Wuxia!

[brian d]

looks like the fist, pole, spear, elbow, trident thread on the other board didn't carry over, so here we go again. i've decided that my 2020 challenge will be to watch 52 wuxia films, because they seem fun and because i haven't seen more than maybe 10. the 29 i have so far is below, so i'm currently 23 short. i'd like to focus on the swordplay ones, not kung fu films, with no preference for what comes from mainland china, taiwan, or hong kong, mostly focused on the 60s and 70s.

the twin swords
dragon inn
the one-armed swordsman
the silent swordsman
the arch
the fastest sword
golden swallow
the silver fox
have sword, will travel
the golden knight
the heroic ones
ambush
the fate of lee khan
the brave archer
executioners from shaolin
jade tiger
the crippled avengers
the five venoms
the 36th chamber of shaolin
dirty ho
last hurrah for chivalry
raining in the mountain
return to the 36th chamber
masked avengers
eight diagram pole fighter
a chinese ghost story
a chinese ghost story ii
a chinese ghost story iii
green snake

so what am i missing? (and i'm not a purist on anything, but if any of these don't actually fit the genre let me know.)

[rischka]

the enchanting shadow and the love eterne, han hsiang li. and the magic blade, sentimental swordsman, swordsman and enchantress by chor yuen. all 60s-70s

[Lencho of the Apes]

It's wildly impure (and 2016), but I got a kick out of League Of Gods...

[rischka]

(and i'm not a purist on anything, but if any of these don't actually fit the genre let me know.)

the arch isn't wuxia. also if you're gonna watch chinese ghost story might as well watch zu warriors from the magic mountain



once upon a time in china 1.2.3 are very good and tsui hark's dao and patrick tam's ming jian are some of the best

sad to think of my beautiful gifs in that thread what is league of gods

[brian d]

thanks! i’d seen a couple of the chor yuen a couple of years ago for a cup, but the other five are up. i’ll watch the arch anyway, just not for this. it was on someone’s wuxia list and i don’t know what i’m doing. still needing 18.

[rischka]

if you're gonna watch 'raining in the mountain' watch 'legend of the mountain' too. and 'the valiant ones.' all king hu is good basically



you've probably seen 'ashes of time' right? and hou's 'the assassin'? nrh and greg will have more ideas i'm sure

[nrh]

second rishka's suggestion to just do all of king hu, and chor yuen as well (i particularly like his sentimental swordsmen trilogy).

i can think of other interesting suggestions that aren't on your list but my big one would be to check out stephen teo's chinese martial arts cinema book, which is invaluable for context and great just as a engine for suggestions. i think there's even a version on kg.

[wba]

I second all of King Hu!

Apart from that I'll consult some of my lists and reply again.

[wba]

Soooooo, some of my wuxia favorites not mentioned yet would be:


must-see:

The New One-Armed Swordsman (Chech Chang, 1971)
The Killer Meteors (Wei Lo, 1976)
Shaolin Kung-Fu Mystagogue (Peng-yi Chang, 1977)
To Kill with Intrigue (Wei Lo, 1977)
Killer Constable (Chih-hung Kuei, 1980)
Little Dragon Maiden (Shan Hua, 1983)
Hero (Yimou Zhang, 2002)
House of Flying Daggers (Yimou Zhang, 2004)



great stuff:

Temple of the Red Lotus (Jang-hung Siu, 1965)
The Sword of Swords (Kang Cheng, 1968)
The Delightful Forest (Cheh Chang/Hsueh Li Pao, 1972)
The Water Margin (Cheh Chang/Hsueh Li Pao/Wu Ma, 1972)
Shaolin Temple (Cheh Chang, 1976)
The Master (Chun-ku Lu, 1980)
The Young Vagabond (Sze Yu Lau, 1985)
The Blade (Hark Tsui, 1995)

[brian d]

great! some of those seem to be more kung-fu, so i'm leaving them out, but the delightful forest just sounds so perfect. i'm still 9 films short, so any other recs are appreciated.

[nrh]

if you haven’t seen Patrick tam’s the sword yet it’s one of the best new wave takes in the genre, very stylized with early ching siu tung choreography.

Ching sui tung’s own duel to the death is pretty uneven, like a lot of his films, but when it works it’s kind of astonishing.

I’m very fond of sammo hung’s only two real entrees in the genre, the fairly dour blade of fury and the goofy, strangely moving moon warriors (this is the film where andy lau is in seem telepathic communication with his best friend, a killer whale).

second wba recommendation for killer constable, the only film in the genre by a director more closely associated with horror genre.

black tavern is a wonderfully mean Shaw’s take on dragon gate inn, with a gothic mood full of cannibalism and fake (hopping vampires).

no one has mentioned tsui hark’s butterfly murders yet but it’s kind of fascinating - wuxia as locked room mystery (actually fairly common for the genre in the 70s) but all the typical magic contrivances explained by science. his late detective dee films kind of play with this too.

if you’re willing to go more towards the 90s the swordsman trilogy is very much worth watching, though at that point the film workshop over the top style is very much an acquired taste. and I’m very fond of jeffrey lau’s two parodies, eagle shooting heroes and Chinese odyssey 2000.

[brian d]

awesome! that’ll bring me to 52+. thanks everybody! i’ll put a list up on letterboxd later and keep it updated.

[liquidnature]

Neat, haven't seen hardly a thing here, but looking forward to following your journey throughout the year!

[thoxans]

shadow (zhang yimou) kinda torn over this one. pretty sure i really liked it, but never been into zhang. haven't seen his celebrated early work (ju dou, raise the red lantern, the story of qiu ju, etc.), and don't care for most of what i've seen from his mid-to-later-to-more-recent work (enjoyed the road home; didn't like happy times, hero, or house of flying daggers; was lukewarm on riding alone for thousands of miles (despite its wonderful title); and outright hated the great wall). dude always seemed like a bit of a sellout to me, esp compared to a peer such as tian zhuangzhuang. but still i return to his work. idkw. so i gave this a watch. and boom right out of the gate, i'm basically disoriented. talk about in media res. it's like where the hell am i, who are these people, and why are we here...!?!?!? the momentum feels all backwards. it's a good twenty or thirty minutes into the film before more tactile aspects of the story are actually alluded to, before we can even really start to piece together answers to some of those questions i had at the start. finally, a full hour in, we're on some semi-firm footing. pretty positive that zhang did a marathon of nothing but hou's the assassin during this film's preproduction. but then zhang goes all zhang, giving audiences what they presumably want. fight and battle scenes ensue. you know all the adjectives: balletic, operatic, all those tics; but it's also noticeably less exaggerated than before. a thirty second fight scene doesn't turn into a thirty minute ordeal cuz someone is a lil too fond of slowmo. also, it's all so much more visceral, brutal, and yet still artful. also, interesting that this has such a simple color palette, when it's so much more complicated than any of those zhang films with the broad and eye-popping palettes. there are problems of course. the shakespearean court intrigue isn't nearly as interesting as it thinks it is. most so-called twists and turns can be spotted pretty much a mile away. but still that momentum. even if we know where it's going, it's damned cool in how it gets there. and whoa, that ending. i think the ending solidified it for me. what coulda turned into a major eyeroll had it gone where you think it's gonna go, instead turns into a major jawdrop. talk about going out on a high note

[...]

dude always seemed like a bit of a sellout to me, esp compared to a peer such as tian zhuangzhuang.

yeah, you hear that a lot about Zhang Yimou, but I'm not sure it's really fair. I mean it isn't as if one expects filmmakers from the West to only make movies that are directly critical of their governments or to only engage in small audience "arthouse" filmmaking. Those that do either may indeed deserve to be celebrated for their efforts and maybe their movies, if they're actually good, but it isn't the only way to make films and directors like Yimou deserve the same relative freedom to make movies for larger audiences. I'm also not convinced that he has become as toothless a filmmaker as some suggest, after his earlier more celebrated "arty" works. Shadow, for example, can be understood as potentially carrying a deeper critique of Chinese history than it may appear on the surface, with that history also being one of radical change and overthrow of ideologies and rulers in ways that find some echo in the story, though more metaphorically than directly of course. That's potentially the case with Hero and some of his other movies as well, but the surface elements tend to keep people from even trying to look very closely at possible subtext.

[thoxans]

yeah, i don't want to be unfair to zhang, esp since i haven't explored his filmog enough to have a firm grasp on what he's done throughout his career. his early works are always on my radar. i'm probs viewing him through a post-crouching tiger, hidden dragon lens, during that oh so brief period when western audiences seemed somewhat interested in those sorts of films (i remember iron monkey getting a super belated - and butchered - release around this time, along with zhang's hero, and anything that had zhang ziyi in it). this preconception even made me watch a chunk of shadow with unwarranted skepticism, so it's really a testament to the film that it broke through that, really impressing me. probs gonna make my final 2010s list, even though i still stand by my derision for the great wall

[...]

But Matt Damon!

Okay, I'm not gonna try and defend everything he's done, just think he's had an interesting career that probably deserves re-evaluation after having been kinda ignored since Flying Daggers and not really taken seriously since To Live or so.