Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

  We continue the martial arts trend with Crouching Tiger, the OG for a lot of people (including myself) for an introduction into the genre.  I saw this in theaters my first year away from home and it was a transformative experience for me.

Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-Fat) has decided to give up his quest for vengeance against the murderer of his master.  To symbolize his resolve, he makes a gift of his sword, the Green Destiny, to a long-time patron, Sir Te (Sihung Lung), trusting his friend Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) to deliver it.  Unfortunately, the sword is stolen the first night.  Shu Lien believes the culprit is the governor's daughter, Jen (Ziyi Zhang), rebelling against her upcoming marriage, but has no proof.  The truth is both stranger and darker.

There is a lot going on in this movie.  It is very operatic in its themes, balletic in its movements.  I normally hate this descriptor, but it has a very dream-like feel, especially in its transitions between present and past.  This can make it seem slow-paced if you are used to more traditional action movies.  I love it, though.  It holds up really well for being 25 years old.  It's streaming on (sigh) Max but I've literally owned the DVD since 2000.

House of Flying Daggers (2004)

This was the movie I chose to introduce people to wuxia, wire-fu, and Zhang Yimou.  I remembered it as being beautiful and sad.  I did not remember it as being borderline rapey.  There's at least two scenes of sexual assault and one of a peeping tom.  Content warning on that.  Also, as I was dragging this post back to the front page, I realized I never actually described the plot.

Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro), a police officer, goes undercover to discover the leader of the Flying Daggers, an anti-government resistance movement that has eluded capture, by ingratiating himself to Mei (Ziyi Zhang), a blind dancer, but as the stakes get higher, Jin begins to have real feelings for Mei that complicate his mission even further.

It's very twisty, lots of shifting loyalties, lots of beautifully shot action sequences.  I stand by my choice.  Originally posted 26 May 2010.    I remember the first time I saw this movie in theaters. It was 2004 and I was living in Georgia. My (at the time) husband and I went to see this because we were both big Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fans.

I was so pissed over the ending. I felt completely cheated and I didn't understand at all, which made me hate it. And yet... The imagery and story stayed with me. I found myself mulling over it at the oddest times during the next six years. So I bought it. It's rare for me to feel anything for longer than a moment, and I always want to reward (or at least possess) things that accomplish that.

I re-watched it for the first time since on Wednesday. Maybe I'm more cynical now, but the ending made a depressing sort of sense. Don't get me wrong, I seriously doubt I would ever do the same, but it didn't feel like a betrayal. I was able now to see it as an even more highly stylized operatic fantasy than CTHD. The vividness of the colors, the shifts in season that don't correspond to reality, and of course the spectacular stunt-work combine to tell a story that I can at least respect, even if I can't identify with it.

My last boyfriend was a Chinese linguist and we had numerous discussions about Asian films. I don't think we referenced this one by name (I think we were talking about The Curse of the Golden Flower) but I mentioned how depressing it was that **SPOILER ALERT** everyone dies **END SPOILER** at the end of every Chinese movie. He said that it was just part of the style of film-making over there. Even their comedies end like that. Call me culturally insensitive, but I prefer to have at least ONE major character live to see the end credits. Still, I can't fault them. They told a story and they told it well. It may not be how I would have written it, but I can't hold that against them.

Rambo: Last Blood (2019)

  Talk about a series with diminishing returns.  Content warning:  gore, rape (off-screen), violence

John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) has settled into retirement on his family farm in Arizona, spending his time training horses and raising his niece, Gabby (Yvette Monreal).  But when Gabby goes missing in Mexico on an ill-advised attempt to find her birth father, Rambo has to dust off all the skills he thought he put away for good.

And I thought Rambo was bad.  At least that was so over-the-top it was entertaining.  This was a humorless slog.  There's nothing really new or interesting happening in it and the cinematography is so muddied you couldn't tell if there was anyway.  Stick with the original three.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015)

  I took last week off to adjust to having a new job. For the last four years, I have worked from home but now I'm in the office five days a week and it was kicking my ass.  Content warning:  cancer

Greg (Thomas Mann) is trying to get through high school without any meaningful relationships.  He has one friend/co-worker, Earl (RJ Cyler), with whom he makes parody films, and a teacher (Jon Bernthal) who lets him watch movies with Earl during study hall, but that's it.  All's well until his mother (Connie Britton) makes him hang out with Rachel (Olivia Cooke), a girl his age who has cancer.  

I don't have anything against the "kids with cancer discover romance" genre but it's not really my bag.  This one isn't bad, though.  The supporting performances from adults like Bernthal, Molly Shannon, and Nick Offerman really help leaven the schmaltzy overdramatic teen drama.  Cyler gets reduced to kind of a caricature and that's a shame because he's very charismatic.  

I started watching this a couple of weeks ago, right after the Oscars and it took me days to get through so pace yourself.  It's streaming on Hulu.

No Other Land (2024)

Nominated for Best Documentary Feature    The last of the nominees I managed to watch (32 in total this year!) before the ceremony and it was the winner of its category.  Content warning:  dead people, gun violence

A young Palestinian man and his Israeli friend document the ongoing destruction of Palestinian homes in the West Bank of Gaza by the Israeli army.

I'm glad this won.  Even if it feels like too little, too late.  It will be an important record in the future, the way the documentaries about Syria and Ukraine will be.  I'm not going to go on a long-ass rant about it.  

It has no distribution in the United States so dust off that VPN.  Maybe an Oscar win will overcome some cowardice, maybe not.  It's worth searching out.

Black Box Diaries (2024)

Nominated for Best Documentary Feature    Content warning:  description of rape

Journalist Shiori Ito documents her legal and social battle after publicly accusing a prominent news anchor of raping her.  

Every year we have to have this conversation.  And every year it is just as infuriating.  Please realize that women put their lives at risk to call out rapists, especially prominent ones who can weaponize police forces and have government leaders on speed-dial.  Civil suits are often the only way to get any kind of justice but there is literally no amount of money that can un-rape someone.  

Anyway, it's streaming on Paramount+.

The Six Triple Eight (2024)

Nominated for Best Original Song    The women of the 6888 deserved better than this.  Content warning:  war violence, blood, racial slurs

Lena (Ebony Obsidian) decides to join the Women's Auxiliary Corps after her boyfriend (Gregg Sulkin) is killed during WWII.  As a Black woman, the only unit available is the Six Triple Eight, led by Major Charity Adams (Kerry Washington).  MAJ Adams has been training these women but never receiving any orders to actually do anything useful until General Holt (Dean Norris) assigns them to be the new postal battalion in the European theater.  It sounds like a meaningless job until MAJ Adams realizes that her battalion is meant to organize, sort, and deliver over 17 million pieces of mail in six months.  They were set up to fail but they persisted.

This is a remarkable story that deserved better than this vehicle.  It's schmaltzy, filled with montages, poor characterization, and abysmal dialogue.  Washington, Obsidian, and Milauna Jackson do their level best to rise above the material but this could have been a Hallmark special.  It's honestly insulting but it's also the only attempt made to bring this story to a wider audience.  That is a shame on behalf of the entire film industry.  It's streaming on Netflix.