Samuel L Jackson presents it, there's lots of silly editing and music choices, the camera is right up in Jackson's face most of the time, too much about the western films influenced by Hong Kong.

There's a decent amount of footage of silent martial arts films and stuff up to the 50s, I get the impression they were always popular but it doesn't really say. To be honest, not much of this footage was very dynamic.
It did say that women were mainly the stars until the mid 60s because male actors considered films beneath them, so women were usually playing men. Or were they? From the footage I saw, it didn't look like they were trying to be men. At the start of Come Drink With Me, the main character is bafflingly mistaken for a man (that actress is interviewed here and I had no idea she was the older woman in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon). So it seems that King Hu in the 60s was the main turning point in the genre?
The very biggest directors and actors are discussed. Annoyingly, it never tells you who the people being interviewed are.

Another documentary, Kung Fu Fighting, from the late 90s and its only half an hour but was quite good considering it was a third of the length of the other documentary.
It talks quite a lot about how dangerous it is to make these films. I guess this could be the main reason these films have declined, people are generally less willing to take that kind of risk today, even though that annoys me, I can't really blame them.

In both documentaries, Bruce Lee and Donnie Yen talk a lot about martial arts as self expression. I never completely understood this.

It can be as much self-expression than ballet or wrestling. Many martial arts movies are very much about physical expression of ideas. Have you seen Dirty Ho?

I haven't seen that, but I got the impression they weren't just talking about their performances, but the entire discipline as self expression.

I just watched King Hu's Dragon Inn. It's good in places, it feels like a Kurosawa film to me but far too long and I didn't like it as much as Come Drink With Me.

Saw the restored early '70s genre klassik A Touch of Zen yesterday. If wuxia rocks your world you'll undoubtedly love it. There are at least a couple great sequences but i was bored about half the time; don't expect any 'action' in the first of the 3 hours.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_Qd3UicjPs

I got the Eureka edition recently. I haven't finished watching it yet. I have been bored most of the time but there is plenty of great images to compensate me.

if you like art movie martial arts this is on netflix now. slow and dreamy and cool to look at.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKFtNsQ78oI

been wanting to see that, thanks for lmk

one of the very best martial-arts films -- nay, one of the very best FILMS -- ever made, tsui hark's THE BLADE, is finally out in a decent DVD edition. unfortunately, as with a number of other Golden Harvest films released by Warner Archive in recent months, the subtitles are actually closed-caption titles, so they have things like "loud music plays" in addition to translations of the dialogue. but still, everyone should see this film -- and Sammo Hung's PEDICAB DRIVER, which is also newly out on DVD.

also dr morbs you might like "dragon inn" a little better than "touch of zen." it definitely is also a slow-boil film, but it gets to the action more quickly, and it's more concise in general.

("dragon inn" is out on a dvd/blu-ray in the UK, not terribly expensive to import)

Thanks for the headsup
http://cityonfire.com/have-yourself-a-golden-harvest-christmas-warner-archive-dvd-collection/
This is the fullest listing I can find.

yeah, it's amazing that those are actually easily (and cheaply) available in good-quality editions (at least in terms of visual quality, uncut prints, etc.). the subtitles thing is pretty head-scratching though.

all of the films in that series are worth seeing, but THE BLADE and PEDICAB DRIVER are the standouts. the latter is just a great, compact, hilarious and exciting action film. the former is a flat-out visionary masterpiece. (HE'S A WOMAN, SHE'S A WOMAN is good lowbrow fun, too.)

UK netflix currently has some good seventies Shaw Bros classics to stream, all yr Shaolin Temple, Deadly Venom etc faves.

Anyone seen Downtown Torpedoes? Is that considered a modern classic?

"dragon inn" is out on a dvd/blu-ray in the UK

Yes, from Eureka/Masters of Cinema - they've also issued Touch of Zen in a nice edition. I know Criterion are planning their own Touch of Zen set, wonder if it will share the same source material/supplements etc as the Region 2

As much as I have complained about these films being neglected and it's really nice to see several King Hu and Golden Harvest films get rereleased on disc, I can see why they might be a hard sell despite their obvious attractions.
Watching some of the Shaw Brothers film's recently, it's easy to get frustrated and bored with the cliched characters and plots. It wouldn't matter if the duration was more fight scene dominated but there's so many dragged out character drama where you know exactly what's going to happen. I wasn't that taken with One Armed Swordsman, it is pretty good in some ways but all those scenes demonstrating how virtuous the main character is (virtue signalling haha) grow pretty tiresome.
The charisma of the later more comedy orientated actors goes a long way.

i would have to think so, WF

US is also getting a new digital iteration of Dragon Inn

Still haven't finished Touch Of Zen, but I hope Eureka also puts out more King Hu. I'd like Legend Of The Mountain.

Just about anything with Donnie Yen is worth seeing. All the Ip Man films are great fun. "The Lost Bladesman" and "Dragon" are very cool.

lol did you see Ip Man 3? I enjoyed it for the fantastic fight sequences, but the story was a bit weird, and I couldn't not laugh at Mike Tyson. still...fun for what it was.

Yeah I've watched them all. I mean - you don't go into watching these films expecting a great acting performance from anyone least of all Iron Mike! They're supposed to be hammy and fun.

And the stories are usually always weird, aren't they?

I had a blast (saw it in the theatre) but Mike Tyson in anything makes me LOL, much less an HK martial arts film.

don't feel like it was as solid as the first one, and I actually don't think I saw the second?

I've seen the first two. The first felt very much like a fairly serious prestige film, the second was a bit sillier and falling back on old habits of the genre.

Agree with RAG here. Also both had some ridiculous nationalism/propaganda - at least IM3 toned it down. Thought it was better than the second if just for having that dude from The Grandmaster (let alone the insanely goofy fake-Brit villain of IM2).

I don't remember any propaganda. The Japanese and the goofy brit boxer were bastards but that seemed fair for the context.

What I disliked was the way both films use (better than Jesus) Bruce Lee to validate Ip Man.

Amazingly, there's been like 5 or 6 different Ip Man film and tv series in the last decade. Anyone seen the Wong Kar-Wai one?

Are you kidding? Though kung fu movies have a long long history of anti-foreign sentiment, the Ip Man movies (hardly alone in this in the past 20 years of mainstream HK/Chinese filmmaking) love to paint an idyllic pre-WW2 picture of unified Chinese patriotism, staving off the European and Japanese devils, almost as if they're trying to paper over a certain enormous conflict that happened about that time...

(See also the ridiculous final act of True Legend which had nothing to do with the rest of the film. And good lord, the "first" Ip Man 3 origin story where the huge twist revealed is that Ip Man had a brother who was secretly a Japanese spy, infiltrated since birth as a sleeper agent.)

The use of Bruce lee is pretty corny in all of them. Thank goodness we didn't get CGI Bruce Lee in Ip Man 3 like they planned...

I thought The Grandmaster was worthwhile. If you've seen WKW's other films it's got plenty of his trademark style, lots of intense closeups of Zhang Ziyi looking agonizingly pretty...

Kuro Obi (2007) gives an interesting perspective on the "evil Japanese" trope; it's a Japanese movie about karate practitioners caught up in the Imperial Army in Manchuria. The training and fight sequences are quite different from Chinese martial arts movies (some of the actors are high-ranking karateka). I think it's on YouTube.