liked but didn't love
Prometheus. Still pretty good on the whole, there's simply too many very good qualities here to let the occasionally rather shitty ones muck it all up. Kind of like how Sunshine was flawed as hell but still pretty ace.
So yesterday, fate somehow lead me to watch two separate movies in which the very manly Tony Leung (big Tony, the dude from Election and Prison on Fire, not the little Tony Leung from Infernal Affairs and Hero) dresses up in drag to get a laugh. Such an occasion warrents some sort of written record. Only one of these films had his specterally floating head being used as a battle implement/soccer ball. That film would have been the supremely silly
The Eagle Shooting Heroes. A film I was lead to watch after hearing it was a spoof of Wong Kar Wai's typically melancholy and gorgeous Ashes of Time using all the same cast, which it kinda is. There's almost every significant 90's Hong Kong star here, Bridgette Lin, Leslie Chung, Maggie Chueng, Carina Lau, and both Tony Leung's, and they're all hamming it up to an admirable degree in a terrifically silly but energetic comedy. With a lot of extremely unrealistic but still pretty cool looney toons inspired kung fu (thanks Sammo Hung) sprinkled in liberally.
There's more plot then a whole channel of K-drama's, but it doesn't really matter. The context for why Carina Lau (also in drag) is frantically stabbing her own leg will be clear enough when the time comes.
B+Much less successful, and only slightly less stuffed with Canto pop stars is
The Twins Effect 2, which is in no way a sequel to The Twins Effect, but does serve well as a feature length commercial for all the hot young talent that Hong Kong of 2004 had to offer. Why, here in 2012, you can see the humble beginnings of current mega-stars of today like Edison Chen, Gillian Chung, Wilson Chen, Jaycee Chan, and ... wait a second, what do you mean all has bens eight years later, well shit. Real actors are here too, like Tony Leung, Donnie Yen, Daniel Wu, and an inexplicable but still awesome cameo from Jackie Chan. All that moneyed cast and some expensive-for-2004-but-still-kinda-shoddy-CGI go towards a feudal age Chinese fantasy film where an evil queen who is subjugating all men tries to thwart a prophecy of her downfall by sending her most badass, poutiest agent Gillian Cheung (ha) who teams up with the other half of the pop duo Twins (terminally bubbly Charlene Choi) who plays the cutest slave trader in cinema history.
Any film this ridiculous, no matter how stupid or calculatedly mercenary, is going to provide some amusement. And this one does. Its not great by any means, but there's some occasional decent spectacle, the most ineffectual protagonist of 2004, some adorably chintzy special effects, and a pretty good gag in the evil queen's doomsday weapon/spell.
spoiler (click to show/hide)
she makes all the men grow boobs, which is apparently pretty painful. Starting with poor Tony Leung.
Not great art, not even great commerce, but its hard to hate any film that commits to being that silly.
C+
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