Foreign Film February: Fist of Fury (1972)

fist of fury poster

Over the last couple of years, I’ve really gotten into kung fu movies. That’s something I loved when I was a kid but had completely gotten away from as an adult. Somewhere during the pandemic, I started watching old Shaw Brothers’ films and that has rekindled my love of the genre.

While the Shaw Brothers made a lot of movies filled with kung fu action, sword fights, crazy costumes, and ridiculous storylines, they never did make a movie with Bruce Lee. I’ve not actually watched a lot of movies with Bruce Lee. I did, however, recently purchase a boxed set of Bruce Lee movies from the Criterion Collection, so maybe I’ll remedy my deficiency soon. The other day I watched Fist of Fury, which I sadly found to be not that great.

Lee plays Chen Zhen, the best kung fu student at his school. When his mentor and the master of the school dies, Chen thinks it must have been murder. He blames the gang of Japanese dudes that have been harassing his school for weeks. The rest of the school urges Chen for restraint, as their master always preached that kung fu was not to be used for revenge.

But Chen cannot restrain himself. He goes to the Japanese dojo and kicks some serious ass. The action scenes are pretty good, but they are far from the best I’ve seen in a kung fu movie. But they are definitely worth watching. But everything around the fights is utterly dull. Kung fu flicks aren’t exactly known for their great drama, but the best ones are at least interesting, or funny, or something. This one is utterly forgettable. You really are just biding your time until Bruce Lee takes his shirt off and gets down to business.

Foreign Film February: A Virgin Among the Living Dead (1973)

a virgin among the living dead poster

Jesús Franco was a prolific Spanish filmmaker who dabbled in a lot of genres (including hardcore pornography) but is mostly known as a horror director. He’s one of those guys whose name I’ve heard for years, but that I’d never gotten around to watching.

A Virgin Among the Living Dead is what you might call an erotic horror film with a gothic setting, a dreamlike plot, beautiful visuals, and, yet, lots of naked flesh. It is also pretty good.

It focuses on Christine (Christina von Blanc) a young woman whose mother died when she was very young. As a child, her father sent her away to boarding schools where she stayed, even through holidays, so that she doesn’t even really know who her father is. But when she’s notified that he has died she returns to his home in a small village.

Almost immediately we know things are strange because when she arrives in the village and informs some townspeople that she will be staying at her father’s manor, she’s told that no one has lived there for some time. But Christie just knows she has other family members living there. When she arrives she is greeted by her relatives, an odd bunch one and all (including the director himself as a drooling, sniveling mute).

As the title implies, and you’ll probably figure out pretty quickly, these relatives aren’t exactly what they at first seem to be. They might be the living dead, or they might be some manifestation of her deranged psyche. It all gets pretty weird and pretty confusing, but Franco imbues it with enough beautiful imagery that you won’t mind, at least I didn’t.

It isn’t quite good, but it is definitely not boring and it for sure made me want to watch some more films from the director.

Autumn Sonata (1978)

autumn sonata criterion bluray

I have not yet watched an Ingmar Bergman film for this year’s Foreign Film February. I really should remedy that. I bought a big boxed set of his films from the Criterion Collection a couple of years ago and haven’t begun to really scratch the surface of it. Bergman films tend to be very weighty, which sometimes makes them difficult to watch. They are often rewarding, but the effort it takes to watch them often makes me put them off. Foreign Film February is always a good excuse to make me make that effort, but I haven’t yet.

Goals!

I did watch this one several years ago and reviewed it here. It is definitely a rewarding watch.

Prime Suspect: The Complete Collection

prime suspect the complete collection

Prime Suspect is one of my all-time favorite detective television shows. Helen Mirren stars as Jane Tennison, one of the few female Detective Chief Inspectors in London. The series follows her as she fights against institutionalized sexism, her own destructive personality, and solves some pretty gnarly crimes. It is incredibly well made and Mirren is absolutely brilliant. I highly recommend the show as you can see from the review I wrote of the complete series that came out on Blu-ray a few years back.

Foreign Film February: Tampopo (1985)

tampopo poster

When I was a teenager, or maybe in college my brother asked me if I had seen Tampopo. I’d said I’d heard of it, probably seen it while flipping channels, but hadn’t watched it. He said it was really weird, but kind of awesome. He admitted that the plot – about a little restaurant that made noodles, something really foreign sounding to us Oklahoma boys – sounded goofy on paper, but that it was really funny and cool. I made a mental note to watch it and then never did. Until this last week.

It is funny how those things go. Why do I remember my brother telling me about a silly noodle movie from decades ago? Why does it seem like I’d told similar stories several times lately? I seem to be watching a lot of movies that made an impression on me as a teenager lately. Don’t ask me why.

Tampopo is really weird and absolutely delightful. The main story is about a couple of truck drivers who stop off at a run-down noodle shop owned by a pretty divorcee, with a young son. They decide to help the poor lady out and enlist some friends – a noodle connoisseur, an interior decorator, etc – to make her noodle shop the best dang noodle shop in Japan. This part of the film is very sweet and silly and wonderful. One of the drivers is sweet on the woman and they innocently flirt. The men spend much of their time trying to help her learn to cook the very best bath of noodles ever and that gets really fun.

Interspersed through all this is a series of vignettes about food and love often intersect. There is a husband who demands a woman rise from her deathbed to cook him one last meal, a lowly office worker who shows up his superiors with his vast knowledge of French cuisine, and an etiquette class that teaches its Japanese students how to properly eat spaghetti. The longest, strangest, and funniest is one involving a couple who use food in a variety of sexual ways. The vignettes are interesting and very silly, but I mostly enjoyed the film for its main story.

But the whole thing adds up to a big dish of delightful.

Doctor Who: Spearhead From Space

spearhead from space

Doctor Who
Spearhead From Space
Season 7, Story 51
Originally Aired: January 3-24, 1970

My answer to the question as to who is my favorite incarnation of The Doctor is usually answered by which Doctor I most recently watched. But if pressed Jon Pertwee is often my definitive answer (when it isn’t Tom Baker, or David Tennant, or Peter Capaldi…). But Pertwee is a great Doctor.

Spearhead From Space was his first story, it was also the first Doctor Who story to be shot in color and the first to be released on Blu-ray. I reviewed the disk when it first came out and you can read my thoughts here.