This Is Not What I Expected (Review)
This Is Not What I Expected
aka 喜欢你
2017
Written by Yuan Li and Yimeng Xu
Based on the book Finally I Get You by Lan Bai Se
Directed by Derek Hui Wang-Yu
You better eat before you sit down to watch This Is Not What I Expected, because the lavish and constant footage of the porniest of food porn is enough to send any viewer’s stomach rumbling (spoiler alert, even the main characters have growling stomachs in the final scene!) From the opening shot of a steak on the grill to the intricately timed details for the perfect instant ramen bowl, the food becomes the media the rest of the romantic comedy is built around.
Let’s just ignore the implausibility of parts of the plot (that’s par for the course in a romantic comedy!) and just focus on the chemistry of the leads, the infusion of the plot elements, and whether the male character goes into stalker creeper mode. Things do get a bit messed up later on down the line, but it is nothing an extra line or two couldn’t have fixed. This is Derek Hui’s feature debut, usually spending time as an editor (Wu Xia, Man of Tai Chi). He does a some neat sequences and montages that give it a visual edge over the average romantic comedy, but it also made me greedy for more.
Gu Shengnan (Zhou Dong-Yu – Under the Hawthorn Tree) is introduced scratching rude words into the hood of a car, revenge on her friend’s cheating boyfriend (her friend Xu Zhaodi is played by model Ming Xi) It turns out to be the wrong car, belonging to billionaire investor Lu Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro – K-20: Legend of the Mask), who after some convincing promises not to call the police if she gets the hood repaired at his preferred shop before a certain time. Her life isn’t going well, as her boss who is also her secret boyfriend dumps her, and she feels her chef job is going nowhere. Gu Shengnan is 29, while in the US there is pressure for ladies to marry before they are 30, in China it is even worse where 29 is considered by many to be so old the women are a lost cause.
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Categories: Movie Reviews Tags: China, Derek Hui Wang-Yu, Ming Xi, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Zhou Dong-Yu
Wuxia is now Dragon
Because what movies need is a dumb and generic name! Blame Weinstein Co. for the dumb new name, but since Wuxia had a dumb name to begin with it’s more like a lateral move. Wuxia, mind you, is the obviously made with foreign distribution in mind film starring Takeshi Kaneshiro, Donnie Yen, Tang Wei, and Jimmy Wang Yu. The plot sounds similar A History of Violence, with a regular guy Jinxi (Donnie Yen) who foils a robbery from two super bandits, attracting attention from Detective Xu (Takeshi Kaneshiro), who wonders how a regular guy could do it. It’s getting okay reviews, but it will probably be more widely seen than other recent Asian films so we might as well talk about it so TarsTarkas.NET looks hip and current.
The film is brought to us by some Warlords alums, director Peter Chan Ho-sun and writer Aubrey Lam. I thought Warlords was generic and predictable, getting lost in the mess of other giant spectacle films that came out that year. Maybe Wuxia will surprise me, the praise for the script sounds like it will be at least good enough that I’ll finish the film.
And now I have to differentiate this Dragon from the Dragon from Asylum. Thanks a lot!
pics ganked from here and here
Categories: Movie News Tags: Donnie Yen Ji-Dan, Jimmy Wang Yu, Peter Chan Ho-sun, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Tang Wei, wuxia
K-20: Legend of the Mask (Review)
K-20: Legend of the Mask
aka K-20: Kaijin niju menso den
2008
Directed by Shimako Sato
In a world where Japan avoided going to war with the US, the Meiji Era nobility continues to exist in 1949. This has created a huge divide between the rich and the poor in the capital city of Teito. Yes, Teito. Stay with me here. No social mobility leads to a massive poor underclass and a tiny fraction of superrich. This playland for the rich is not without costs, as a masked villain known as K-20, the Fiend with 20 Faces, drives fear in their hearts as he steals their money. K-20 is not a noble thief or a Robin Hood, he is just a jerk who robs jerks.
There are also police zeppelins that drop police gyroplanes, because that always happens in comic books.
Series creator Edogawa Rampo is a popular horror and mystery writer whose work has been turned into cinema since 1927. After WWII, most samurai and similar films were banned, and Edogawa Rampo’s vast contemporary work was quickly put on the big screen. The K-20 stories originate in a Boy Detectives series launched in 1936 that lasted 26 years. Edogawa Rampo’s character of The Fiend With Twenty Faces is a mysterious master of disguise, and Detective Kogoro Akechi is called Rampo’s alter ego. Other early Rampo films include 1946’s The Palette Knife Murder (Palette Knife no Satsujin) and 1947’s Ghost Pagoda (Yurei To) and Phantom With Twenty Faces (Kaijin Nijumenso), which is the same Phantom story that inspired the novel this film is based on.
Said novel is the 1989 work from playwright Soh Kitamura, which updates the classic Rampo Akechi tales. Kitamura’s completely new take on the tale caused much controversy among Rampo Edogawa’s fans, much like many remakes.
More about Edogawa Rampo: Yes, Edogawa Rampo is not his real name, Taro Hirai named himself after Edgar Allen Poe! His first writing successes were in 1923, his erotic horror style is called eroguro-nansensu. Other Rampo stories on film include 1969’s The Blind Beast (Moju), 1969’s The Horror of Malformed Men (Kyofu Kikei Ningen), 1976’s The Stroller in the Attic (Yaneura no Sanposha) and 1968’s Black Lizard (Kurotokage). Rampo eventually became a character in mystery films of his own, in the movie Rampo (and this film has two wildly different versions.)
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Categories: Movie Reviews, Ugly Tags: Detective Kogoro Akechi, Edogawa Rampo, Japan, Jun Kunimura, Kanata Hongo, Shimako Sato, Takako Matsu, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Toru Nakamura, Yuki Imai