Shaolin monks are made illegal, so all monks have to run or fight or die. Monk Fong (Wong Fei-hung in Drunken Master III the same year) and Carman Lee (between Wicked City and Lifeline) are on the run, get thrown in a trap-filled prison temple and have to fight and scheme their way out. One of the best-looking HK blu-rays around, the blood and intense brutality coming through crystal clear.
Blackie and his bestie, the thinner-mustached Marko are communists in 1941. The nearby zoo is bombed, panicking Marko’s brother, the stuttering zookeeper Ivan, and nazis overtake the town. Enter Natalija, Blackie’s girl, an actress also beloved by Marko and Nazi Franz. Marko hides Blackie and his fellow revolutionaries in a basement and when the war ends he decides not to tell them, so he keeps Natalija above ground and the undergrounders keep manufacturing weapons for him to sell. When a monkey blows a hole in the wall during Blackie’s son’s wedding they escape, come across the set of the film reenacting Blackie’s war heroism, and he starts killing German actors. Thirty years later as Yugoslavia is violently dissolving, Ivan finds his lost monkey then everybody dies tragically.
Young Ivan and flock:
Marko and Nat preparing to take drastic measures:
Inserting Blackie into documentary footage from the era was well-done. I think the internet is saying the movie is pro-genocide, but I don’t follow why. Even if so, this is counterbalanced by the movie’s major macaw presence. Won the top prize at Cannes versus Dead Man, City of Lost Children, Shanghai Triad, Hou, Oliveira, Terence Davies, and a pissed-off Theodoros Angelopoulos. Blackie appeared with a couple of James Bonds and played Santa Claus in the nutty-looking anthology Goodbye 20th Century. Marko was in Ozon’s Criminal Lovers, and Franz was in Ozon’s Frantz. Natalija came to Hollywood and ended up hundredth-billed in Maid in Manhattan, playing a maid, that’s embarrassing.
Old Blackie:
Old Ivan finds Old Marko:
A good bird movie, with emus and cockatoos and budgies. Kate Winslet falls in with guru Baba and decides to stay in India, so her parents trick her into returning home and hire cult deprogrammer Harvey Keitel. But he lacks his required assistant and fucks up the assignment – the sight of Kate nude leads to a fully degraded Harvey selling out his whole plan. Keitel in the Emil Jannings tradition, a master of playing an apparent tough guy who becomes a blubbering mess. When his would-be assistant does arrive it’s Pam Grier, who I just saw in Ghosts of Mars.
L-R: Kate, Cockatoo
L-R: Robbie (Chopper), Yvonne (Muriel’s Wedding), Tim (Farscape)
Harvey, tough as nails, uncorruptable:
Ah, well, nevertheless…
Muratova plays a local government official who hires Nina Ruslanova (of Khrustalyov, My Car! two decades later) as a maid. At other times they’ve both been in love with Vladimir Vysotsky. Psychologically true and beautiful drama. Nervous cutting between timelines, solid within each particular time and place. If this had been widely seen, the cold war would’ve not gone down the way it did.
Criterion did a giallo series and I went straight for the John Saxon movie. Nora is a young “New Yorker” visiting Rome (Letícia Román, also of a Russ Meyer erotic comedy and an Elvis flick). Her Aunt Ethel was being cared for by Dr. Saxon, dies almost instantly after he leaves, then Nora runs outside for help and is immediately mugged – tough town. She has a Blow-Up fever dream of a witnessed murder and ropes John Saxon into her madness, and I guess her landlady (Valentina Cortese, Masina’s friend in Juliet of the Spirits) has been doing some murders.
Italians are absolute goofballs. Last night I told Katy about Trap, and she asked how could a dumb movie be great, and as if to answer her, here’s Italy with one of the dumbest greatest movies of its era. Movies aren’t even allowed to be this beautiful or dumb anymore. Bava made this the same year as Black Sabbath and The Whip and the Body (which we just might watch this Shocktober). There are seven credited writers, which honestly makes sense.
Opens with a heist, Peter Fonda collecting money from the manager whose family is held hostage by his partner Deke (biker-movie regular Adam Roarke). Dirty drifter Susan George (Straw Dogs) gets in the way so they take her along. Sheriff Vic Morrow takes this pursuit personally and throws all resources into the chase. Car swappin’, fast drivin’, and drawbridge jumpin’ ensue, up to the requisite ’70s downbeat ending (our group is flattened by a train). Amazing to read that a lab error led to the movie being badly color-shifted for its first 30 years. Hough was mostly a horror guy, made The Legend of Hell House, the Cassavetes Incubus, and a Howling sequel.
Movie is known for its car action but I only gasped at this helicopter:
M. Night sometimes likes to be grim and serious or to talk earnestly and endlessly about his big ideas, and sometimes he likes to weave murderous tension into scenarios so ridiculous they border on hilarious – a mode I far prefer, which is why this movie joins Old Beach and Lady in the Water among my favorites.
Josh Hartnett never better, not even in Valley of the Gods. With M. Night’s daughter as Lady Raven, Scott Pilgrim’s drummer Alison Pill as the mom, Jonathan Langdon as the merch guy with the outstanding dialogue, Rob Lowe’s wife from Stir of Echoes 2 as a fellow parent at the show, Bill & Ted 3‘s Kid Cudi as the guest star, and trap veteran Hayley Mills as the police psychiatrist.
Thought this would be a low-stakes entry in the Inherent Vice / Under the Silver Lake / Big Lebowski burnout detective genre, and it mostly is, but with a biting ending as Evil Principal Peter MacNeill (sheriff of A History of Violence) reveals that detective Adam Brody’s new client is the daughter of his long-missing receptionist. “Now they’ll know what we were capable of.”
Doctor Yang (Yu Rongguang of Supercop 2, which is a different movie from Police Story 4 even though Supercop 1 was Police Story 3) goes around in disguise acting like Disney’s Robin Hood, with assistant Orchid (Jean Wang, kicking much more ass here than as 14th Aunt), making mockeries of corrupt governor James Wong (a major songwriter, also in Twin Dragons) and his lead cop Yuen Shun-Yi (of Drunken Master). Wong Fei-hung’s dad Donnie Yen (confusingly, he’ll play the title role in the sequel) is passing through town, the governor holds his son prisoner so he’ll help them catch the righteous bandit. But of course they all team up to defeat the evil master (also the evil master of Heroic Trio the same year).
Twin monkeys:
Much action ensues. I saw this on VHS or something back in the day, but it’s extremely helpful to have seen a bunch of kung-fu movies leading up to this, getting used to their plots and moves and sound effects, to appreciate this one’s particular excellence… in context of the OUATIC sequels going slowly downhill, this feels like the best movie ever made.
Like father like son:
