The Woman Knight of Mirror Lake
The Woman Knight of Mirror Lake
aka 競雄女俠秋瑾 aka Jian hu nu xia Qiu Jin
2011
Written by Erica Li Man and Checkley Sin Kwok-Lam
Directed by Herman Yau Lai-To
To say that The Woman Knight of Mirror Lake was a disappointment would be a sad understatement. The biopic of famed femme revolutionary Qiu Jin is about a remarkable woman in a dangerous time, but the entire narrative suffers through flashbacks and a lack of establishing just what the heck is going on. I am familiar with the history of Qiu Jin because she’s interesting, but I still had trouble following the historical who’s who of revolutionaries, both real and consolidated/fake. Unfocused and scattered, The Woman Knight of Mirror Lake jumps from revolutionary speak to scenes trying to depict how women got it tough to speeches about Chinese patriotism to battle scenes involving people the audience has never met. The zig-zagging prevents a good narrative that we can follow, and the flashbacks serve no purpose and don’t correspond to what is happening in the present. It’s like they read about the narrative technique in a book and decided to do it just because it sounded cool. Herman Yau Lai-To has directed some cult classics in years gone by, but his extreme nature seems to have been neutered for bigger paychecks, and along with that, any attempts to do things creatively.
The Woman Knight of Mirror Lake is a very patriotic film. Most discussions on the ills of society end up running into the narrative that China is lead by weaklings, so that’s why everything sucks. And at this time, China was essentially carved up by foreign powers, humiliated, and reform attempts had just ended in disaster. But instead of showing how the failures justify the repeated revolution attempts (there were literally dozens over the years before they took), we just jump to the next problem of women not being able to travel due to children, or Japan restricting what students can say, or Qiu Jin’s husband being an entitled douche.
Beyond the script not following a story arc that makes it easy to follow, the individual scenes themselves are messes at times. The most notable is near the end of the film where there is an attempted assassination of a local governor. The setup and subsequent fight seems to last forever, and it’s filled with unknown people fighting unknown people. Worst of all, we all know the conclusion, because it was in the beginning of the film! This is like worrying if Obi-Won Kenobi is in any trouble in a Star Wars prequel.
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Vampire Warriors (Review)
Vampire Warriors
2010
Written and directed by Dennis Law Sau-Yiu
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Sparkle THIS!
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The announcements of a film starring Jiang Luxia and Chrissie Chau as chicks who fight vampires sounded like it would be the best movie ever. The reality is a far different creature, instead being a disappointing film with a few good moments. Jiang Luxia continues to be the best part of the films she shows up in, while Chrissie Chau continues to be…hot. She also barely participates in the action sequences. The action sequences should be what the film is built upon, but the tone of the sequences shift from practical fighting to insane flying wire fu where people get thrown through every wall in China, except for the one wall you would want to see someone thrown through.
The script itself feels more like a first draft than a full script. Many characters have little motivation, and even those given reasons for why they do stuff aren’t given much else to explain how they got to where they were. More of this complaint near the end of the review. It is obvious that Twilight inspired parts of the film, what with all the moping, the vampire family, and the vegetarian vampire angle. Someone needs to write a teenage girl hopping vampire romance novel quick!
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Yank him until he goes full Anime!
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When you think Chinese vampire films, you think of the hopping vampires, one-eyebrowed monks, awesome retro effects, lots of goofy scenes, and spooky/gross effects shots. Which is why when one comes out that features exclusively the western style vampires it is sort of interesting. There is no vampire hopping at all in this film, though there is a guy running around in the Qing style uniforms. We got no priests, and the effects shots are entirely digital and sparse. I don’t know if the complete lack of religious figures blasting the vampires is because the film is trying to appeal to more Western audiences who would be confused, or if there is some film guidelines from Mainland China that are against that stuff showing up. I do think the latter is why there were less gross/makeup effects that used to be common in these films.
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Only mean people on the internet can make Chrissie Chau sad
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Besides Jiang Luxia and Chrissie Chau, there are a bunch of other models in the cast – Haley C, Annie G, Dominic, Laying, Mia C, Suki, all of these are model/lang mo names. One expects the amount of Blue Steel in this movie will keep Pittsburgh in business for a bajillion years. I’m sure other girls with normal names in the credits are also models, it’s almost as if Dennis Law was trolling for dates. We also have two alumni from the original Mr. Vampire film, who are also the only people (besides one old lady) who look over 24 in the film. So please forgive the scant biographical information on some of these girls, as there isn’t any in English. As a final note, the film toys with some lesbian undertones between the main characters, which is sort of weird, especially since this film takes place in the all-too-common Hong Kong world where everyone is attractive 22 year old models who have never had a boyfriend.
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Gymkata!
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Menstruation really hits the spot!
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Bad Blood (Review)
Bad Blood
aka Mit moon
2010
Directed and written by Dennis Law Sau-Yiu
Bad Blood is a Hong Kong crime film that is about Triads and betrayal and having too many characters to give enough of them proper character development. And it isn’t very good. It is saved from being completely boring by one character going absolutely crazy and by Jiang Luxia beating up lots of dudes.
Granted, the only reason I even bothered to see this film was Jiang Luxia was in it, and from the trailer and description it made it look like she was going to be a deaf evil hit girl. And though she is deaf and dumb, she isn’t an evil hit girl and her character actual does stuff and is likeable, more than in Coweb, but no one still has bothered to use Jiang Luxia in a real capacity. Someone get of your duff and do it right, before I fly to Hong Kong and then quickly fly back home after having breathing problems in the bad air quality.
But Triad films are still the rage thanks to affairs of the infernal kind and dudes who are youthful and menacing. So for every HK Triad film you will sort of remember, there are many more that you will not. This might qualify as a film you will remember, but not because of the intriguing Triad relationships.
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Coweb (Review)
Coweb
aka Zhang wu shuang
2009
Directed by Xiong Xin Xin
Coweb is part of several films that showed up around the same time involving a lone female fighter beating the tar out of lots and lots of people. Others include Chocolate, High-Kick Girl, and Fighter. So of course TarsTarkas.NET was paying attention, because we are all about girl power. Or at least
Jiang Luxia is the Chinese Nation-wide Wushu Champion in Shaolin quan. She has a host of other sports accolade and is the Chief Trainer on the Practical Ladies Self-Defense program on CCTV.com. Jiange Luxia is also an expert in Martial Arts Repertoire, Practical Self-Defense, Qiqong, Taijiquan and Crossbow techniques. First showed up on the scene after she started posting online shorts of herself doing wushu moves in 2007 under the name Mao Er Bao Bei (translates as “Cat-Eared Baby.”) I think this is the link to her video blogs, but to get to the older videos you have to go a few pages back because there are a lot of Coweb shorts before that. She was also on a show hosted by Jackie Chan to find new kung fu stars. What is weird is her videos show her being full of energy and smiling and having a positive attitude, but Coweb keeps her in a somber tone the entire film. Completely drains her personality. That is one of several mistakes that hurt Coweb, however, Jiang Luxia is beyond awesome and will be a big star (assuming she doesn’t get horribly injured.)
Coweb was rumored to have a cameo by Edison Chen (fresh of his sex photo scandal) but the mainland DVD version I watched did not have Edison Chen in it at all. I was disappointed because I wanted to see him get beat up, but maybe Mainland China cut him out and he will still show up if this ever gets released in Hong Kong. As mentioned, the only way this film has been released outside of a few festivals is on a Mainland China DVD, dubbed in Mandarin with no subs. That’s not entirely accurate, there are Chinese subtitles, which were ran through an auto-translator thanks to the magic of the internet. Thus, incredibly confusing English subtitles played while I watched this, but I just ignored them (I left them on some of the screencaps for humor’s sake)
Coweb is the directorial debut of Xiong Xin Xin (aka Hung Yan-Yan), who is an action choreographer and stunt double, who also became an actor just to show off his wushu acrobatic moves.
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Categories: Movie Reviews, Ugly Tags: Eddie Cheung Siu-Fai, Hong Kong, Jiang Luxia, Kane Kosugi, martial arts, Peggy Tseng Pei-Yu, Sam Lee Chan-Sam, Women who kick butt, Xiong Xin-Xin