Category: Action - Action / Adventure - Adventure - Feature Film-action/Adventure - Foreign Film [Dub Or Subtitle]
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DVD House of Flying Daggers
No one uses color like Chinese director Zhang Yimou--movies like Raise the Red Lantern or Hero, though different in tone and subject matter, are drenched in rich, luscious shades of red, blue, yellow, and green. House of Flying Daggers is no exception; if they weren't choreographed with such vigorous imagination, the spectacular action sequences would seem little more than an excuse for vivid hues rippling across the screen. Government officers Leo and Jin (Asian superstars Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro) set out to destroy an underground rebellion called the House of Flying Daggers (named for their weapon of choice, a curved blade that swoops through the air like a boomerang). Their only chance to find the rebels is a blind women named Mei (Ziyi Zhang, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) who has some lethal kung fu moves of her own. In the guise of an aspiring rebel, Jin escorts Mei through gorgeous forests and fields that become bloody battlegrounds as soldiers try to kill them both. While arrows and spears of bamboo fly through the air, Mei, Jin, and Leo turn against each other in surprising ways, driven by passion and honor. Zhang's previous action/art film, Hero, sometimes sacrificed momentum for sheer visual beauty; House of Flying Daggers finds a more muscular balance of aesthetic splendor and dazzling swordplay. --Bret Fetzer
I have to get this out of my system. After watching the triumphant "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and as well as the brilliant "Hero," I cannot see how "Flying Daggers" can be considered to be remotely in the same league. In Flying Daggers, the characters are poorly developed. I felt no sympathy for any of them from beginning to end. The plot twists just struck me as manipulative and ineffective. Most of kung fu scenes were unrealistically choreographed. And the ending just seemed like "blood for the sake of blood." I also found the use the Chinese movie cliche of blood coming from the mouth to be silly and almost a parody of the genre. None of the cinematography could make up for these deficiencies. In the short film about the making of the movie that is included in the CD, Zhang Yimou goes through a ponderous explanation of the deeper meaning of the film that did not seem to relate to real world experience. My hope is that on the next go around, Zhang Yimou will find a better use of his time.
Lovely film undone by an overwrought ending
House of Flying Daggers is almost everything you've heard it to be, a beautifully composed and designed film with ballet-like fight scenes. The principle actors are attractive and engaging, the script offers surprising twists, but the end - the end undoes all the effort. If you've seen director Zhang Yimou's Hero, then there won't be many surprises about what happens to the characters in Flying Dagger's love triangle. The ending is also reminiscent of The Promise, another big-budget martial arts film about a doomed love triangle. But where the endings of Hero and The Promise were annoyingly hokey, the conclusion to Flying Daggers is laughably bad.
Death seemingly never ends. One character falls with a gasp, a close-up shows eyes closed, the other characters anguish in reaction. But wait! The dead one isn't really dead and comes crawling back a few minutes later. The same character appears to die yet again and lies so long in the field that the body is buried under snow. A protracted fight ensues between the remaining characters in which they stab each other in the back with broadswords - yet remain alive to finish out the scene with the corpse that has crawled out of the snow. Blood from the ice-covered cadaver comes gushing out of a wound like water out of a hose, Monty Python-like, the music cues the final-final-final death, the body falls, and all you can do is roll your eyes and hope that this really is THE END. But it isn't. The corpse-to-be opens its eyes one last time to choke out a farewell and an impaled survivor walks into the snowy horizon.
Watch it at your own peril.
I was very disappointed
I am a big fan of martial arts films -- having lived in Taiwan. However, this one was over-hyped in my opinion. The love affairs in the DVD were unbelievable at best and even absurd at times. I often enjoy the melodrama and over-acting of Chinese films, but I gagged a few times on this one. It was down-right goofy at times. I really wanted this one to grab me, but it did not.
I am a Jet li fan and i am also a true martial arts fanatic, having said that i would like to mention that i try not to be bias, i love this movie this movie is raw poetry and creative imagination in motion, you must embrace the substance of the story and understand the perception created for the ordiance then you must exercise creative thinking along with basic logic, right! there is the recipe to enjoy this movie, i have no complains and i would recomend that you view this yourself don't let anyone tell you about this experience.
as wonderful, stunning, creative movie this definitely on my classic list. More Info about this DVD Director(s): Yimou Zhang DVD Release Date: Released the 30 November 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Hong Kong wuxia films, or martial arts fantasies, traditionally squeeze poor acting, slapstick humor, and silly story lines between elaborate fight scenes in which characters can literally fly. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has no shortage of breathtaking battles, but it also has the dramatic soul of a Greek tragedy and the sweep of an epic romance. This is the work of director Ang Lee, who fell in love with movies while watching wuxia films as a youngster and made Crouching Tiger as a tribute to the form. To elevate the genre above its B-movie roots and broaden its appeal, Lee did two important things. First, he assembled an all-star lineup of talent, joining the famous Asian actors Chow Yun-fat and Michelle Yeoh with the striking, charismatic newcomer Zhang... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Yun-Fat Chow - Michelle Yeoh - Ziyi Zhang Director(s): Ang Lee DVD Release Date: Released the 05 June 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Movie-kinetics genius. Kung Fu Hustle takes the gleeful mayhem of Hong Kong action movies, the deadpan physical humor of silent comedies, and the sheer elasticity of Wile E. Coyote cartoons and fuses them into a spectacle that is simple in its joys and mind-boggling in its orchestration. A run-down slum has been poor but peaceful until a bunch of black-suited gangsters called the Axe Gang show up to cause trouble--and discover that, hidden among the humble poor, are three kung fu masters trying to live an ordinary life. But after these martial artists repulse the gang with their flying fists and feet, the gang leader hires a pair of assassins, whose arrival leads to the unveiling of more secrets, until both the screen and the audience are dizzy with hyperbolic fight artistry... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Sheng Yi Huang - Qiu Yuen - Wah Yuen DVD Release Date: Released the 09 August 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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The two-disc edition of Sin City easily makes the earlier single-disc theatrical-cut release obsolete by including the regular theatrical cut on the first disc, recutting the movie into four extended segments on the second disc (separated by story line), then piling on an impressive load of bonus features. But there's a catch. Billed as "Recut, Extended, Unrated," with "over 20 minutes" of new footage, the new set's four separate stories are extended by only about 6.5 total minutes of movie action (see details below in "What's New"); the rest of the added running time is the splashy new title shots (named by the title of the story or book) and the four minutes of credits that run at the end of each segment. Each addition makes the movie even closer to the comic books, and these... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Frank Miller (II) - Robert Rodriguez DVD Release Date: Released the 13 December 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Ending the most popular film epic in history, Star Wars: Episode III, Revenge of the Sith is an exciting, uneven, but ultimately satisfying journey. Picking up the action from Episode II, Attack of the Clones as well as the animated Clone Wars series, Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and his apprentice, Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen), pursue General Grievous into space after the droid kidnapped Supreme Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid).
The Star Wars Family Tree (click for larger image)
