First new-to-me movies of the year
I doubt my selections surprise anyone.
The Four II and The Four III: The completion of the trilogy based of Woon Swee Oan's The Four Great constables. The plot of the second one took a little while to get going, but once it did, I mostly really liked it, and the parts of it that carried over into the third movie. The main plot of the third movie was weaker, but had a strong emphasis on found family, and that was good. The "mostly" comment above is because the series suddenly decided that it was inconvenient to have a wuxia movie where the female lead and emotional center of a lot of the plot was disabled, and decided to play fixit. Not that they weren't inconsistent with Yayu's paralysis in the first movie, but at least they tried. These two movies, though were a lot more serious and joyless than the first. Which isn't to say that the first wasn't also serious and rather fond of character angst, but it let humor and cheer pop up once in a while. The romance between Yayu and Lingqi had a pretty decent buildup in the first movie, but for most of the second movie and about half of the third, it's almost entirely fueled by angst and trauma. not that they don't both have plenty to angst about and be traumatized over both together and separately, but a little angst can go a long way in wuxia.
The Huntresses: A Korean action/comedy series about 3 female bounty hunters in the Joseon period who get involved with thwarting a plot to overthrow the royal family. It's apparently inspired by Charlie's Angels, but thankfully thought one fanservice scene was enough. Ha Ji Won, unsurpisingly, carries a lot of the movie on her back, but the rest of the cast pulls their weight just fine. It's a bit uneven, but overall very fun. There's an angsty romantic subplot, though, that causes a bit of cognitive dissonance when combined with the rest of the movie. It manages to pull it off almost purely because of Ha Ji Won and Joo Sang Wook's talents, but that's about it. (The subplot actually WOULD have been pretty good if properly developed in a movie or series, though, as opposed to shoehorned into an otherwise lighthearted movie.) Warning for a character in blackface at one point.
White Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom: the latest adaptation of Liang Yusheng's Legend of the White Haired Demoness. The first half follows the plot and characterizations from the book more closely than the Brigitte Lin movies did, but then it veers off quite a bit, forgetting about a couple of important subplots along the way. It's a Tsui Hark movie, and so is both incredibly beautiful and occasionally has WTF plotting. (I think he is getting better about that in recent years, though...) As a movie, I liked it. As an adaptation of the only wuxia novel I've read in its entirety, I feel a bit judgey. Fan Bingbing was fabulous, and Huang Xiaoming was pretty good, though a bit overshadowed by Bingbing and Vincent Zhao (who I actually didn't recognize for about 2/3s of the movie thanks to facial hair and shaving off some of his eyebrows). A much higher percentage of male characters from the book than female made it into the movie, and Nishang's army of women is reduced to Tie Shanhu alone. Though I will take solace in the fact that Shanhu made it into the movie, but her love interest from the book didn't. (Not that I disliked him, but i have to take what I can get.) I'm very annoyed, though, that they kept the bit from the Brigitte Lin movies where Yihang gives Nishang her name, as opposed to keep it like it is in the book, where she's teasing him about doing so and he guesses her actual name.
The Four II and The Four III: The completion of the trilogy based of Woon Swee Oan's The Four Great constables. The plot of the second one took a little while to get going, but once it did, I mostly really liked it, and the parts of it that carried over into the third movie. The main plot of the third movie was weaker, but had a strong emphasis on found family, and that was good. The "mostly" comment above is because the series suddenly decided that it was inconvenient to have a wuxia movie where the female lead and emotional center of a lot of the plot was disabled, and decided to play fixit. Not that they weren't inconsistent with Yayu's paralysis in the first movie, but at least they tried. These two movies, though were a lot more serious and joyless than the first. Which isn't to say that the first wasn't also serious and rather fond of character angst, but it let humor and cheer pop up once in a while. The romance between Yayu and Lingqi had a pretty decent buildup in the first movie, but for most of the second movie and about half of the third, it's almost entirely fueled by angst and trauma. not that they don't both have plenty to angst about and be traumatized over both together and separately, but a little angst can go a long way in wuxia.
The Huntresses: A Korean action/comedy series about 3 female bounty hunters in the Joseon period who get involved with thwarting a plot to overthrow the royal family. It's apparently inspired by Charlie's Angels, but thankfully thought one fanservice scene was enough. Ha Ji Won, unsurpisingly, carries a lot of the movie on her back, but the rest of the cast pulls their weight just fine. It's a bit uneven, but overall very fun. There's an angsty romantic subplot, though, that causes a bit of cognitive dissonance when combined with the rest of the movie. It manages to pull it off almost purely because of Ha Ji Won and Joo Sang Wook's talents, but that's about it. (The subplot actually WOULD have been pretty good if properly developed in a movie or series, though, as opposed to shoehorned into an otherwise lighthearted movie.) Warning for a character in blackface at one point.
White Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom: the latest adaptation of Liang Yusheng's Legend of the White Haired Demoness. The first half follows the plot and characterizations from the book more closely than the Brigitte Lin movies did, but then it veers off quite a bit, forgetting about a couple of important subplots along the way. It's a Tsui Hark movie, and so is both incredibly beautiful and occasionally has WTF plotting. (I think he is getting better about that in recent years, though...) As a movie, I liked it. As an adaptation of the only wuxia novel I've read in its entirety, I feel a bit judgey. Fan Bingbing was fabulous, and Huang Xiaoming was pretty good, though a bit overshadowed by Bingbing and Vincent Zhao (who I actually didn't recognize for about 2/3s of the movie thanks to facial hair and shaving off some of his eyebrows). A much higher percentage of male characters from the book than female made it into the movie, and Nishang's army of women is reduced to Tie Shanhu alone. Though I will take solace in the fact that Shanhu made it into the movie, but her love interest from the book didn't. (Not that I disliked him, but i have to take what I can get.) I'm very annoyed, though, that they kept the bit from the Brigitte Lin movies where Yihang gives Nishang her name, as opposed to keep it like it is in the book, where she's teasing him about doing so and he guesses her actual name.