What asian film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

[luckystars]

Kung Fu Chefs 3.5/5
Tame but oddly entertaining story, predominately about Food but with ample Kung Fu, cuteness and wot not. Sammo and co., choreographed here by the Yuen Clan, and it shows! If anyone here overlooked this film as 'just' another low budget Sammo film (and who wouldn't want to see any Sammo film anyway!) this has really great fights, which are well stanged, inventive and well edited with a real late 80's/early 90's feel..Sammo looks great here and the production overall is very well done, just don't expect the story to get you really worked up...leave that to the action... definitely one for sunday viewing/unconditionally devoted Sammo fans

[gasteropod]

Door 3: 3.5/5

If you're a fan of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's horror films, you should definitely check this one out.

[gasteropod]

Tales of Terror - Haunted Apartment: 3/5

[gasteropod]

Cold Fish: 4.5/5

The Blu-ray has some strange PQ problems though, there are horizontal lines present throughout like stripes, more visible in dark scenes, and there's also brightness flickering once a second, very strange.

[saltysam]

Detective Dee & The Mystery Of The Phantom Flame 2/5 i'd heard positive vibes about this one,unfortunately for me it's only average at best,Andy Lau is good in the title role but the action sequences are fairly routine & lack lustre.Some very impressive set design though.

[Keung]

Invisible Target 2.5/5

I got sick of seeing Nicholas Tse's miserable face. I mean, I know Wu Jing just killed your bird, but at least crack a smile every now and then. The action scenes bored the shit out of me. I'm being very generous with my rating.

Fist of Legend 5/5

What else is there to say about this that hasn't been said before?

[Yi-Long]

Fist of Legend 5/5

What else is there to say about this that hasn't been said before?

"Multiple monkeys were raped and killed on the set by the cast during the filming of this movie!"

I'm pretty sure that hadn't been said before, but I could be wrong.

[Markgway]

"Multiple monkeys were raped and killed on the set by the cast during the filming of this movie!"

The Bulgarian dub of the movie has that credit (in Bulgarian).

[Keung]

Ip Man 2 3/5

Kung Fu Dunk 3/5

[HungFist]

Mole’s Festival (Japan, 2009) – 2/5
Kishu Izuchi’s collaboration with the students of Film School of Tokyo is a 50 minute amateur detective / countryside movie. Launched under his Eiga Ikki –indie cinema movement, it’s essentially a uninsprired student work, despite the director’s steady experience as both director and screenwriter (Kokkuri, Hysteric). The storyline, loosely inspired by real events, follows three young women solving a mystery involving missing child and private detective who turned out to be a conman. While techically competent enough, Muddy Planet comes out with little more than predictable storyline and one-dimensional characters.

Muddy Planet (Japan, 2010) – 3/5
Kishu Izuchi x Japan Academy of Moving Images. This time collaborating with the students of Japan Academy of Moving Images, Izuchi delivers a solid 53 minute high school drama about ordinary students – without any major drama bigger than a random crush. The charcters are seen in their everyday activities – one spending her nights looking at the sky, the other practicing trumpet, and a whole bunch scrabbling in mud as a part of their agriculture studies. Based on a screenplay by Daisuke Tengan (The Most Beautiful Night in the World) it’s a pleasing little film, slightly reminiscent of Shunji Iwai’s more easy going effort. For its young actors it should make a very decent business card, and a nice viewing for everyone else.

Sketches of Kaitan City (Japan, 2010) – 4/5
Kazuyoshi Kumakiri has come a long way since his ultra-violent political splatter Kichiku: Banquet of the Beasts that sent him into world wide fame in 1997. In his latest film Sketches of Kaitan City he doesn’t have anyone brutally killed. Based on an unfinished novel by Yasushi Sato, Kumakiri has picked five stories set in the fictional Kaitan City (portrayed by Hokkaido’s breezy port town Hakodate), all connected by a common theme: the fear or losing something. Bravely distancing the film from any easy entertainment, Kumakiri shows small pieces of life from Kaitan City, often starting storylines from the middle, and moving on before the conclusion has been reached. Kumakiri’s directorial touch is passive and coldish, if slightly hopeful, supported by steady tech credits, excellent performances, and former US-rocker Jim O'Rourke’s (United Red Army, 2007) impressive soundtrack. Very much a slow burner with characters that can’t be interpreted in 10 minutes, Kaitan City is no doubt one of the strong films of 2010.
- in more detail: http://sketchesofcinema.wordpress.com/2 ... itan-city/

[luckystars]

How To Meet the Lucky Stars 5.5/10

After really enjoying the action in Kung Fu Chefs, I dug out the Dragon Jester DVD of this out to see how Sammo looked back then under the Martial Arts Direction of Yuen Cheung-Yan (working here alongside Mars). Admittedly the film itself would be fairly unenjoyable without the Lucky Stars cast regulars but although it's quite slow and suffers from an overly tepid plot, its not that dissimilar to a lot of HK movies of the day and I felt quite at home watching it. Apart from a smattering of cameo scenes from Sammo the real payoff is the heightened pace of the 'final reel' where the film turns quite dark in places (a wake up for the audience) with some really quite violent touches on the action side. Humour ranges from silly to bad taste "don't worry, we won't rape you!" etc.

Here's the trailer which shows some of the action, the carpark fight with Sammo is terrific
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsbxCcPvwgA

Overal a poor effort for the series but some grit at the end saved the film from being on-the-whole forgettable.



What I really want to know now is - did Diana Pang ever do any other action roles or was this film the only one?

[HungFist]

Shinobi – Heart Under Blade (Japan, 2005) – 1.5/5
Epic Hollywood score is the strongest element in Ten Shimoyama’s piece of shit ninja romance. The boring story of two ninja villages competing in love and war is further brought down my meritless action scenes where the only brawling-skilled troublemaker (Tak Sakaguchi) is wasted in CG-clown role. The same plagues the entire film, with even the supposedly breathtaking views of canyons, mountains, and ninjas in them, all being done in CG – badly, I might add. Joe Odagiri is handsome as ever, though. Would be well worth asking for a coffee, I bet.

God’s Puzzle (Japan, 2008) – 2/5
Hikikomori girl and a pussy chasing good-for-nothing team up to create a new universe in Takashi Miike’s sci-fi-teen-comedy. Starting fast and fun it unfortunately runs 45 minutes too long, and towards the end raises a burning question: who is dumb here, me or the screenplay. The latter would be a strong guess. There isn’t anything to wrong with the ever charming Mitsuki Tanimura, though (other than the film surrounding her). Male lead Hayato Ichihara is performing on a level of his own, yet his genius hasn’t convived everyone. MidnightEye named him as the worst screen actor in Japan. What’s next? Criticizing Nic Cage?

[gasteropod]

Sweet Home: 2.5/5

[HungFist]

gas, it would be nice if you wrote even a little bit about the movies, because rating alone doesn't really tell anything. Could be an interesting movie, could be a terrible one, no idea

[gasteropod]

Haha sorry, I don't always feel I have things to say. Sweet Home is an early Kiyoshi Kurosawa horror film, but the tone is quite different to his others and not really my style.

[HungFist]

I know the feeling. If you look at my "reviews" in the other thread, you see most of them they're much shorter, and, well... kinda like back in elementary school when you had to eat your lunch even if you didn't like it

But Sweet Home... first I thought it was some romantic HK comedy You see the importance of additional info now

[luckystars]

Hidden Enforcers 1/10
Back in 1991, Sammo Hung made two movies for Silver Medal produced by all rounder Nam Yin, Ringo Lam's brother. Touch and Go (directed by Lam himself) and My Flying Wife. Fast forward to 2002 and I can only believe Sammo owed Nam Yin a favour when he agreed to take part in what is probably the worst movie in Sammos entire catalogue. It'd be hard to beat at any rate.

The story revolves around Sammos character, a retired Cop frustrated with big fishes slipping through the justice systems net...he raises 4 orphans in Thailand who become Summer Killers (the films alt title) or vigilante Angels of Death...what could possibly go wrong? The integrity of the story starts to crumble during the opening credits however(!) when it's obvious the laughing and giggling troupe of kids probably couldn't even work out how to take a sweater of whilst holding an icecream between the four of them

I made it through the film despite the entirely transparent plot, and while the kids are going out full retard (and you never go full retard) having been raised on a island..think Arnie in Twins, without the books....the poor souls can't define right from wrong and not only hit their targets, but cops, kids and their own team too. The drama within a drama facing the unfortunate quartet is actually quite interesting in its own way (at one point I thought the writers might've been thinking of the childlike Replicants in Bladerunner...who knows!). Sadly it's Sammos character who comes off most stupid for not seeing what everyone else did...why Sammo why?

It's a shame because Sammo's 'origin story' (told in flashback). Is a really quite tasty gunplay action sequence thats not that badly put together.

To sum it up, Hidden Enforcers is great if you're the type to enjoy truly awful movies, woefully bad if not. Still it wasn't an unwatchable film, like say Guy Ritchie's Revolver though, so it gets a 1 instead of a zero. Just so you know.

[thelostdragon]

The Beast Stalker - 3.5/5
After a second viewing Dante Lam's kidnap thriller didn't make that 4/5 impression on me again.

[Keung]

The Beast Stalker - 3.5/5
After a second viewing Dante Lam's kidnap thriller didn't make that 4/5 impression on me again.

Same! I loved it the first time around. Watched it again not long back and couldn't wait for it to end.

[bradavon]

gas, it would be nice if you wrote even a little bit about the movies, because rating alone doesn't really tell anything. Could be an interesting movie, could be a terrible one, no idea

Agreed. Gas's posts are a bit weird in this thread. I don't bother posting unless I've got something I want to say.

Write a sentence or two

[gasteropod]

Gas's posts are a bit weird in this thread.

Erm, you might want to look at the title of the thread

[Markgway]

I don't bother posting unless I've got something to say.

If only...

[HungFist]

Shirome (Japan, 2010) – 4/5
Horror x J-Pop. Notorious horror director Koji Shiraishi (Grotesque) teamed up with Stardust Agency’s latest pop idol group, Momoiro Clover, to make an idol documentary. The girls, all aged 13-16 and still mastering their kawaii skills, were to visit a haunted house and wish luck from a spirit for the upcoming song competition that would be on TV. Only that Shiraishi didn’t tell the poor girls that he was actually shooting "horror film", all the people around them were hired actors, and there was a special effects team doing live work around them. Morally questionable and damned funny, Shirome is one of the best things to happen to J-horror since Sion Sono.
- in more detail: http://sketchesofcinema.wordpress.com/2 ... 6/shirome/

[gasteropod]

I disagree, I thought Shirome was lame and the girls were really annoying!

[HungFist]

Well, like I said in the review, it thought it was funny as hell (if a bit sadistic). And it seems like (for once) I'm not alone with my opinions: at Nippon Connection the film received applauses... three times!

My friend actually ran into Shiraishi in the bathroom. He was praising him while taking a piss