Rhapsodies

Continuing my world war I theme, I watched French world war I films. Considering France was one of the countries hardest hit by the war, l thought that perspective would be especially interesting.

The first film on my list, Jean Renoir’s Grand Ilusion, tells the story of two French pilots who are shot down during a reconnaissancemission. They are taken to a POW camp where they wait for their chance to escape, or for the war to end, whichever comes first.
This was a wonderful film that looks at human nature, the end of an era and how war pulls away all illusions.

The next film on my list Jean-Pierre Jeunet‘s A Very Long Engagement. Tells the story of Five soldiers sentenced to death for self mutilation. However rather than being executed, they out of the trenches into no man’s land where they will either freeze, starve or get shot by the Germans

Because of the nature of their deaths, it is unclear whether all of them died or not. Because of this, Mathilda,Audrey Tautou, one of the solders’ fiancee, begins an investigation to find him.

When I heard that there was a film by one of my favorite directors I hadn’t heard of or seen, I knew I had to correct that.
This was a great film that was up to Jeunet’s usual standards as a director. The one thing I’d nitpic about is I found a strange disconnect between Jeunet’s whimsical style and the extremely serious subject matter.

I needed something to clear my pallet of the holiday season. So I went for something different, steampunk wuxia. The movies I saw were listed as a two-parter, doing a very loose retelling of the origin of the Chen style of the martial art t’ai chi ch’uan which, at the time, I assumed would be like John Wu’s Red Cliff. Based on that, I decided to watch them back to back. They weren’t quite the two film epic I expected but were still quite enjoyable.

The first film of the two Stephen Fung’s Tai chi Zero tells the story of Yang Lu Chan aka the Freak (Jayden Yuan) born with a strange growth on his skull called the “Three Blossoms on the Crown,”. This gives him the ability to memorize any martial Arts technique he watches. When this bump or hit, he becomes an unstoppable berserker. 

The downside is it’s slowly killing him. He is told the only way to save himself. he has to seek the Village of Chen where we can be taught by Master Chen (Tony Leung). When he arrives at the village, he discovers that everyone in the village is a martial arts master(even the adorable eight-year-old) and it is forbidden to teach the village’s techniques to outsiders. All of his attempts to get to reach Master Chen are thwarted by the villagers led by Master Chen’s daughter Chen Yu Niang (Angelababy) 

Meanwhile, the Chinese government wanders expanding the railway and regards the village as an inconvenient impediment. They Decide to deal with it using the army and giant steam-powered automatons. 

This was mostly a fun film, with tongue firmly in cheek. The fight choreography was well done what I especially liked about it was, was the captioning where Each character is introduced along with the r actor case dependent on the popularity of the actor) in large letters. 

The next film of the two, Tai Chi Hero continues where Zero left off, With the British East India company who have been backing the Chinese government, wants to deal with The village of Chen once and for all. 

Meanwhile, Yang Lu Chan has married Chen Yu Niang to become part of the village And and his new brother in law shows up, who may be working for the British. 

This film was perfectly entertaining and had some good action bit, but 1 thought it lacked a lot of the charm of the first film.