Recommend cracktastic Hong Kong movies!

[rachelmanija]

oyceter, yhlee, and others will be getting together over the 4th of July weekend. We want to watch insane cracktastic Hong Kong (or mainland) movies! The crazier the better! Artistic quality is a plus but not actually required; entertainment quality is!

These movies must be commercially available on DVD via easy sources like Netflix or neighborhood video shops. I am very sad that the genuinely excellent Peking Opera Blues is NOT easily available, nor are the excellently cracktastic 2002 or Wicked City.

We have already had group viewings of Heroic Trio. We are definitely going to see Andy Lau's Armageddon, which I started to watch myself, but when a priest spontaneously combusted within the first five minutes, I decided it was better saved for group viewing. (Please do NOT spoil the even more hilarious thing that happens soon after, I want to spring it on them.)

We are also going to watch the Red Cliff movies.

Comments

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

Heroic Trio is awesome. The sequel to it is less awesome, but you might want to pick it up.

The Bride with White Hair is a Classic.

If they don't have to have supernatural elements, you could look at movies like Full Contact, Eastern Condors, City on Fire (from which Tarantino "borrowed" key elements for Reservoir Dogs), and A Better Tommorow.

[affreca.livejournal.com]

I nominate God of Cookery.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Peking Opera Blues is all over our Chinatown and, now I think of it, points north as well. Bootleg in all probability, but that's how one gets twenty year old films these days.

I do strongly recommend The Promise with Nicholas Tse, just because crack doesn't come crackier than that. Alas that my (bootleg) copy won't play on my DVD player.

[oyceter]

Rachel, this is the one I told you about with the completely incoherent plot, a guy in black raven feathers, and the giant birdcage!

[gwynnega]

I'm very fond of Eastern Condors. Also A Chinese Ghost Story.

[marith.livejournal.com]

Jackie Chan's The Raid is always one of my favorites. Not sure how it scores on cracktastic as opposed to just silly.

[oyceter]

Artistic quality is a plus but not actually required; entertainment quality is!

I feel this describes so much of what I consume right now!

I vote for Bride with White Hair even though two of us have seen it, just because I think rewatching it together will be super fun!

Things I have not seen and would not mind: Anything I haven't seen with Birgitte Lin or Maggie Cheung or Tony Leung!

Things I have seen and would not mind rewatching: The Promise (so much snark potential!), House of Flying Daggers (own), Hero (own, watch a ton, but it is so gorgeous I don't care), other stuff I probably can't think of.

Things I have seen but would rather not rewatch: Chinese Ghost Story (gross and slimy tree tongues!), Green Snake (kind of boring, though may be better with snark), Fearless (too much nationalism, not enough crack)

Oh! Um, would you be interested in seeing the suicide-via-head-beating-on-coffin drama ep even though it has no English subs? I feel if we make up the dialogue, things will be even funnier.

[eredien]

Suggestion, though maybe it's too arty:

Wong Kar Wai's "Chungking Express" - somewhat absurd, I think it's hilarious. Girl secretly breaks into the house of the guy she has a crush on and cleans in increments!

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Mr. Vampire -- horror/comedy, heavy on the comedy! If you like this it paved the way for a squillion other horror/comedy vampire slapstick fests -- I have heard particularly good things about "Hello Dracular", which features shady gwailo corpse-rustlers, lonely baseball-playing kid vampires, and plucky orphans who teach the displaced undead to do some dance numbers!

Swordsman III/The East Is Red -- still one of my absolute favorites, it manages to be gloriously over-the-top and unexpectedly moving all at the same time. Magical genderswap! Deadly embroidery-based martial arts! Midget samurai! Ninja submarines! Flying swordfish! Brothels staffed entirely by women impersonating the lead character! Random Spanish priests! Attack kites! Did I mention it stars Brigitte Lin?

(As a raving Brigitte Lin fan I also heartily second the rec for Bride with White Hair, although if you're mostly looking for gleeful crack that one might be a little too serious and tragic? It has some cracky elements, particularly the raised-by-wolves (literally!) nameless girl and the hill tribe evil twin cult leaders, but the overall tone is more epic romantic tragedy. The East Is Red, while it has tragic elements, just has a much higher proportion of utterly glorious crack. And you really don't need to have seen the previous movies -- what little backstory is required all gets filled in at the beginning.)

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

The East is Red, absolutely. It stands on its own, IIRC, so you don't need to feel obligated to see the first two Swordsman movies.

Brigitte Lin!

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the first two Swordsman movies are quite enjoyable, but they're lacking the delightfully cracktastic "twenty pounds of crack stuffed into a five-pound bag" manic feel of The East Is Red. They're much more straightforward dramatic wu xia rather than Epic Crack, so while they do give you further background on the history of the Sun Moon Sect and the bloodshed and madness sparked by the Sacred Macguffin Scroll, Brigitte Lin's character is the only one carried on from the earlier films.

Mmmmm, Brigitte Lin.

[larryhammer]

I'd offer The Legend of the Shadowless Sword, but it is neither Hong Kong nor mainland, but Korean. It otherwise fits your requirements, though.

---L.

[issen4.livejournal.com]

Contemporary romantic stuff at My Lucky Star (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0380069/) which stars Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and has a very funny opening sequence, plus send-ups of fengshui.

The Aces Go Places (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084955) series is a classic, which has the Hui brothers and is one of the earliest gag-filled movies Hong Kong is known for.

And if you don't mind Stephen Chow's stuff, A Chinese Odyssey (in two parts), the re-do of Journey to the West, which has crack and send-ups galore and still manages to be watchable. Lots of his early stuff is fun, if rather scatalogical and sexist. Also reccing Justice, My Foot, which he starred in with the late Anita Mui.

And speaking of Anita Mui (she was in Heroic Trio), have you watched Wu Yen (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0272362), also a 'historical' comedy where she cross-dresses as Emperor Qi? Because it's hilarious--Anita Mui is great at comedy.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Wait, Anita Mui died? I'm sorry to hear that (and obviously very out of touch).

[issen4.livejournal.com]

Yup, in 2003, of cervical cancer.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

We just watched Contract Killer, an early Jet Li movie with buddies, explosions, and a Chinese guy with the waviest long hair I've seen outside anime.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

How about Jackie Chan movies? Drunken Master? Drunken Master 2? Wheels on Meals? Project A?

[madam-silvertip.livejournal.com]

I don't know anything about this field but Jessica Amanda Salmonson has a huge amount of information on her website at http://www.weirdwildrealm.com. She has a Hong Kong subindex at http://www.weirdwildrealm.com/index-chinese.html.

[radiotelescope.livejournal.com]

I am envious, and would totally offer my copy of _Wicked City_ if I weren't on the wrong coast.