martial arts
From this year’s New York Asian Film Festival we take a look at Pattaya Heat, Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In & Brush of the God!
Though initially marketed to a younger audience, Avatar: The Last Airbender offered important and incisive messages to all of its viewers.
Sadly, it’s hard to call this final chapter of the Ip Man saga a successful piece of filmmaking.
Though with a generic plot, Triple Threat is a slick, entertaining feature that works best as a showcase for the talents of its three leads.
Furie has severe pacing issues, but is saved due to the exhilarating showcase of Vernoica Ngo’s talents as an action star.
Film Inquiry’s Samantha Celentano talked to Yoshi Sudarso about Buffalo Boys, and the rarity of seeing Asian-American cowboys on the big screen.
With Buffalo Boys, Wiluan succeeds in his mission of taking an important piece of his people’s history and rendering it into an entertaining film with international appeal.
If you’re a fan or a newbie or just someone looking for a bloodbath of an action movie, move The Night Comes for Us to the very, very top of your list.
Unfortunately, 1992’s Sidekicks, which is a vehicle to show Chuck Norris as the greatest action star, is a sloppy project for his talents.
Jackie Chan is in peak form in The Foreigner, and handily wins you over despite the film’s dated source material.
Call of Heroes is the latest from Benny Chan, and manages to both modernize and feel old-fashioned when compared to the martial arts genre.
Headshot is a bit too melodramatic and tries to emulate The Raid sequels too blatantly, yet it is just enough to satisfy action junkies.
Brutal is an unentertaining slog to get through from start to finish, and it should have been abandoned on the very first day of shooting.
Skiptrace (originally titled Jue Di Tao Wang) is a 2016 action-comedy film directed by Renny Harlin and starring Jackie Chan, Johnny Knoxville and Chinese actress Fan Bingbing. It is about a Hong Kong cop and an avid gambler that must team together, each for their own reasons, and take down the Chinese crime syndicate and its mysterious leader ‘The Matador’. It is a film that I, in all honesty, did not want to sit down and watch at first but did, due to unmentionable circumstances, and in my forced viewing of this easy-going and lighthearted film, I began to remember why Jackie Chan is one of the most beloved names in Hollywood.
The new Criterion Collection release of A Touch of Zen includes director King Hu’s own notes on the film. In these notes, Hu discusses a conversation he had with a Zen Buddhist who told him that Zen must be understood not through verbal explanation, but through an enlightening experience. Despite his renown as a director of wuxia films, Hu was neither a Buddhist nor a martial artist; but, he believed that capturing an experience of Zen would make for a strong film.