dont fear the subs Tagged Articles at Cinematical

You can't accuse this movie of false advertising. Tokyo Gore Police, which screened this weekend as part of the seventh annual Asian Film Festival of Dallas (AFFD), bursts at the seams with severed limbs, oceans of bodily fluids, and enough intestines to choke a horse. More sensitive souls will run screaming from the room during the first scene, in which a man's head explodes in a cloudburst of blood, but that sets the tone of the movie as a live-action adult cartoon. Just keep repeating to yourself: "It's only latex and corn syrup, it's only latex and corn syrup ..."

Structured very much like a sick and twisted variety show, Tokyo Gore Police is all about the set pieces, which are mighty impressive indeed for fans of "hardcore mega-splatter," as our own Scott Weinberg described a clip he saw a few months ago. In the future, the Tokyo police force has become privatized for the protection of its citizens. That gives them license to execute all criminals with, let us say, extreme prejudice. One strain of bad guys remain a problem, however. Whenever so-called "engineers" lose a body part, the missing limb mutates into a bizarre weapon.

I thought Noburu Iguchi's The Machine Girl was insanely over-the-top, but Tokyo Gore Police ups the ante by mixing in generous nods to Paul Verhoeven, especially RoboCop and Starship Troopers.

If you sat through all of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (not everyone did), then you saw Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh engage in a deadly sword battle -- Li as the evil resurrected Dragon Emperor and Yeoh as the good guardian of eternal life. Their skirmish was far too brief to understand why these two have enjoyed so much international success. May I invite you to set aside any fear you might have of sub-titles and enjoy the awe, power, and majesty of Li and Yeoh in their prime?

Tai Chi Master, which was released on DVD in a new Special Collector's Edition from Dragon Dynasty this past week, begins with two young monks in training at the famed Shaolin Temple. Jun Bao is younger, shorter, and kinder; Tien Bao is older, taller, and ambitious. Jun Bao grows up to be Jet Li and Tien Bao transforms into Chin Siu Ho. After they are (perhaps wrongfully) expelled from the temple, Tien Bao turns to the dark side and becomes the henchman for a powerful, evil warlord, while Jun Bao joints a group of rebels, led by Michelle Yeoh, before inventing Tai Chi (!).

Yuen Woo Ping is best known in the US as the action choreographer for The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but in the films he directed on his own (Iron Monkey, Wing Chun), the action is fully integrated into the story. Tai Chi Master is no exception; it's jam-packed with wire-assisted, incredibly intricate movement, sometimes involving dozens of acrobatic martial artists. Some purists despise "wire fu," but I'm not a purist, and Tai Chi Master is dazzling and showcases what Li and Yeoh -- and the oft-spectacular Chin -- could do.

Let's face it, family dramas are universal: one generation raising the next, the young resisting the old, conflict, tears, intense feelings, "you don't let me," "why don't you," and so forth. Watching Sunflower, a Chinese film from 2005 that finally hit DVD last week, I had the feeling that director Zhang Yang (Shower, Quitting) must moonlight as an alchemist. Working with very familiar, common elements, he makes something fresh and new.

Joan Chen (The Last Emperor, Twin Peaks) may be the most familiar face in the cast; she has quietly turned in one marvelous performance after another over the past 10 years outside the US studio system. (Check out the devastating, difficult The Home Song Stories.) Here she plays the pivotal role of Xiuqing, left to raise Xiangyang, her young son, after her husband Gengnian (the equally memorable Sun Haiying) is sent to a labor camp in 1967.

Gengnian returns from camp unable to continue his career as a painter, and so he transfers his artistic ambitions to his son, who wants nothing to do with this stranger who has taken over the household. Gengnian has a powerful will, though, and is determined to see his son succeed, whether he wants to or not.

The story takes place over four different eras of recent Chinese history as Xiangyang grows into a man and eventually contemplates fatherhood himself; Zhang Yang drew from his own life experiences for inspiration. Sunflower is simply told. The rich period details look gorgeous (Christopher Doyle served as visual consultant) and each episode leads inexorably to the next.

The DVD from New Yorker Video includes a "making of" feature and the original theatrical trailer. Sunflower is perfect for a summer evening's rental, a contemplative consideration of love, destiny, and the strongest bonds of all.

When I saw The Incredible Hulk yesterday at a matinee screening, I was entertained. (My feelings were very similar to what Scott Weinberg wrote in his review, so no sense repeating them here.) But, truthfully, the CGI-to-death battle scenes made me long for hard-core, physical action sequences involving real people, an itch that was easily scratched by watching Invisible Target, which came out on DVD earlier this week.

Directed by veteran action maestro Benny Chan, Invisible Target is a very basic Hong Kong "cops and criminals" tale with a couple of deeper psychological layers thrown in for good measure. As I wrote in my review when I saw it at Fantastic Fest last fall, "Invisible Target may not be strikingly original in either its plot or action choreography, but there's definitely something entirely positive to be said for a film that intends to be nothing more than a delivery system for adrenaline and keeps its promise in a very satisfying fashion."

You might not think that a heartbroken Japanese girl and an avenging Chinese boy would have much in common, but a closer look at two films released on DVD earlier this week reveals an unexpected connection.

Nana, directed by Kentaro Otani, features two young women that share the same name but little else. Nana (Aoi Miyazaki) is preternaturally cheerful, a bundle of naive joy. She strikes up a one-sided conversation with a quiet seat mate on a snowbound train headed to Tokyo and is delighted to learn that the other girl (Mika Nakashima) is also named Nana. Cheerful Nana is moving to the big city to be with her boyfriend; the quieter Nana is nursing a prolonged case of heartbreak. The two meet again when each is searching for an apartment and decide to room together on the spur of the moment.

Cheerful Nana has no goal in life other than marrying her boyfriend. Quieter Nana is a singer and musician who rediscovers her goal of making her rock group, The Black Stones, successful. The two 20-year-old women develop a strong friendship, which helps each of them deal with romantic adversity. Based on a popular manga series, Nana rides the emotional turmoil of their lives like an expert surfer, embracing a few cliches while eschewing many others, keeping the appealing melodrama pleasantly off-balance.

Both of these movies come highly recommended -- by other people, because my personal copies have not arrived yet (Grrr!!!). Still, I've heard from such a wide cross-section of trusted friends and complete strangers that I feel completely confident in suggesting you check these movies out. Both were released in Region 1 DVD editions earlier this week.

Kiltro was one of the movies that people were raving about at Fantastic Fest last fall. As as our own Scott Weinberg noted at the time, Kiltro is an action flick from Chile starring "stuntman-turned-hero Marko 'The Latin Dragon' Zaror." Michael Gingold of Fangoria wrote that, despite a multitude of kung-fu movie conventions, Kiltro succeeds "due to a tongue-in-cheek approach that tweaks the genre's requirements ... and the charisma and abilities of Zaror." The DVD from Magnet Releasing includes deleted scenes, bloopers, fight training and behind the scenes footage, and storyboard action.