Mural (Review)
Mural
aka 畫壁
2011
Written by Gordon Chan Ka-Seung, Lau Ho-Leung, Frankie Tam Gong-Yuen, and Maria Wong Si-Man
Directed by Gordon Chan Ka-Seung and Danny Go Lam-Paau
Mural is another attempt from China to make bigger Hollywood-style pictures, which is both a good and a bad thing. It is good that money is being brought into make epic films. It is bad because the films being produced are all generic garbage. And as the money flows away from Hong Kong into the pack of upstart Mainland production companies, things are changing rapidly in both Hong Kong and Chinese cinema. But this review isn’t about that, it’s about Mural, a story about a guy who goes into a painting full of fairy women.
While Mural certainly looks nice, the story doesn’t hold up to the visuals and things become very bland. The visuals of creatures and monsters make good spectacles, even if the CGI isn’t up to par with Western films yet. Monsters and beauties are the two main attractions to Mural, there is enough of both you can let some things slide. Some good scenes and creativity in monster design help make certain points more memorable, but the underlying uninteresting characters and the obvious conclusion of the main love story cause things to not be so much a journey as just a trip through a museum.
Like Gordan Chan’s prior film Painted Skin, it is a tale from Pu Songling’s story collection Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. The tomb contains nearly 500 tales, and has been the basis for dozens of films and tv series, including the Chinese Ghost Story films.
There are far too many of the models/actresses/singers playing the fariy women to list them all in the Roll Call, but I should name drop a few, like model-actress Monica Mok Xiao-Qi, Xia Yi-Yao, and Bao Wen-Jing. And now we will never mention them again! Even Eric Tsang Chi-Wai shows up with ear extensions as a goofy monk.
|
Categories: Movie Reviews, Ugly Tags: Ada Liu Yan, Andy On Chi-Kit, Bao Bei-Er, Bao Wen-Jing, Betty Sun Li, China, Deng Chao, Du Shi-Wu, Eric Tsang Chi-Wai, Frankie Tam Gong-Yuen, Gordon Chan Ka-Seung, Lau Ho-Leung, Maria Wong Si-Man, Monica Mok Xiao-Qi, Ngai Sing, wuxia, Xia Yi-Yao, Xie Nan, Yan Ni, Zheng Shuang
Kung Fu Cyborg (Review)
Kung Fu Cyborg
aka Kei hei hup aka Kung Fu Cyborg: Metallic Attraction
2009
Directed by Jeffery Lau
Jeffery Lau declared he wanted to do Chinese Transformers, and have his robots be “the incarnation of Oriental wisdom and strength.” Okay. Lau is no stranger to science fiction, as anyone who has seen A Chinese Tall Story can testify. Kung Fu Cyborg was originally titled Robot, then the title was turned into the easier to remember Metallic Attraction: Kung Fu Cyborg. Except for when it was called Kung Fu Cyborg: Metallic Attraction! Or just Kung Fu Cyborg. D’Oh! So we’ll just call it Kung Fu Cyborg when we refer to it, even if we slip up later. Just ignore the slip ups. They are not the droids you are looking for.
But in any event, here are a bunch of cool posters for Kung Fu Cyborg.
This is a long movie, approaching Korean standard of length. One could easily trim 30 minutes and it would do nothing but help the film along. The length is because it seems like two movies smooshed together, an origin story and a second story. Unfortunately, that means things will be dragging. And dragging. And lots of side plots happen. And it takes forever for the freaking robots to do their robot thing. Which is sort of why I watched the movie in the first place. Before this introduction gets as long as the pre-robot fight scenes in Kung Fu Cyborg, let’s just get to the Roll Call!
|
Categories: Movie Reviews, Ugly Tags: Alex Fong Lik-Sun, Betty Sun Li, CGI trainwreck, cool robots, Eric Tsang Chi-Wai, Gan Wei, Hong Kong, Hopping Vampires, Hu Jun, Jeffery Lau, Ronald Cheng Chung-Kei, Wu Jing