stuartmcd Reviews

Volcano High (2001)

Not too bad, but could do better

[18 July 2003]

The main problem with Volcano High is that it is half an hour too long. I felt that the first half of the film worked pretty well. The plot was incoherent, but there was a sense of movement, and the tension was building well. But when the evil teachers turned up, and that naughty kid Ryang got beaten up (repeatedly), the film suddenly stopped moving.

For the first part of Volcano High's the action sequences were amiably ludicrous, but also fairly understated. People flew around but no one really cut loose. At the final confrontation, we were ready for a bit of visual hyperbole, and I was expecting something as mind-blowing as the finales to Storm Riders, or Swordsman II, but instead the film closed with a protracted and very dull punch-up.

Visually, though, Volcano High is tremendous. While the action was derivative of the Matrix, it struck me that the camerawork and choreography had more life and grace than in that film. The comedy was amiably goofy, and the actors were charismatic.

So, not a bad film, but I think that any other persons wishing to make wu xia high school comedies can improve the formula by applying more care and attention.

The Blade (1995)

Out of control, but magnificent with it

[6 February 2003]

The great thing about this film (and the sort of thing that upsets people who like seeing martial arts fights where you can see every kick and every punch) is that most of the fighting is just blurs of motion punctuated by shouting and clashing blades. This is what I love in HK fantasies: fight scenes that are so incomprehensible you're left going: huh?

Tsui Hark's best example is Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain, where the viewer has to actually fill in the blanks for themselves. It's edited in such a way that that the film we see feels like only a portion of the story. In some contexts this technique would be stupid, but in fantasy it's wonderful. It's the inverse of the computer graphics bare-all approach, and it's lucky that we had the HK film industry to provide an alternative to Hollywood in this regard. (I say had, because, since Storm Riders, cg in HK is more prevalent than before.)

This approach to fight scenes is impressionistic, and with the final fightscene in Dao it's almost operatic. At no stage do you get a feeling that the fight is actually rational. The use of sound and music in the film is also wonderful, especially in the menacing flashback scene. It's hard to think of a more effective way of setting up a backstory, and gives new life to that tired old cliche, the revenge story.

So that's all good. Sometimes, however, the impressionism gets a bit out of hand. Things take on a Wong Kar Wai pretentiousness, like the horrible Ashes of time, where Leslie Cheung sits around feeling sorry for himself for no appreciable reason. In Dao, the voiceover of the female character gets really annoying. Her mutterings only really serve to remind us she is there, as she has only one pivotal scene in the film (where tells the hero his origin story).

The film is also a bit over-bloody for my taste, but it certainly leaves one with no illusions about the brutalness of the world in which the film is set.

Dao is one of those films that is so strange and vivid it leaves a strong resonance with the viewer long after it is over. It has faults by the barrel, but I'd rather have it and Tsui Hark with us than a legion of James Camerons and Roland Emmerichs.

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978)

Very good, but not that good

[2 February 2003]

The good thing about this film (it was called The 36th Chamber of Shaolin on my cassette box) is that it makes kung fu look really hard -- rather than, as it so often does, like a couple of guys having an angry dance. I guess part of that comes down to talent, and part of it direction and editing.

The film is very slick, and despite the yawn factor of the 'secret mystical sect' schtick, I liked the fact that the training exercises where oblique, and that the only actual shaolin fighting that occurred in the temple came down to the contest scenes with the senior monk. In essence, the film caught, well, the essence of shaolin well. I guess, not having studied there...

The plot isn't particularly imaginative, it has to be said. It's like a five paragraph folk story stretched uncomfortably into 90 minutes of film. The concluding scenes are a bit perfunctory, though it's quite nice seeing a final fightscene where the good guy utterly trounces his foe from start to finish (unlike the endless toing and froing of final battles in films like Fist of Legend). It's refreshing, but it lacks drama, and the monk comes across, as Buddhist monks have to, like a passionless automaton. (The film is a bit humourless as well, it has to be said, leaving one longing for the merry hijinks of an early 90s kung fu fantasy.)

In all, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin is an excellently gritty film, although if you want gritty revenge plots I think Tsui Hark's the Blade is a better bet (and a lot trippier).

If you want classical kung fu at its most elemental, this one does the job admirably.

Legend of the Dragon (1991)

Early, but one of the better ones

[8/10 · 18 January 2003]

Legend of the Dragon is one of my favourite Stephen Chow films, probably because it is so quintessentially Chinese. It's old vs new, rich vs poor, corrupt vs virtuous, etc, etc. In portraying all these aspects, you get a vivid impression of Hong Kong at its earthy best.

Do I need to go into the plot? I guess so. Young naive and backward Stephen lives on a somewhat backward HK island that developers want to use to make an Airport. Chow's cousin is used to fool his father out of the land, and Chow must use his kung fu snooker skills to save the day.

The film lacks the genuinely hyper-absurd moments of God of Cookery or 60 million dollar man, but isn't as oddly deflating as My Hero, or over-slick like From Beijing with Love.

It's good.

Chinese Odyssey 2002 (2002)

Generally good

[12 October 2002]

First up, anyone wanting to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon style martial arts carry-on should look elsewhere. This film is a one of the increasingly perplexing (to Westerners just after kung fu) school of Hong Kong comedies known as 'mo lei tow' (nonsense) films.

The basic feel of the movie is something akin to the Simpsons set in Ming dynasty China. Women pretend to be men, women fall in love with women pretending to be men, the women pretending to be men fall in love with the actual men, who are trying to fix them up with the women. It's a bit like a Shakespeare comedy, actually, with hilarious surreal flourishes.

So that's all good. Tony Leung is great as the male lead, as always (he's the Hong Kong equivalent of Robert Redford or Paul Newman, though somewhat younger). Faye Wong is equally good as the female lead, and her singing is lovely. The best bit in the film is a scene where Leung and Wong get stuck in quicksand and try to persuade a goose to rescue them.

Sadly, things go awry. Producer/director Wong Kar Wai is notorious (and critically lauded) for making arty, boring films (examples include the dreadful Ashes of Time, and In the Mood for Love), so I was pleasantly surprised that this film was so different. Alas, at the end, Wong tries to inject dramatic weight into proceedings to resolve the romantic tensions, and the action becomes a series of oblique internal monologues containing near-meaningless aphorisms (Wong's "forte"). Stumbling and choking under the weight of this nonsense (and not good, mo lei tow nonsense either), the film's conclusion is unnecessarily leaden and downbeat.

Still, Chinese Odyssey _is_ a funny film, and even the downhillness at the end can be excused. For more genuine examples of mo lei tow cinema (ie, not contrived by an arthouse director selfconciously trying to make his mark on the genre), try Flying Daggers (1993) or Stephen Chow's Forbidden City Cop (1995). In fact, just watch any Stephen Chow film.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

Just a few points

[24 December 2001]

Sorry, I just had to wade in...

Several people here have said this film is 'okay, but not as good as star wars'. I feel that on balance the FOTR _as_a_film_ is a good deal better than Star Wars. Star Wars was constructed specifically for cinema and wasn't an attempt at adapting a book that in many respects is simply too large for film. Given the difficulties inherent in the project (the glass is always half-empty with adaptations from books) I'm surprised FOTR's faults are so few. So, essentially, it was more difficult to make FOTR as un-crap as it is, whereas it's comparatively easy to make Star Wars 'good' (and let's face it, without the music score and the sound effects it wouldn't have been half as impressive).

What some may be confusing is the cinematic value of Star Wars vs. the huge cultural/nostalgic/whatever resonance it has accumulated. Will the Lord of the Rings films surpass this? I don't think so -- mostly because the LOTR world is too complex to fire the imagination the way Star Wars does. But Fellowship of the Rings is a much greater achievement cinematically than the first Star Wars film and IMO only Empire Strikes Back rivals it.

As for FOTR itself:

I respect the effort Jackson has put into characterisation, and he's managed to evoke a real tenderness in the characters -- something probably more true to Tolkien than we should ever have expected. The other bonus about a film adaptation is that you don't get Tolkien's embarrassingly portentious language.

Admittedly I regret the shambles that was the film version of the council of Elrond (althought you have to admire how Hugo Weaving delivered his performance with the same alien menace of his role in the Matrix -- he seems more truly, 'traditionally' elvish than one could hope). It's true that we were left wondering who these Gimli and Legolas fellows were. That's a pity. But there you go. We'll get to know them much better in the Two Towers, and maybe a vast director's cut for the 'true fans' will restore all that.

To those who think the film is boring or too long: try to expand your attention span.

To those who think this film is the best anything of all time: don't get carried away.

To those of you who were grief-stricken that the _ADAPTATION_ was not 100% faithful: just calm down.

To those who thought there wasn't enough action: you are idiots.