Letterboxd Review: Once Upon a Time in China

Letterboxd Review: Once Upon a Time in China - 1991

The Story - Legendary martial arts hero Wong Fei-Hung fights against foreign forces' plundering of China. When Aunt Yee arrives back from America, Wong Fei-Hung assumes the role of her protector.
Cast - Jet Li, Yuen Biao, Jacky Cheung, Rosamund Kwan
Crew - Tsui Hark (Director/Writer)
Runtime - 134 minutes

The best martial arts movie I’ve ever seen. The best Kung Fu fights I’ve seen on film. This movie is perfect, 2 hours of pure cinema.

I lack historical knowledge of China in the 1900s so I can only assume from this movie that the period of Westernization was starting. Its commentary pointing to Britain's colonization, American “legal slavery through commerce and business” and the fear of losing an identity by mixing with the Western world fit perfectly in this setting.

Sublime martial arts, perhaps in second place I put Dragon Inn which is also a sort of historical movie with martial arts. I wasn’t expecting to like it this much, I’ve been trying to finish it many times but I ended up leaving after a couple of minutes.

I will try to watch the rest of the movies, and maybe get the Criterion release in the future.

Criterion Collection Boxset

Comments

Review: What is a Woman? - 2022

Story - Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire travels around the world to ask one of the biggest questions of this generation. Cast - Matt Walsh Crew - Justin Folk (Director) Runtime - 95 minutes What is a woman? A woman is someone who claims that as their identity. After two years of the pandemic, many theater chains and venues are struggling to put people in their seats, it is harder than ever to get a group of 150–200 people to sit quietly and watch a drama, comedy, or even horror movie, surprisingly, one category of film that has seen a consistent demographic to show up are "conservative" or "right-wing" movies. This is not a new phenomenon, there have always been movies whose primary audiences were conservative, republican, and white throughout history, but this new era of filmmaking has been growing and gaining more attention after the release of the 2023 movie 'Sound of Freedom'. The supposed docum...

Review: Resan (The Journey) - 1987

Story - Petter Watkins' global look at the impact of military use of nuclear technology and people's perception of it, as well as a meditation on the inherent bias of the media, and documentaries themselves. Cast - Peter Watkins Crew - Peter Watkins (Director) Runtime - 873 minutes "I think to remove the veil of ignorance from the world is the most direct way at least to achieve enlightenment." Sometimes it is incredibly difficult to sit and watch a long movie, after all, the way of life in the XXI century has been accelerating to the point that 90-minute movies are consumed in 20 different parts on a tiny screen while commuting to work. This is a world that 15 years ago I would have never imagined. I believe on this occasion, watching a movie divided into 19 different sections has helped me to appreciate and embrace what it is trying to say on a different level. It is hard for someone in 2024 to...

Look Back - Review

Cast - Yuumi Kawai, Mizuki Yoshida. Kiyotaka Oshiyama - Director Tatsuki Fujimoto - Original Writer "Then why do you draw, Fujino?" One of the most common complaints when watching a film is the runtime. When movies like Oppenheimer or Killers of the Flower Moon reach or surpass the 3-hour mark, it can be heavy to most viewers, but looking past the raw number of minutes it will take you to finish a movie this often rewards you with a much more intimate portrait of the characters, their mental states and why are they doing the things they do. This is not the norm, and many times the long runtime can feel clunky and unimportant. On the other side, we can get works like Look Back , that with a duration of 57 minutes fails to capture the essence of its two main characters and is more focused on giving us cute and emotional montages, trying to overcompensate the lack of character development. Look Ba...

The Alex Archives

Search This Blog