July marks the one-year anniversary of Kung Fu Fridays, so I've selected a load of really cool films for my peeps who can show up in person to read subtitles all evening. The poster features my favorite actor (no Asian actor, just Actor, period), Tony Leung, admittedly from Hero and not one of the following (he stars in Red Cliff).Five Element Ninjas - It stars the "Five Venoms", it's written and directed by Chang Cheh, and it's a Shaw Brothers classic. Expect lots of violence and accidental homoeroticism.
Red Cliff - This John Woo historical epic is so long, at 288 minutes, that I'm actually showing it on two consecutive Fridays. It's not that we can't take a Lord of the Rings-type length, it's that we can't do it in the stuffy heat of summer. And we've got an extra Friday in July anyway.
Fearless - It would be fun (if daunting) to draw a diagram of how all the martial arts films link together. Jet Li's Fearless has him play the (historical) master of the (mostly fictitious) character from Fist of Fury and Fist of Legend (so Jet plays his own master).
Return to the 36th Chamber of Shaolin - KFF started with a Gordon Liu film (Heroes of the East), so he was a must to round out the year. His 36th Chamber of Shaolin ranked highly when its turn came, and in Return, he plays a con man impersonating the character he played in the first film, with hilarious consequences.
Definitely a hot month of action.
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