IMDb ??? Review: In the Mood for Love (2000)

Source: Wikipedia

We plunge into another exotic locale, this time to Hong Kong.

Now imagine your tour bus slid off a bridge. It also ran over your guide, who somehow embezzled your life savings and donated it the to “Vaccinate the Three-Toed Sloths Foundation.” And it rained. At this point, there’s little to do but sit around indoors, chow down on local food, and grudgingly get to know the people in your immediate vicinity.

This probably hypothetical example summarizes this movie. Sitting around, doing nothing, eating, talking, doing more nothing.

Two married couples move in to adjacent apartments. One’s husband leaves on a business trip, one’s wife works late. You see where this is going. Despite the porno-riffic title, the odd couple acts polite, reserved, probably to save face. This is 1960’s Hong Kong, not France.

He takes her out to eat, she helps him start the martial arts serial he’s wanted to write. (Well, movie, I want to WATCH one, but here we are.) Then the gossip catches up to them.

So yes, Hong Kong. Slinky qipaos, swanky suits, mahjong parties, and horrendous work/life balance. Balancing freedom of individual choice versus joint decisions as a couple.

There’s slow motion for no reason. A minimalistic soundtrack, meaning silence or the same plucking strings number used half-a-dozen times. Years fly by, and nobody ages except the viewer.

Why is this snoozefest so critically acclaimed? You're asking the wrong critic.

Recommended for bored Asian house spouses, stifled writers who need a dose of nuptial doldrums to get going, and unhappily married businessmen who need an excuse to get back to the office (“She’s watching it again?!”).

98 minutes.

IMDb #208 Review: Infernal Affairs

Source: Wikipedia

Ignore the dumb pun in the title. This is no wacky Jackie Chan comedy about a Chinese-American cop who goes to hell to liberate his fallen buddies from the devil’s clutches via kung-fu and secretly seducing Lucifer’s hot girlfriend. Though that'd be rad.

Instead, we follow two double lives. One, a bright young cop tasked to infiltrate a Hong Kong drug cartel — for ten years. The other, a dirty cop — working for the same cartel.

Neither knows the other’s identity. The result: spy versus spy, a battle of balls and bullshitting and late nineties tech, set to thumping techno beats.

The clean cop paradoxically surrounds himself with scum. His ex is afraid of him because, to everyone except his boss, he’s a grizzled gangster. And after a decade undercover, he’s cracking. Understandable. Because he sleeps through his mandatory therapy, while the therapist plays Microsoft solitaire.

Meanwhile, the dirty cop enjoys a solid reputation on the force, as well as a loving and pregnant wife. Even as the investigation crumbles (thanks to his efforts), he gets promoted. His new assignment: catch the dirty cop.

It’s pretty intense.

Yes, there are car chases and shootouts and pointless shoehorned romance arcs. Any movie can have those things. But for moral dilemmas, complex characters, dramatic irony, high-stakes cat-and-mouse (where the mouse is secretly a cat, and the cat an overgrown rat) — look no further.

OH CRAP twist piles upon OH CRAP twist. Then the gut-punch of an ending finally pulverizes whatever squishy pulp of heart you’ve got left.

Recommended for police academy valedictorians (who’ve yet to experience the phenomenon of project creep), happy wives (as a primer to spot consummate liars), and morbidly curious Hong Kong tourists.

101 minutes.

IMDb #219 Review: Ip Man (2008)

Source: Wikipedia

In China, the 1930s, kung-fu masters practice their art despite twentieth-century industrialization and increasing prevalence of firearms. Packs of ruffians still rove the countryside and challenge masters for their schools. Only Ip Man — a small, humble, egregiously overpowered Wing Chun grandmaster — can defend his defeated friends. But we like egregiously overpowered.

The world sparkles with color and humor and energy. Typical kung-fu antics abound.

For the first thirty minutes.

Surprise! World War II happens. (Frankly, the Chinese were surprised too.)

The color drains. The energy dissipates. The frivolity disappears and leaves an aching void. Japanese armies march over China; cowards submit to their service.

Languishing in squalor, kung-fu masters beg for work shoveling coal. Formerly wealthy Ip Man struggles to provide for his wife and young son.

But the occupying Japanese general remembers the city’s reputation for martial arts. He summons Chinese martial artists to challenge the Japanese style.

The result is what you'd expect. People fight, people die. Enraged by senseless violence, our hero resurges from retirement to deliver sensible violence.

The effects punch through your eyeballs so the story can grab you by the heart and squeeze.

Actually, this film attains a peculiar balance. The fight sequences are spectacular, but they aren't the whole focus. The hero has a family to mind. He inspires courage by standing up for his people’s honor in the face of almost certain death. And leaves the quislings quivering in their boots.

The best part? This story is true. (Mostly.)

108 minutes.