What is the last non martial arts Asian movie you've watched?

[Super Ninja]

I remember not really liking it as much as I thought I would, partly because it has one of my favorite titles ever, which got me expecting to see something, well, like Fallen Angels I guess.

Tsai Ming-liang is definitely an interesting director. I regret not reviewing his films as I watched them, but I was planning to revisit most of them and so some scribbling along the way. I remember The River being a beautiful movie, perhaps one of his best, and Vive L'Amour one that I liked but knew I couldn't truly appreciate at that time. I couldn't get a ticket to see one of his more recent films in Venice, think it was Afternoon which is, from what I understand, his "interview" with Lee Kang-sheng, his regular and an actor who's relationship with the director is said to be more than friendly.

Watching his movies I remember thinking they all belong to the same celuloid universe, with even the same items reappearing years later in his later works. Much like Hou Hsiao-hsien's films, Tsai Ming-liang's films are also slow and are best consumed in the right mood.

Still I'd call myself a fan, with The Hole you mentioned being my favorite. Wayward Cloud deserves a special mention. If not one of my favorite movies of his, it certainly has one of my favorite Tsai Ming-liang scenes.

 

[masterofoneinchpunch]

Crossroads (1937: Shen Xiling: China):

I wrote elsewhere that I was going to watch a Hong Kong, Taiwanese and Mainland film for Chinese New Year and this completes the trifecta (Swordsman II, Rebels of the Neon God and this). It is interesting to see Mandarin films from before Mao Tse-tung would hinder Chinese cinema for decades.  For those who follow lists this is on “Golden Horse's 100 Greatest Chinese-Language Films” list (https://bit.ly/3gjSTA2) and watching this now has me at 50% done with that.

At first you think this will be a socialist realist drama like Street Angel (1937: Yuan Muzhi), but it quickly turns into a Hollywood romantic comedy for the majority of the film.  There is even a meet cute of sorts.  This takes place in 1937 Shanghai among a backdrop of the Japanese invasion of China which hurt the economy.  This is mostly a farce.  It will remind you of A Shop Around the Corner, though in this situation the “couple” live back-to-back in a tenement housing, hate each other, but do not know who each other is until the meet after a bus incident and lie to each other about who they are (well mostly him).

This movie does not eschew politics, but when it approaches it, it lessens the film.  It seems tacked on (and is since the beginning and the ending feel like different films) and feels didactic. 

Also, the landlady archetype is a lot older than Kung Fu Hustle.

I love paying attention to the cinematography details of early sound cinema.  Superimposition is used a lot (not new to sound).  There is a nice amount of camera movement.  Some of the composition is nice.  An interesting use of wipes: one is this weird cut-wipe and a side-wipe (like Akira Kurosawa and Hollywood films of this time) is used a lot. Non-diegetic music is used especially classical like The William Tell Overture: The Storm.  Sound came a little later to China but notice the use of post-dubbing here.

The Cinema Epoch DVD of this is quite bad, but I do not think the original elements are good.  So this OOP DVD is probably the best you will see of it.  The special feature on it is an essay by Andy Klein.  Nice mention of Shanghai Blues which this film definitely reminds me of.  Now while several others have noticed this including Stephen Teo in Hong Kong the Extra Dimensions, I could not find Tsui Hark mentioning this film directly.

The only book I really see mention this is in some detail is Encyclopedia of Chinese Film by Yingjin Zhang and Zhiwei Xiao, but it is mostly recap of the plot (and it really reads like the writer did not see the film, focusing mostly on the very beginning and ending )and several mentions of the actors in it.

https://www.filmarchive.gov.hk/en_US/web/hkfa/pe-event-2020-3-1-8.html

“Director Tsui animates Shanghai of the 1930s and '40s with equal measures of nostalgia for old China and projection of Hong Kong's modernity, with references to such Shanghai classics as Crossroads and Street Angel.”

https://www.filmcomment.com/article/an-annotated-tsui-hark-interview-part-ii/

Nice interview of Tsui Hark, but he does not mention Crossroads.

[nectarsis]

late night movie

 

[nectarsis]

[Yihetuan]

A Leg - Dir. Chang Yao-sheng [2020] Taiwan

I really enjoyed this dark comedy/marital melodrama centering on a bereaved wife's dogged determination to find the amputated leg of her late husband which was accidentally misplaced by the hospital staff post-surgery. There were some really poignant moments as well as some low key hilariously funny comedic ones and this film did a good job of balancing both. I credit the script for never allowing the humor to step into bizarre self-parody which would've been easy to do with this material. Both main actors were excellent in portraying the slow destruction of love and trust within their marriage but I thought Gwei Lun-mei really stole the show here with her nuanced performance.

★★★★☆

 

Edited February 21, 2022 by Yihetuan

[DrNgor]

S.W.A.T. (PRC, 2019: Ding Sheng) - I guess this would be the Chinese take on the Hollywood SWAT movie from 2003. I missed the first half (came across it while channel surfing), but the second half focused on the fledgling team's first missions: 1) bust some black guys (including one who looked like Vin Diesel) holding a Chinese woman hostage in a high-rise apartment and 2) rescue an undercover officer from a big-time meth producer and his American mercenary clients, led by Robert Knepper. There is also some drama about one guy trying to become a sniper and the girl feeling oppressed because of her gender. The last half hour is the second aforementioned action sequence, set at a meth lab located in an abandoned building on the coast. I thought the set piece is generally handled well, although some brief moments of two-fisted gunplay and occasional foray into Doom-esque 1st person shooter perspectives cheapen what might have been a (relatively) realistic action sequence. In that case, you're better sticking with First Option. There is a smattering of hand-to-hand, although nothing really special: a black guy attacks a SWAT team member with a barrage of spin kicks, who responds with a series of roundhouse kicks to the arm; then it goes into groundfighting mode. The movie has awful reviews and a fairly low score (4.2/10) at the IMDB as of this moment.

[DrNgor]

Ming Ming (Hong Kong, 2007: Susie Au) - This was released on DVD in Brazil (by Universal) with a cover and retitling (O Combate; transl. The Combat) suggesting this to be a martial arts film of sorts. That was very dishonest of the distributors. Ming Ming is very much its own creature, sort of a Wong Kar-Wai film by way of David Lynch with a smidgen of Quentin Tarantino, photographed and edited by the people who did Tony Scott's movies (or Tsui Hark in Knock Off mode). This super-stylized tale tells the story of Ming Ming (Zhou Xun), a Triad enforcer who falls in love with a kickboxer (Daniel Wu) and steals 5 million dollars (and a mysterious box) from her crime boss employer to run off with her new lover. The money lands in the hands of a "professional runner" Tu, who drags another woman, Nana (also Zhou Xun) into the mix, mistakening her for Ming Ming. There are some "martial arts" sequences, courtesy of Nicky Li Chung-Chi. A few action scenes have Ming Ming flicking beads at her enemies at near-bullet speeds. There's a "big" set piece that pits Daniel Wu against what can only be described as a "gang of synchronized match flickers." But those scenes aside, the film is a really weird concotion of noir and "lovers on the lam" elements. In the end, it wasn't really my thing.

[masterofoneinchpunch]

The Phantom Lover (1995: Ronny Yu: Hong Kong):

This is another one of those watch if you are into Hong Kong films and maybe eschew if you are not.  The cinematography here is brilliant; the music is good (though if you are not into Leslie Cheung’s singing some of that might annoy you); the set design is fantastic; however, the plot and some of the acting leaves a bit to be desired.

This is based after a few films: the mainland classic Song at Midnight (1935: worth watching for fans of Chinese cinema) and, both were influenced by The Phantom of the Opera (if you have not read Gaston Leroux’s book – read it, which I loved; obviously watch Lon Chaney in silent film as well).  But it deviates enough to not really be a remake.

In the 1920s there was a singer Sung Danping who owned a large opera house where he titillated the masses with the play Romeo and Juliet (the local government did not like this), fell in love with a woman whose parents wanted her to be wed to a local boy of an important family and well this was not to be (of course).  His opera house not-so-mysteriously burnt down, apparently with him in it.  Yeah it is obvious he did not die and we know he was disfigured.

But in the meantime (not the Helmet song), 1936 to be exact (around the time of the original film Song at Midnight),  a troupe rents the large Crimson Peak like abode and at first fails in their local plays until their lead singer “finds” the Romeo and Juliet singing play (well given to him by a hooded figure whom we already know who it is).  He has relationship issues too.  This aspect is completely underplayed and gets sacrificed for the main love story.  This is a mistake since it is supposed to parallel the long-lost couple.

Here is a movie that needed to be longer.  It needed to explain more, it needed to not rush over so much and it concluded way too fast.  There were some other issues like Leslie Cheung’s stage acting which was like an overly sanguine Vincent Price on too much coffee, but Cheung broods well.  Too bad he died early as he could have easily been so emo.  Imagine Cheung as an emo vampire with Falling in Reverse being played in the background.

This was a modest box office hit for Ronny Hu, though if you have not watch his The Bride with White Hair (1993) before this.  This has potential, falls too much into pathos and really needed a more complete script.  But the score is good and it looks beautiful.  Unfortunately, the Tai Seng 2-Disc DVD set is not a good transfer (though the extras are great including a couple of commentaries).

Nerd Notes: this was filmed in sync Mandarin. John Charles gives this a 9/10 in Hong Kong Filmography. Paul Fonoroff blasts it in At the Hong Kong Movies.

[DrNgor]

Break out the champagne, @One Armed Boxer, I watched a Korean movie!

The Ring Virus (South Korea, 1999) - Korea's answer to the highly-popular Ringu is essentially a scene-for-scene remake of the Hideo Nakata film, with only a few token differences (ex. instead of an ex-husband, it's a quirky morgue doctor; instead of having a son, the lead has a daughter; the first victim is in a two-parent family; both grandparents are present; etc.). The most notable differences are that the movie goes to greater lengths to keep the heroine's reporter buddy in the story, as opposed to Ringu, that sort of forgets about him after the first act. But even more important is that the 10-extra minutes to the run time gives the filmmakers more of an opportunity to develop the Sadako-variation's backstory, which involves more sex than we ever saw in the Japanese films. This film benefits from looking for polished than the Japanese film, complete with more dynamic camerawork and better lighting. It's never particularly scary (it's arguably less intense than the Japanese version), but it looks good.

Edited April 21, 2022 by DrNgor

[One Armed Boxer]

9 hours ago, DrNgor said:

Break out the champagne, @One Armed Boxer, I watched a Korean movie!

I'm breaking out the bubbles now.  For me this one is more of a curio-piece to see Bae Doona in an early role, as Sadako no less, before she'd really establish herself as a popular actress in the early to mid-00's through her collaborations with the likes of Bong Joon-ho and Park Chan-wook. Interestingly if you compare Hideo Nakata and Kim Dong-bin's respective takes on Koji Suzuki's original 1991 novel, it's actually the Korean version which sticks to it more closely, with Nakata wisely deciding to crank up the horror elements of the story, and in turn create the Japanese classic that kick-started the whole late 90's/00's long haired Asian ghost genre.

[One Armed Boxer]

I recently got through watching the 2016 China & Korea co-production 'Foolish Plan', that I believe may be the first example of Jordan Chan sporting a haircut 20 years too young for his age. I gave it the full review treatment over at COF - 

https://cityonfire.com/foolish-plan-2016-review/

 

[Yihetuan]

Knock Knock - Dir. Xiang Liu [2021] China

Entertaining but at times convoluted crime mystery whodunit in the mold of a Coen Brothers dark comedy. There was never a lull and the pacing was quite good and the plot kept me engrossed until the end even with some absurd plot elements and twists. Well, that is until you realize how it will end since this is a Mainland Chinese film and everyone knows how these end.

Worth a watch.

★★★☆☆

 

Edited May 4, 2022 by Yihetuan

[Chu Liu Hsiang]

BANGKOK DANGEROUS - impressing and depressing. It's easy to sympathize with the protagonists. I liked the idea of having the "ghost" of Kong's buddy walking besides him on his first vendetta trip.

[FightingFool]

Run and kill.

After sort of sorry guy Fatty Cheung catches his wife sleeping with another man he goes to bar for drinks. Completely drunk he accidentally orders hit to betraying wife. And end ups owing $800 000 to killers, tough vietnamese gang. And things go even lot worse...

It`s truly amazing dark crime thriller with great cast ( wang lung wei, simon yam, danny lee, melvin wong), few bits of martial arts, some gunplay and fair amount of violence. In atmosphere IMO Run and Kill holds it`s own against creme of HK crime movies.

Can`t wait to upgrade HK dvd for american BR...

Edited May 24, 2022 by FightingFool

[morpheus]

Untold Story (1993)

Anthony Wong Chau Sang was outstanding.  Perhaps I'll do a write up someday.

[Chu Liu Hsiang]

RUNNING OUT OF TIME - amazing. Loved the chemistry between Andy Lau and Lau Ching Wan. Like in many movies,  the cops behave too stupid to tolerate, especially in the bowling hall.

[Yihetuan]

The Battle at Lake Changjin 2 aka Water Gate Bridge - Dir. Tsui Hark, Dante Lam, Chen Kaige [2022] China

I enjoyed the first film and read this "sequel" was filmed concurrently and it wasn't as good but still fairly entertaining. Like the first movie, It definitely has a HK action feel and the influence of Hark & Lam were unmistakable. Let me preface by saying I'm not a military historian, so no idea how close this was factually to the real battle during the Korean War & I'm sure quite a few artistic liberties were taken but I can't deny from an entertainment standpoint this was worth a watch.

I mentioned that a HK influence was readily apparent and to its detriment, it did feel over stylized at certain points and not as gritty as I would've preferred. If you go in expecting a Chinese Saving Private Ryan type movie, this isn't it. Asian war films such as The Assembly, The Eight Hundred, Tae Guk-gi: the Brotherhood of War or My Way were much more realistic in the depiction of the actual horrors of battlefield combat. That's not to say this film didn't indulge the viewer in war gore and violence because there are plenty of scenes of bodies blown apart by munitions and ravaged by artillery but it felt like a special effects spectacle rather than a somber display of battlefield casualties and death.

Some of that had to do with the unconvincing CG effects and the the worst parts were in the final battle scene which bordered on farcical. In particular, the scene...

Spoiler

...the gravely wounded commander drives a jeep packed with explosives kamikaze style into the bridge and when Wu Jing is shot by the American soldiers off the bridge but still manages to shoot the explosive shell in slow motion...

Yes, I went in expecting a nationalistic, jingoistic interpretation of the PLA's involvement in this historic battle and I have no qualms with it. This movie was made during the CPC's centennial anniversary of its founding, so of course this film would reflect that and I grew up watching tons of American war films (from Battle of the Bulge to Deer Hunter) which lionized the American soldier and demonized the enemy whether they be Germans, Japanese, Vietnamese, etc, as nameless, faceless masses of cannon fodder for the heroic American soldier to kill.

Now this film inverts that and shows the PLA soldiers as human beings and the US forces as the "faceless" enemy. If you can't accept that then certainly this movie will not interest you but if you go in just wanting to see some nice action set pieces, winter battle scenes mixed in with an underdog plot about a small cadre of Chinese soldiers tasked with an impossible mission against an opposing armed force with superior equipment & numbers then you will be rewarded with a decent war action pic for its 2 and half hour runtime.

 

Edited August 11, 2022 by Yihetuan

[Drunken Monk]

I might get torn apart of these forums for this but I recent watched Time and Tide and fucking HATED it. And I'm not using that word lightly. I thought it was an ugly looking, badly plotted, chore of a film. The only good thing about it was the action set piece in the middle (the one where they're on the side of the building). Besides that, I think this film has little in the way of redeeming features. An absolute nightmare to sit through.

[DiP]

Insanity (2015) - 7.5/10

Well-structured and intriguing story with Lau Ching-Wan playing a mentally disturbed person and veteran actress Pau Hei-Ching playing a traumatized mother. Huang Xiao-Ming (Ip Man 2) was alright and the film would've benefited greatly had they replaced him with someone more competent for the doctor role. Because that's where the film goes a bit downhill as it reaches the climax. What appeared to be interesting -- the premise of Hei-Ching's character being a menace to Ching-Wan's protagonist later on -- turned into something far less appealing and out of the blue (in true HK movie fashion). That said, the acting was terrific as a whole and made up for the cons of the movie; Ching-Wan and Hei-Ching particularly.

Dealer/Healer (2017) - 7/10

A biopic about former Hong Kong drug dealer Chan Shun Chi (https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/陳慎芝) who later reformed and opened a rehabilitation center during the late 1980s, in hope to cure drug addicts from taking the same path as he did. Great directing from veteran director Lawrence Lau, and great acting performances from Lau Ching-Wan, Gordon Lam, and even Max Zhang Jin who plays a pivotal role here. It was also nice to see a variety of familiar faces in Hong Kong cinema: From Ng Man-Tat, Chen Kuan-Tai and Nora Miao to Ben Lam, Vincent Wan, Patrick Tam etc. This movie is mostly acting-oriented but does contain a good handful of action scenes in form of gang brawls, empty-handed and with weapons, which should be enough to please both HK action and crime movie enthusiasts.

Edited August 18, 2022 by DiP

[Yihetuan]

Godspeed - Dir. Chung Mong-hong [2016] Taiwan

Loved it when I first saw this and a recent re-watch just reinforced my belief this gangster/road trip dark comedy/drama is one of the best Taiwanese films since the New Wave cinema movement. One of the best performances from Michael Hui as well. I remember reading one review that said this movie is a Johnnie To film played at the wrong speed & that is an apt description but discredits the job director Chung did in taking a lot of disparate elements (gangster thriller, road movie, slice of life comedy) to form a really cohesive and wonderful film.

The same two scenes that affected me in my first viewing are the same that still haunt me today...
 

Spoiler

...when Na Dow and Michael Hui are locked in the trunk of the Mercedes and Hui starts waxing about the time he spent his birthday taking his wife, kid and mother-in-law to a fancy steamed bun place to celebrate and the aftermath of his decision to forgo parking in the adjacent lot to save a few bucks is a very simple story which on the surface seems to be a tale of frugality gone awry but is just such a poignant painful look at the life of a "everyday" man & being invisible to his family...

...the brutal & violent scene where Leon Dai captures the two gangsters who betrayed Brother Tou & has his enforcer saw through the guy's motorcycle helmet with a hack saw and split it open like a bloody watermelon and then gives him a chance to save his life by smoking a cigarette in one drag without dropping any ash while he has a gun to his head. The palpable tension and emotion was just so raw and real in that scene...

[Darth Kermit]

I recently watched Lam Ngai Kai's The Cat and A Moment of Romance. The Cat was good, but AMoR blew me away. So beautiful and such a haunting Romeo and Juliet type story. I need to watch some more Benny Chan, I've seen 8 of his and liked/loved all of them so far. Call of Heroes peaks my interest.

[KUNG FU BOB]

On 8/8/2022 at 1:13 PM, Drunken Monk said:

I might get torn apart of these forums for this but I recent watched Time and Tide and fucking HATED it. And I'm not using that word lightly. I thought it was an ugly looking, badly plotted, chore of a film. The only good thing about it was the action set piece in the middle (the one where they're on the side of the building). Besides that, I think this film has little in the way of redeeming features. An absolute nightmare to sit through.

Uh-oh. I haven't seen TIME AND TIDE since it first came out in 2000 (I did a blind buy of the DVD), and I remember enjoying it a lot. Even though it's not a film I was compelled to revisit over the last two decades (and change), I ordered the Eureka Blu-ray to support physical media releases of Asian cinema and check out the extras. I hope when I get around to re-watching it I still like it and don't feel the same way that you do about it, @Drunken Monk. However, this was around the same time that Tsui Hark directed BLACK MASK 2... so...

[Drunken Monk]

22 minutes ago, KUNG FU BOB said:

Uh-oh. I haven't seen TIME AND TIDE since it first came out in 2000 (I did a blind buy of the DVD), and I remember enjoying it a lot. Even though it's not a film I was compelled to revisit over the last two decades (and change), I ordered the Eureka Blu-ray to support physical media releases of Asian cinema and check out the extras. I hope when I get around to re-watching it I still like it and don't feel the same way that you do about it, @Drunken Monk. However, this was around the same time that Tsui Hark directed BLACK MASK 2... so...

I think I’m firmly in the minority on this one. I’ve been condemned for my alleged “bad take.”

[KUNG FU BOB]

3 minutes ago, Drunken Monk said:

I think I’m firmly in the minority on this one. I’ve been condemned for my alleged “bad take.”

Nothing wrong with that. I'm thankful we don't all feel the exact same way about everything. That would be really boring. One of my closest friends on here rates one of my all time favorite films an over-rated, uninspired mess. I was surprised for sure, but no love was lost.

[Chu Liu Hsiang]

TUNNEL (SK 2016). Unusual disaster movie, quite captivating.