The DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter Special Edition: A few Asian films

Made for video

As in the United States, the home video industry is Japan was so lucrative in the Nineties that film companies began producing movies designed specifically for video release, and nine such features have been gathered on the terrific Arrow Video five-platter Blu-ray set, V-Cinema Essentials Bullets & Betrayal (UPC#760137172901, $100). The films are all presented in a squared full screen format. While the images vary in the amount of grain they contain, hues are always fresh and fleshtones are accurate. During darker scenes, the picture can get a little murky, and in most of the films, grain is pronounced even during strong daylight sequences, but what usually happens is that you become oblivious to it after a while, since some scenes are not grainy at all and what is going on in the films is usually too engaging to enable distractions. The stereo sound is relegated to the music on each film, and while most of scores have surges of Eighties dance-style music adding to the excitement, there is also a lot of jazz, and it sounds lovely with the intricate separations and steady dimensionality. The films are in Japanese with optional English subtitles, and are all accompanied by excellent 3 to 5-minute introductions (best watched afterwards, of course) that provide a cogent thumbnail profile of the director and the stars, and explain the exceptional appeal each film achieves, as well as highlighting the attractions of the V-Cinema format. “What I’d call V-Cinema fans are not people who reject movie theaters. They are old-school movie fans. They’re people who used to go to movie theaters, but they no longer find there what they came for. If you compare it to the A-side and B-side of records, it’s like movie theaters only offered the A-side but these people preferred the B-side.”

And the first movie, Crime Hunter, is worth the price of the set. It runs just 58 minutes, but in all likelihood kept a squib company in the black for a whole year, if not a decade. The film is one bang-up bloody gunfight after another, and it is a total riot. Shot in Okinawa but pretending to be Los Angeles, the story is about a ‘Little Tokyo’ cop, played by Masanori Sera, who quits the force to take revenge on the gang that killed his partner. He meets a gun-toting nun who is trying to retrieve several million dollars (although, from the size of the bag, it looks like the filmmakers were thinking yen) that was stolen from her church charity, and the two quests coincide, so the two team up and blast their way through to the money and the truth. Drawing as much iconography from the Rambo movies as it does from cop films, the 1989 production is a symphony of slaughter, and yet it has just enough character development and plot to justify its frantic action and bloodletting. If you want to entertain your friends and you only have an hour, you can’t ask more for your popcorn.

Along with a trailer and an excellent 13-minute summary of the beginning of the home video market in Japan and the rise of V-Cinema, there is a really nice 18-minute interview with director Shundo Okawa, who is very candid about the learning experiences he went through making Crime Hunter, which was his first film, but also claims, proudly, some of the innovations he created for the gun effects. He says he set the film in America so that he didn’t have to come up with excuses about why all of the characters have firearms.

The companion film on the platter, the 1990 Neo Chinpira: Zoom Goes the Bullet, offers a very different set of pleasures. Running 86 minutes, there are only a couple of violent scenes, and while there is an appreciable amount of sex, it is entirely in support of the developing the characters. Show Aikawa, who had a small but very noticeable part in Crime Hunter, became a star as the lead in Neo Chinpira, playing a sort of yakuza-in-training and chauffeur, who takes almost the entire movie to work up the courage to pull off the assassination he has been assigned. He spends much of his time with a girlfriend, played by Chikako Aoyama, who was standoffish until she got to fire his gun, and subsequently cannot get enough of either the gun or him. Sixties Japanese crime star Joe Shishido has a nice supporting part as the uncle of Aikawa’s character. The film is sort of like there is a genuine yakuza movie going on somewhere else, and what you are seeing are the characters in their off time from it, like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, but it is a very unique concoction. While not everyone will be satisfied with Aikawa’s brooding, most will find the film’s wit (the movie is ostensibly a comedy) and the sex to be a sufficient compensation. The film is accompanied by a trailer and an informative 15-minute interview with director Banmei Takahashi, reflecting on the film’s creation and his memories of the various cast members.

Yûko Natori delivers a definitive performance as a female cab driver working the night shift, who is being terrorized by an anonymous stalker driving a black SUV in the entertaining thriller, Stranger. Running 89 minutes, the 1991 film takes its time to establish its characters, including the other cab company drivers and several passengers, so that you become invested in the heroine and her plight, and then it divvies out the thrills, even as you wonder if she is just imagining everything. Directed by Shunichi Nagasaki, it is exactly the sort of movie one hopes to come across in this kind of anthology. It may not be monumental, but it is a very effective execution of a basic suspense premise and is enormously satisfying for it competent blend of embellishments and excitements. The film is accompanied by a good 18-minute interview with Nagasaki (“It’s not only about creating suspense. I wanted the main character to look at these different people, who appear from out of the scenery, but to never have any kind of relationship with them.”), who admits he copied some shots from Steven Spielberg’s Duel.

In the companion film, Carlos, a Brazilian-Japanese gangster, memorably played by Naoto Takenaka, steps into a yakuza war, manipulating both sides in an attempt to rise to the top. The film was directed by a manga artist, Kazuhiro Kiuchi. Along with being visually engaging while maintaining an earthy perspective, the editing is exceptional. While one scene, where a boss smashes an underling with a crystal bowl, has clearly been snipped, it is also clear that the narrative only had to provide hints of what occurred to keep the story moving. At another point, the camera lingers on a close up of a man who is about to be shot in the head, and lingers, and lingers, and lingers. It is an amazing moment. Running 92 minutes, the 1990 film captures the spirit of a yakuza movie with the essence of such a film’s politics and violence, but infuses it with the fascinating impurities of outsiders trying to get into the game—there is also a deadly American hitman, played by George Wilson—and a nihilism that is as much about an outside motion picture format looking in as it is about the characters. Also featured is a good 20-minute interview with Kiuchi, who allows as to how Takenaka could never have landed such a meaty role in a theatrical feature, and an 18-minute summary of the film’s plot and artistic components.

Since the film shows rather than tells, it takes a while to figure out that the 1991 Burning Dog is a heist movie, but it turns out to be a very satisfying one. Set in Okinawa, Seiji Matano (with an abundance of screen magnetism, he played kind of a villain in Crime Hunter, but is the hero here) has a bad experience in a previous heist and ends up on the island to shake things off, only to get pulled into a plan to rob a U.S. military payroll. The film, directed by Yôichi Sai, runs a full 103 minutes, so it has time to develop the characters and their idiosyncrasies, and the heist sequence is especially satisfying—as is, for once, when it comes to heist films, the ending. A few details here and there don’t make a lot of sense or are left unexplained, but overall there is a decent amount of sex, lots of exhilarating violence, and plenty of star power to carry the characters along. Additional to a trailer, there is a 16-minute overview of the film and the careers of the director and stars.

We reviewed Arrow’s Female Prisoner Scorpion The Complete Collection, a terrific Japanese cult series from the early Seventies, in Oct 16. The last entry of the series was certainly open ended, however, and it makes perfect sense to continue the indulgence with the 1991 Female Prisoner Scorpion: Death Threat, which fully acknowledges the double decade gap between the other films and the follow up. Yûko Mizushima stars as a female assassin who is hired to kill the former ‘Scorpion’ in prison and, surprising no one, ends up being a prisoner there herself. Running 91 minutes, all of the ‘women’s prison film’ tropes are covered with flair and the film, directed by Toshiharu Ikeda, is both energetic and enjoyable. A trailer is included, as well as a good 12-minute piece summarizing the entire Female Prisoner Scorpion series and its themes.

As he first steps out of the shadows and into the light, Hideki Saijo looks exactly like Charles Bronson, although once he is fully lit it is clear he does not have a mustache. He does, however, have the same killer instinct and it serves him well in the 1991 The Hitman: Blood Smells Like Roses (a Chuck Norris film also called The Hitman came out the same year). The film opens with a depiction of three men raping a woman one of them has picked up in a night club, although after viewers are given the chance to savor the idea of it, Saijo’s character shows up and spoils their party. After that, there is a flashback to show how his character, an innocent trucker, ended up becoming a deadly vigilante, and the circumstances are a little different, but the dialog even manages to slip in the phrase, ‘death wish,’ while Saijo’s clothing and hair are a match for Bronson’s. In some profile shots, for a quick second, he looks exactly like Bronson.

The director, Teruo Ishii, who also made Abashiri Prison (Oct 24), has a strong and pleasing visual sense. He places the camera in the bottom of a stairwell to catch Saijo shooting from the top of the stairs, and elsewhere he follows a woman with a bright red jacket across a crowded noonday intersection—nobody else is wearing anything near a bright. The leader of one yakuza gang has a stuffed tiger’s head on his desk and the camera is positioned so that the face of the tiger is in the lower right corner of the screen, while the boss is above and in the center, and his henchmen surround him, arguing about how to strike back at what they think is a mob war.

In the other introductions, it is explained that Carlos and, secondarily, Stranger, received the greatest critical praise among all of the V-Cinema films, but to our mind, The Hitman: Blood Smells Like Roses is the best, most entertaining movie in a collection filled with entertainments. While working his way through the yakuza hierarchies, Saijo’s character gets help from an attractive thief played by Natsumi Nanase, giving the film a viable romantic component, and there is also a dogged detective who begins to understand that he is not investigating a mob war per se. Running 85 minutes, the story is solidly conceived, while the film’s cinematography, action, sex and star power are all exceptional. An 8-minute overview of Ishii’s remarkably diverse career is included, along with a trailer.

When the camera opens and the credits appear, the image of a blossoming wild flower fills the screen and you worry, ‘Oh dear, is this going to be some kind of la, la, la film?’ But once the credits near completion (spoiler alert), a large black tire stops right on the flowers, grinding them into the ground, and you know you are in good company. The 1991 Danger Point: The Road to Hell, directed by Yasuharu Hasebe (he also made Black Tight Killers—Feb 24), has a terrific, methodical a-to-b-to-c-to-d plot that carries you for a full 100 minutes, from those first images to the very end. It is marvelous storytelling that keeps you involved with the characters and interested in what they will find next. Shishido stars with Aikawa, playing a pair of hit men who are about to kill their mark when the mark offers them an enormous amount of money. Yeah, they kill him anyway, but then they start tracking down the money. The sex and the action are there, and are fully satisfying, but it is the storytelling that is the film’s true strength, carrying you along from character to character as the two men follow the history of the money to its final destination. The ending is inevitable but follows the same compelling logic that guides every scene, and the performances are wonderful. Also featured is a 15-minute summary of Shishido and Hasebe’s careers.

The fifth platter holds just one film, the wacky 1994 XX: Beautiful Hunter, which is best left to be discovered, such as it is. Makiko Kuno plays an assassin trained from childhood, by an oddball Christian cult led by a blind ‘Father,’ to kill people. And then she meets a nice guy… At one point the villains tie her up so she is hanging by her wrists. They had dressed her in black latex and then cut off the latex to expose her legs and one breast. Then they spray her with a hose and whip her. That seems to be the point of the film, actually. Johnny Okura costars. Running 90 minutes, the image looks decent—while hazy at times, the picture has the least amount of grain in the set—and there certainly is plenty of sex and violence. Directed by softcore porn veteran Masaru Konuma, if you are looking for a strong narrative to go with that, you had best look elsewhere.

Along with a trailer, there is a 19-minute overview of the careers of the cast and crew (there is a particular appreciation of the cinematography) combined with a history of the V-Cinema films that summarizes how the talent all came together to create the feature; and an interesting 18-minute interview with screenwriter Hiroshi Takahashi, who talks about how the story, such as it is, was developed. “This film made me realize how difficult it is to have a woman as a protagonist. Not that it’s difficult to write female characters, the problem is the man beside her. With a male hero, the woman next to him is appealing even if she doesn’t do anything. As a writer, you don’t have to worry about it. But when the main character is a woman, the male supporting character has to work hard, even at the screenplay stage, for their charm to come out. Otherwise, the woman stands out and the man gets lost.”

Kiarostami’s unique poetry

Abbas Kiarostami loves watching people walk or drive up and down hillsides, and nobody really captures the cinematic possibilities of these moments better. You inevitably come to see his hillsides as a pathway to heaven, and the people, fumbling about, getting closer and farther away as they come and they go.

Another exceptional film from the amazing movie year of 1999, Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us (Bad Ma Ra Khahad Bord) is set in a remote rural Iranian village that is carved into a hillside so that the fields in the valley below can be used for cultivation. There are other hills around the village as well. The highest one holds the cemetery, which is where the protagonist, played by Behzad Dorani, who has a James Woods thing going, must hop into his car and drive to whenever he gets a phone call, because it is the only location clear enough for him to get service on his phone. Dorani’s character claims to be an engineer, but as the 118-minute film unfolds, you gradually piece together that he actually has another purpose for visiting the town, and becomes increasingly frustrated—and downright evil—when he is unable to do what he came to do. He has a crew with him, who remain unseen—while not emphatically so, Kiarostami avoids reverse angle shots a lot of the time, and particularly when he doesn’t want you to see stuff. We hear the crew talking to Dorani’s character now and then, but so far as the movie’s visuals are concerned, he is alone.

Released on Blu-ray by MK2, Janus Films and The Criterion Collection (UPC#715515313216, $40), the film is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1, and it is the breathtaking views of the hillside, and the fascinating, vertically labyrinthine intricacy of the town, that hold the viewer spellbound as the actions and frustrations of Dorani’s character play out. The monophonic sound is clean and strong, and while Kiarostami often uses voiceover conversations with characters placed at a distance from the camera, the detailed background and environmental noises shift flawlessly to the passages where you can see the characters talking. The film is in Persian and Kurdish, with optional English subtitles. While the subtitles are lightly outlined in black, they can be difficult to read in scenes set in the village, where all the walls are white. The color transfer is sharp and precise, and the brown, treeless hills and golden grass are captivating. The locations would be exotic even for residents of Tehran, and for viewers from other parts of the globe, the film, as it is presented on the Blu-ray, essentially transports the viewer to another world. In the same manner, the BD magnifies the power of Kiarostami’s unique cinematic poetry, placing the viewer in a deceptively pedestrian set of actions that barely qualify as a drama, yet brought to the mystery of the sublime by the fusion of its arid beauty and universal humanity.

The supplements do not start up where they left off if playback is terminated, even the 90-minute production documentary, A Week with Kiarostami, shot by a Japanese camera crew on location. The documentary depicts four days of shooting in the town (and getting an apple to role properly off a balcony) and then three in a nearby wooded area where they eventually cut apart a dead tree and place it across a stream, because the existing dead trees across the stream did not meet their needs. Along with always trying to get the actors to use less Persian and more Kurdish, Kiarostami spends a particular amount of time coaxing a child actor from the village, who is a central character in the film, to give the performance he is hoping for. Also featured is a trailer; an excellent 53-minute interview with Kiarostami about the film (the villagers would never sit still because they had so much work to do before winter came, so he had a difficult time populating his movie with extras), his motivation behind various sequences (he put in a traveling shot in the woods only because he wanted to cheer up his camera crew—he didn’t really like the shot, although from an outsider’s perspective, it’s a wonderful moment), how he loves using animals because they have no self conscious reaction to the camera (“I would say the best actor here is the rooster. It’s wondering, ‘Where should it go? Where shouldn’t it go?’ It acts better than our actor.”), and the many symbols he incorporated within the images; and an artsy 15-minute piece that is really more of a home video promo reel, combining clips from many different Kiarostami films with quotations from his poetry (“All night long I thought. As a result I slept all day.”).

Kinji Fukasaku classics

Akira Kurosawa co-authored the script (there are a couple of conversations about dreams) for Kinji Fukasaku’s richly textured 1964 Toei masterpiece, Jakoman & Tetsu, an 88 Films Blu-ray (UPC#760137178088, $40). The film plays like it was made a decade or even a couple of decades earlier, which is when it is set, but that is part of its accomplishment, capturing its period so thoroughly that the environment is even conveyed through the Neorealistic manner of the film itself. Taking place in the far north of Japan, it is about a herring fisherman played by Isao Yamagata who has gathered migrant workers for a big seasonal haul that occurs every year when the herring arrive in his bay to spawn. His son, played by a young Ken Takakura, shows up with the migrants, as does a man who has a serious grudge against Yamagata’s character, played by Tetsurō Tamba (these latter two actors, in reverse order, provide the character names that serve as the movie’s title). Running 100 minutes, the film follows several dramas during the wintry wait for the spawning to occur, and like the spawning, the film uses the event to capture these co-mingled dramas in its net, including a labor conflict that occurs when the stinginess of Yamagata’s character gets the best of him. The actual fishing scenes are both exciting and edifying, while the different character stories and experiences bring an abundance of flavor and emotional exploration to the narrative.

The film does not start up where it left off if playback is terminated. The black-and-white picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1. Despite the widescreen, however, the film feels aged, with a number of errant speckles and a general softness in the contrasts. The film is fully watchable, it just feels older than it is. The monophonic sound is fairly strong and there is a compelling Masaru Satō musical score. The movie is in Japanese with optional English subtitles, and comes with a minute-long montage of memorabilia and a good 18-minute overview of the story and the film’s production.

Also featured is a commentary discussion with two Japanese film experts, Tom Mes and Jasper Sharp, who talk a lot about the careers of Fukasaku and the cast members, and also go over an earlier version of the story that Kurosawa was also involved with (that version featured Toshiro Mifune in the Takakura role, and they compare the careers of the two stars), as well as talking a lot about movies set in Hokkaido. All of that said, they seem to miss the forest from the trees and fail to grasp what a truly unique Neorealist accomplishment the film is, or how effectively the performances and the direction lend themselves to the movie’s entertainment.

***

Fukasaku wonderfully frantic yakuza film from 1977, Horkuriku Proxy War, has been released on Blu-ray by Radiance Films (UPC#760137172833, $40). The film is set on Japan’s west coast and although it takes place across several years, it is always winter. In fact, the protagonist, an upstart gangster played by Hiroki Matsukata, likes to bury his competitors in the snow up to their heads and then drive an open jeep around them. Sonny Chiba is also featured. The 97-minute film opens with one of such sequence and then never really slows down, as Matsukata’s character eliminates the branches of the gangs from the east coast that are trying to take over the rackets in his home territory. The pulsing musical score, by Toshiaki Tsushima, sounds like it came straight from Ennio Morricone and sets the non-stop pace. Even though the film is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1, much of the movie feels like it was shot with handheld cameras, and even when the camera is locked down, it is placed really close to the characters or at awkward angles, to keep the viewer from settling in. There can be times when one loses track of which characters are working with which group, but it eventually becomes clear, or clear enough, what the pathways are, and in the meantime, a viewer can savor the violence and relentless mix of formal politeness and underhanded backstabbing that all of the characters engage in as they vie for a position of control. Basically, if you have run out of really good American gangster films to watch—and face it, there really aren’t that many—then turn to Japan if you want to continue your fix, and Horkuriku is as good a place as any to begin.

The image is usually a bit grainy, but since even during the daytime it is always taking place in the middle of a heavy snowstorm, the picture is never going to be bright or entirely clear. Since it is setting a specific mood, the transfer looks terrific and not even the occasional stray speckle can upset the film’s atmosphere or a basic satisfaction with its presentation. The monophonic sound is fine and we would cut off our little finger to find a copy of the musical score. The film is Japanese with optional English subtitles and comes with a trailer; a really good 16-minute interview with co-star Yoko Takahashi, who has vivid memories of the production; a nice 19-minute rumination upon the film’s creation by screenwriter Koji Takada; and a 15-minute analysis of the film that talks about the uncomfortable situation which was created because the film was based upon actual Yakuza figures. In fact, Fukasaku interviewed one such individual in a particular booth of a particular café, and then shot the film in the same café, where there is an attempt on the life of Matsukata’s character in the same booth. A couple of months after the film was released, the man Fukasaku had interviewed was assassinated, while sitting in that same booth.

***

Being a small island filled with people, Japan has a reputation for overcrowding and that reputation percolates throughout Fukasaku’s impressively managed 1975 Toei crime film, Cops vs. Thugs, an Arrow Video DVD & Blu-ray (UPC#760137992981, $50). Almost every scene is set in a bar, an office, an automobile and so forth, and every scene is crammed with people, so that you aren’t just trying to figure you who is who, you’re trying to figure out who is talking. Even letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1, Fukasaku overpopulates nearly every shot, and once you get used to it, you realize his direction becomes not only a way of intensifying the conflicts created by police corruption and a mob war, but that it begins to feel like a unique cinematic approach, and is enormously satisfying simply as a storytelling style. On subsequent viewings, you find yourself paying more and more attention to the characters in the background and on the sides (and, at times, poking into the foreground), even as their presence pulls you into the central drama.

It does take a while to get a handle on who the primary gangsters are and who the major cops are—not only is there a mob war, but members of the police are beholden to one side or the other of that war—and it is only at about the halfway point of the 104-minute feature that a new cop, played by Tatsuo Umemiya, is brought in to clean up the town, which he wisely begins by cleaning up his own department. It is at that point that you stop just cruising with the violence and the sex and the money schemes the characters are involved in and really become excited watching loyalties and friendships fray, and onlookers start to take sides. Fukasaku’s style is so compelling that when, at the very end of the film, one of the protagonists dies totally and completely alone, the character’s uncrowded alienation feels overwhelming.

Bunta Sugawara and Matsukata star. Other than a stray speckle now and then, the picture transfer looks sharp, fleshtones are accurate and hues are strong. The monophonic sound is fine and the film is in Japanese with optional English subtitles. Also featured is a trailer, a 14-minute look at Fukasaku’s career, 5 minutes of behind-the-scenes footage including an interview with Fukasaku talking about the characters, and a good 9-minute overview of the film’s creation and themes. We were unable to assess the DVD included in the set.

***

A gangster released from prison after a decade of incarceration, played by Kōji Tsuruta, discovers that most of Japan has been taken over by a large syndicate, so he gathers the handful of former associates who have remained loyal to him and transplants himself to Okinawa, which is still open territory, as it were, in Fukasaku’s 1971 Toei production, Sympathy for the Underdog, a Radiance Blu-ray (UPC#760137155843, $40). Tsuruta’s character gradually wrestles control of the strip clubs and the port from the diverse factions controlling different areas of the town, only to see the syndicate take interest after he has managed to consolidate things. The film is shot in a gritty, headline-grabbing manner, but still manages to slip in the personalities of the gangsters between the flurries of violent confrontations. Running 93 minutes, the film implies that the protagonists have accomplished everything entirely by themselves, without building an hierarchy beneath the half-dozen characters who begin the film, but otherwise the movie, inspired by real events, is an enjoyable crime feature. The Okinawa locations, often captured on the sly, also add to the film’s fascinations. In both triumph and failure, Tsuruta is totally cool at all times (he spends most of the film wearing dark glasses), and you completely understand why his men would remain so loyal to him. As one of the island’s crime bosses, Tomisaburō Wakayama from the Lone Wolf and Cub films delivers an appealingly excessive performance, and the film’s balance between bursts of chaotic violence and passages of strategic posturing is enough to keep a viewer captivated.

Noboru Ando and Kenji Imai are also featured. The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1. The color transfer is fresh, although the film’s grungy atmosphere prevents the image from having a standout presence. In the few shots where portions of the screen are clearly lit, the details and accuracy of the hues are readily apparent and admirable. The monophonic sound is passable, and there is a wonderful jazz score by Takeo Yamashita, supplemented quite nicely by Okinawa folk music—one of the themes of the film is that the Japanese characters are just as intrusive upon the local culture as the Americans. The film is in Japanese with optional English subtitles. Along with a trailer, there is a thoughtful 27-minute appreciation of the film and Fukasaku’s career, and a terrific 26-minute look at the changing fortunes that have undergone Okinawa in Japanese films, with lots of great clips and stills.

An expert in Japanese gangster movies, Nathan Stuart (who says he has never seen The Wild Bunch because it is not a yakuza film, although others compare Fukasaku to Sam Peckinpah and Sympathy for the Underdog to Wild Bunch specifically; Fukasaku’s work may even be a key to understanding Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia), provides an informative commentary track, talking about the yakuza genre and how the film and the cast members fit into the growth and changes the movies were undergoing at the time. His talk contains many insightful details about the film at hand, while also examining the impact the genre was having. “To understand these films is that they go far beyond just being based upon a true story. We’ve got Noboru Ando, a real life yakuza, who went to prison, got out, became an actor. We’ve got yakuza bosses being able to request who plays them in biographies. We’ve got police raiding the Toei offices because they think they’re too sympathetic to the yakuza. We’ve got yakuza hanging around on set, being nuisances. Private screening set ups, so yakuza bosses and their family members can view the film before it is released to the general public. And it all adds up to this huge, fascinatingly rich and complex way of going about business and influencing this important genre of film that would go on to become not just influential but also incredibly popular.”

4K Concubine

A history of 20^th Century China as seen through the eyes of two actors in the Peking Opera, Kaige Chen’s 1993 Farewell My Concubine is as visually captivating as it is emotionally gripping, and thus makes an ideal two-platter Film Movement Classics Criterion Collection 4K Blu-ray (UPC#715515299817, $50). First seen as children undergoing the horrific training regimen that must be endured if they are to become artists, the partners are played as adults by Leslie Cheung and Fengyi Zhang, with Li Gong playing a prostitute who upsets their offstage equilibrium, at least in the eyes of Cheung’s character, when she marries Zhang’s character. Meanwhile, China is first invaded by Japan, then beset by Civil War, and finally torn inside out by the Cultural Revolution. Running 152 minutes, the film is visually transfixing (the initial scenes from the Twenties are in black and white with amazing incisions of dulled reds within the images), whether it is the incredibly colored details of Cheung’s stage face and costumes, or the dank urban landscapes of war and revolt, and in 4K, every frame is transcendent. The film’s presentation on the standard Blu-ray would probably be fine and is certainly more stable than the Miramax DVD we reviewed in Mar 00, but it is a mess of grain compared to the immaculate 4K presentation. Chen deliberately varies the clarity of the image from scene to scene. Some play with mildly blurry and impressionistic imagery, while others are sharp and smooth, underscoring the emotional complexity of each sequence. On the standard Blu-ray, it all has a basic grain and the back-and-forth gradations are lost. The 4K presentation holds you in its spell from start to finish.

The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1. The 5.1-channel DTS sound has delicate and crisp separations, adding greatly to the film’s immersive experience. The movie is in Mandarin with optional English subtitles.

The disc is an outstanding presentation of the film by any measure, but it is made even greater by the inclusion of three exceptional supplementary pieces which appear along with a trailer on the standard BD (while the film restarts where it left off if playback is terminated, the supplements do not). The first is a 23-minute production featurette that includes substantial interviews with the stars about their performances and characters, and behind-the-scenes footage of how several of the most challenging segments of the film were shot. That is followed by an excellent 36-minute conversation between Chinese film expert Michael Berry and an exporter who brought the first films from Communist China to the art house market in America in the late Eighties, Janet Yang. They begin by discussing the ‘Fifth Generation’ of filmmakers who spearheaded the ‘Third New Wave’ of Chinese features (i.e., films from Mainland China, which followed the Waves from Hong Kong and Taiwan), and segueing into a full contextual analysis of the film and its artistry. One of the things they make note of is that the co-screenwriter, Lu Wei, patterned the film’s structure somewhat recognizably after The Last Emperor, although they both allow as to how the characters are a great deal more appealing.

Finally, there is an amazing 18-minute interview with Chen from 1993 on The Charlie Rose Show that deserves an extensive deconstruction of its own. Most importantly, in addition to talking about the movie and supplying a basic context for potential American viewers, Chen talks about how, as a young teenager, he denounced his own father during the Cultural Revolution, and then reconciled with him after the madness had passed (his father served as a producer on the film). It is a very moving confession, but whom is he confessing to? In a couple of decades, Rose himself would, albeit deservedly, be denounced for cultural improprieties and lose his vocational position as a result of the denouncement, in some ways very much like the clip from the film that is shared on the show where the protagonists denounce one another. But it doesn’t stop there. Chen is wearing a pop culture jacket celebrating the Warner cartoon character known as ‘Taz,’ a Tasmanian Devil whose shtick is to rip through an environment leaving nothing but utter devastation in his wake. It is a fascinating fashion choice to employ while promoting his film. He and Rose talk about the censorship that the Chinese government employed before the film could be screened domestically, but they never broach what the movie’s initial American distributor, Miramax (under a man who would eventually undergo an even greater and more severe denouncement than what Rose experienced), did to the film initially to make it more palatable for American audiences, cutting out 14 minutes from the International version that represented Chen’s full intentions (the original LD we reviewed in Nov 94 was the abridged version and it was terrible, and it was only when the DVD was released that the film’s true value became apparent). Was Chen’s jacket sending a subliminal message in this regard?

4K Ugetsu

The camera pans from right to left across a rural landscape in the opening shot of Kenji Mizoguchi’s 1953 Ugetsu, and on the new Criterion Collection two-platter 4K Blu-ray (UPC#715515309318, $50), the image is so sharp that your eyes, reading from left to right, create a fleeting 3D effect. On the standard Blu-ray included in the set, which we reviewed as a separate release in Oct 24 (for Halloween!), the picture, while still nice looking, is not sharp enough or detailed enough to manifest the same illusion. Throughout the 96-minute film, the improved sharpness creates an even stronger bond between the film’s haunting emotional power and the viewer. With the exception of one split second displacement error in the lower left at the 53-minute mark, the presentation is perfect. Set in a pre-technological era, the film combines several short stories and fables to follow the fates of two rural couples during a time of war when they attempt to take their pottery to a busy town to profit from the mayhem. Each character is separated from the others and has a different experience, some of which are ethereal. The film is meticulously composed and the better the picture appears, the more involved you become with each character. The standard Blu-ray release was wonderful, but the 4K presentation is even more captivating.

The monophonic sound on the 4K presentation is at least as clean and sharp as the sound on the standard BD, and also adds to the film’s allure. The film is in Japanese with optional English subtitles. The 4K platter also carries the excellent Tony Rayns commentary track. The standard BD also has the commentary and comes with three trailers, a 14-minute appreciation of the film, 31 minutes of interviews with various crewmembers and an outstanding 150-minute retrospective profile of Mizoguchi entitled Kenji Mizoguchi The Life of a Film Director. The 4K packaging also comes with an excellent booklet containing several of the short stories by Akinari Ueda and Guy de Maupassant that were adapted and integrated for the film.

The way of Flesh

An outstanding ensemble drama set in the immediate post-War slums of Tokyo, Hideo Gosha’s 1988 Gate of Flesh is about a team of prostitutes living in a literally bombed out building—one yet-to-explode bomb is still dangling between two floors like a large, sinister breast—as they scrape together funds from the tricks they turn with American GIs to imagine a better future. The male yakuza gangs leave them alone out of fear for the bomb. The sets are too elaborate, the locations are too populated, the action is too furious and the sex is too explicit for the film to ever feel like a stage drama, but it conveys the same satisfactions, imbuing its characters with a vital and continually intriguing humanity.

Based upon a novel by Taijirō Tamura, the story was adapted both as a stageplay and as several previous films, including a 1964 feature directed by Seijun Suzuki that is probably better known. Rino Katase, Yūko Natori, Miyuki Kanō, Mineko Nishikawa, Senri Yamazaki and Naomi Hase star. The Toei production, released on Blu-ray by 88 Films (UPC#760137175919, $40), runs 119 minutes, integrating the stories of several of the women and a couple of the gangsters in a melodramatic tableau that is as compelling for its emotional exposures as it is for its feminized criminal aesthetic—bright colors amid the grime, as encapsulated by meticulously dressed prostitutes plying their trade in the ashes and mud. It’s Douglas Sirk meets Robert Aldrich by way of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Even Nozomu Izumimori’s musical score, which sounds fantastic on the BD’s exceptionally strong monophonic audio track, seems influenced as much by the classicism of Joaquín Rodrigo as it is by the modernism of Ennio Morricone.

The film’s final shot, incidentally, which accompanies the scrolling end credits, is an absolutely brilliant and sardonic capstone to the movie, and one of the all time great closing images that mean nothing whatsoever without having seen the movie preceding it. The film does not start up where it left off if playback is terminated, and is in Japanese with optional English subtitles. Letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1, the picture transfer is spotless, the hues are bright and fleshtones are accurate. Along with two trailers, there is a 3-minute montage of memorabilia, a good 12-minute interview with tattoo artist Seiji Mouri about the challenge of maintaining the veracity of the painted tattoos during the rigors of filmmaking (and actors leaning back in their chairs), and a 22-minute overview of the film and its precedents.

A commentary is included with Japanese film experts Jasper Sharp and Amber T., who don’t really have much to say about the production team (they fleetingly mention the cinematographer and don’t address the music at all) but talk extensively about Tamura’s story and its various adaptations, as well as about the American occupation of Japan and other movies depicting it, and the changes that the film’s locale underwent after the economy started up again. They also discuss the film’s thematic depth and its reflection of the Japanese psyche. “In film and media, sex workers are often shown as these kind of immoral, baseless people, but in this film, they’re the ones upholding this moral. The men are like, ‘No, we’ll work with the Americans,’ but the women are like, ‘No, we have to help ourselves and help each other first.’ I think it’s a really progressive representation of prostitutes, especially coming from a time that maybe, you know, we look at this now from 2025 and we have kind of obviously very different ideas about sex work and are very much more liberal in how we look at it, but this wasn’t like a ‘girl boss’ feminism time. This was ‘doing what they needed to do to survive’ and with that comes its own set of—I don’t know—morals and ethics, I suppose.”

Chinese family

The name of the 2000 film, Yi Yi, is translated in the subtitles and the jacket cover on the Criterion Collection Blu-ray (UPC#715515069410, $40) as, A One and a Two…, and sure enough, you’re going to want to watch the movie at least twice, if not many more times. The film is about the psyches and love lives of every stratum in a middle class family living in a Taipei apartment. The grandmother has a stroke and is bedridden. The father is being pressured to close business deals he is not happy with, and also reconnects with a college sweetheart. The mother is off at a retreat. The teenage daughter is acting as a go-between for her friend next door, who is becoming an accomplished cellist, and a flighty boyfriend (the friend’s mother is also a piece of work). And the youngest boy has just begun to see the girl who teases him all of the time in a different light. Running a daunting 173 minutes and often presented in long and medium long shots, the film can seem uninteresting at first—too many characters, not much happening—but by about the halfway point you become totally addicted, and that is why you will want to watch the movie at least one more time, to go back to the beginning with your new knowledge of the characters and their fates, and pick up all of the nuances you missed the first time through. Directed by Edward Yang, the film does everything it can to keep the viewer distanced from the characters, but that just makes you work harder to know them and enjoy their company when you’re given the opportunity to do so.

The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1 and the color transfer is finely detailed. The two-channel DTS sound has a compelling dimensionality that adds to the atmosphere of every scene. The film is in Mandarin and fractured English, with optional English subtitles. Along with a trailer, there is a 15-minute history of the Taiwan film business and an explanation as to how Yang’s New Wave features fit into it by Asian expert Tony Rayns.

Rayns then sits down with Edward to provide a conversational commentary track for the entire running of the film, going over Edward’s intentions and inspirations for specific scenes, talking about the performances and how various sequences were accomplished, and sharing many more insights and details.

“This is real rain, yes.”

“Actually it was an accident, or you waited?”

“I waited. The summer was kind of a dry summer and it rained very little rain, and one day we waited and we knew it was gonna to rain, so we waited and it turned out to be really heavy pouring.”

“And you scripted it to be raining because this is the most emotionally turbulent day in the lives [of the characters.]”

Japanese families

Two children, a teenager, two adults and an old woman live together as a family in a cramped urban shack in the 2018 Palme d'Or winner at the Cannes Film Festival, Shoplifters, a Magnolia Entertainment DVD (UPC#876964016582, $15) directed by Kore-eda Hirokazu. Yes, they do engage in petty crimes here and there to keep the food coming in, but the real gist of the film is its exploration of what constitutes a family and the emotional bonds that develop between each of the characters with the others, individually. Running 121 minutes, most of the film sustains its entertainment with its character explorations, although in the last act there are a series of revelations regarding the backgrounds of the characters that perhaps places those dynamics in a new light, or perhaps not. In any case, the characters and their performers are all appealing and adeptly played, so that the time spent in their company remains a rewarding and even thought provoking experience. The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. The color transfer looks great and is hindered only by a slight softness in some of the darker portions of the screen. The 5.1-channel Dolby Digital sound has a viable dimensionality that adds effectively to the movie’s atmosphere. The film is in Japanese with permanent English subtitles.

***

Letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1, the action takes place entirely within a single cramped Tokyo apartment in the amusing 1962 Japanese comedy about a family of con artists, Elegant Beast, a Radiance Films Blu-ray (UPC#760137141068, $40). Directed by Yuzo Kawashima, the wonderful horizontal framings are often broken up with walls and windows to separate characters, and there are vertical and diagonal separations as well. Sometimes a character will just be in a small triangular slice of a space above a shelf in an upper corner of the screen. Hence, the film is as enjoyable for Kawashima’s inventive blocking as it is for its stageplay-like narrative. As the film opens, the husband and wife are busily dressing down their apartment, to make them look poorer than they already are. They finish just in time for their visitors—their son’s boss, the office accountant and one of the office clients, who claim the son has been embezzling payments. Running 96 minutes, the parade of visitors arriving or returning continues—the daughter is the mistress to a successful writer, and the son has been borrowing from him as well—and it soon becomes apparent that the family is also being scammed by one of the other characters. Over the course of 24 hours, a lot of things happen and not much happens, but you do get to know all of the characters, and from their conversations, you can vividly imagine their lives and problems. The comedy is subdued, but ever-present, and the film is pretty much a textbook example of constructing a rich and entertaining feature with minimal resources and maximum creativity.

The color transfer is solid. The image is not glossy, of course, but the source material is free of wear. The monophonic sound is okay and the film is in Japanese with optional English subtitles. Along with a trailer, there is an excellent 17-minute introduction to Kawashima (“His films had a wonderful lightness and brightness, and a sense of speed.”), the cast and the characters; an insightful 14-minute appreciation of the film; and a terrific 12-minute analysis of the film’s historical context (such as Japan’s housing challenges after the War) and stylistic accomplishments.

Delightful colors

Nothing prepares one—certainly not the undistinguished jacket art—for the remarkable children’s film released on Blu-ray by The Criterion Collection, Takashi Murakami’s 2013 Jellyfish Eyes (UPC#715515161817, $40). Sadly, the disc does not have an English language audio track, so its constituency is unnecessarily limited to older kids and open-minded adults, but the film, also known as Mememe No Kurage (it is simply coincidental that the Japanese word for jellyfish, kurage, matches the English word, courage, although the link applies to the film’s story), will have one dependable fan base—those who have very large screens and like colorful images. Letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.78:1, the transfer is exceptional, even in the high-end world of Criterion Blu-ray transfers. Every edge is sharp, every hue is vivid, and the presentation is spectacular, not just during its fantasy sequences, but even the simple shots of green fields and trees.

Running 101 minutes, the movie begins innocently and commonly enough, with a boy and his recently widowed mother driving to their new home. He catches a brief glimpse of a small but fantastical creature flying above their car, and when he arrives at their new apartment, the creature, who looks like the Pillsbury Doughboy, but with a jellyfish-ish umbrella hat seemingly made of white tobacco leaves, follows him inside, asking for string cheese. He hides the creature in his backpack, brings him to school on his first day in his new classroom, and just when you think the film is going to turn into one more E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial ripoff, it turns out that unbeknownst to the teacher, every kid in the class has a different and often mischievous creature with them. So the movie ends up moving closer to The Great Yokai War (Jan 22), but the important thing is, the film is constantly imaginative and quite delightful. Unlike movies that pander to kids, the emotions the children express are always believably real and unguarded. Some of the kids are vicious, and so are their creatures. The plot—the same scientists that created the creatures are villains looking to tap negative energy from the kids—builds to quite a grand finale, but it is continually witty (oh yeah, some of those creatures are so adorable they make Pikachu seem like a pet rock), exciting and imaginative. Backed up by the amazing color transfer, the film is the distillation of what is best about every children’s film ever, with none of the usual baggage to remind you why you don’t like kiddie films any more.

The film is in Japanese with optional English subtitles. The 5.1-channel DTS sound has a few cool directional effects and while it is not overly stimulating in the way that the picture is, it serves the film adequately. After the end credit scroll, there is a teaser for a very different but even more spectacular Jellyfish Eyes 2, and Criterion also includes a trailer for the sequel in the supplement, but sadly no one has yet had the impetus to release the film on another Blu-ray. Also featured is a very nice 23-minute interview with Murakami explaining how the film was gestated, and 56 minutes of terrific behind-the-scenes footage showing the artists working on the crazy models and the live action shoot, as well as story and design conferences (at one point they argue about whether or not the film should have a happy ending—like, duh).

Chan emerges

Long before he began performing death-defying stunts in front of the camera and long before he brought a martial arts attitude to contemporary cop films, Jackie Chan began by making period Chinese kung fu features, and since he was not facially sculpted like Bruce Lee, he turned, as men who can’t get by on just their looks often do, to humor. Five such films that Chan made in the late Seventies and early Eighties, along with his first contemporary cop feature (Project A, which is not part of the set, was still a period film), are presented on the four-platter Criterion Collection Blu-ray set, Jackie Chan Emergence of a Superstar (UPC#715515289115, $125).

The initial five films are all letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1. All of the films in the collection are monophonic in Cantonese with optional English subtitles and all come with alternate English dubbed tracks. All of them also have an alternate Cantonese track, mostly in 5.1-channel DTS sound, which must be selected because the default is the mono track.

The opening film may be tough going for some viewers because it is an out-and-out comedy without the refinements that would mature his later movies (most of the time) and balance the humor. The 1978 Lo Wei Motion Picture Company production, Half a Loaf of Kung Fu!, directed by Chi-Hwa Chan (no relation to Jackie), begins with a very amusing parody of a Shaw Bros. opening credit sequence—abstract images of the star or stars performing martial arts by themselves or against opponents—that begins with Chan acting like a lazy bum, and then incorporates spoofs of Zatoichi, Jesus Christ, Superstar and other cinematic icons. The story itself is simple enough—Chan’s character, while learning kung fu over the course of the film, presents himself as a master and is taken on by an escorting service to help guard a valuable shipment of jewels, while gangs of all shapes and sizes try to grab the goods—and is presented in a hyper-comical style, with sped up frame rates, slapstick violence and many, many gags about bodily functions. Running 96 minutes, the movie is rescued only by the wit of the actual fighting sequences and Chan’s impressive acrobatic talents, essentially making his purposefully inept fighting style as effective (and dazzling) as any more supposedly elegant fighter might be.

The colors are fresh, and while the source material looks like it is on the verge of falling apart at any moment, it remains both stable and relatively smooth. By any measure, it is a substantial improvement over the cropped presentation on DVD from Simitar that we reviewed in Dec 97, even though the improvements do not enhance the entertainment. Also featured are two trailers and a nice 10-minute overview of Chan’s appeal that includes a steady montage of stunts and fights in clips not only from this boxed set, but from Criterion’s Police Story set (Jul 19) and stills from lots of other Chan films.

Assume, hypothetically, that someone who has never seen a Jackie Chan film before has purchased Criterion’s collection as an introduction to the actor’s artistry, and has not, after the first film, gone running back to the store to demand a refund. There are, after all, innumerable indications within Half a Loaf of Kung Fu! that Chan’s athleticism is, at the very least, intriguing and different. And then comes the second feature in the collection, Wei Lo’s 1978 Lo Wei production, Spiritual Kung Fu. It, too, begins comically, but with substantially more refinement than Half a Loaf. Chan’s character, unshorn, is a low level employee, for want of a better word, at a monastery, and is being trained by the monks in the age-old classical way of training, making him do chores that build up his strength and dexterity without his realizing it. Friends come to the wall of the monastery and tease him with food while his hands are tied to a heavy plank across his shoulders, and without missing a beat, he catches each piece of food in his mouth. Rather than a mindless narrative about protecting jewels, a Least Likely Suspect steals an important manual and passes it to an outsider who wants to become the greatest kung fu master, thus turning the movie into a viable mystery, where an innocent person is accused of the theft and subsequent murders. At the same time, Chan’s character uncovers a long lost manual that essentially trumps the other manual and with the help of several ethereal spirits, rapidly improves his skills. Yes, the spirits are comical and there is plenty of physical slapstick, but the vectors of the outsider character and Chan’s character are clearly going to meet at some point, and that, plus the viable whodunit, is enough to sustain an interest in the 98-minute film up to the final half hour.

And then, in that final half hour, which is made up of almost constant fighting scenes, the true nature of Chan’s appeal is put on full display and you realize you are not watching a funny Bruce Lee, you’re watching a Fred Astaire who can knock down any man in the room. Chan’s intricate, carefully timed moves are relentless and amazing—there can be a dozen blows between cuts—and it is never the same move over and over, but constantly different arm movements, leg movements and body positions. In one sequence, he faces off against eighteen pole fighters lined up in a row, and he dispenses with each one quickly and differently. The lack of redundancy underscores the imaginative vitality that makes Chan’s films—and in retrospect, even Half a Loaf—inherently entertaining regardless of their dramatic content. And since, with editing, the fights are even more dazzling and complex works of unique cinematic art, the films attached to them are exceptional works of entertainment.

James Tien, Wen-Siu Wu and Tong-Chun Li co-star. The color transfer is a solid and free of impediments. The camera lenses distort the edges of the image at times, and the double exposed spirits create exaggerated hazes and other impurities, but the presentation is a viable representation of the original production and is in much better condition than previous efforts have appeared. This time the improved picture transfer adds greatly to the entertainment in comparison to the pathetic Simitar DVD we reviewed in Mar 98. The widescreen image enhances the dynamics of the action significantly, while the improved color transfer enables a greater emotional connection to the narrative. Also featured is a trailer, a 4-minute segment on the fighting styles in the film that includes a brief interview with Chan, and a passable 10-minute summary of Lo’s career as a director, with more great clips.

Chan himself directed the 1979 Goodyear Movie Company production, The Fearless Hyena, which does not have the elaborate narrative (or setting) that made Spiritual Kung Fu exceptional, but presents another viable blend of humor and serious fighting. The grandfather of Chan’s character is in hiding because a villain wants to kill him, and he forbids Chan’s character from showing off his fighting skills, so as not to alert the bad guys, but in order to make money, Chan’s character inevitably begins to use what he knows, and eventually the villain gets wind of it. Meanwhile, however, the fights are once again highly elaborate and creative, even as the characters pretend to be sloppy or confused, so that not only is Chan doing innumerable moves within a single take, he is ‘acting’ at the same time, sometimes with purposely exaggerated emotions (indeed, some of the fight moves are keyed by the declared emotion) and sometimes with genuine reactions to the drama. Running 97 minutes, the film delivers on its promises and is wholly satisfying even as its story shifts from humor to tragedy.

Other than a few briefly glimpsed extras, there are no female characters. Tien, Shi-Kwan Yen, Lee Kwan, Hui-Lou Chen and Fu-Hung Cheng costar. The color transfer is in excellent condition again, removing the impediments to the entertainment that were present in the Simitar DVD we reviewed in Dec 97, although even cropped and poorly colored, the film was still plenty of fun. Two trailers are included.

Hong Kong film expert Frank Djeng, speaking very quickly to squeeze everything in, supplies an excellent commentary track, covering the backgrounds of the cast and the crew, identifying the many voice actors substituting the actors on the screen, explaining the film’s cultural nuances, deconstructing the narrative and fight choreography, noting the differences in how Chan was spelling his first name in the earlier films compared to the later ones, and going over the many idiosyncrasies of Hong Kong filmmaking. “Now you hear the music of Henry Mancini’s The Pink Panther theme music, which I’m pretty sure the filmmakers didn’t get cleared to use. Back then, the idea of requesting permission from the music copyright owner to use his library was almost nonexistent. The filmmaker would just use his Hollywood library music, whichever was most appropriate for the scene, without ever thinking about asking for permission or clearance to use it, and many times when the music’s rightful owner finds out about its non-copyrighted use or unauthorized use in a film like this they try to contact the producer or the filmmaking company by calling Hong Kong only to get a response from someone who doesn’t speak a word of English. So during the Seventies and Eighties, it was almost impossible for owners of the music of Hollywood films to ask the Hong Kong filmmakers not to use them or have them go through the proper procedures to clear it. Music clearance is no longer an issue now.”

A sequel in name only, the 1983 Lo Wei production, Fearless Hyena II, has many of the same actors, including Tien, Yen and Chen, often in the same makeup and costumes, but the characters are entirely different and the film is something of a mess. As Djeng explains during his commentary on the first film, the movie was a patchwork job to cash in on Chan’s popularity and Chan pretty much disowned it, although it was quite profitable. There is a vague narrative about a pair of villains looking for the father of Chan’s character so they can kill him, but the film is kind of pasted together so that the story takes enormous, unexplained leaps from one situation to the next, and you only keep up with it because the entire thing is so mindless. That would be fine if the fight scenes were innovative, but they, too, are pretty much a reiteration of what was done in the initial Hyena feature. Directed by Chuen Chan (no relation to Jackie), you can spot a lot of the same moves and even the same combinations. Additional creativity is minimal. The editing in the fight scenes is also off tangent, so that there is no logic in the punches and counter-punches—instead, it looks like the fighters are deliberately missing one another. The final act in the 91-minute feature, in which another character sets traps in a bamboo forest for the villains, followed by the big final duel, isn’t bad, but getting there will require a great deal of patience or a complete Jackie Chan fanaticism.

The picture looks fine and its only flaws are instigated by the cinematography and not the image transfer, again a substantial improvement over the Simitar DVD we reviewed in Mar 98 (although we enjoyed the film a little more at the time, perhaps because we assumed we were missing more than we were actually missing). There are two different English language tracks offered.

Chan directed the very enjoyable 1980 Golden Harvest production, The Young Master, which dazzles the viewer with its opening sequence—a lion costume battle in a town square—and then continues to present creative and witty fights and stunts throughout the 107-minute feature, which appears by itself on the third platter. His character is also on the receiving end of the blows throughout the film. He loses the lion fight, is kicked out of his kung fu school (and family), is mistaken for a bank robber (while still taking place in a pre-technological setting, the film has a more contemporary feeling to it than the previous films) and much abused by his captors, and then gets beaten to a pulp in the final and lengthy one-on-one fight with the villain, although he ultimately triumphs. Nevertheless, he never loses his sense of humor, and the fighting combinations become more complex and inventive as they go along. Yuen costars, and the meticulously timed sparring they do together is especially impressive. Perhaps it helps to come to the film after the ineptitudes of Fearless Hyena II, but every aspect of the filmmaking is stronger, tighter and more engaging.

The color transfer looks great. There is an 8-minute interview with Chan talking about how things got easier for him as a director as his films became successful; 8 minutes of interesting deleted scenes; 9 minutes of great silent bloopers; a 13-minute silent abridgment of the film highlighting several fight sequences; a trailer; and a terrific 28-minute interview with costar and martial arts expert In-shik Hwang, who assisted in training a number of Hong Kong stars in his particular style of fighting, and shares his memories of becoming involved with the movies.

Djeng supplies another excellent commentary track, going over the careers of many members of the cast and the crew, explaining cultural references, contextualizing the translations of the Chinese dialog and texts, discussing the film’s production history and deconstructing individual scenes and fights. “You notice that they have black duct tape on the hilt of the swords. That is to help absorb the hand sweats because of the humidity. Hong Kong is very humid, especially during like spring or summertime. Now note the use of baskets behind them, apparently to hide some modern structure on the road. Also note that railing there that looks awfully too modern.”

Chan appears in the first 12 minutes of the 1985 contemporary action comedy from Golden Harvest, My Lucky Stars, and then does not reappear, except for one brief scene, until the final 20 minutes. The sequences where he does appear are fantastic. He plays a Hong Kong cop chasing after international criminals in Japan. The chases are on par with his Police Story films, and his fights are equally terrific. The middle hour of the 97-minute feature, however, stars director Sammo Hung (who appeared as a villain for one fight in Half a Loaf of Kung Fu!) with an ensemble of comedians, Eric Tsang, Richard Ng, Charlie Chin and Stanley Fung. Since he can’t trust the police, Chan’s character recruits the group—mostly childhood friends who are now all drifters and hustlers—to infiltrate the Tokyo mob. Most of that hour, however, is comprised of Hung’s character gathering the group together, and it is filled with slapstick gags and juvenile character humor. Here and there, a bit is amusing or a stunt is reasonably impressive and energized, but it can try the patience of viewers who were hoping for more action and less comedy. Sibelle Hu costars as the group’s handler (their obsession over her is the basis for much of the attempted humor) and Bolo Yeung has a brief part.

The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.78:1, and the color transfer is impeccable. The image is sharp, bright and glossy. The alternate stereo soundtrack has just two channels, but still sustains a decent dimensionality and clarity. The film is presented by itself on the fourth platter and comes with two trailers; 22 minutes of terrific silent bloopers; an interesting 21-minute interview with costar Michiko Nishiwaki, talking about her career, working with the different cast members, and the fight scenes; and a great 18-minute interview with Hung talking about making Lucky Stars (he would only sleep on the ride to and from the set) and a couple of other films (with more wonderful clips), and explaining the challenges of various stunts.

Two phases of Cheh Chang’s lengthy career

Two Shaw Bros. films that share an English translated word in their titles have been paired on the single-platter Celestial Pictures and Eureka! Blu-ray, The Magnificent Chang Cheh (UPC#760137177906, $40). Both films are set in pre-technological times and combine terrific martial arts sequences with adeptly conveyed star power. Both movies are letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1 and are in Mandarin with optional English subtitles.

The storytelling is immediately grabbing in the Chang’s 1966 The Magnificent Trio. A swordsman returning from battle sees three men tying up a woman and steps in to save her, only to learn that her abduction is justified. From there the plot advances with more characters and plenty of interesting twists and turns, so that by the time the characters you have invested in begin to die, you are too involved to be alienated by the tragedies. There are many lyrical fight scenes, several pleasing romantic interludes, wonderfully composed soundstage sets that are not over decorated but dressed just enough to transport the imagination, and a few carefully chosen outdoor sequences, including a widescreen shot at the end that places two characters as little more than discernible pinpoints on the opposite edges of the wide screen. Chang’s filmmaking is thrilling, but his storytelling is also masterful, so that even when the heroes know the villain is going to go back on his word, more than once during the 109-minute feature, they are logically compelled to follow through with the deals they have made with him to save others. Jimmy Wang Yu, Feng Ku, and Ming Lui star, with Feng Tien, Lieh Lo and Margaret Tu Chuan.

Although the cinematography is out of focus at times, to a point of irritation, the image transfer is lovely, with accurate fleshtones and bright hues, and when the picture is sharp, the details are carefully defined. The monophonic sound is crisp, and the delivery is mostly satisfying, although the high end is raspy from time to time. Hong Kong film experts Frank Djeng and Michael Worth provide a viable commentary track, pointing out that not only was this Chang’s fourth film, it was his first color film and the earliest martial arts movie that is still available (an earlier one is lost). Along with supplying more extensive career information only for cast members who haven’t appeared in many other films they’ve done commentaries for, and deconstructing the basics of the movie’s drama and composition, they focus on the Chang’s budding stylistic innovations and how he was changing the nature of martial arts films. “We’re at this phase where we switched over from, or we are in the process of switching over from the choreography of the earlier films that had been surviving since 1928, which is modeled on the Shanghai School of Peking Opera, the Northern styles, and then the second style of martial arts, which Chang Cheh essentially felt—he’s not entirely wrong—were attributed to both him and King Hu.”

The second film, Magnificent Wanderers, is a completely unrelated 1977 comedy—nobody dies—with Robin Hood aspirations. Alexander Fu Sheng, Kuan-Chun Chi and Yi-Min Li are three street hustlers who team up with a wealthy rebel (he shoots gold marbles from a bow at people, distracting them as much as hurting them as they scramble to find the balls on the ground after they’ve been hit) played by David Chiang to fight a corrupt government official and his hopeless lackeys. The official has an irritating stutter, but otherwise the comedy is palatable, and the martial arts are unharmed by the film’s tone. Indeed, the enthusiasm with which the heroes bash the bad guys is the foundation of the film’s charm. Running 98 minutes, the story sort of breaks off where a sequel ought to begin, but it is an enjoyable blend of humor and action, strengthened substantially by the personalities of the characters—another reason a sequel would have been most welcome.

Again, the transfer is excellent, and this time the cinematography is in focus, but filters are employed at times that give the image a kind of shadowy tone. Nevertheless, colors are accurate and the image is crisp. The sound is very nicely defined and has a decent bass for its day. Hong Kong film enthusiasts Arne Venema and Michael Worth supply an entertaining, conversational commentary track. Although they go on many enjoyable digressions, they do talk about the movie, the cast and the crew, and explain the basic dynamic that created the film—Chang had made a couple of boxoffice disappointments and was thrown into a period of doubt while the entire industry was going through a number of changes.

“It’s not Chang Cheh’s best.”

“It’s interesting to see where he was, and as a transitional film, as a piece that you look at and go, ‘This is what happens to a filmmaker that was at the top of his game and got knocked off.’”

“He was unsure, suddenly, and the genre was changing.”

Fortunately, he would recover his mojo and make many more terrific films.

Also featured on the platter is an excellent 29-minute deconstruction of Chang’s filmmaking techniques, using the two films for comparative examples, showing Chang’s effective use of strategies such foreground framing, symmetrical composition, slow motion, whip pans, zooms and so on.

The ladies of Shaw Bros.

Since the 1975 Shaw Bros. production, Lady of the Law, runs 90 minutes on the dot, it seems clear that the filmmakers themselves were the ones who trimmed out scenes to keep the story moving, as the narrative leaps precipitously from one story advancement to the next. The story jumps are mitigated by two factors, however. One is that the plot is still very easy to follow—you never need more than a split second to figure out what is going on—and the other is that the movie is so enjoyable, the only regret for the missing scenes is that they would clearly be just as much fun as what has been left in and this is a movie you would happily spend a couple of hours with. Indeed, as ‘The End’ appears, you immediately long for a sequel.

Released on Blu-ray by Celestial Pictures and 88 Films (UPC#760137167709, $40), Rushuang Leng plays the title character, a sort of roving vigilante who works with each locality’s law enforcement to bring villains to justice during a non-technological era. The film’s hero is played by Lieh Lo (the two met as children, but have since been separated), a flunky in a bodyguard business who has secretly mastered the kung fu taught to the other bodyguards while he does cleaning chores. When the boss’s evil son rapes and kills the mistress of another boss, the son plants the blame on Lo’s character, and he must escape and prove his innocence, while Leng’s character is on his trail. Directed by Chang Shen, the fights are acrobatic and enjoyable, there is a little bit of nudity and the story is composed to keep the viewer in suspense and delight every step of the way. Additionally, while the costumes are not flowery, they are carefully color coordinated, so that not only can you differentiate when a mass of good guys and bad guys are battling, but the screen is always lit with captivating hues, like a garden. Letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1, the image is very fresh and free of wear, so that the film is as visually pleasing as it is dramatically entertaining.

The monophonic sound is in Mandarin with optional English subtitles and is also in good condition. A 4-minute montage of nice promotional stills is also included.

Asian film authority David West supplies a commentary track, but it is of limited value. He spends most of the time reeling off the credits for the cast members and has very little to say about the movie at hand, other than blaming some of the story leaps on production difficulties. However, he even mistakenly claims that something doesn’t occur in the final battle that most certainly does occur, although the gist of what he is saying about the story not following through on things is valid.

***

Gender equality is readily achieved in the simple but entertaining 1971 Shaw Bros. martial arts feature, Lady with a Sword, a Celestial Pictures 88 Films Blu-ray (UPC#760137175889, $30). A rarity for Shaw Bros., the film was directed by a female, Pao-Shu Kao, and has both a gratifying, straightforward visual style and distinctive editing that clarifies and advances every sequence. There are male and female villains and heroes, all highly and equally skilled at swordplay, leaping about in defiance of gravity. A couple of them are outright evil, but most are torn between familial loyalty and moral sensibility. The linear story pushes the plot along from one tragedy or fight to the next, with blood spraying all over the place. Lily Ho stars, seeking to avenge her sister’s sexual assault and murder, only to discover, eventually, that the young man who committed the crime is her fiancé, even though they haven’t seen one another since childhood. After encounters, conflicts and ambushes at an inn, she follows him back to his home and confronts his family. The moral dilemma she faces between the honor she owes her sister and the honor she owes her future husband and his family enriches the dramatic validity of the action that follows. Unfortunately, while the story does not exactly paint itself into a corner, most of the characters, even the likable ones, are dead by the end. Be that as it may, the 89-minute film is highly entertaining as it plays out because of the manner in which the story advances, the ferocity and numerosity of the fights, and the exceptionally clear emotional constructs of every character, male and female.

Seok-Hoon Nam, Shieh Wang, Yuen-Man Meng and Chih Hsien Po co-star. The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1. The color transfer is excellent and the image is spotless. The only flaws in the presentation are the problematic camera lenses Shaw Bros. employed now and then. The monophonic sound is clear and the film is in Mandarin with optional English subtitles. A 2-minute montage of promotional stills is also included. West provides a workable commentary track. He seems a bit less informed than the best commentators, but he knows all of the basics and talks about the cast, the crew and the film’s innovative feminine perspective, including how that affects the dynamics of duty and honor.

***

A clever 1983 Shaw Bros. production that updates kung fu films for a new generation of viewers, The Lady Is the Boss includes, among other things, a fight where the heroes use BMX bikes and the villains wield construction tools. Kar-Leung Lau directed the entertaining feature, released on Blu-ray by Celestial Pictures and 88 Films (UPC#760137167679, $30), which takes a standard narrative template—trying to protect their kung fu school, the heroes run afoul of gangsters—and dresses it in modern times. In one amusing scene, bar girls who have been to the school, practice what they have learned on their grabby customers. When the school’s leader is unable to come to Hong Kong from America to address the issues it is facing, his young but talented daughter arrives instead, mixing English with her Cantonese (many of her line readings are positively poetic) and showing no deference to age or maleness. Kara Hui stars, and her fighting movements are as frisky and invigorating as her line readings. Running 97 minutes, the film may be little more than a string of fabulously inventive and energetic fight scenes staged in contemporary settings, but the stars are appealing, the story is sort of valid enough to justify the action, and the film feels like nothing you’ve ever seen before even if, on close examination, you’ve seen it a thousand times.

Lau also costars, along with Gordon Liu (they make inspired fun of his monk image), Wong Yu and Robert Mak. The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1. Well lit indoor shots demonstrate that the picture transfer is excellent, with fresh, accurate hues, and there is no damage to the source material, but the cinematography is a strain at times, looking very hazy or otherwise mishandled. The monophonic sound is okay, and there are optional English subtitles. Along with a trailer, there is a 3-minute montage of promotional photos and a 14-minute introduction to Lau’s breakthrough martial arts features.

Hong Kong film expert Frank Djeng provides a thorough commentary going into Lau’s career and Hui’s background, and profiling the other members of the cast and the crew, as well as digressing into various reflections on the different Hong Kong locations appearing in the film, the nature and hierarchies of martial arts schools and clubs, and the film’s plot turns. “The writer wastes an opportunity to really let a strong female actress like Hui take center stage in the finale, and makes you think why Lau felt like he had to fall back on the same old ‘damsel in distress plot, hero to the rescue’ thing, but thanks to the quality of the martial arts action here and everyone’s wonderful performances, the film’s narrative deficits can sometimes be overlooked.”

Ichikawa cool

Along with playing ultra-cool samurai and ninja heroes in his other films, Raizo Ichikawa also plays ultra-ultra-cool hitmen in two 1967 Daiei features directed by Kazuo Mori and released on a single-platter Blu-ray by Arrow Video, A Certain Killer / A Killer’s Key (UPC# 760137170556, $40). Not only is Ichikawa totally awesome, but the films have a wonderful, Sixties tone and style that are transporting and engrossing even without the very clever narratives. Although he appears to be a different character in the two films (he has a different name in each one, and a different ‘civilian’ skill to hide his true identity), there are still great similarities between the characters—they both kill their marks by quickly poking a needle in the victim’s spine—and produced just months apart, the two films make an ideal double bill.

Both films are letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1. Both movies have a kind of grimy atmosphere at times, but are still stylistically compelling and have decent looking color transfers that are free of significant flaws. On both, the monophonic sound is fine, and both films are in Japanese with optional English subtitles.

Running 82 minutes, A Certain Killer introduces Ichikawa’s character as a skilled chef and the owner of a restaurant, who has rented a room in a remote shack-like building next to a graveyard, looking out over a desolate urban landscape. The film cuts between him and his companions waiting to do the job they have planned, and flashbacks showing how they met and what the job will be. The thing is, the flashbacks initially lead you down one path, so there is a surprise and a twist halfway through. Ichikawa’s character is steely and reserved, and is two steps ahead of everyone around him. He is also capable of defending himself if things don’t go his way. Basically, he just stares at you from the screen and you are hooked, ready to bask in whatever trick he’s going to pull.

Japanese film expert Tony Rayns supplies a commentary track, explaining as best he can the narrative’s chronology, going over Daiei’s passion for creating ‘series’ films, discussing the film’s production history and pointing out its artistic merits—he notes that there are visual and narrative similarities to Le Samuraï (Aug 24), which was being made simultaneously in France at the time—but he spends most of his talk going into extensive detail about the rather short but richly rewarding (for movie fans) life and career of Ichikawa.

There are no clever flashbacks in A Killer’s Key, just a totally involving step-by-step narrative that swings even closer to Le Samuraï, as Ichikawa’s character, a dance instructor, is hired to do an assassination, only to have the people who hired him try to kill him afterwards. In response, he works his way up their hierarchy, death by death, to find out who was behind it all. The ending could have been more clever than it is, but otherwise, the 71-minute film is brisk, totally absorbing, and still really, really cool.

Rayns talks for a total of 46 minutes over Killer’s Key, in two segments, the first starting at the beginning and the second starting at the 42-minute mark. He has a bit to say about the movie and how its narrative structure differs from Certain Killer, but he spends most of his time talking about Mori, who had an exceptional career as a workhorse director, making over a hundred films that were mostly studio formula pictures but, as Rayns explains, invariably stood out for their efficient and clearly expressed storytelling. “Mori doesn’t have a style. There is no distinctive approach to shooting films that you could identify as characteristic of him. [His] films are different. They’re in different genres. They behave differently. They have different kinds of plot, and they call for different solutions. Mori was definitely a director who adapted himself to the challenges of the scripts that he was handed by Daiei, and came up with different solutions according to the script. What is consistent in his work, whether it is historical or modern day, whether it’s exaggerated, whether it’s comic or serious, whether it’s a thriller or an action film, is a certain keenness of the direction. He lets his images do the talking, from film to film. It’s a characteristic. It’s a very non-specific characteristic, because we can’t point to a particular camera style, but it is true, that if you look at this film, it looks nothing at all like other films [the cinematographer, Kazuo Miyagawa] shot at Daiei.”

Trailers for both films are also included, along with a small collection of promotional photos in still frame for each movie and a generalized 33-minute introduction to the films that suggest the primary creative force behind them was screenwriter Yasuzô Masumura.

Brute force

Hiroki Matsukata plays an indefatigable convict in Sadao Nakajima’s surprisingly entertaining 1974 action drama released on Blu-ray by Radiance, The Rapacious Jailbreaker (UPC#760137179375, $40). To begin right at the end, the film has the best final moment ever for a prison movie, and it is the combination of directorial wit and the perseverance of Matsukata’s character in that scene that reflects the irresistible nature of 97-minute film as a whole, regardless of the brutality and gore that occurs along the way. Set shortly after the end of World War II, Matsukata’s character is initially sent to prison for the murder of a drug dealer, but over the course of the film he manages to escape several times, always increasing the length of his sentence but making him that much more determined to get out again. The film does not gloss over the nastiness of prison life that even earlier Japanese films soft pedaled, but carried along by Matsukata’s charisma and the promise of repeated short term successes in his endeavors, the film has an overriding ‘bring it on’ mentality that will bemuse even the most jaded viewers.

The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1. Prisons are dank and dreary places, but for what it is worth, the color transfer is decent and fleshtones are accurate. The monophonic sound is very clean—you can hear the whirring of the cameras in the winter scenes, although in summer it is drowned out by the cicadas—and there is a decent, Lalo Schifrin-style musical score by Kenjiro Hirose. The film is in Japanese with optional English subtitles and comes with an informative 17-minute overview of Nakajima’s entire career that includes many terrific clips from other films. Japanese film expert Nathan Stuart provides a passable commentary track, talking about the careers of Nakajima, Matsukata and other members of the cast, and talking about Japanese prison movies, as well as the cycle of yakuza films that was occurring at around the same time. He cites Papillon as one of the film’s inspirations, but never mentions Cool Hand Luke. There is one point near the end of the talk where either Stuart repeats himself word for word or a brief passage was run twice to cover something up (he does explain that his dog was making a ruckus), but otherwise he does a good job analyzing the film’s drama and placing it in the context of other Japanese films at the time. And he concurs with us in regards to the final shot. “I absolutely love the ending. I think it perfectly caps off the film.”

Relax, take a train

Here is a handy axiom: Any movie that has ‘bullet train’ in its title is guaranteed to be entertaining. A case in point would be the granddaddy of them all, the original 1975 Toei production directed by Junya Sato, Bullet Train, which was released on Blu-ray by Twilight Time (UPC#811956021472). An epic combination of a disaster film and a police procedural that runs a whopping 153 minutes, the film is nevertheless fully engrossing and highly entertaining. You’ve heard the plot before since they sort of lifted it a couple of decades later for Speed. An extortionist played by Ken Takakura affixes a bomb to the wheels of a bullet train so that it will explode is the train slows below a certain speed, and then makes arrangements to obtain a ransom in exchange for instructions on deactivating it. Sonny Chiba plays the train’s mostly cool-headed motorman. The film essentially cuts back and forth between the passengers on the train becoming more and more panicky and the police frantically tracking down clues and leads while Takakura’s character stays one step ahead of them. In addition to developing portraits of several of the characters, there is also a cogent political argument about the responsibilities for protecting the passengers and any members of the public that might be nearby in the case of an explosion. There are so many opportunities for suspense and thrills that the movie could really go on even longer, but it is a marvelous and clever journey filled with intrigue and excitement, all fully geeked out by a Taking of Pelham One Two Three look at how the bullet trains are managed and what goes into keeping them running smoothly. For viewers that find those sequences fascinating, the rest of the film is one bonus after another.

The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1. The color transfer looks fresh and fleshtones are accurate, but the image is a little soft much of the time, and a stray speckle pops up now and then. The film is in Japanese with optional English subtitles. The monophonic sound is solidly delivered and there is a second audio track that eliminates the dialog, bringing an even stronger delivery of the sound effects and Hachiro Aoyama’s musical score. Also featured is a very rewarding 24-minute interview with Sato, who provides a comprehensive understanding of how the film was conceived, cast and shot (they had to steal images from inside a real train, among other things).

Detective Dee returns

Just as Tsui Hark’s 2013 prequel, Young Detective Dee Rise of the Sea Dragon (Dec 15) was exponentially more elaborate and spectacular than his original 2010 Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (Dec 11), so too is Hark’s 2018 sequel to the prequel, Detective Dee The Four Heavenly Fathers, released on a DVD + Blu-ray by Well Go USA Entertainment (UPC#810348030214, $30), exponentially more advanced in spectacle and action than its predecessor. Mark Chao reprises his role as the titular hero (replacing Andy Lau from the first film, which is why the narratives had to be restarted), essentially in charge of the emperor’s security and investigating an elaborate plot against him that turns out to be even more elaborate than initially supposed. While the first film danced around the supernatural, this one dives right in, presenting elaborate illusions and dangers that appear out of the mist but have very real and deadly consequences. At one point the heroes are attacked by an enormous dragon, and in another sequence they battle a huge, multi-eyed and multi-tentacled monster. A white ape the size of King Kong is on their side. The film is essentially equivalent to an Avengers feature, without the snappy one liners, but with an enhanced sense of spiritual power in the essential conflict between good and evil. Like its predecessors, the appeal of the film is in the quick-thinking actions of the hero, who has a Sherlock Holmes-type intellect and can deconstruct a crime scene with no more than a quick glance. The film runs 132 minutes and builds to a suitably grand finale, but every moment of it is an exciting pleasure, whether it is in the display of the hero’s deductive skills, the fantastic martial arts that remain exhilarating and athletically impressive regardless of how much they have been augmented by computers, or the dizzying story twists and turns that are five steps ahead of what you have just figured out—at one point, two sets of soldiers are fiercely fighting one another and you are trying to determine which ones are the good guys and which are the bad guys because what you thought apparently wasn’t the case, until Chao’s character steps in and stops the fight because indeed, the villain used his powers of illusion to set the good guys against each other. Sea Dragon was an impressive blend of wit and spectacle, but the half-decade in improvements to special effects have made Four Heavenly Fathers an even more thrilling and satisfying production that is as grand and engaging as anything Hollywood could ever achieve.

The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1. The colors are bright and sharp, and the graphic effects are seamless. The audio mix has some wonderful directional effects, including dialog shooting to the sides, and a decent bass, but the Blu-ray’s 5.1-channel Dolby Digital delivery doesn’t do it complete justice, especially since the Dolby Atmos logo appears quite prominently in the end credit scroll. The film is in Mandarin with optional English subtitles and is accompanied by two trailers. The DVD included in the set is still a great deal of fun, but the film was made for Blu-ray delivery and there really is no going back.

Karma’s gonna get you

A rip-roaring 2008 Hong Kong action feature with touches of the supernatural that ends up going as dark as Se7en, Johnny To and Ka-fai Wai’s Running on Karma, has been released by Fortune Star and Eureka! as a The Masters of Cinema Collection Blu-ray (UPC#760137171737, $40). The film opens on a gruesome crime scene, where the police find the killer hiding in a can about the size of a wastebasket. That scene is intercut, however, with a scene set in a male strip club, where a stripper with enormous muscles, played by Andy Lau, is dancing in front of a group of enthusiastic ladies, including an undercover cop played by Cecilia Cheung. The two stories converge rather quickly, however, when the killer escapes. Running 93 minutes, the film’s narrative tends to leap forward, and sometimes backward, in time without much in the way of demarcation, so the further it goes the more concentration it requires. The action scenes are thrilling. Letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1, the image is slick and glossy, and the Cantonese audio track has a pounding two-channel stereo mix with many directional effects. The characters fight, clamor up walls, bend metal and leap impossible lengths, but it all remains within the logic of the story being told. Unfortunately, the story takes a very dark turn in the third act, and while it raises the film’s artistic content to a higher spiritual level, those who bought into it because of the visceral thrills in the beginning will find the karma of their enthusiasm coming back to bite them in a very soft spot.

Along with optional English subtitles, there is a very good 19-minute promotional featurette with lots of behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with the cast and the crew, and a decent 25-minute overview of the film’s production history and intentions.

Eschewing his usual recitation of the careers of the filmmakers, Hong Kong movie expert Frank Djeng joins Asian film enthusiast F.J. DeSanto to focus their talk on a deconstruction of the film’s narrative and themes. Djeng explains that he didn’t appreciate the film the first time he saw it, but has become obsessed with it as time has gone by. As they point out the film’s dynamics—DeSanto suggests that the film has such a distinctive three-act structure that it could easily be presented as three episodes in a limited TV series—and explain the plot, they also reflect on the meanings of the decisions the characters make. “This is actually a very deep film. It’s almost like, watching the entirety, almost like a spiritual journey. You’re going through this journey together with the two characters. First, you’re moved by the relationship, then you’re shocked by what happened. You’re enraged, just like Andy Lau is enraged, but then gradually, in the final part, it became like this healing process where you saw how Andy Lau[’s character] makes the decision to turn things around, to turn the rage around. That’s how you, as an audience, also felt relief at the end, because he has shown you the way. In the end, you as an audience are enlightened by his choice.”

Perhaps feeling guilty or just wanting to make sure that his own karma is on an even keel, Djeng then goes back and supplies a second commentary by himself, where he does indeed fill in a few more details about the production (Cheung and Lau did not get along so well) but also spends most of his time reiterating his explanation of the plot from new perspectives, so that between the two talks, a viewer will have a pretty good idea of the thematic and spiritual nuances the film is exploring.

The horror of adolescence

Adolescence is a horror film in and of itself. The body is changing. Sex rears its frightening head. The mind is trying to sort out what is real and what is not, what is important and what is irrelevant, who are true friends and who are exploiters, and even what parts of the personality are genuine and what are trial runs and experiments. The characters in the 1998 Japanese horror film directed by Ataru Oikawa, Tomie, are in their very early twenties, but parts of the film are about events earlier in their lives and adolescence really isn’t over anyway until the mid-twenties or so. Besides, the film isn’t designed for the characters, it is designed for its audience, which are younger viewers anticipating where their adolescence is leading and having their worst fears realized with such features.

Released on Blu-ray by Arrow Video (UPC#760137164340, $40), the film requires patience because it isn’t until about halfway through that its various narrative fragments begin to form a comprehensive image. Reminiscent in some ways of a David Lynch feature, its purpose is the evocation of feelings and fears, and there is only just enough of a story to nudge you through its horrors. Briefly, the primary narrative fragments concern a photography student who is seeing a hypnotherapist in an attempt to recall the events leading up to an ‘accident’ she otherwise has no memory of, which had occurred while she was in high school. There is also a police detective, who seems in every way like a high school nerd, investigating a series of reported deaths that have apparently involved the same unfound corpse, again and again, stretching back decades. And having just moved in two floors below the student, a mentally troubled young man is carrying something in a bag that talks, and he is feeding it, and he is growing it. There are connections between the characters, all of which involve the mysterious title character, and rather than having a sudden revelation as to how everything fits together, as might occur in an American film, it just seems that gradually more and more of the initially disparate scenes and characters begin to link to one another. Considering how most of the movie goes down, the ending is surprisingly resolute, even though it still holds onto its ambiguities for dear life.

Mami Nakamura, Yoriko Doguchi, Tomorō Taguchi and Miho Kanno star. The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.78:1. While the cinematography is grainy at times, for the most part the image is smooth and colors are sharp. The 5.1-channel DTS sound is suitably eerie and dimensional, and well worth amplifying. The film is in Japanese with optional English subtitles. Along with five trailers for the film and its sequels (demonstrating the pathways the story will take, albeit with different casts) and a small collection of memorabilia in still frame, there is a taxing 35-minute interview with Oikawa who talks about his career, making the film and working with the cast in a monotone voice while barely moving a muscle, leaving you wondering how he managed to accomplish anything at all; a nice 16-minute interview with Nakamura talking about her character and working with the filmmakers; a good 13-minute interview with producer Mikihiko Hirata, talking about his relationship with Oikawa and how he set about putting the production together; and a great 28-minute production featurette that includes a nice interview with manga author Junji Ito (“When I was young, I was scared of women.”).

The Japanese film enthusiast known as Amber T. supplies a passable commentary track. She talks quite a bit about the manga books that the film is drawn from and works her way through the narrative, commenting on the characters and what they represent, but she also addresses how the film is executed and points out its various strengths. “I love this bit of blink-and-you’ll-miss-it gore here. This period of Japanese horror does tend to be somewhat lighter on gore than previous offerings, but that just means that when you do get gore, especially great practical effects like we see in this movie, the gore is almost more impactful.”

The horror of war

A worthy and even classy spinoff of the brief but potent Nazi zombie genre, Kongkiat Komesiri’s 2024 Operation Undead, released on Blu-ray by Well Go USA Entertainment (UPC#810348037831, $30), is set in 1941 when Japan invaded Thailand. After a few days of resistance, the Thai government capitulated, but in the film, the Japanese brought a secret bio-weapon with them, a walking corpse that infects others by biting them and turns them into walking corpses as well if they are not entirely devoured. The Japanese had hoped to experiment with the corpses as a substitute for soldiers, and when one gets loose, Thai soldiers are ordered to cooperate with the Japanese to capture or eradicate them. These zombies, however, if they aren’t too