Chan's the Man

By Salim Garami

What's good?

This past Tuesday saw the home video Criterion Collection release of a 4K restoration for Police Story and Police Story 2, two of movies that made a household name out of Hong Kong international superstar Jackie Chan. Chan is ostensibly a man who needs no introduction in the world of action cinema, but put it this way: the bodily injury and risk, the way this man twists and flips his body and face for our entertainment, the rigorous and grueling discipline that he pushes despite looking so rubbery and clownish... it all makes Tom Cruise's high-altitude climbs and dives look like square cowardice.

The Hong-Kong-based actor-director is a more painful descendent of the school of physical comedy that Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton opened up, utilizing his background in the Peking Chinese Opera to make things as small as answering multiple phone calls look like athletic feats...

In order to illustrate his excellence and to celebrate this canonization and recognition through the Blu-Ray set release, I've opted to provide two mini-lists here: his top five fights in this post and his top five solo stunts in a post later tomorrow...

Click to read more ...

Nathaniel's "Extra" Prizes: Musical Moments, Action Sequences, and Best Endings

As the Oscar aftermath is just about over, we return you to the in-progress Film Bitch Awards. We hate to not be done with these before the Oscars - argh - but these things happen. We'll finish up soon as there's now just 5 (gulp) categories left. 

Scene Awards
Musical moments, thrilling action sequences, opening scenes and great endings, and the like. There's lots to reminisce about but obviously there are spoilers for some 2018 scenes, particularly given the "endings" category. Films honored include but are not limited to: Ant-Man and the Wasp, The Children Act, Cold War, Eighth Grade, Isle of Dogs, Old Man and the Gun, Paddington 2, Vice, and You Were Never Really Here. Check it out.

Posterized: Michelle Yeoh

by Nathaniel R

It's a new season of our series Posterized in which we look back at the entire careers of various actors and directors. Last week Spike Lee joints. Today, Malaysia's finest: Michelle Yeoh. The fifty-six year old Asian superstar is currently grande dame'ing it through the romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians, giving the movie nearly all of its dramatic bite through her excellent nuanced underplaying of the intimidating and at times outright cruel potential mother-in-law. 

Yeoh's career is harder to track here in the US since not all of her films are released here. Nevertheless, let's do our posterized retrospective. We've pruned just a bit for lack of quality posters or obscurity but this is nearly everything starting with her first leading role in 1985 in Yes, Madam! (which has apparently been retitled Police Assassins), a dual-lead action vehicle with American actress Cynthia Rothrock (of late 80s B movie fame). Anyway... on to the pictorial survey.

How many of these 34 Michelle Yeoh projects have you seen? Was it more than you expected? The posters are after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Months of Meryl: The River Wild (1994)

John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep. 

 

 #21 —Gail Hartman, a rafting expert whose distracted husband and disgruntled son will soon turn out to be the least of her problems…

MATTHEW: The River Wild opens with the rather surprising sight of Meryl Streep rowing a kayak with steely determination and brisk athletic prowess down the lengthy expanse of the Charles River. Watching Curtis Hanson’s waterborne caper for the first time in 2018, I asked myself with stunned curiosity the same question that surely rolled through the minds of ‘90s audiences upon the film’s release: How exactly did she get here? The River Wild is a light rip-roarer that could have easily ended up as little more than a forgettable IMDB entry in the filmography of Sigourney Weaver or Geena Davis or Linda Hamilton were it not for someone’s out-of-the-box idea to transform one of our most famously worldly and erudite thespians into a hard-bodied, take-charge action heroine...

Click to read more ...

Podcast: Black Panther (plus underseen gems)

With Nathaniel now ensconced in new digs, the podcast can resume. Up first a mini-podcast on Ryan Coogler and Marvel's Black Panther blockbuster with Nick Davis and Katey Rich. It's paired with a "deleted scene" from the last podcast as Nick, special guest Teo Bugbee and Nathaniel discuss favorites that were never really in the awards conversation but we hope people will find on streaming including super-hero adjacent Professor Marston and the Wonder Women. 

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

Black Panther and More