Recommend Martial Arts Movies

Totally the opposite to me, with anime/videogames/manga I find it much easier and less jarring

Eastern Condors might be a good reference point for this.

I was watching some fighting game trailers the other day and the angsty earnestness and determined+EMOTIONAL+stylish thing really irritates me, maybe there's more of it now in martial arts cinema now but I can't really see much of that in 60s-90s martial arts films.

I wish more fighting games just tried to be like the big crossover games or Power Instinct.

Are you excited for Dan's return to SFV? I know I am!

I really like Dan but I never play any of these games I just watch footage occasionally. Oro seems like the most exciting comeback, always loved him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3d_KzGfo2lU
I always thought there must have been pressure on Chan because regardless of where he lives, he's still the most famous chinese actor, but these people know better than me and it is disappointing how he seems to think. Lots of people saying in the comments that his reputation in HK was already being destroyed by his affairs, the situation with his daughter (Chan has said that he had an illegitimate child because everyone else did), treatment of a nanny and other things.

Love that "nice parking" bit, before Seinfeld, or was that already something people used to joke about?

One thing I read about Sammo Hung though, is that he got a huge backlash from a HK public that would have preferred he had a open secret affair than the divorce he had.

Interesting video

I assumed (maybe wishful thinking) that he was clearly pressured into his pro-govt stances but that video mostly makes the argument that his turn was deliberate and willful

Was surprised to find out Tsui Hark was always pro-reunification. I knew he was a young leftie, but had assumed he'd be close enough to China to be a bit more critical.

Chan once gave a stupid essentialist answer, like "democracy can't work in China because the chinese are too chaotic".

I think Hark's views did become more much more tempered over time but apparently he and his friends had a very idealized view of communist china when they were young.

Question is: which HK film people are openly critical?

And I wonder about Chan calling america "most corrupt country in the world" and discouraging his fans from watching his american films. Sounds weirdly calculated to me.
He once said that his american films weren't good because he was unable to communicate with everyone properly but I doubt they're his worst films.

Depends which ones we're talking about. I don't think you could pay me to watch Skiptrace.

I think it's fair to say the American movie industry didn't "get" Chan and that even his best US stuff is marred by too much plot, not enough stunts. His early erotic cinema roles are probably worse tho.

Question is: which HK film people are openly critical?

Anthony Wong and Chow Yun Fat (who has also recently given away his fortune, so a good egg all around).

Isn't Anthony Wong known for being generally outspoken and was in Hard Boiled but still dismissive of John Woo generally? My Spooky Encounters book said his career suffered for things like that but he's never been out of work and he hardly seems relegated to low budgets when you see his cv.

I don't know much about Wong tbh, apart from that I used to belong to a forum where everyone referred to him as Anthony MOTHERFUCKING Wong.

Dragon Lord (extended cut) - This version also has different takes, I've never seen the normal version but this was far too long and it didn't really get good until the second half. Odd that it ends with a big rugby match instead of a fight.

Dragons Forever (extended japanese version) - It was only 2017 the first time I saw this, this time I'm more struck by how preposterous the last court scene is, stretching even the allowances of this style of comedy and maybe that scene of Biao trying to kill Jackie's girlfriend too; but it's still a really good film. Again, I love Yuen Wah and his fast cigar puffing. I like the way Benny Urquidez smiles when he's working, as if he just loves being a drug criminal.
I'm glad this version incorporates the extra Yuen Biao scenes.

Bonus features has more interviews than I have time for but there's a different Benny Urquidez interview from the one on the Wheels On Meals bluray, his mother was a wrestler, his father a boxer and his brother was also in martial arts, he says that he still has all the same capabilities as his 25 year old self and he felt that he helped break the standard pacing of fights in martial arts films. If he weren't so nice he might have seemed very full of himself.

Throw Down - This is very stylishly shot and I've never seen anything quite like it, but I found the eccentricity a bit too affected. It's partly a homage to Kurosawa's Sanshiro Sugata (which I've never seen). It's from 2004 and the characters play Virtua Fighter 4 and SNK vs Capcom.

Have you seen To's crime stuff? Perhaps an easier point of entry. A martial arts director he ain't, despite that being the subject.

I haven't. He's got 71 director credits, which is surprising to me, considering the style of the film I saw.

Shit, really? Get a hold of the Election films, Drug War, Breaking News and Exiled, and see if you want to go down the rabbit hole after that.

I'll take note but I'm starting to come to terms with the idea that I have more things I want to investigate than I have time for and I try to watch one film per week to cope with all my other interests. I've also realized that the main purpose of human interaction is to create cool things and recommend them to each other and get out of each other's way as soon as possible.

fair enough... i tend to ingest too many movies or video games or comic books and I get that it's impossible to maintain all those hobbies all the time

I've nearly came to the end of my current disc pile so I will be ordering another pile soon and it will mostly be new releases because there is a lot of good stuff coming out.

Is New Fists Of Fury and Shaolin Wooden Men worthwhile? Because I feel like I could have skipped some of the other early Jackie Chan films.

I've been wondering if there's a BDSM themed martial arts film. Seems unlikely because so many martial arts actors have a really clean cut image. People sometimes joke that Jackie Chan likes getting beaten and humiliated in his films more than other action heroes.

Dragon/Wuxia - Donnie Yen fights Kara Wai and Jimmy Wang Yu. There's a lot of good stuff in this and I liked the detective character but there's a bit of special effects overkill. Why didn't the detective recieve any blowback from anyone for injuring Donnie's shoulder?

isn't that basically the plot of A HIstory of Violence? I saw that in the theater

Yeah, that movie surprised me, better than I expected. Did love those appearances by the old heads.

A lot of it was just like A History Of Violence but there's a One Armed Swordsman callback which is also maybe important or maybe just thrown in there. I don't recall there being a detective with a large part in A History Of Violence.

In the extras Donnie said the cows were literally people wearing dead cows from the butcher.

I keep having to remind myself just how long Donnie Yen has been in the game (since at least 1984), his first roles were starring roles in Yuen Woo Ping films but I haven't seen any of his 80s films. Similarly had to remind myself that Jet Li is old but I have seen Shaolin Temple from 1982.

Fearless Hyena - Jackie Chan's first directed film and I didnt really dig it much. The fighting is fine/good but almost everything about it seems like worn out tropes.

Young Master and Lucky Stars box set (3 films) announced.

I think I've seen two Lucky Stars films but I've never been sure what it was really about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_Stars

I've only seen My Lucky Stars, but the sexual politics, esp. the excruciatingly extended gang rape "comedy" bit, were completely ruinous imo, no way to enjoy the action after striking such a deeply sour note. And from what I've read the sequel goes back to the exact same well

I'm sure I've at least seen the third one and a lot of it was the gang of guys perving over Rosamund Kwan and it was uncomfortable.

It's weird, on forums I go to concerned with models/actresses I see tv/films clips from all over the world with the exact same sense of humor as 70s british comedy (Carry On, Window Cleaner, etc), 70s italian sex comedies and Lucky Stars.
Russia, Nigeria and Thailand are still making comedy EXACTLY the same but Hong Kong sex comedies seem to have moved on a bit at least.

tbh I probably could have shrugged off more subtle examples of mid-80s sexism or even misogyny, but the bit just felt like it went on *forever*, making you feel more and more bummed and complicit in it as it dragged on

It was similarly a series of scenes in the third film that escalated. And I bloody hate coy cheekiness.

Time And Tide and One Armed Boxer coming from Eureka

Yup, preordered those. I have very fond memories of Time and Tide, someone on the Criterion forums said the first hour is almost like a Wong Kar Wai film.

Possibly not the greatest showcase of martial arts, though certainly an action movie.

One of Hark's American films with Van Damme and Rodman came out too, is it possibly worth a look? Right now I don't fancy it.

The Master (Tsui Hark, Jet Li, Yuen Wah) is pretty good. It's about chinese and mexican immigrants in america, lots of language barrier/culture clash comedy. The fall off the skyscraper at the end is pretty spectacular.
Bonus interviews include Yuen Wah and John Kreng talking about near death experiences (I still want to know how many people have died making HK action films, everyone seems to nearly die).
Crystal Kwok became a director but still only has one film but it sounded interesting, she is chinese american, exactly what she plays in The Master.

Encounters Of The Spooky Kind coming on bluray!

good news to hear, i may actually pick it up this time

You just got a multiregion player?

If you haven't seen this yet please do
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LISgv3LcenQ

Maybe if it comes to streaming...

Just finished the Lucky Stars trilogy set. As far as I could tell it was always about a group of small time criminals who work with the police. They all act like sex criminals too, there's a scene in the second film which is meant to be a joke but looks like a scene from Repulsion. Jackie Chan and Yuen Biao are secondary characters and work in some stunts, some of them really amazing (car jumping scene is preposterous). The extended version of the third film included a ton of stuff I didn't remember. Sex crime comedy aside, they're all good and I think the second film might be the best of them. Third film has Michelle Yeoh's first fight scene.

Richard Ng interview was interesting. Acted in the UK before any hong kong credits and even went back and made appearances in The Bill, Red Dwarf and River City (!!!). He said that Jackie Chan moved away from comedy for a time because Golden Harvest told him the japanese audience didn't get the comedy. John Sham (guy with glasses and wild hair) was in real life just like the protester he plays in the first film and he got on blacklists for his activism.

Richard Norton talked a lot about the rock bands he had been a bodyguard for and what exercises he taught them. I just looked up his credits and didn't know he was one of the Imperators in Fury Road.

Kinda tempted to watch commentaries, I like the trivia a bit too much

Young Master - I really like the long fight at the end, somebody in bonus features said this and Drunken Master 2 had the longest fights he knew of (I think he said about 18 minutes), I'd like to see someone try for longer. In this new release there are 3 versions of the film (but yet another exists), Jackie Chan originally wanted to release his 3 hour version of it and I'm really glad he didn't because it's a bit long as it is, so there was a lot of footage to make different versions from.