16 June - "Without Green Destiny, you are nothing!"

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

dir. Ang Lee (Lust, Caution, 2007)

starring

Chow Yun Fat (Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, 2007)

Michelle Yeoh (Sunshine, 2007)

Ziyi Zhang (Memoirs of a Geisha, 2005)

The first time I saw this movie, I was about ten years younger and I though to myself - Aww dang, a subtitled movie :(

But by the end I was totally engrossed, I forgot that I was reading and just got lost in the story. But I still must have been hopping around my bedroom because somehow I missed that whole romance between Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun Fat, which was lovely and tragic.

It reminded of someone saying, and I probably heard this in another movie, that you have to be even braver to make the decision to be happy, because it's always easier to make no decision and keep being frustrated*. These folks are making the easy choices, choosing to empower the status quo rather than admitting that they would be happier doing something else.

The primary conflict is created by a rogue warrior, the Jade Fox, a woman who turned bad because the teacher of wutan (their flying-around fighting style) kept her around as a consort but would not teach her the secrets of fighting, and so she stole the book and took a wealthy bureaucrats daughter as her apprentice. The student soon outmatches her teacher, but is uncertain whether she want's the pursue the path of her wayward teacher, flee with her true love - a bandit king from the desert - or stay at home and get married. She leans toward the latter option until she get in over her head stealing the sword of Green Destiny.

I'm trying to think of lesson, or to relate this to my own life somehow. Maybe it's something like the way you don't get the chance to make everything right until it's too late. Maybe the important thing was the way the warriors were able to float up walls and fight on the tops of bamboo branches. It might be a metaphor for being untethered to the world, the freedom of being unbound by custom, and yet the inability to create a bond with anyone else. Which might be why the young girl wasn't able to be with her love, because it was too late to undo the things that had been done.

The end was very sad.

* I remembered! It was Kamikaze Girls - A really great movie

16 Jan - "But he's so cautious. He won't go into dark places"

Lust, Caution (2007)
dir. Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain, 2005)

CAST
Wei Tang
Tony Leung Chiu Wai
Leehom Wang

This movie is set in WW2-era Shanghai, and it's about a college drama club in 1940s China who discover and attempt to murder a high-level traitor collaborating with enemy Japan. The youngest member of the club, Wong, ingratiates herself with the traitor Yee's household and quickly becomes his mistress. The club gets drawn into the REAL resistance movement and the conspiracy deepens. Wong delves deeper and deeper into her make-believe role, rejecting her own true love for the farce of romance with the sadistic Mr. Yee. All of the heroes die.

You guys, this movie was super-sad. The heroine gave up everything to become the perfect spy, only to fall for her own act, and betray the people she swore to protect and die for. There's one part where the gang realizes that in order to carry on their scam, Wong is going to have to sleep with Mr. Yee. And so one of the other club members, the only one with any experience, is elected to show Wong how it's done. That's the part where Wong becomes a real outsider in the group, and her commitment to her alter-ego begins to overpower her own true self.

I think this was marketed as an "espionage thriller," I don't think that's right at all. I guess it's a "wartime romance," but a really twisted one. Lots of explicit sex scenes in here, but that's pretty much the name of the game with these foreign films. Plus, I think I watched the uncut version (it was 2:40 long)

9 Jan - "These days, dying is easy. Living is harder"

The Warlords (2007)
dir. Peter Chan, Wai Man Yip

CAST
Jet Li (Fearless, 2006)
Andy Lau (House of Flying Daggers, 2004)
Takeshi Kaneshiro (House of Flying Daggers, 2004)

Jet Li is the coolest name ever. Do you think he thought of that hiself? I think so, because his real name is more Chinese.

The story is abot a disgraced military commander who joins a band of robbers and convinces them to join the army under his command. The twist is while that guy (Jet Li) was supposed to be the ethical one, his own rotted sense of pride turns him into a real jerk. So when he starts out by executing two of his own soldiers for raping girls in a conquered city because, "everyone should be free," he ends up ordering an entire city of unarmed people be executed so he can hustle out of there and capture the next city, the rebel capital. As a result, the former leader of the robber band gets all moralistic and goes up against Jet's character. They're also both in love with the same girl (the only female character).

There's lots of really intense fighting, but I don't think an of the subsequent fights compared with the first, in which Jet Li gets stabed with a really long spear, but still kills a WHOLE LOT of guys, and then lets the spear run through him so he can kill the guy who's holding the spear. AND THEN HE SURVIVES!

Maybe it's the translation, but I thought this movie was a little heavy-handed with the metaphors. There's one scene where Jet Li walks out onto a crackly frozen lake, and some other guy goes, "General Pang! Be careful!" and then he says, "I have walked on thin ice all my life" End scene.

Lame! In that sense it reminds me of a book I read translated from Vietnamese. It was about the Vietnam War, and was all critically acclaimed and shit, but all I could think was, "Is he seriously comparing his life to a river???" For serious?!

I forget what it was called.