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| KUNG FU MOVIE REVIEW: CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON (2000) |
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# OF TIMES I LAUGHED: twice, but there were only two jokes in it NO-SHADOW KICK? no, but enough both-legs-at-once kicking to satisfy. BEST MOVE: the toe-grab-to-prevent-the-flying-away move MONKS? several fine ones. not ONE praises Buddha. SUBTITLES: readable. finally! SOUNDTRACK: props to Yo-Yo. Very effective. WORTH OWNING? in letterbox, please. That means DVD, as the corporations are forcing you to the new format if you're not already there. Fucking whore shit bastards. EXTRA DVD FEATURES: I swear, if i hear the phrase "Sense and Sensibility, but with fighting" one more time, I'm gonna go apeshit on somebody somewhere. BEST LINE: "Father gets first dip." IF WE WROTE FOR MAD MAGAZINE: Crotching Torah, Hidden Dreidel SEE ALSO: WING CHUN |
Ang
Lee done good here. Definitely a film by a man who loves kung fu movies.
It is a veritable tour of the genre. You get your mountain-top fight,
your restaurant brawl, your echoey, drippy cave fight, your horseback
across the desert chase, your bamboo forest fight, your courtyard
fight, your training room fight. Oh, and there's a plot, too. Something
about a sword and a foxy lady. Chow Yun Fat is quite good. For a little
while, you forgive him for Replacement Killers. Michelle Yeoh
plays a similar character to the one she played in Wing Chun,
but a little older & with a few more regrets. The dude that plays
Lo looks like a Puerto Rican headbanger I knew in high school. Zhang
Ziyi is purty. The only complaint I have for this flick is the whole
bamboo scene. Yes, it was pretty. Yes, I appreciate the
work that went into it. No, it just wasn't particularly exciting.
This movie is based on a five volume Chinese novel by Wang Du Lu.
No, I've never read it, I'm just letting you know how much useless
trivia I have at my fingertips. This is by far the most useless review
I've written to date. It was just sort of a good excuse to go hunt
around the web to find some neat-o pictures. Often I find my life
troubling, and sometimes just a tiny bit sad. It's not easy playing
with action figures when they are still in their original packaging.
- tom: 2001
