Quickie movie reviews
Watched a couple movies with Cris & Janet last nite while passed out on the couch & recovering from J&J-wedding and its assorted shenanigans. Both were recent purchases from video rental stores clearing out their foreign film sections.
First up was RUNNING ON KARMA, also known around the house as "Andy Lau wears a giant muscle suit" (not to be confused with LOVE ON A DIET, aka "Andy Lau and Sammi Cheng wear giant fat suits") The first thing that stuck with me while watching the movie was that they really felt they needed to get their money's worth out of the lifelike-but-prosthetic nature of the suit, as despite being a IIB movie I saw more naked ass (all Andy Lau's suit's) than in any Cat. III movie I've seen without the word "sex" in the title. The second thing was a bit of a regret that I'd already shown MAD DETECTIVE for our movie night, as although LOVE ON A DIET will someday be a natural fit, DETECTIVE would be much moreso: both movies are the most explicit representations I've seen thus far of Wai Ka-Fai's obsession with Buudhist mystico-supernatural philosophy, and in retrospect I think there are a lot of elements in MAD DETECTIVE that are basically extensions of or further ruminations on the themes of RUNNING ON KARMA. C'est la vie. The suit is hilarious, tho, just for the record. Just as awesome as I'd hoped.
Next up was ALL'S WELL, ENDS WELL. The main reason I wanted to see this was that it was one of the many Stephen Chow films that have never gotten any real US release (as far as I can tell), despite being a fairly big & influential film in HK. Secondarily, as far as I can tell from what I've read, it's basically the archetypal Lunar New Year comedy: star-studded, big, dumb, and makes No God Damn Sense (and not in a mo lei tau / nonsense comedy fashion either). And yes, it does star Stephen Chow, and yes it makes No God Damn Sense. On the other hand, it has some great movie parody jokes, the best of which is probably the riff on Wong Kar-Wai's DAYS OF BEING WILD and the second-best of which is Stephen Chow's horrible attempt to pull off Schwarzenegger's hair from the poster for TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY. Better yet, Leslie Cheung does a fantastic performance as the flamboyant middle brother of the family. On the other hand, it is more than a bit on the Big Dumb side of things (again, archetypally so) and it does go a bit overboard trying to make sure every character gets a heteronormatively happy ending within the last five minutes of the film. On the other other hand, it does that last bit in a couple spectacularly hilarious fashions, so it's hard to bear much of a grudge.
First up was RUNNING ON KARMA, also known around the house as "Andy Lau wears a giant muscle suit" (not to be confused with LOVE ON A DIET, aka "Andy Lau and Sammi Cheng wear giant fat suits") The first thing that stuck with me while watching the movie was that they really felt they needed to get their money's worth out of the lifelike-but-prosthetic nature of the suit, as despite being a IIB movie I saw more naked ass (all Andy Lau's suit's) than in any Cat. III movie I've seen without the word "sex" in the title. The second thing was a bit of a regret that I'd already shown MAD DETECTIVE for our movie night, as although LOVE ON A DIET will someday be a natural fit, DETECTIVE would be much moreso: both movies are the most explicit representations I've seen thus far of Wai Ka-Fai's obsession with Buudhist mystico-supernatural philosophy, and in retrospect I think there are a lot of elements in MAD DETECTIVE that are basically extensions of or further ruminations on the themes of RUNNING ON KARMA. C'est la vie. The suit is hilarious, tho, just for the record. Just as awesome as I'd hoped.
Next up was ALL'S WELL, ENDS WELL. The main reason I wanted to see this was that it was one of the many Stephen Chow films that have never gotten any real US release (as far as I can tell), despite being a fairly big & influential film in HK. Secondarily, as far as I can tell from what I've read, it's basically the archetypal Lunar New Year comedy: star-studded, big, dumb, and makes No God Damn Sense (and not in a mo lei tau / nonsense comedy fashion either). And yes, it does star Stephen Chow, and yes it makes No God Damn Sense. On the other hand, it has some great movie parody jokes, the best of which is probably the riff on Wong Kar-Wai's DAYS OF BEING WILD and the second-best of which is Stephen Chow's horrible attempt to pull off Schwarzenegger's hair from the poster for TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY. Better yet, Leslie Cheung does a fantastic performance as the flamboyant middle brother of the family. On the other hand, it is more than a bit on the Big Dumb side of things (again, archetypally so) and it does go a bit overboard trying to make sure every character gets a heteronormatively happy ending within the last five minutes of the film. On the other other hand, it does that last bit in a couple spectacularly hilarious fashions, so it's hard to bear much of a grudge.