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the seventh curse (lam nai-choi, 1986)

This is the twenty-fifth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2020-21", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 6th annual challenge, and my second time participating (last year can be found at "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2019-20"). Week 25 is called "Golden Harvest Week".

From Wikipedia:

"Orange Sky Golden Harvest, previously known as Golden Harvest from 1970 to 2009, is a film production, distribution, and exhibition company based in Hong Kong. It dominated Hong Kong box office sales from the 1970s to 1980s and played a major role in introducing Hong Kong films to the Western market, especially those by Bruce Lee (Concord Production Inc.), Jackie Chan, and Sammo Hung."

This week's challenge is to watch a previously unseen film produced and/or distributed by Golden Harvest.

The Seventh Curse is the kind of movie where the IMDB parents guide gives a sense of what you are in for:

• A baby monster bites a man's neck and erupts from his abdomen, lots of blood everywhere (looks like red paint)
• General martial arts fighting
• Police and villains are shot and have little bullet holes with small amounts of blood dripping
• Man tears flesh off his face and punches hole into his belly, where maggots pour out.
• A curse causes small spurts of blood to occasionally "pop" out of his veins.
• Small children are lowered into a stone device that crushes them and their blood pours out. You don't see their bodies being crushed, but the concept is disturbing.
• A woman has a disfigured face (looks like burn scar)
• Character is torn in half by a trap and his int stones [?] are seen, group of men are skewered on spikes. Not overly graphic, but aftermath shows some blood.
• Monster attacks people and tears at their skin. 2 monsters fight, blood pouring out of wounds. monster is shot by bazooka and explodes into bits, not overly bloody.

Even the above doesn't really explain how loony this movie is. For that, I go to the Wikipedia description of the plot:

Dr. Yuen (Chin Siu-ho) in the jungle of Thailand attempts to rescue a beautiful girl from being sacrificed to the "Worm Tribe" she belongs to. As a result, Yuen is damned with seven "Blood Curses" which burst through his leg periodically. When the seventh bursts, he will die, but Betsy, the beauty he saved, stops the curse with an antidote that lasts only one year, so on the advice of Wisely (Chow Yun-fat) he heads back to Thailand to find a permanent cure. Action ensues as Yuen and cohorts battle the evil sorcerer of the Worm Tribe, a hideous bloodthirsty baby-like creature, and "Old Ancestor," a skeleton with glowing blue eyes that transforms into a monster that is a cross between Rodan and Alien.

I appreciate that I'm cheating here ... it's not much of a review when all I've done is quote other sources. But really, doesn't the above give you a feel for what The Seventh Curse might be up to?

I can add a little to the above. Apparently the basic plot and characters come from two series of novels by the prolific writer Ni Kuang. There are 150 or so stories in the "Wisely Series" and roughly 30+ Dr. Yuen stories. In The Seventh Curse, Wisely takes a back seat, which means Chow Yun-Fat isn't around nearly enough. His cool factor is seriously challenged by the fact that he smokes a pipe ... even Chow can't make pipe smoking cool. On the other hand, he's the one who turns up at the end with the bazooka. This film came out the same year as the icon-creating A Better Tomorrow, but I can't tell which came out first. Meantime, Maggie Cheung is involved, a year after Police Story ... she's adorable but annoying, kinda like she was in Police Story. (My invaluable source for HK culture, Steve Fore, noted in a comment to my post about Police Story, "Maggie Cheung was participating here in the standard rite of passage for ingenue female stars in HK movies, taking on roles as the whiny and/or ditzy girlfriend and arm candy.") She's only 22 in The Seventh Curse.

Finally, I should mention that director Ngai Choi Lam has quite a cult following. This is the first movie of his I have seen. Fans speak highly of his Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky.

The Seventh Curse is pretty crappy, but also pretty fun. It's also short. You'd have to be in the right mood, but it's certainly possible that if you caught it on the right day, you might get a lot of goofy enjoyment.

underrated movies from the 21st century

Something to watch in 2021 while you wait for the lockdown to end. One a year:

2000: Ginger Snaps
2001: Time Out
2002: Real Women Have Curves
2003: The Dreamers
2004: Baadasssss!
2005: Dave Chappelle's Block Party
2006: The Host
2007: Chop Shop
2008: The Beaches of Agnès
2009: Vengeance
2010: Mysteries of Lisbon
2011: A Separation
2012: Stories We Tell
2013: Exhibition
2014: The Raid 2
2015: The Lure
2016: Midnight Special
2017: Detroit
2018: Blindspotting
2019: Furie
2020: The Vast of Night

royal warriors (david chung, 1986)

It was Michelle Yeoh's birthday Thursday, so I thought to watch one of her movies. She rarely disappoints, and Royal Warriors is a notch above average besides, so I made a good choice. But first, a few words about HK film series, understanding in advance that it all gets so confusing, I am certain to make some mistakes.

An example. In 1986, John Woo directed A Better Tomorrow, which made Chow Yun-Fat a big international star and started the "Heroic Bloodshed" genre. There was a sequel, A Better Tomorrow 2, but disagreements between Woo and Tsui Hark led to Tsui directing A Better Tomorrow 3, which was a quasi-prequel to the first two. Woo's script for that on, much changed, became his film Bullet in the Head. Chow had made such an impression in the first one that they wanted to fit him into the sequel, but his character died in the original. So they invented a twin brother, and I can remember how we all laughed with delight in the theater at this corny way to get Chow into the action. Since Tsui's movie was a prequel, he was able to use Chow as the same character as the one who died in the first movie, meaning Chow is in all three. (There was also a Korean remake of the first movie in 2010, and a Chinese remake in 2018.)

So, to Royal Warriors. This gets complicated. In 1985, Yes, Madam! was released, starring Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock. Rothrock was an American newcomer and a champion martial artist ... Yeoh had a dance background but no martial arts training. She busted her ass because she wanted to do her own stunts, plus she saw martial arts scenes as just another form of choreography. Anyway, Yes, Madam! was a hit, and so, just as A Better Tomorrow had done for Heroic Bloodshed, Yes, Madam! inspired imitators. Royal Warriors was a (unofficial?) sequel to Yes, Madam!, with Yeoh (as Michelle Khan) returning, although she doesn't seem to be playing the same character, nor is the plot clearly connected to the first movie. That's when it gets confusing. There was a third film in the series ... not sure what exactly it was called at first, but today it is known as In the Line of Duty III. To make the connections clearer (yeah, right), Royal Warriors was renamed In the Line of Duty (I don't think Yes, Madam! was ever renamed). The series continued with In the Line of Duty 4, and on and on, finally leading to Yes Madam 5 (!).

This may not interest most people, but at the least, it will help you find Royal Warriors if you want to watch it, since as far as I can tell, it's called In the Line of Duty more often than it's called Royal Warriors.

Is it any good. Yep. Yeoh is terrific (and very young, still in her early-20s). The action is well done and often over-the-top in true HK style. Japanese actor Hiroyuki Sanada (a "hey, it's that guy" for American audiences) is excellent as one of the leads. The plot is goofy, but it hardly matters when Yeoh is doing her thing. If you like this, there are plenty more. Try Wing Chun, where she is the star, or Police Story 3 (known as Super Cop ... here we go again), where she shows herself to be the best partner Jackie Chan ever had.

mad world (chun wong, 2016)

This movie hits too close to home: a story about a bipolar man trying to retrieve his life. I mention this only as a caveat ... I'm not the most objective observer.

There are many things that Mad World does well. While we can probably assume that the main character, Tung, has some chemical imbalances, they do not explain everything about his life. Society doesn't know how to treat him or to help him, and the "mad world" creates bipolar people, chemistry or not. The film is sympathetic towards Tung without romanticizing his life. But Chun Wong does not spare us the effect Tung has on others. His father (Eric Tsang) takes him in after Tung is released from a mental institution, and he is ill-equipped for the job. He tries, though, and his life is more difficult because of Tung's presence. (The father was absent during much of Tung's life ... he must also take some blame.) For the most part, though, Tung gets the short end of the stick. He has a hard time getting a job (he was a financial analyst), people shun him and make assumptions about him.

The only person who meets Tung on an equal basis is "Fruit", played by Yvan Hok-Man Chan (I may have this wrong, I'm struggling to understand the credits). Fruit is a young boy with an overprotective mother, a nerd who connects with Tung as no one else can.

The film succeeds mainly because Shawn Yue is excellent as Tung. He plays all sides, the depressed Tung and the manic Tung, believably. He is the reason Mad World is at times hard to watch, but he also the main reason to check the film out.

fist of fury (wei lo, 1972)

A couple of days ago, W. Kamau Bell posted an interesting piece, "Me and Bruce Lee would like to have a word with you." Bell writes about growing up in Chicago and seeing Fist of Fury:

In the 1970’s many Black people adopted [Bruce Lee] as if he was one of us. Maybe it was because of the themes of racism that were often in his films. Maybe it was because he always played the underdog, which meant Black folks could watch and go, “Yup! I know that fight.” ... Maybe Black folks liked Bruce because of the way he moved on screen, bouncing on his toes like his hero Muhammad Ali. Who knows why. But Bruce Lee was certainly responsible for an explosion in interest in martial arts in Black America. Whatever it was that made Bruce feel like ours, I was there for it and still am.

On a basic level, Fist of Fury is an excuse for a series of set pieces that allow Lee to kick Japanese ass. And Lee is unmatched in such scenes. It's not just his command of martial arts ... it's the beauty of his style, "bouncing on his toes like Ali". He was beautiful to look at even when he wasn't moving, but movement made that beauty special. But it was more than beauty. Lee gave the impression of compressed violence. You could say he plays the title character in this movie, and there is immense power in the ways he uses his fists. He is lethal.

The plot is a fairly standard revenge tale. There's a romance that mostly serves to slow the movie down. But you don't watch Fist of Fury for plot or romance. You watch to see Bruce Lee kick ass.

Japanese ass. That matters ... the story takes place in Shanghai in the 1910s, when the Japanese have much power over the daily lives of the Chinese. Worse, they disrespect Chinese culture. After the death of the leader of the school Lee is a part of, the Japanese show up, make threats, and give a "gift", a poster with the message "Sick Men of Asia", referring to the Chinese. Lee is the one who stands against the Japanese, returning the poster with a message of his own.

Bell writes of this scene, "Apparently when Chinese movie audiences first saw this scene they would stand and cheer. And as a prepubescent kid in Chicago, I might have done the same thing. As a Black boy in America, I felt that line in my bones. I wasn’t Chinese, and my oppressors weren’t Japanese, but I was in my mom’s apartment on the South Side of Chicago going, 'I’M NOT A SICK MAN EITHER!'"

Lee had incredible charisma on the screen. I wish Fist of Fury was slicker ... it looks kinda cheap. But that's what Enter the Dragon is for.

police story (jackie chan, 1985)

This is Jackie Chan's favorite of his many movies, and it always turns up on lists of the greatest Jackie movies ... hell, the greatest HK action movies of all time. It is among my favorites, as well, although when I made my Top 50 list some years ago, it was Supercop (Police Story 3) that made the list. I also have a soft spot in my heart for Armour of God 2: Operation Condor, which is admittedly inconsistent and even occasionally awful, but which finishes with a colossal wind tunnel scene.

Police Story features two of Chan's best set pieces, a battle in a town that starts the film, and arguably his greatest scene, an extensive fight in a mall. There is enough between those two iconic scenes to keep your interest, but no more than that ... as great as Chan is (and he is one of the true GOATs), I don't know if he's ever made a perfect movie (his comedy works great in the action scenes, when he truly is the Buster Keaton of his day, but it is less effective outside of those scenes). There was an odd video store back in the day in Berkeley ... this was before DVDs, so everything was VHS, the owner was a wonderful snaggle-toothed guy, and every morning they put a life size replica of Robot Monster outside the front door ... they had this one tape that was nothing but 8 hours of Jackie Chan stunts.

On the plus side, Police Story features Brigitte Lin, who is not only supremely talented but who was, in the years when I watched a couple of HK films a week, my choice for most beautiful Hong Kong actor (her, or Tony Leung). On the minus side, it also has Maggie Cheung, whose character (Jackie's girlfriend) also turns up in the next two sequels. Cheung is usually marvelous ... she co-stars with Leung in In the Mood for Love, which still gets my vote as the best film of the 21st century ... but her character in the Police Story movies is a pain in the ass, unworthy of her (in fairness, in 1985 she was barely 21 and had been in only a few movies).

Still, if you start with a great action sequence, and you end with an even greater action sequence, you can forgive a lot of the rest.

Here is the mall scene. At the end, when Jackie slides down the pole, the lights were hot, resulting in second-degree burns for Chan (he also dislocated his back and injured his pelvis). Note that Brigitte Lin did some of her own stunts. And you can see why the stunt crew referred to this film as "Glass Story".

Here is Chan talking about the final stunt:

come drink with me (king hu, 1966)

Another movie for "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2019-20", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." Week 18 is called "Wuxia Week":

From Wikipedia:

"Wuxia, which literally means 'martial heroes', is a genre of Chinese fiction concerning the adventures of martial artists in ancient China. Although wuxia is traditionally a form of fantasy literature, its popularity has caused it to spread to diverse art forms such as Chinese opera, mànhuà, films, television series and video games. It forms part of popular culture in many Chinese-speaking communities around the world. The word "wǔxiá" is a compound composed of the elements wǔ (武, literally "martial", "military", or "armed") and xiá (俠, literally "chivalrous", "vigilante" or "hero"). A martial artist who follows the code of xia is often referred to as a xiákè (俠客, literally "follower of xia") or yóuxiá (遊俠, literally "wandering xia"). In some translations, the martial artist is referred to as a "swordsman" or "swordswoman" even though he or she may not necessarily wield a sword. The heroes in wuxia fiction typically do not serve a lord, wield military power, or belong to the aristocratic class. They often originate from the lower social classes of ancient Chinese society. A code of chivalry usually requires wuxia heroes to right and redress wrongs, fight for righteousness, remove oppressors, and bring retribution for past misdeeds. Chinese xia traditions can be compared to martial codes from other cultures such as the Japanese samurai bushidō."

This week's challenge is to watch a previously unseen Wuxia film.

This was a late substitute, after Tsui Hark's directorial debut, The Butterfly Murders, became unavailable. Come Drink with Me is an excellent replacement. It is one of the earliest wuxia movies, and stars Cheng Pei-Pei, who many years later played Jade Fox in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I realized after watching the film that I had the mistaken notion that wuxia films were all "wire fu". The above Wikipedia description shows that wuxia is much broader than that, and in fact, Come Drink with Me seems to have very little wire work.

Cheng had a background in dance, which King Hu thought was more useful than training in martial arts. (Michelle Yeoh had a similar story prior to her work in action films.) Given how influential Come Drink with Me turned out to be, it's interesting that there is probably more plot than action in the film. To my eye, the action was not as impressive as in later films, but I'm not certain King Hu intended the action to be mind-blowing.

Cheng is good (and very young, only 20 at the time). The rest of the cast are more archetypal than "real", which fits the way the story is told. The version I watched was dubbed, not ideal, but better than nothing, and it added a retro feel ... it was a bit like watching dubbed kung fu movies on TV back in the day. My favorite wuxia movie is probably A Chinese Ghost Story.

top three of each year

I've been spending a little time at the Letterboxd website ... this is what happens when you're retired, I guess. A couple of fellows from Germany uploaded a list of their top three films of each year, and I got inspired enough to create my own list. It starts in 1924 and goes through 2018. Two years (1926 and 1929) only got two movies, so the entire list is comprised of 283 movies. The thing that interested me the most was the recent films, because when I make Top 50 lists or whatever, I always end up with lots of old movies and not enough new ones. By forcing myself to pick three from each year, I was able to give recent years some space. So, to take a couple of years at random, from 2018, Black Panther, Roma, and Springsteen on Broadway made the list, while 2005 offered A History of Violence, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, and Dave Chappelle's Block Party. Top three from 1924? Sherlock, Jr., Greed, and The Navigator (lots of Buster Keaton in the silent years).

You can check out the list here:

Top 3 of each year, 1924-2018

g affairs (lee cheuk-pan, 2018)

We saw this at SFFILM's Hong Kong Cinema series. Director Lee Cheuk-pan and actors Hanna Chan and Kyle Li were in attendance for a short Q&A after the showing. This was the directorial debut for Lee. I'm unfamiliar with the work of the three artists who attended, and only recognized one other name in the cast, Chapman To (Infernal Affairs, Beautiful Country). All of the actors were excellent in G Affairs, with To and Huang Lu the standouts. The latter two played a corrupt cop and a whore-with-heart-of-gold, which is to say, the characters in the film are largely stereotypes. But the style of the film is quirky enough that you don't always notice those stereotypes, and To and Lu do wonders with the material. To say that To plays a corrupt cop is a bit repetitive ... in G Affairs, if you are a cop, you are corrupt. Basically, everyone and everything in the movie is corrupt. Hong Kong society is a mess, from the teenagers at the elite high school to the criminal scum. Chan's character seems sweet enough ... she also gives blow jobs to her teacher, eventually getting gonorrhea. It's that kind of movie. The letter "G" is a gimmick ... everything in the plot is connected in some way to words that begin with a G (gravity, guns, a dog named Gustav), and it was never clear why the English letter turned up in the lives of people speaking Chinese. (This was addressed in the Q&A, and I still didn't understand it.)

Honestly, there was a lot I didn't understand about G Affairs. Some of this can be attributed to the Hong Kong specificity of the film ... I was more certain than usual that I was missing a lot of cultural clues. But Lee also uses a fragmented style that further muddies the narrative. If you are the type who doesn't mind this kind of muddying (or even enjoys it), you will get more out of G Affairs than I did. Good acting and a style that always looked good, even when I had no idea what I was watching, meant I found G Affairs an interesting 105 minutes, and Lee, only 33 years old, seems to have a good future ahead for him. But I wasn't blown away.

And look out for that severed head.

what i watched

Catch-22 (Mike Nichols, 1970). Better than I remembered it being. It's still like a revue of the novel, with various highlights, doing better with the humor than with the existential angst. Features a ridiculous cast: Alan Arkin, Bob Balaban, Martin Balsam, Richard Benjamin, Marcel Dalio, Norman Fell, Art Garfunkel , Jack Gilford, Charles Grodin, Buck Henry, Bob Newhart, Anthony Perkins, Paula Prentiss, Martin Sheen, Jon Voight, Orson Welles. Better than reading the CliffsNotes, I suppose, at least more fun. I see I used the word "better" three times ... that may give the movie more credit than it deserves.

I didn't know this, but there was a TV pilot in 1973 with Richard Dreyfuss as Yossarian. It's pretty bad, with an incongruous laugh track. I'd link to a video, but it's been taken down from YouTube. I'd recommend you try to hunt it down, but it's awful enough that it's not worth your time unless you're a completist. Of course, there's also a new mini-series, which I'll get to once I finish it.

Ip Man 3 (Wilson Yip, 2015). Follows Ip Man and Ip Man 2 (duh). Donnie Yen is a little older with each outing, but unlike someone like Jackie Chan, who relies so heavily on stunts, Yen mostly sticks to martial arts, which I imagine aren't quite as hard on an old body as some of Jackie's crazier stunts. Lynn Hung returns one last time as Ip Man's wife ... she's not always given a lot to do, but at 5'10" she certainly stands out, and her acting is as good as she is tall. Max Zhang makes his first appearance in the series, and he's so good they gave him a spinoff, Master Z: Ip Man Legacy, which I haven't seen. Nor have I seen the recent Ip Man 4, with Yen returning once again. (In fairness to me, I don't think Ip Man 4 has been released yet.) A final fight between Yen and Zhang is the highlight, but there's also Ip Man going up against "Frank", played by Mike Tyson, that isn't as bad as it sounds. Ip Man 3 was the biggest success of the three at the box office. For reasons that escape me, I watched this in an English dub, which was not too bad. This outing takes place in 1959, and as with Ip Man 2, there is a notable anti-British bias. Ip Man remains the best of the series, but they are all worth seeing.

Here, Ip Man takes on Mike Tyson in a 3-minute round:

Not bad for a 52-year-old and a 49-year-old.