REVIEW: 一代宗師 [The Grandmaster] [2013]

“Keep the light burning” I think 一代宗師 [The Grandmaster] loses something in its translation for an American who couldn’t spot the differences between Kung Fu and Karate if his life depended on it (besides the former being Chinese and latter Japanese, of course). There’s the significance of the dark rain beating down on multiple fight scenes I’ve read provides the “white noise” for one’s “sense of touch”; the honor in accepting one’s actions to seek vengeance by taking vows to forever be alone as compensation; and the history of a…

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REVIEW: The Green Hornet [2011]

“Don’t thank him. He did nothing.” Don’t be surprised when you find that the new incarnation of The Green Hornet has taken a very different path from its predecessors. The trailer should address this issue, but the simple fact Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are the duo tackling the escapades of George W. Trendle’s characters will if not. The two had great success with their semi-autobiographical coming-of-age tale of high school angst in Superbad and took a well-orchestrated shot at making action funny with Pineapple Express. It’s not hard to…

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TIFF10: Day One Recap

Day One at TIFF has been completed. It started with a bang … as in a rogue Customs agent yelling for us to stop at a cone wall before the actual stop followed by a seemingly exciting wrestling to the ground of two criminals at Dundas Square. We couldn’t stop to see the action completely because we had movies to see. Our first screening was cinema maestro Jean-Luc Godard‘s newest work Film socialisme [Film Socialism]. A complete head-scratcher consisting of unsubtitled French for 100 minutes, overlapping a random sequence of…

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TIFF10 REVIEW: 精武風雲-陳真 [Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen] [2010]

“Chinese are not sick men of East Asia” For a director whose only other film I’ve seen is the amazing Infernal Affairs, Andrew Lau’s (no, not star Andy Lau) admittance to Bruce Lee being his ‘super idol’ while introducing his newest work 精武風雲-陳真 [Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen] at the Toronto International Film Festival became quite the relevant tidbit. A far cry from the realistic cop vs. criminal thriller, Legend goes as far to the opposite end of the spectrum as it can, existing in a…

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REVIEW: Persepolis [2007]

“ABBA is for wimps” Here we have France’s official entry for foreign film at the Oscars, the animated film Persepolis. This intrigues me for many reasons. One, it is a cartoon and almost destined for the nod in that category; two, it is about Iran, by an Iranian who took France as an adopted home in her 20’s, and third, the wonderful film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly had a real shot at winning the award, let alone getting a nomination (but then it was directed by an American,…

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