Well, here we are, at the end of my “Scenes I Go Back To” blogging project. 31 days, 31 scenes. And I thought I’d end things with a scene from a movie that left an indelible mark on my young mind when I saw it. That helped mold me into the man I am today. Yes, I am indeed referring to Chang Cheh’s Chinese Super Ninjas.

Prior to Chinese Super Ninjas (aka Five Element Ninjas), the only cinematic martial arts I’d seen were courtesy of one Mr. Miyagi. But then my friend Jason leant me a VHS tape on which he had recorded Chang Cheh’s 1982 opus during some “Kung-Fu June” marathon that was running on basic cable. And the movie that I watched promptly blew my young high school mind.

On one level, I knew that the movie was completely and utterly ludicrous. A list of the movie’s flaws, inconsistencies, and outright fallacies would run as long as the Great Wall of China. Case in point: there’s no way a human being can keep fighting when he’s tripping over his own intestines, something that happens during one of the film’s major battles.

I’m pretty sure the clip above violates several of Newton’s laws all by itself. Nevermind the fact that the special effect of those water ninjas leaping out of the pond—which is obviously accomplished by simply running the film backwards—is cheesy as hell.

But I also learned an important lesson from Chinese Super Ninjas, one that has stuck with me to this day. Movies can break every known law of physics, can ignore every guideline put forth in the “Making Movies” handbook, and can be so ludicrous they ought to be banned by the Geneva Convention, so long as they’re freaking awesome.

And it just doesn’t get any more freaking awesome than Chinese Super Ninjas.

This entry is part of my August blogging project, “Scenes I Go Back To”.

It seems only fitting that I write about Fist Of Legend after having just posted about The Matrix. As much as The Matrix borrowed from Ghost In The Shell, it also borrowed mightily from kung fu films such as Fist Of Legend—even going so far as to use the same martial arts choreographer, the legendary Yuen Woo-Ping.

To put it quite simply, Fist Of Legend represents the pinnacle of both Jet Li’s and Yuen Woo-Ping’s careers, which is saying something because both have a heckuva a lot of great films under their belts. But Fist Of Legend represents both at the very top of their game. The result is one of the finest martial arts films of all time.

A remake of Bruce Lee’s classic, The Chinese Connection (aka Fist Of Fury), Fist Of Legend stars Jet Li as a Chen Zhen, a Chinese student studying in Japan circa 1937. There he confronts constant bigotry and prejudice from many of the Japanese students. Thankfully, as the scene above shows, he’s more than capable of protecting of himself.

The above fight scene isn’t the best one in Fist Of Legend, but it happens within the first 5 minutes, and immediately whets your appetite for the many fist flurries to come—though it barely prepares you for the impending martial arts cornucopia.

This might sound blasphemous, but I actually prefer Fist Of Legend to The Chinese Connection. Whereas Lee’s film is pretty black and white (Japanese = bad, Chinese = good), Li’s film is a little more complicated, morally. As it turns out, there is both corruption and nobility on both sides, and the martial arts are shown as a way to learn tolerance and compassion—as well as an effective method for handing bigots their kneecaps.

Sadly, there’s not been a good version of Fist Of Legend available here in the States.  Which, considering its status in the genre, is a crying shame. Thankfully, Dragon Dynasty will be releasing a two-disc “Ultimate Edition” of the film this December, which will hopefully live up to its “Ultimate” title.

This entry is part of my August blogging project, “Scenes I Go Back To”.

I first learned of the existence of The Matrix—the movie, silly—when I saw a poster for it in a movie theatre lobby. I immediately wrote it off—it starred Keanu Reeves, how good could it? And even after I saw the trailer, I was fairly uninterested. When my friends and I did eventually see it, it was on a total whim.

To say that I was blown away would be a grand understatement. My first viewing of The Matrix was probably akin to someone in the previous generation seeing Star Wars for the first time. I walked in knowing next to nothing about the film, and for the next two hours or so, was treated to something that unlike anything else I had ever seen. As I stumbled out of the theatre, high on the experience, I found myself wishing the movie had been twice as long. I wanted more, more, more.

Of course, that wish was granted, albeit in a slightly bittersweet manner. We got the much-anticipated (and much-debated) sequels. While The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions weren’t as bad as everyone says they are, but they certainly weren’t as good as the first film. Which still feels as revolutionary and groundbreaking now as it did back in 1999.

This is most apparent in the movie’s numerous action scenes, which blend together lightning fast martial arts (courtesy of Yuen Woo-Ping), lots of John Woo-esque gunplay, bleeding edge special effects, and tons of ultra-cool panache (trenchcoats and cool sunglasses are always a winning combination). The lobby shootout, in which Neo and Trinity storm an office building full of soldiers to rescue Morpheus from Agent Smith and his cronies, is a perfect example of this.

The scene is a perfect study in contrasts, between the frantic firearms pyrotechnics—which find Trinity and Neo going through about 300 guns in 3 minutes—and wonderful slow-mo acrobatics, like Trinity’s “running up the wall” move. All in all, it’s a beautiful, aesthetic scene to watch (I love the way the chunks of marble and stone explode in glorious slow motion around our two heroes as they make their way through the hail of bullets) as well as one full of signature kick-ass moments (love the way in which Trinity relieves that one guy of his shotgun).

Many movies have since cribbed The Matrix’ style, effects, and whatnot, but none of them have come close to the dazzling results that the Keanu Reeves and Wachowskis seemed to pull off so effortlessly.

Now, bring on Speed Racer!

This entry is part of my August blogging project, “Scenes I Go Back To”.

Park Chan-Wook’s second vengeance-themed film, 2003’s OldBoy has generated a good deal of controversy since its release.  Not the least of which was when photos of Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho were released featuring him striking poses that were eerily remiscent of scenes from the movie.

Of course, there was never any evidence that Cho had actually seen OldBoy, but that didn’t stop folks from talking up the connection.

That being said, OldBoy is a difficult and brutal film to watch. The story of a man imprisoned for 15 years, then suddenly released, only to go on the warpath to find those responsible for his captivity, is full of scenes of brutality and violence, among other things. And on top of that, it’s incredibly stylish and fanciful, shot with virtuosic aplombby Park and featuring a searing performance by Choi Min-Sik, one of South Korea’s finest actors.

But to simply dismiss it as an orgy of violence and sadism is to miss the point.  OldBoy is far more complex than the mere exploitation flick that its critics sometimes present it as, as it explores and deconstructs themes of revenge, forgiveness, grace, and depravity.  Its characters never simple, one-note caricatures, but rather, complex and deeply flawed characters whose failings are taken to almost mythic extremes.

And though there are many scenes that do provide a rush of adrenaline, those same scenes often cause us to question said rush, that challenge our excitement and make us wade through the consequences of violence.  Case in point, arguably the movie’s most famous scene, in which Oh Daesu (the film’s “hero”) takes on an entire hallway of thugs with nothing more than a hammer.

Technically, it’s a brilliant scene. It’s all done in one take, with the camera moving back and forth along the hallway, following Oh Daesu and the gang as they duke it out. But the fight never approaches the hyperkinetic, overly stylized bloodletting that you might expect—this is not a kung fu movie.

Rather, as the fight progresses, Park refuses to cut away from the violence and its effects.  And so we see the combatants grow tired from their exertion and their injuries.  Their attacks become sloppy and desperate, and towards the end, it becomes rather darkly comical, as barely-conscious thugs have to resort to throwing scraps of wood (and lame curses) at the barely-standing Oh Daesu.

It’s thrilling to watch, as any good action scene should be. And yet it undercuts viewers’ expectations and forces us to rethink our assumptions and expectations, to question why we got so excited in the first place.

Which is the ultimate goal of OldBoy, I think. By showing us the dreadful, bloody, damaging results of vengeance and hatred, of refusing to show mercy and forgiveness, we’re left with brutality and sadism. Not as something to revel in, as might be the case with a true exploitation film, but rather as something to lament and mourn (much like the trumpet that plays during the hallway fight theme).

This entry is part of my August blogging project, “Scenes I Go Back To”.

(The above YouTube clip contains several scenes from The Sacrifice. The scene I’m writing about takes up the first half or so.  The second half contains other scenes from the movie, and does contain some nudity.)

The Sacrifice is my second favorite Tarkovsky film, after Stalker, but it contains some of my favorite scenes and images from the man’s ouevre. The film centers around Alexander (Erland Josephson), a retired professor who has gathered friends and family together at his beloved coastal home to celebrate his birthday. The festivities are quickly forgotten, however, when jets scream by overhead and the birthday party begins hearing news reports that war has broken out around the world.

Distraught by the calamity surrounding him, Alexander, who has previously admitted to having no faith, falls to his knees and begs God to save the world from the impending doom. In return, he promises to sacrifice and forego everything he loves: his family, his friends, his house, his speech, and even his beloved son. What then follows is a sequence of bizarre, dreamlike sequences (which look stunning, thanks to veteran cinematographer Sven Nykvist) that begin calling into question Alexander’s sanity even as it becomes increasingly clear that God has answered his urgent prayer.

Tarkovsky is not the easiest filmmaker to “get”.  His films are demanding as few other filmmakers’ are. They are full of surreal imagery, long takes (that border on glacial), obtuse characters, and dialog laden with philosophical and metaphysical musings. The Sacrifice is no different, but at the same time, there’s a directness and urgency to the film—which makes sense considering that Tarkovsky knew he was dying when he made it.

Not surprisingly, The Sacrifice has often been labelled Tarkovsky’s “last will and testament”, a summation of all of his ideas concerning art, humanity, and spirituality. I think that comes through vividly in the scene above, as Alexander submits to the primacy of the spiritual as the last and final bulwark against oblivion.

This entry is part of my August blogging project, “Scenes I Go Back To”.

Most folks probably know David Thewlis from his fine portrayal of Remus Lupin in the recent most Harry Potter films. However, his arguably best role—and the one that garnered him a “Best Actor” award at the 1993 Cannes festival—is that of Johnny in Mike Leigh’s incendiary Naked.

As Johnny, an itinerant drifter whose cynicism makes him a walking black hole, leaving emotional and spiritual devastation wherever he goes, Thewlis gives what some have called one of the best performances of the ‘90s. There’s no denying that Johnny is a complete and total bastard—when we first meet him, he’s raping a woman in a back alley, and he goes on to ruin the lives of nearly everyone he encounters in the film—and yet it’s impossible to write him off as a villain.

It’s obvious that the man is deeply troubled—some viewers have posited, from his quirky behavior, that it’s possible he’s mentally ill. And for all of the poison and bile in his attacks on the society and mores that surround him, there is also great truth in his words. In my favorite scene, he’s talking with a former girlfriend and in one brief, spiteful speech, sums up all that is wrong with modern society:

Louise: So what happened, were you bored in Manchester?

Johnny: Was I bored? No, I wasn’t fuckin’ bored. I’m never bored. That’s the trouble with everybody—you’re all so bored. You’ve had nature explained to you and you’re bored with it. You’ve had the living body explained to you and you’re bored with it. You’ve had the universe explained to you and you’re bored with it. So now you want cheap thrills and, like, plenty of them, and it doesn’t matter how tawdry or vacuous they are as long as it’s new, as long as it’s new, as long as it flashes and fuckin’ bleeps in forty fuckin’ different colors. So whatever else you can say about me, I’m not fuckin’ bored.

Naked is not an easy film to watch, and not one that I can easily recommend to most folks. But neither does it deserve much of the vilification that it has received (for being misogynistic, for example). And Thewlis’ morally and intellectually complex character—as evidenced by the scene above—is one of the reasons why.

This entry is part of my August blogging project, “Scenes I Go Back To”.

Go was the movie that first got me thinking about “scenes I go back to.”  A few months ago, I found myself down in the basement with a sudden urge to just flip through the many solid scenes in this Japanese film (which is not to be confused with the 1999 American movie of the same name, which is enjoyable as well, but for completely different reasons).

Go boasts a solid performance from Yôsuke Kubozuka, one of Japan’s finest young actors, and deals with some heavy topics—racial identity, discrimination—in a manner that gets its point across without being preachy.

A lot of this is due to director Isao Yukisada, who infuses the film with enough offbeat style and verve to keep things hopping. But ultimately, it comes down to Kubozuka, who delivers a layered performance as a Japanese-born Korean who is as capable of enjoying Shakespeare as he is knocking the teeth out of the Japanese high schoolers who try to rough him up.  He delves into some particularly gutwrenching territory, especially when he chooses to stand up to some Korean friends who want to avenge a fellow classmate’s murder.

There’s an inner torment that Kubozuka expresses so amazingly and touchingly, as he struggles to reconcile his Korean heritage and Japanese identity, his thirst for violence and his desire for a simple, private life.  And when Kubozuka confronts his Korean friend, telling him he’d sell his own soul if it meant he could be at peace with such frightening intensity in his eyes—goosebumps, plain and simple.

This entry is part of my August blogging project, “Scenes I Go Back To”.

Jackie Chan’s latest movie, Rush Hour 3, recently opened.  I haven’t seen it (though I probably will at some point—I’m a sucker like that), but I assume it’s just more of the same.  Whatever the case, though, I hope that it’ll convince some of the youngsters out there to go back and check out some of the man’s older films, and you could do far worse than Police Story.

Simply put, if it weren’t for Police Story, there’d be no Rush Hour 3, no Shanghai Noon, nothing.  Heck, I’d venture to say that most of modern action cinema would be sorely impoverished if not for Jackie Chan’s output in the early/mid ‘80s.

After spending many of his early years as a pretender to the recently deceased Bruce Lee’s throne, and a somewhat disasterous first foray into Hollywood, Chan returned to Hong Kong.  It was then that he discovered his winning formula, the action comedy.  Blending whiplash-inducing martial arts with a broad, slapstick style of humor inspired by the Three Stooges and Harold Lloyd, Chan produced a number of very successful films, including Winners And Sinners, Project A, and Wheels On Meals.  However, his crowning achievement was 1985’s Police Story.

Police Story has everything one now associates with a Jackie Chan film: Chan plays a bumbling, goofy police officer who, in a split second, suddenly turns into a bone-crushing machine; there’s lots of very broad, and sometimes slightly offensive comedy; everyday household objects (chairs, ladders, cooking utensils) become lethal weapons of death; and Chan and his crew perform stunts that would kill a normal, average human being like you or I twelve times over.

The movie’s climax takes place in a crowded shopping mall as Chan’s character, who has recently been disgraced and charged with a murder he didn’t commit, attempts to track down a notorious crimeboss and the evidence that will clear his name.  Brigitte Lin and Maggie Cheung make appearances as two damsels in distress, but the focus is clearly on Chan and the amount of damage he deals out—and takes.

After about two minutes, the film just jumps into a parallel universe of absurdity. (Just what, exactly, is that motorcycle doing there?)  And yet, Chan doesn’t let you off the hook so easily.  He wants you to know how much it hurt to make the film, to know that these stunts are not just something you brush off.  He wants you to know that these are real people doing really dangerous things.

So when you see Nameless Thug #47 fall 15 feet from a balcony to the concrete floor below, or get kicked down an escalator, what you see is what really happened sans any special effects or camera tricks.  Which, for all of the goofiness and absurdity inherent to a Jackie Chan movie, gives a hardness and realism that you don’t find in too many other action movies.

The finest example of this is the movie’s most famous stunt, which has Chan sliding down a three-story pole wrapped in light bulbs, which explode all around him as he descends.  The stunt is replayed from three different angles so that you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it’s actually Jackie Chan suffering those second-degree burns, getting cut up by shattering glass, and falling the last ten feet or so onto the cold, hard floor below.  He wants you to know that only he, and no mere mortal, can pull something like that off.

Guess what?  He’s right.

This entry is part of my August blogging project, “Scenes I Go Back To”.