For many viable reasons, this will not be incredibly extravagant. No photos, and maybe one or two paragraphs. But, it will still be awesome.
Fong Sai Yuk
So, this is one of those martial arts pictures in the vein of EVERY martial arts picture. Back in rural china (is there any other form of china?), there's this city where there's the people and the government, and of course the government sucks. The movie opens on scene where Fong(Jet Li, of course) and his friends at a racrtrack, where they get challeneged to a competition. It's like the decathalon, but with random people instead of atheletes, and only three events. But, Egads! Jet Li has only two friends and they need four people to be in the race! (I'm trying to remember why this race is happening, but it's been a while since I saw this moviefilm) so he picks this random woman, who of course is amazingly gorgeous (He probably didn't give any thought to any of the less conventionally attractive women in the crowd. You know, it's people like this who demean womanhood. Sexist) Anyways, they win, even though the woman doesn't run that well, because you know, Li is a badass and everything. And so th3e other team get mad, sore losers, and challenge Li to a fight. And he shows off his badassness again. Awesome. Anyways, That's the opening.
The plotline of the movie is not hard to follow, perse, but it's hard to explain. there's this competition held by the NEW POWER OF THE CITY to give his daughter away in marraige to anyone who can defeat his wife in combat. This is purely a stunt so that the NEW POWER IN THE CITY can be liked by the cities people. Now, here's the twist. It turns out the NEW POWER IN THE CITY's daughter is the girl from the racetrack. EGADS!! WHAT WILL LI DO?? Well, it turns out, he fights the mother, being like the badass kid in town, but loses in a brilliantly long and kinda awesome interpretive dance, i mean, fight sequence. Here’s the thing, he doesn’t know the daughter is the girl from the racetrack who he is in love with (but you probably already figured that). And that leads to hilarity when he realises the truth. Anyways...
So what happens is his Mom tries to redeem him by pretending to be his brother and fighting the NEW POWER IN THE CITY’s wife and winning, and then for some reason Fong will be married to the daughter, which he is not happy about at first, but then he is. Everybody happy! Except...
See, all this time there has been a subplot running alongside this main plot. Oh no! It turns out Fong’s father, who is a bit of a dick at the beginning, was actually a dick because it was protecting him from the secret that he is actually part of a rebel movement, and so in the second half Fong learns this secret and then the rest of the movie is protecting this document, and he recruits to help him the NEW POWER IN THE CITY and the daughter and wife, and they all have to defeat evil Japanese government. Fight scenes!
This movie moves so fast, but it is flawed. I’m kinda conflicted on the fight scenes, for example. The actual choreography and the way the fight plays out are really, really, awesome, but the way the fights are shot and edited are extremely annoying. And Fong can be pretty annoying a lot of the time, mostly in the beginning.
However, this movie is a hell of a lot of fun. There a couple of really brilliantly hilarious moments, like the plotline of someone working on the NEW POWER IN THE CITY’s side (I think it’s his wife, but I could be wrong.) falls in love with Fong’s mom, thinking she’s his brother. And when the father reads poetry. So it’s really really good, and very funny, definitely worth checking out.
Buddha Bless America
But this...this is amazing. Simply Buddha Bless America is about the effect US occupation has on a small Taiwanese community in the late 1960s. While it mostly looks at the entire community (who all have to live in the school now) it also takes a closer eye at the family of a teacher (helpfully called Teach) and his son, Junior, who lost two of fingers in an accident, who try to get Junior’s fingers reattached by American Doctors, while Teach also has to deal with his alienation by vouching for allowing the Americans to come, or at least being on their side, though, while he has an affinity for the Americans, it was probably only because he wanted Junior’s fingers fixed.
I’m not going to spend much time on this movie, but it is just an amazing film. I cried during some of the scenes, especially when Junior went to the American camp looking for someone to help him, and it’s just so gorgeous and achingly beautiful. The shots of the vast and sandy vegetable plains are gorgeous, and there’s some shots, like when the kids are standing in front of Tanks rolling down on them in the aforementioned haunting and beautifully deserted fields, and they are just dwarfed by what‘s going on there. So beautiful.
The narrative arc is beautifully played, as the villagers go from enjoying the condensed space to a bit to being annoyed to becoming angry to resorting to stealing which leads to Teach being shamed into stealing something which leads to much bigger consequences, although the way that specific moment, when Teach realises what he has stolen later on the film, is played so uniquely. The consequences don’t come from the Americans getting angry, it comes from the additional turmoil within Teach, the idea that he is just weighing the group down, that he’s no help to anybody but the struggle is much more transcendental then that, not just some silly comedy.
There are some great comedic moments in here, like when the words painte3d on the top of the bar for the Americans are all spelt the wrong way, or when the villagers fight back and the language barrier makes everyone confused, or how the villagers believe that “Hey you” is an insult”. But the language barrier is also used by interpreters as keeping the villagers in line. And some of the saddest scenes are seeing, for example, when the Americans raid and the general says “This stuff must have just been misplaced” but the interpreter threatens the villagers by telling them if they had evidence they would all be hanged. Just a gorgeous film.
Verdict: It’s a shame Fong Sai Yuk came up against Buddha Bless America so early, as it really deserves to make it past a couple of rounds. But Buddha Bless America has to go on.