New Gods: Nezha Reborn (2021) - Movie Review

Well, it looks like it’s going to take a bit longer before we get the next addition to the Fengshen cinematic universe that has already given us Ne Zha and Jiang Ziya. But a film along those same lines did come out this year on Netflix, itself also based on Investiture Of The Gods. However, where the Fengshen films went full period-setting in their reworking of the story, Nezha Reborn goes several steps further. Gone is the feudal ancient Chinese setting, and in its place is an industrial, mystically-tinged steampunk setting based on 1920s Shanghai. And instead of the cheeky demon child that used anywhere and everywhere as his own public toilet, we have motorcycle racer and courier Li Yunxiang (voiced by Yang Tianxiang), who must discover the power of his reincarnated heritage in order to save his town and the ones he loves.

Leap (2020) - Movie Review

Considering two of my favourite films so far this year have been Chinese efforts, I figured it’d be worth diving into that creative pool once again with this sports biopic about the Chinese women’s volleyball team. And ignoring whatever easy jokes I could make about that particular choice of sport, the film itself presents it in pretty visceral fashion. When their coach says that they need to "shed blood, not tears", he really isn’t kidding, and their physical exertion combined with the sound mixing (that ‘thwack’ as they make contact with the ball is weirdly satisfying) starts the film on solid ground.

The New King Of Comedy (2020) - Movie Review

Stephen Chow’s King Of Comedy is a certified classic. One of the most refined examples of Chow’s unique style of Eastern slapstick, it’s basically one of those films that anyone interested in the acting craft needs to watch, as it covers a pretty wide variety of ‘method’ acting, it’s got some of Chow’s best gags (I’m still giggling at the stuntman-on-fire scene as I’m writing this), and I can pretty much guarantee you’ll feel good after watching it. It is, at the time of writing this, my favourite Chow film. Or, rather, it was… until I saw its spiritual successor.

The Iron Mask (2020) - Movie Review

I feel like I need to put a massive ‘citation needed’ graphic on that poster because it is all kinds of misleading. They stunt-casted this movie twice over, as while Arnie and Jackie Chan are indeed in this, they are absent from roughly 85% of this two-hour feature (And on a minor note, Charles Dance is in even less of the film than them). Not that it stops just there, though; even the title isn’t accurate. Aside from being labelled in other markets as Journey To China, and the subtitle 'Mystery Of The Dragon Seal' shows up sporadically on different posters as well, it is also a sequel to the 2014 Russian film Viy, with its main character (played by English actor Jason Flemyng) returning here as the lead… kind of. If you thought all of this was confusing enough, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Jiang Ziya: Legend Of Deification (2020) - Movie Review

Ne Zha was a proper great film from last year. A Chinese animated flick that set records within the Chinese film industry, a highly entertaining piece of mythology on film, and a feature that I saw on official detail for FilmInk and was quite impressed with. So you can imagine how excited I was to learn that Beijing Enlight Pictures seems to be preparing for a shot at a cinematic universe, with today’s film being set up by Ne Zha’s post-credits scene and taking place within the same world. And honestly, even with how much I liked Ne Zha, I think I like this film just that little bit more.

Spycies (2020) - Movie Review

Oh look, another decent animated film that got shafted by terrible marketing. Only this example might be even worse than Red Shoes And The Seven Dwarfs, as the slip-up here is… well, you can see the title; it doesn’t get any more obvious than that. And I’ll admit, my initial interest in this movie came out of wanting to find the story behind what is easily the worst pun title I have ever seen. But, like I said, I’m not here to rag on yet another dreadful talking animal movie. Instead, I’m here to highlight a surprisingly solid feature.

Cats (2019) [No, not that one] - Movie Review

Why do I keep doing this to myself? My habit for checking out every new film I can get to, intended audience be damned, frequently puts me in the position of acknowledging that, yes, I am actively putting money and time towards something that wasn’t made with someone like me in mind. But I happily go through with it, partly because being that open with new releases sometimes puts me in front of genuinely good films that I wouldn’t have even noticed otherwise, and partly because even if a given film is bad, it still gives me some much-needed venting and usually decent material to write about afterwards. Over the last few years, the sub-genre of animated family films about talking animals has served as one of the bigger examples of all of the worst-case scenarios listed above, and we have a particularly bad one today.

Shadow (2018) - Movie Review

The plot: Against the orders of his king (Ryan Zhang), Commander Yu (Chao Deng) has challenged General Yang (Jun Hu) to a one-on-one duel, with the victor gaining the territory of the defeated, which Yu means regaining his homeland. As Yu prepares for the battle, forces both in plain sight and hidden in the shadows work towards all-out war, and the fate of both kingdoms will hang in the balance.

Duck Duck Goose (2018) - Movie Review

The plot: As his flock prepares to migrate for the winter, Peng (Jim Gaffigan) finds himself stranded on his own. He comes across two ducklings, Chi (Zendaya) and Chao (Lance Lim), who have also been separated from their flock, and he begrudgingly agrees to join them as they both make their way back to their respective families. However, with the psychotic cat Banzou (Greg Proops) hot on their trails, it seems that their migration has only begun to get difficult.

A Better Tomorrow (2018) - Movie Review

 

The plot: Brothers Kai (Kai Wang) and Chao (Tianyu Ma) are on opposite sides of the law: Kai is a smuggler working for crime lord Ha Ge (Suet Lam) alongside his partner Mark (Darren Wang), while Chao is an up-and-coming officer in the Hong Kong narcotics division. However, as they discover how distant they have become from each other, Kai decides to reform his criminal ways and maybe regain the trust of his brother. In order to do the right thing by his family, he may have to cut ties with his former employers… permanently.

Battle Of Memories (2017) - Movie Review

Have you ever had an experience that you wish never happened? Of course you have; we all have. Would you want to erase it completely from your mind? That question’s a little trickier to answer. Must be why memory manipulation has been a science-fiction trope for as long as it has, dealing with the many implications and philosophical musings attached to it. Now, as I’ve made mention on this blog before, I see memories and the long-lasting effects they have on personalities to be a fairly inherent thing; I’ve been through some rather awful events in my own life, and yet I wouldn’t dare touch any of it in my own mind because, for better or for worse, they helped make me who I am today. Given how part of that includes my attitudes towards media and the real world, feel free to question whether or not that’s such a good thing. For right now, though, we have another psychological thriller to get through; hopefully, my natural affinity for the genre will make this at least worth watching.

The Great Wall (2017) - Movie Review

Lines of argument like what I’m about to get into are usually the sorts of strawman burning matters that get people lynched on social media for daring to voice it. But as I have already brought up this point in previous reviews, it’s worth repeating: I don’t care about “whitewashing” controversies when it comes to film casts. Or, at least, I don’t buy into them nearly as much as critics have in recent years. The reasons why are many and varied, from how people tend to cherry-pick examples to rage against to the inherent hypocrisy involved in isolating only this instance (white actors portraying non-whites) as a bad thing. But the biggest factor for my own reasoning is that, considering the utter crap I’ve highlighted on this blog, I can think of a myriad of worse sins that a filmmaker can commit than anything involving ethnic (or non-ethnic) casting. So, imagine my lack of reaction to how the only thing that anyone seems to discuss with this film is how a white actor was cast as the lead in a film set in China and populated by and primarily made by the Chinese. Time to dig in, and let’s see if there’s anything else worth discussing.

Journey To The West: The Demons Strike Back (2017) - Movie Review

Even considering the filmmakers that I’ve already covered on this blog, Stephen Chow might be one of the single weirdest that I’ve come across. I say this because, from the works of his that I’ve seen, his cinematic expertise seems to lie in two very different and very conflicting thematic styles. He tends to stick to his own brand of martial arts shenanigans, as influenced by the Shaw Brothers as he is by Tex Avery, resulting in some incredibly energetic and cartoonish action scenes. Alongside that, he has a habit of injecting elements of Buddhist philosophies and a rather nuanced perspective on the matters of life and love, resulting in some remarkably touching moments and end-of-film codas.

These are two worlds that really have no business next to each other, which makes it even more perplexing when he does it well. And really damn well at that; Kung Fu Hustle got the man a lot of attention when it came out and for very good reason. So, with this sequel to his film Journey To The West: Conquering The Demons, and Stephen Chow’s script being utilised by director Tsui Hark, how does this clashing of energy levels turn out?

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword Of Destiny (2016) - Movie Review

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon may not be a perfect film, but it is most certainly a great film. Officially putting Ang Lee on the map, and given his output we can debate the worth of that till kingdom come, its combination of breath-taking fight scenes and phenomenal writing, not to mention outright iconic music, resulted in what I would genuinely consider to be a work of art. But more so than its merits as a film in its own right, its place within film history is difficult to ignore as well. An international co-production, it has gone into legend for basically breaking the Hollywood system and what films should be expected to make an commercial impact, becoming an exception to the rule that would end up having new rules written around it. With all this in mind, and considering the unexpected quality control that can go into Netflix releases, the prospect of a sequel to a film like this is certainly interesting. But considering the Sequel Rules made around those that are made over a decade after the fact, and the low expectations for success, how did it turn out?

Zhong Kui: Snow Girl And The Dark Crystal (2015) - Movie Review

In my short time of compulsively watching as many films as I do, and even shorter time of reviewing them for public consumption, I feel I have covered a wide spectrum of films in that time that I have given a wide spectrum of reactions to. However, no matter what film I looked at, no matter how out-of-my-depth I may have been concerning the genre, country of origin or subject matter, I always prided myself on being able to articulate exactly why I felt the way I did about each one of them. Sure, I’ve had films that were difficult for me to pin down: Birdman took me a while to really collect my thoughts about, 12 Years A Slave had me hesitating because of peer pressure and how much the rest of the world seemed to love it and God’s Not Dead had to be severely edited from the reams of notes I wrote on it so as to not piss off every religious group under the sun, or rather out of paranoia that that would happen. Today, however, I think I have found a film to top them all in that regard.