B | Rival schools of kung fu vie for supremacy amidst the Japanese invasion of China and the Chinese civil war. Directed by Wong Kar-wai Starring Tony Leung and Zhang Ziyi Review by Jon Kissel |
Wong Kar-wai, master of the slow-burn romance, can no longer ignore his Hong Kong roots in The Grandmaster, a film that surrounds Wong’s signature unrequited romances with the wire-fu style of Hong Kong action cinema. Sold as a biopic of Ip Man, the eventual trainer of Bruce Lee, The Grandmaster is only tangentially concerned with him, such that his children die off-screen. In Wong’s vision, Ip Man isn’t a complicated man, albeit one who makes the uncomplicated look incredible. Instead, Wong broadens his focus for a consideration of 20th century China and all the tumult it experienced during the first half of Ip Man’s life. The Grandmaster illuminates little of Ip Man, starting as it does at a point when he’s already an expert at Wing Chun kung fu. Its greater success is Wong’s technical perfection in the service of a national metaphor about collective destruction.
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There’s a distinct possibility that a major international conflict will erupt in the South China Sea over which country owns this or that chain of tiny islands. Taiwan continues to float out in its waters, a thorn in China’s side and a constant counter-example to authoritarian rule, at least in recent history. In the year 4000, assuming a future where China takes over these islands and whatever other land it considers itself the rightful owners of, someone might very well make a historical epic justifying the bloody wars of unification as the only way to have true peace. Future humans watching that movie might be as queasy as I am after watching Hero, Zhang Yimou’s stunning collection of top-tier actors and martial artists that is also a politically untenable argument for iron-fisted top-down control. Iconic tableaus and peak wu xia wire work bring the viewer in for an entrée of herrenvolk unification.
Superhero franchises in the early 21st century could not seem to make their third entries work. Spider-Man 3 was overstuffed and cringey while X-Men 3 turned to hackiest hack Brett Ratner. Blade Trinity fits squarely within that pattern but worse, as it’s a film enslaved to current trends in blockbuster movies and music with an eye toward future sequels and a lack of any motivating factor beyond the quest for more money. The two earlier Blade films at least had a minimal amount of underlying drama, whereas this is all meaningless snark and commerce. Blade Trinity exists for the funny behind-the-scenes nonsense, at least if Patton Oswalt is to be believed, and that’s about all the entertainment value provided by this pathetic limp to the end credits.
Blade might’ve kicked off the superhero movie craze, but it didn’t take long for its sequel to trade inspiration for imitation. Blade 2, directed by Guillermo Del Toro, sticks with the characters and tone of the original while heavily incorporating the style of The Matrix and Del Toro’s particular affinity for creature effects and body horror. It also is a classic sequel with all the expected advancements, like a deadlier enemy, a deeper world, and a larger cast of distinctive characters. This is a film whose strong reputation doesn’t justify the actual result, especially with how derivative so much of it is, but it does mark Del Toro’s emergence as a singular sculptor of weird appendages and an acolyte of Ray Harryhausen and David Cronenberg. The best result from Blade 2 is that it allowed Del Toro to level up his own career and make films better than this solid and silly entrée into future passion projects.
Oddly important despite the presence of a monstrously obese archivist vampire, Blade is both a throwback and a harbinger. After the inter-species love of Howard the Duck and the license-preserving Fantastic Four of the early 90’s, Blade is the first earnest attempt at a movie based on a Marvel Comics character and its success would greenlight the X-Men, Spider-Man, and the big screen TV show that is the MCU, though the latter now also requires small-screen participation to stay up on everything. It’s also rich that first-out-of-the-gate Blade features a Black lead, a feat that would be recreated only twice in the ensuing 23 years. The culture moving backward in terms of onscreen representation is more galling due to the fact that Blade was both successful and pretty good as an action/horror flick. Stephen Norrington’s subpar and sparse career as a director notwithstanding, Blade provides a good deal of dumb fun. |
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