August: Osage County

If you wanna see Meryl Streep do her "thing" so brilliantly (and rightly nominated for) and an ensemble of top notch actors delightfully bouncing off one another, then August: Osage County is that film to see.  After the death of her husband, cancer stricken Violet Watson (Streep) gathers with her family during mourning and all sorts of family mess and secrets, regrets, and resentments.  But minus the performances which are heartfelt and humorous, which include that of Julia Roberts for a change, the film really goes nowhere in resolution. 

The Counselor

As a legal counsel to a drug cartel, Michael Fassbender quickly finds himself caught up in over his head with among the colorful cast of characters.  The Counselor has the right look, style, cast (Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz,  Jarvier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, and all the way down to the talented supporting players) and director in Ridley Scott. It is also very intriguing and entertaining with plenty of twist and turns. However, what it lacks is a more defined storyline and script to navigate the sorted world the characters inhabit.  For the first 30 minutes of the film, I was a bit confused as to who was who or what was going on, beyond even what the plot would even call for; which is unfortunate because it takes a bit away from making The Counselor more than what it could have been. Though, I'd quickly watch it again just to see Cameron Diaz's sexy and steely performance. 

Haofeng Xu

Haofeng Xu is one of the writers of The Grandmaster and I really like his style of incorporating authenticity into the spirit of martial art films.  Having just finished watching The Sword Identity and being rather impressed with it, I'm now on the hunt to watch Judge Archer.  

The Wrath Of Vajra

Just prior to the second Word War, Imperial Japan attempts to internally weaken China prior to invasion by re-activating a mercenary cult of fighters called the Hades,  forcefully recruited from childhood from all around Asia and other parts of the world.  An ex member who escaped (Vajra played by real life Shaolin monk and actor Yu Xing) and went elsewhere to find peace at China's Shaolin Temple, seeks to disband the Hades, after the latest group of child recruits in China are kidnapped. The Wrath Of Vajra isn't the greatest martial arts movie, but it's definetely not a bad thing to watch.  What made the movie interesting to watch was the story and historical significance, the international casting of it all, and the pretty decent fight choreography courtesy in part to Sammo Hung.  Not many movies have a pretty balanced mix of rather decent and primarily Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and various Western actors that appropriately fitted the story.  There are many things wrong with the film surely, but in this rant I choose to focus primarily on the opposite, because I like what the filmmakers were trying to do, and they more or less appropriately borrowed ideas from other contemporary good martial art movies in every aspect, including soundtrack. The creative fight training sets with the iron Wing Chun dummies served as a nice precursor to the fights that follow and clearly have influence in the Ip Man movies and the metaphoric fight opening in Hero.  Yu Xing as Vajra though, is clearly one of the main reason the movie works so well.   His authenticity as a real martial artist is undeniable and his debut as a lead actor here is good.  Do take note of the best fight in the film, the real climactic fight before the "climactic" fight. Here, he fights the dark Crazy Monkey boxer, and as incredible as it is to behold, we must also recognize that there is clearly a heavily influenced Ong Bak type of fight choreography and acrobatics at play, that Thai and Indonesian filmmakers have been taking the martial arts genre in fresh directions with in the past decade.  But it's nice to see a rather fresh attempt/try from Chinese filmmakers and the international collaboration and influence that does come thru.