Japanese martial arts films have almost ceased to exist, with there being little more to the genre anymore than CGI movies or no-budget T&A stinkers. So a bunch of karate guys woke up one day and thought to themselves, “you know, maybe we should be the guys making karate movies.”
The dream of High Kick Girl was to take the Japanese martial arts movie back from the fumbling hands of CGI-heavy fantasy films and boob-heavy sexploitation stinkers full of AV idols flopping about and calling it karate, and return the martial arts film to the stewardship of people who actually care about it.
Lam Ching-Ying made a whole slew of vampire comedies. The most interesting aspect of Vampire vs. Vampire is the fact that it pits Lam’s character against a Western style vampire
Old Hong Kong movies use the presence of a Taoist priest as a license to print crazy, despite the real world practice of Taoism’s emphasis on quiet contemplation and equilibrium with nature.
Samurai films have a curious knack for expressing compassionate, humanist ideals via soul-crushing bleakness and violence. One would be hard-pressed to find a bleaker, more violent indictment of the romance […]
In such an environment, it’s not surprising that A Chinese Ghost Story: The Animation, despite being a fun movie, sparked no interest in the pursuit of a Chinese animation renaissance. Animation is just too hard. It’s too labor intensive. And the Hong Kong industry had been totally gutted.
I should point out that in this movie, Jackie Chan attempts to outdo is formerly sometimes nude female co-star by featuring prolonged exposure of his own bare ass. Longtime fans of Jackie Chan films are, of course, already acquainted with his bare ass, which if I recall correctly made its film debut in Project A. I think this might be its longest appearance yet.
This isn’t really a Donnie Yen movie in the way Donnie Yen has been presenting himself in the last five or ten years. There is nary an open shirt, motorcycle jacket or MMA throwdown in sight.
Frustrating, flawed, and fun; sometimes infuriating, sometimes breathtaking. I can’t think of a game that would more accurately reflect the character of many of the movies I end up championing.
I had to watch this movie more than once to verify that George Lazenby actually has more dialog than just, “Hmm? Hmmmmm,” mumbled with that smug chin-in-the-air look as if […]
