Boss Level

Year 14, Day 15 - 1/15/22 - Movie #4,016

BEFORE: All right, I'm going to stick with action movies on streaming platforms for a while, at least this will get my Netflix list reduced by a bit.  But tonight's film is on Hulu, so I'm glad we're paying for that service for at least a few more months.  Boy, when they say "A Hulu exclusive", they mean it, this one's not even on iTunes, so it's really Hulu or bust tonight. 

Michelle Yeoh carries over one more time from "Gunpowder Milkshake". 

THE PLOT: Trapped in a time loop that constantly repeats the day of his murder, a former special forces agent must unlock the mystery behind his untimely demise. 

AFTER: Oh, it's so easy to see where this film came from - "Groundhog Day" is the most obvious touchstone, but "Edge of Tomorrow" (which was called "Live Die Repeat" in some markets - both are terrible titles, but I guess the original sounded too much like a soap opera) is another influence.  "Source Code" too, I suppose.  But if you mashed up that Bill Murray time-loop film with that Tom Cruise time-loop film, and threw in a little bit of "Deadpool", especially the way that he'd break the fourth wall, then you'd have something like "Boss Level".  Another similarity to "Deadpool" is how often the main character gets injured and recovered, of course Deadpool and Wolverine have special healing abilities, tonight's hero keeps DYING in horrible ways, but when he keeps repeating the same day over and over, the effect is the same, he might as well be invulnerable.  

The question then becomes - can you take this formula, which we've seen before, and do something different with it, can you make something new?  I think somebody accomplished that here, because Roy Pulver's not fighting aliens, and he's not stuck in an idyllic Pennsylvania town, either, he's just being killed by assassins, again and again and again.  Each time, though, he learns a little bit more about their moves, or a tiny bit more about the situation he's in, maybe each time he'll try a new way to kill somebody or he'll learn to jump out of his apartment a few seconds earlier so he won't get blown up next time.  Yeah, there's a lot of trial and error, but after a few hundred deaths and some experimentation, Roy starts to figure out a few things, like how the assassins are tracking him, and then after a few more tries, maybe he can start turning the tables on them.  Before that, though, there are a LOT of wasted afternoons spent drinking in a bar, because Roy has his periods of giving up, wondering if it's all worthless if he's just going to die anyway.  Maybe there's a pandemic metaphor in there somewhere, what's the point of getting up each day if you're not going to go anywhere, your work's on hold and you're just going to die someday?  

But hopefully you find your motivation, eventually, like Roy does.  He's inspired by the son that he doesn't have much of a relationship with, the kid doesn't even know that Roy is his father - so he spends a few days getting to know his son, and this turns out to be a great idea, for several reasons.  One of which is that his son likes playing video-games, and there's an e-sports tournament in the basement of the mall, so Roy accidentally learns that the assassins can't track him while he's underground.  Oh, yeah, plus Roy gets to know his son, which is good, too.  He gets to live a little longer, but he also finds out that even if he makes it to the end of the day, the world basically ends thanks to a machine his ex-girlfriend helped build, so that might explain the constant resetting.  So it's not just him, the whole world is stuck re-living the same day, he's just the only one who's aware of it happening. 

But now he's extra-motivated, he's got to dispatch the assassins more quickly next time, get to the compound of the evil military guy, get through all the security somehow, save his ex, stop the machine and defeat the big villain, in some order.  This leads to much more trial and error, many more deaths, but I guess if he keeps trying everything, eventually something's going to work.  

Nice placement for Michelle Yeoh, she plays a master martial artist proficient in katana, who just happens to frequent the same underground bar that Roy drinks at.  Remember how many days Bill Murray's character spent learning to play the piano in "Groundhog Day"?  Yeah, it's a bit like that, only with sword lessons.  Really, if you're stuck on the same day over and over, you've got all the time in the world, if you think about it.  I really like some of the music chosen for the film, too - "Foreplay/Long Time" by Boston, "Time Has Come Today" by the Chambers Brothers, and "Day After Day" by Badfinger.  Some music supervisor has both good taste AND a sense of humor. 

All told, I think the pieces came together in a new way with this one, and it was mostly worth the effort.  There were a few things unresolved (the "second Roy" guy, what was up with THAT?) and the science was junky, of course - meaning this was the equivalent of a fast food meal, a lot of empty calories but at least it will fill you up and make you feel satisfied.  

Also starring Frank Grillo (last seen in "Warrior"), Mel Gibson (last seen in "Tina"), Naomi Watts (last seen in "The Bill Murray Stories"), Annabelle Wallis (last seen in "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword"), Ken Jeong (last heard in "Scoob!"), Will Sasso (last seen in "Irresistible"), Selina Lo, Meadow Williams (last seen in "Den of Thieves"), Mathilde Ollivier, Rio Grillo, Sheaun McKinney, Armida Lopez, Buster Reeves (last seen in "Stand Up Guys"), Eric Etebari (last seen in "The Lincoln Lawyer"), Quinton "Rampage" Jackson (last seen in "The A-Team"), Rashad Evans (also last seen in "Warrior"), Adam Simon, Aaron Beelner (last seen in "Monster Hunter"), Travis Gomez, Michael Tourek (last seen in "Harriet"), Joe Knezevich (last seen in "The Highwaymen"), Eric Goins (last seen in "The Accountant"), John Cenatiempo (last seen in "Joker"), with cameos from Rob Gronkowski (last seen in "The Clapper"), Tyler Jon Olson (last seen in "Marauders").

RATING: 6 out of 10 pulled teeth

Gunpowder Milkshake

Year 14, Day 14 - 1/14/22 - Movie #4,015

BEFORE: OK, I've got a long slog ahead of me to get to the end of January, so let me get started.  Again, I'll match the movies watched in the first two weeks of this year up against any other two weeks of movie-watching ever, I'm already proud of my work in 2023.  I physically went OUTSIDE and went to the real theater, in person!  Had popcorn and a drink!  I watched a Best Picture winner from last year and three films with release dates from 2021!  Spent a few days in China and Japan, virtually!  Now I'm not sure exactly what lies ahead, but something tells me it won't be as great as all that was.  Dark winter days are coming, I feel.

Michelle Yeoh carries over from "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny". 

THE PLOT: Three generations of women fight back against those who could take everything from them. 

AFTER: Well, this one's not really that subtle at all - the basic premise is that men are evil and woman are good, or something to that effect. You'd think the issue at hand might be a little less cut and dry, black and white, but you'd be wrong.  The men are all gangsters who run something called The Firm, which is basically organized crime, but from the way it's pitched here, you'd think those men control the world.  Down with the patriarchy, sure, but if you succeed with that, what's going to take its place?  Won't another criminal organization just rise up to fill the gap, and if that one happens to be more gender-neutral or have more opportunities for women, is that really going to be so much better?  It would still be a criminal organization, after all, so I don't really see why "good" and "evil" here are so split along gender lines.  And wait, I thought gender was just a construct, anyway, what about trans people, are they good or evil?  Just saying. 

Besides, the lead character here is a hitman, sorry hit-WOMAN.  Are we really that willing to split hairs and say that a female assassin isn't just as evil as the male ones?  Why, because she has love in her heart, and a male assassin just wouldn't?  That seems rather a sexist viewpoint, in and of itself.  So I'm not really buying that.  Don't get me wrong, it's great to see female action stars, but even "Crouching Tiger" was less gender-biased, and that was set in feudal China, if anything the movie probably exaggerated how many opportunities there were for woman back then, as Liu Shen ran her own security firm, and there was at least the appearance that she had control over her heart, she could decide if she wanted to marry someone, even though she kept tending to choose against that.  

So here men are either the suits in charge of the crime, or the thugs that perform it at street level, and women are supposedly the force that keeps them all in check, to make sure things don't get out of hand.  Right.  What a load of hooey - look, if you want to make a film with female action stars, just do that, we should be past the point where we have to stop and think about what that all MEANS.  We just watched an old, old episode of "Iron Chef" and the judges were considering this feisty young chef named Morimoto, the rule-breaker, the cultural newcomer, the rebel, what does it all MEAN for him to cook this way, instead of just asking themselves, "Does his food TASTE good?"  It really should be that simple. 

There is one male in the film who's not totally evil, at least he's doing the wrong thing, but for the right reasons.  He stole money from The Firm, but only because his daughter was kidnapped by thugs in movie-monster masks, and he's desperate to save her.  Sam, the lead hit-woman in the film, accidentally shoots him, though, before finding all this out, so great, there goes the only decent honest man in this fictional universe.  Then she's got to go out of her way to rescue the little girl, out of a sense of honor or guilt or both, and then the film becomes a little like a play on "Lone Wolf and Cub", only gender-flipped.  Sam suddenly has a daughter figure in her life, and has to protect her while taking down the bad guys, who again, are all GUYS.  

Eventually she does have some help, from her "Aunties", former associates of her mother, who run a "library" where all the books actually contain guns or other forms of weaponry, and I guess somehow the titles of the books are supposed to let you know what weapons are inside, only none of the titles are punny enough or information-based enough to really stand for the type of gun, or let you know that there's a grenade inside, I just didn't get it.  Eventually even Sam's mother turns up again, she was a hit-woman too, who accidentally dragged Sam into the life, and who also crossed the wrong man when she was trying to make things "right", whatever that means in this profession.  Like, where do you draw the line when you kill people for money, how do you then think of yourself as "right" and everybody else is "wrong", or is that just a defense mechanism that enables them to keep going?  You KILL people.  For MONEY.  But I guess everybody sees themself as the hero of their story, and the villains need to do this, too.

What's worse is that everybody spends the movie talking about how complicated everything is, and protecting the child from learning what's really going on.  It's really NOT complicated, though, there's a fight, somebody lives, somebody else dies.  Bringing "right" and "wrong" into the picture is what's making things seem complicated - if you could just NOT do that, you'd see that history is written by the winners, aka the survivors.  And in this film, that's going to be the women, mostly.  

There is a connection to the "Crouching Tiger" films, beyond the fact that Michelle Yeoh carried over.  The fight scenes here are nearly as ridiculous and impossible as the ones seen in wuxia films, OK nobody flies or changes direction mid-flight, but they do those stunts where they flip over or run up walls or shoot one bad guy with another bad guy's gun, it's all very exciting but I doubt that any of it is possible in the real world.  I do award points for breaking new ground, and having Sam engage in a gunfight against three thugs after she's lost the use of her arms, well, that qualifies as new ground, I've never seen that before in a movie.  But then she needs the young girl to steer a car while she pushes the pedals with her feet, while out maneuvering two other cars in a parking garage, and then it's just ridiculous again. 

Compare this to, say, a "John Wick" movie, which also did feature a couple of female assassins the last time around, and also took itself WAY more seriously.  It's OK to have a female hero and a female villain now and again, genderless casting is supposedly the wave of the future, but to only put women on one side of the equation and men on the other, well, that's really not a step forward for either gender, is it? We're right back to the old "battle of the sexes", just from the other side. 

Also starring Karen Gillan (last seen in "Jumanji: The Next Level"), Lena Headey (last seen in "Fighting with My Family"), Carla Gugino (last seen in "The Space Between Us"), Chloe Coleman, Ralph Ineson (last seen in "The Witch"), Adam Nagaitis (last seen in "The Commuter"), Michael Smiley (last seen in "Tulip Fever"), Angela Bassett (last seen in "Tina"), Paul Giamatti (last seen in "Too Big to Fail"), Samuel Anderson, Ivan Kaye (last seen in "The King"), Jack Bandeira (ditto), David Burnell IV, Freya Allan, Mai Duong Kieu, Joanna Bobin (last seen in "Alice Through the Looking Glass"), Joshua Grothe, Hannes Pastor, Billy Buff, Lee Huang.  

RATING: 6 out of 10 bowling alley lanes

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny

Year 14, Day 13 - 1/13/22 - Movie #4,014

BEFORE: I'm anxious to get out of the realm of Chinese action films, but I also just learned that there's a SEQUEL to yesterday's film, and it's available on Netflix.  This is what happened last year, but with Swedish films by Bergman, I kept finding more and more that were available, and so I pulled a few doubles and included as many as I could, because I just didn't want to have to double back.  So I'm sort of in the same boat this January, but with Chinese films instead.  This time I've resigned myself to the fact that the romance chain is just going to be late, otherwise I have to cram 35 films into a calendar month with just 31 days.  My secondary job is starting up again today, so that's not going to be possible.  I've added so many extra films, now I have to either cut four films from the line-up, or just re-schedule my February 1 film for February 6.  I think I'm choosing the latter, again, it's so I won't have to double back here.

I hope you'll agree that these first two weeks of 2022 have been really something, movie-wise, and if so, then it's all been worth it.  Now I'm heading toward the dark days of winter, a bunch of lesser-known action films on Netflix and Hulu, most of them with either Bruce Willis or Nicolas Cage, so we'll see how I feel about 2022 after I get through all of that.  Michelle Yeoh carries over from "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". See, I wasn't so much avoiding "Crouching Tiger, "Hidden Dragon" for 20 years as much as I was just waiting for the sequel that I didn't even know about to become available - that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. 

THE PLOT: A story of lost love, young love, a legendary sword

AFTER: The first "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" film was released in 2000, and the sequel came out a full 16 years later.  These are based on a book series from Chinese literature, called "The Crane-Iron Series", and yesterday's film was based on the fourth book, and this sequel is based on the fifth book, titled "Iron Knight, Silver Vase".  

Any film represents the year it was made, I know 16 years isn't a record for longest distance between a film and its sequel, but it's still a significant period of time.  I've been working for one animator for a long time, nearly 30 years, and when I started working for him he had just finished his first animated feature, and he was in post-production on two live-action features that got finished, but were never distributed.  We still sell them on DVD via his web-site, but there's not that much interest - for one of them, there's no master tape so we never made a lot of copies on DVD, so if somebody orders one the easiest thing for me to do is to burn one from the VHS tape I have at home - it's not fantastic quality, but we're only charging $5 for the DVD, so nobody will complain about it.  It's not that great of a movie, anyway, so it would be criminal to charge more.

But as I sit and I watch the credits roll, waiting for the movie to end so I can finalize the DVD, I see a lot of familiar names, some people I've known for many years, some people I've lost touch with, other people I never met but I know them by reputation, or they're still friends with my boss in real life or on Facebook.  One lead actor happens to be the director of an arts center in suburban Chicago, and I happened to visit that town last June on a trip, we stayed in an AirBnB right across the street from his office. (It's not weird that happened, it's weird that I figured that out, after the fact.). But as I watch the credits roll from a film made in 1992, I can't help but wonder what happened to everybody, did they keep working on movies, did they stay in New York City or did they move away, how many of these people are still alive, and active and happy?  I know for some people, working on films is their calling in life, for others, they might just be doing it as a temporary thing while looking for their calling.  But this is why the credits of a film are important, they're a permanent record for those people - I was here, I stood on that spot, I wore this costume and said those lines, or for people behind the scenes whose efforts may appear invisible to the audience - I was there, I drew storyboards or made costumes or I created props or I drove a truck, and my efforts were not in vain.  

For "Crouching Tiger", I know that only ONE actress carried over to the sequel - part of that is just the nature of the story, this author seemed to like writing stories where nearly everybody died in the end, but it feels a little like a cheap way to achieve closure, if I'm being honest.  That's not the way to run a franchise, by modern standards - if they killed off almost all the "Avengers" at the end of the first movie in 2009, they'd have to rebuild the whole team just to make a sequel, so really, it makes more sense to keep all the heroes alive, that's more incentive for people to come and check in on the team in "Age of Ultron".  Maybe this is why "Infinity War" was so shocking for audiences, because so many heroes blinked out of existence - but I knew that most of them would be brought back, it just made clear financial sense. 

The Chinese movies are maybe a bit different, there seems to be less incentive to keep everyone alive for the next movie.  Then again, this is based on the fifth book of a 5-book series, so perhaps all bets are off.  I don't quite understand the impetus to introduce a whole bunch of new characters just to kill them, but there's probably a lot about Chinese culture that I don't understand.  For me, the "Star Wars" series is an obvious reference point, there's quite a bit here that reminds me of "Star Wars" - their swords aren't glowing, but there's obviously some mysticism involved in learning the ways of the Wudang, and the way the warriors can levitate and do impossible things is at times similar to using the Force.  Donnie Yen played an almost-Jedi in "Rogue One", and he's here in this film, too - and ultimately the story of Snow Vase and Wei Fang reminds me of Kylo Ren and Rey, the way they formed a dyad, with some mental connection between them, like they were opposite sides of the same coin.  

What's a little weird here is that all of the characters speak in English, while in the last film everybody spoke in Mandarin, and there were subtitles.  Maybe they filmed this movie twice, like they did with "Mulan", once in Chinese and once in English?  That's twice as much work, at least, but maybe this makes financial sense?  A lot of Americans simply won't watch a movie that's in a foreign language - clearly I will, but I keep the subtitles on for every movie, it's just easier to know what's going on since I have a hearing aid now, so I'm less likely to miss anything if I read the subtitles.  

So Shu Lien is the only character to carry over from the previous film, which really helps me out.  Michelle Yeoh makes my 2022 year-end countdown for sure, and she may also end up with the most appearances this January.  Now we know why she never got together with Li Mu Bai, because she was promised to another, even though that other guy was dead, the connection was SO strong that she just couldn't move on.  Well, guess who turns up in the sequel?  We learn this warrior's name, Silent Wolf, and he's been isolated on a mountaintop all this time, but now he's back and he puts a new crew of warriors together during a tavern fight (there seem to be a lot of tavern fights in these movies...) to take down the dreaded Hades Dai, who, big shock, wants to get his hands on the Sword of Destiny.  

Whoever is in charge of the Sword of Destiny always seems to put it on display, which is a huge mistake.  Before you know it, some thief from another clan is going to show up to steal the sword, why doesn't everyone just plan on this happening, again?  Shu Lien even comments that the sword should be in a safer place, but then why doesn't she actually, you know, MOVE it to one?  I guess she's technically not the sword's owner, and whoever is in charge of it doesn't want to listen to her, big mistake.  Wei Fang, part of Hades Dai's clan, shows up to steal it, and so does Snow Vase, who tried to join Hades Dai's clan, but was rebuffed.  These two warriors have more in common than they think, they have a shared past which will eventually be revealed.  The theft of the sword is thwarted, Wei Fang gets put in a cage and Snow Vase begins training with Shu Lien.  

Meanwhile, Silent Wolf has come out of isolation and heads back to the late Governor Te's compound, recruiting five new warriors at that tavern fight along the way.  As they said with "The Suicide Squad", don't get too attached. Silent Wolf reunites with his lost love, Shu Lien, and explains why he had to fake his own death. It's not long, though, before the Hades Dai clan attacks, using Mantis and the Blind Enchantress to thin the ranks of the heroes.  After an extensive flashback that explains the connection between Wei Fang and Snow Vase, there's a three-way battle for the sword on a frozen lake, and really, there's only one reason to have a battle on a frozen lake.  Here's where Wei Fang really reminds me of Kylo Ren, because you never really know which way he's going to go, is he ultimately going to be a hero or a villain, or is he just a little bit of both? 

Finally, the Big Bad Hades Dai gets into the battle, and it's Silent Wolf vs. Hades Dai for the title, and control of the Sword of Destiny.  Some cool stuff here, obvious wire-work and fighters moving in impossible ways, but they do a good enough job of removing the wires with CGI so we can all pretend for a moment that warriors can fly.  The ending is sort of a reverse homage to the ending of the original film, only maybe this time we can believe that maybe love wins out.  Jeez, it only took these crazy kids 18 years to get back together, but that's enough to give hope to the masses, I hope. 

OK, I'm off Asian-made movies, I think, but Michelle Yeoh's going to stick around for a couple more days.

Also starring Donnie Yen (last seen in "Mulan" (2020)), Jason Scott Lee (ditto), Harry Shum Jr. (last seen in "The Onion Movie"), Natasha Liu Bordizzo (last seen in "The Greatest Showman"), Eugenia Yuan (last seen in "Memoirs of a Geisha"), Roger Yuan (also last seen in "Mulan" (2020)), Gary Young (itto), JuJu Chan, Chris Pang (last seen in "Palm Springs"), Woon Young Park, Darryl Quon, Veronica Ngo (last seen in "Da 5 Bloods"), Andrew Stehlin (last seen in "X-Men: Dark Phoenix"), Shuya Chang, Xiaofei Zhou, Xingang Gong.  

RATING: 5 out of 10 broken vases

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Year 14, Day 12 - 1/12/22 - Movie #4,013

BEFORE: I could probably spend another week bouncing around in the Chinese/Asian-American action genre, but it's just not my thing, and I'm already running late. I got into this topic and ended up thinking of a couple extra films to drop in, so now I'm a bit desperate to get moving, get on with the rest of my plan for January, even though there's no clear path toward "catching up", and I'm just going to be starting romance films late, I've resigned myself to that now.  Maybe that's a metaphor for our times, this year everything feels like it's fallen behind, movies have been delayed, that TV show you like probably didn't start at its regular time, maybe even your Christmas celebration got put on hold, if you're a responsible type of person.  I know mine did, I haven't visited my parents since Thanksgiving.  So screw it, the romance chain is starting late, and I won't pretend that I meant to do that, but it's a damn metaphor, so deal with it.  

Chow Yun-Fat carries over from "The Replacement Killers".  

THE PLOT: A young Chinese warrior steals a sword from a famed swordsman and then escapes into a world of romantic adventure with a mysterious man in the frontier of the nation.  

AFTER: I will do my best today to make some sense of it all, but the films in foreign languages are tough, they require extra concentration.  But, I made it all the way HERE so I just have to tough it out. This one's WAY over the border, out of my comfort zone, stretching into crazytown.  I mean no offense against the Asian culture by saying this, I'm just not comfortable watching people run up walls, do impossible flips, and basically FLY when humans can't do that, not even the ones who are masters of the martial arts.  The best way through this is just to treat these characters like Chinese superheroes - after all, we have people who can fly and have other powers in American movies, we just call them something different.  Right?  So it's a fantasy film, reality doesn't enter into the picture, we just want to see what the movie can make people LOOK like they're doing, even though nobody can DO that.  

Still, I feel like the whole thing's a bit dishonest, I don't know why I'm holding the martial arts movies to a higher standard, but it just feels like they're telling kids that if they practice their karate moves, attain some form of higher consciousness, then they too can run up walls or balance on a bamboo shoot that couldn't possibly hold their weight.  Or break a pile of bricks with their bare hands and look really cool doing it.  But no, this is a SWORD movie, there's not a lot of karate chop action going on here, so that's something.  What I know about martial arts turns out to be very little, but I guess there are different schools, and this all comes from the "wuxia" genre of Chinese fantasy literature.  Here the heroes tend to come from the lower classes of society, so they're not part of the military or aristocratic classes, they just get to some level of success because they train like crazy.  

The title of the film comes from a Chinese idiom about a situation that is full of unnoticed masters - so it's all about who's got the talent, the best abilities to fight, and how they're hiding in plain sight.  Taken another way, the title also refers to the underlying desires and passions that lie beneath the surface of polite society and civil behavior, and that also factors into the plot, the characters are secretly motivated by their inner emotions, we can go back to that any time I don't understand WHY someone does what they do.  And in the sub-plot, the flashback with Jen Yu and Dark Cloud's secret past, I'm told that the last Chinese characters in their names are the ones for "tiger" and "dragon" respectively, so that could be significant.  

The main storyline is about the sword, Green Destiny, which is owned by Li Mu Bai, a renowned warrior.  He's had a long-term non-relationship with Yu Shu Lien, she runs a private security company, and they've had feelings for each other for a long time, but she was once engaged to his close friend who died, so I guess it's been awkward for them, they both feel loyalty to the dead guy.  But Mu Bai wants to retire, so there's hope for these crazy kids, and he wants to give his sword to his benefactor in Beijing, so he needs her help to get the sword there (?). 

But, shortly after Shu Lien makes friends with a young woman, the engaged daughter of the Governor, a masked thief breaks into the estate and steals the sword, after fighting with Shu Lien.  This thief is apparently a student of Jade Fox, a woman who tried to learn the secret ways of the Wudang, which was forbidden, and coincidentally Jade Fox killed the mentor of Mu Bai, so there, already the story is kind of connecting back to itself.  I get the overall feeling that this whole story is about three times more complicated than it needs to be, but I'm willing to roll with it. The police lieutenant traces the theft of the sword back to the Governor's compound, and this leads to a confrontation where we learn that Jade Fox has been masquerading as the governess to young Jen, and apparently teaching her the mysteries of the Wudang, only the student has now overtaken her mentor.  Jade Fox is rescued by young Jen and leaves, but not before revealing to all why she killed Mu Bais' mentor.  

I'm sorry if this review is all spoiler-y today, there's simply no way to talk about this film without getting into the details of it all.  I realize I'm twenty years late for this party, maybe you are too, I don't know. All I know is even when I set my sights on this film, thanks to my system it still took me a couple years to GET to it, but now it's in the rear-view, so that's another load off of my mind.  Anyway, there's a big flashback scene next, revealing how young Jen was once in a caravan crossing the desert which was attacked by bandits who stole her comb.  Jen was one of the only survivors, she somehow fought back and pursued the leader of the bandits, because she really, REALLY liked that comb for some reason.  Lo, the lead bandit, sort of held her hostage, but thanks to Stockholm syndrome or something they fell in love, only they had to keep their feelings secret because they came from different classes - but he vowed to improve himself and I guess she vowed to join the Wudang clan, and they agreed to meet again, somewhere down the road.  This all becomes important again when Lo shows up again, right before Jen's wedding.  Remember, she's the tiger and he's the dragon, or something like that. 

So, Jen runs away from the wedding - I can't really tell if she GOT married, or left right before that, or maybe she got married but skipped out on the honeymoon, but either way, she chooses instead to dress like a man, go to a tavern where a lot of warriors hang out, and start picking fights, because this IS a fighting movie, after all.  She takes down all the challengers and pretty much destroys the whole tavern, and this is how you get the attention of the Wudang and work yourself back into the main plot, I guess.  Shu Lien shows up again, and reveals that she and Mu Bai found Lo, and he's waiting for Jen back at Mount Wudang.  But then they fight again, of course.  Jen's got that stolen Green Destiny sword, which breaks every weapon that Shu Lien uses, but Shu Lien is the better fighter, so she wins, even with a broken sword.  Jen's a badass, though, because she doesn't accept mercy gracefully.

This leads to ANOTHER fight, Mu Bai shows up and tries to teach Jen how to lose gracefully, and this is the fight where everybody balances on tiny bamboo trees, harnesses the power of wind somehow, and they manage to change direction mid-flight.  Mu Bai takes back his sword, which should mean that Jen would surrender and become his student, only she doesn't do that - is this just because she's a whiny bitch?  Why can't she train with Mu Bai and live honestly and just be with Lo and be happy?  I guess she just doesn't have it in her, go figure.  So Mu Bai throws the sword off a waterfall and she goes diving in after it - just like the comb, I guess she REALLY wants it, you know girls like the shiny things (?)

Jade Fox shows up again to rescue Jen, and it leads to the final battle in a cave somewhere. Mu Bai fights Jade Fox, who's using poisoned needles now, and let's just say this battle doesn't really end well for anybody.  The aftermath is a giant downer, too, I don't think Chinese characters know how to be happy, as everybody seems to know who they want to be with, just nobody seems williing to make it happen.  I'm kind of scratching my head over this ending, can't quite wrap my brain around it, but it is very anti-Hollywood, in that nobody gets their "happily ever after", which is disappointing to a large degree, but maybe it's trying to be more realistic in some sense.  People do often act in ways that are not in their own best interests, some people don't seem to be able to work toward a better future, and isn't the will of society and the government more important in the long run?  I guess that's one theory, anyway. 

Still, there's so much to unpack here, I need to read some more perhaps about everything that happened here, and what it all MEANS. 

Also starring Michelle Yeoh (last seen in "Memoirs of a Geisha"), Zhang Ziyi (ditto), Chang Chen, Cheng Pei-Pei (last seen in "Mulan" (2020)), Sihung Lung, Li Fazeng, Wang Deming, Li Li, Hai Yan, Gao Xi'an, Huang SuYing, Zhang Jinting, Du ZhenXi, Li Kai, Feng Jianhua, Ma Zhongxuan, Li Bao-Cheng, Yang Yongde.  

RATING: 6 out of 10 bite-size meatballs

The Replacement Killers

Year 14, Day 11 - 1/11/22 - Movie #4,012

BEFORE: Well, I'm presented with two choices, follow the linking or stick to the schedule - and apparently I've chosen the linking over the schedule.  I made a plan, sure, but I've already dropped in so many extra films in January that I've got almost no chance of making my February 1 romance deadline in time.  The original plan already assumed I could double-up twice during the month, even though I wasn't totally sure that would be possible, and I was going to link from "Mulan" directly to "Crouching Tiger" via Cheng Pei-Pei.  Now THAT ship has sailed, because I added "Memoirs of a Geisha", and now another one that wasn't planned, so what happens now?  Find four days this month where I can watch TWO movies, just to make an arbitrary deadline that I imposed on myself?  No, the easier thing to do, and I hate to do it, is to just start the romance chain a few days later than usual.  

I know, I know, but just look at all the great movies that I crammed into the first two weeks of the year, isn't that worth something?  And for once I feel like I'm making something akin to progress, getting some of these classic films with stellar reputations off of the watchlist.  I don't know much about "The Replacement Killers", for example, but it's got very good scores, even though it's not on that list of "1,001 Movies to See Before You Die".  But "Crouching Tiger" IS on that list, so that one's important, too.  Heck, they're all important, so what the heck can I do, but watch 'em all?  It's just unfortunate that I noticed the linking opportunity at the last second, but isn't that better than not noticing it at all?  

So, new plan - Kenneth Tsang (The General) AND Randall Duk Kim (Dr. Crab!) carry over from "Memoirs of a Geisha". 

THE PLOT: A troubled hitman seeks aid from a forger to help him get papers to China.  However, the drug lord has hired replacements to finish the job and kill the hitman.  

AFTER: Eh, now I'm not sure that my little detour was worth it - this is a classic film with a good reputation, in other words, I think I've heard good things about it, but I just found it very simple, quite basic. It's an early Antoine Fuqua film (pre-"Training Day"), and it looks like it's the first thing he directed that was NOT a music video, but I think that doesn't elevate it, the director's future track record only counts for so much, and at the end of the day, there doesn't seem to be much here. Also, it was produced by John Woo, another director with a great reputation for action films, but I think I've only seen a few of them, like "Broken Arrow", "Face/Off" and "Mission: Impossible II".

I like the idea that the cold hitman here, John Lee, has a change of heart, and can't go through with the assignment when he learns that his target is a policeman's son, and his last two assignments were to take out criminals, which he found to be a lot easier.  The Asian crimelord has threatened his mother and sister back in China, but that's still not enough to make him kill an innocent child - so he's in a no-win situation, I get that, and he's determined to come out on top here, though it seems the odds are nearly impossible.  All good stuff, but still it feels like something is missing somewhere, and I can't quite put my finger on it. 

(I don't know, maybe it's me, I've been feeling out of sorts during this latest wave of the pandemic, where there's no official lockdown here in NYC, but there might as well be.  Officially, the city's still open, it's just every individual place IN the city is possibly closed, or barely open.  When I went to see "Spider-Man: No Way Home" in a movie theater last week, there were maybe 4 people there, but it was the matinee. It seems like everybody's either sick with COVID or they're staying home so they don't catch COVID, plus it's freaking cold out there, so when you put it all together, nobody's out doing much of anything, I'm at home four full days a week, and I've got the cooped-up cabin fever again.  When I'm at work I just want to be at home, when I'm at home I want to be out doing something, and if I go out with a friend, it just feels weird.  All this hardly makes for a great attitude, and the only travel I'm doing is virtually, through movies.)

Anyway, the hitman tries to get a forged passport from a contact's female connection, so he can fly back to China and check in on his family, but some of the gangster's men track him down at the forger's office and try to shoot him, and her.  This is one of several quick shootouts, they did pack a number of them into a tight 90-minute film.  Not long after, the titular Replacement Killers appear on the scene, they're tasked with killing the kid that John Lee wouldn't kill, also they need to take out John Lee and the forger, who I guess both know too much. This leads to a shoot-out at the car wash, a shoot-out at the movie theater, and then later on they're going to swing by the dry cleaners and the Starbucks, and probably have a couple shoot-outs there too.  

John Lee gets a passport from a dying friend, and the forger works her magic on it, so he's free to leave the country, but he can't stop thinking about the cop's kid - him leaving the country probably means the Replacement Killers will succeed, and he can't have that on his conscience.  So the ex-killer and the forger have to team up to take everybody down, the gangster, his underlings, and the Replacement Killers.  As I said, it all seems like pretty simple stuff - I'm not sorry I watched it, I just thought it would be more relevant, I guess.  

I feel like I haven't seen Mira Sorvino in anything for quite some time - though she was in "Stuber" recently, and I saw her in "Butter" the year before that.  She's been working steadily, it looks like, just not in movies that I've been watching, I guess that's just the luck of the draw.  Reading up on her interest in making this film back in 1998, I knew she went to Harvard (at the same time as a friend of mine) but I didn't know she majored in Asian studies and spent 8 months living in Beijing. She was also dating Quentin Tarantino around the time she made this film, I guess that all makes some kind of sense. 

Also starring Chow Yun-Fat, Mira Sorvino (last seen in "Stuber"), Michael Rooker (last seen in "Brightburn"), Jürgen Prochnow (last seen in "Judge Dredd"), Til Schweiger (last seen in "King Arthur" (2004)), Danny Trejo (last seen in "The Ridiculous 6"), Clifton Collins Jr. (last seen in "The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day"), Carlos Gomez (last seen in "All About Steve"), Frank Medrano (last seen in "Fathers' Day"), Carlos Leon, Leo Lee, Patrick Kilpatrick, Andrew J. Marton, Sydney Coberly, Yau-Gene Chan, Nicki Micheaux, Max Daniels, James Wing Woo (last seen in "The Big Fix"), Albert Wong (last seen in "Enemy of the State"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 pinball machines

Memoirs of a Geisha

Year 14, Day 10 - 1/10/22 - Movie #4,011

BEFORE: I was going to go straight to "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", but then I realized that this was on my Netflix list, and I could drop it in here, it shares cast members with both "Mulan" and that other Chinese film.  January is already an over-crowded month, but if I don't drop this one in here, I don't know when I'll be able to fit it in.  So now Gong Li carries over from "Mulan" and I'm taking a slight detour to Japan before I finish things up in China. 

THE PLOT: Nitta Sayuri reveals how she transcended her fishing-village roots and became one of Japan's most celebrated geisha. 

AFTER: Oh, I just KNOW I'm going to get in trouble tonight over what I have to say.  How do I know this?  A couple years ago, maybe the October just before the pandemic, I took a few photos of people on the NYC subway, on their way to a Halloween party. No big deal, I take photos of costumed people all the time at NY Comic-Con, but this time there was one woman with make-up on, wearing a Japanese robe.  So, naturally, when I tweeted the photo, I said the woman was dressed as a "geisha". Oh, the reaction this got on Twitter, with this person saying her robe wasn't cinched a certain way, so she couldn't be a geisha, another saying that her hair wasn't traditional, and anyway I was using "geisha" as a derogatory term, plus I must be racist just to call a woman in a Japanese robe a "geisha", when she clearly wasn't.  Jeezus, lighten up, what SHOULD I have called her?  "Japanese woman wearing a robe and face make-up, whose costume probably isn't very authentic, but she's just a teenager trying to have a good time on Halloween, so let's cut her a break"?  Would THAT be a better name?  And then I was the a-hole for taking her picture, calling her a "geisha" and thus exploiting her while also highlighting the sexist motifs of Japanese culture.  Well, ex-CUSE ME!

Honestly, I don't know much about the geisha, I never really took the time to study Japanese culture to any extent, I know they used to perform the "tea ceremony" and act as hosts, but that's about it. I figured maybe I'd get some more understanding by watching this movie, but the film spends the first hour or so explaining what a geisha is NOT - she's not a courtesan, not a prostitute - rather than explaining what a geisha IS.  I had to stop and look it up, the word sort of translates into English as "art maker", so that's what she does, besides pouring tea - she plays music, sings, paints I guess, and also practices the art of conversation with her male guests. Look, this is incredibly sexist, no matter how you look at it, but don't blame me, OK?  I didn't make the rules back in pre-World War II Japan, this was a different time, and this is how their culture functioned, at least for a time. 

The film follows a young girl named Chiyo as she and her sister are SOLD by her father and is brought by cart from a small fishing village to a geisha house in a Japanese city.  Yes, apparently you could sell your kids back then, if you were hard up for money.  Again, don't blame me, that was the system.  Her sister is deemed more unattractive and is sent to work in a brothel - remember, geishas are NOT prostitutes - while Chiyo makes friends with another girl named Pumpkin, becomes the servant to a geisha named Hatsumomo, and begins a form of introductory geisha training.  A lot of it seems to involved being taught how to properly move around, bow, carry plates and stuff - a bit like "The Karate Kid" here, minus the karate. 

Hatsumomo tricks Chiyo into destroying the kimono of her geisha rival, and Chiyo gets punished for this, plus falls more deeply into debt, because it was an expensive kimono.  Hmm, imagine that, the person sold as a slave has to work harder, and is unable to have any financial path to freedom.  In other words, a slave. Chiyo tries to locate her sister so they can run away together, but she gets caught and this causes the "Mother" of the house to stop investing in her training. While out in the city and crying by a river, an older, well-dressed man buys her a dessert and gives Chiyo his handkerchief and some money - this inspires her to work harder to become a geisha, so she can grow up and meet this man again someday and become part of his life, even if it's just in some small way, to pour him tea or entertain him.  Umm, hooray for feminism?  

Years go by, and Pumpkin becomes a maiko (apprentice geisha) and Chiyo is taken under the wing of Mameha, that rival whose kimono she once destroyed.  Mameha convinces Mother to restart Chiyo's training and promises to pay Mother back twice over in the future.  As a maiko herself, Chiyo starts working the tea rooms, and sure enough, she meets that man who once gave her a shaved ice, he's a successful businessman, but he doesn't seem to notice her that much. His business partner, Nobu, however, starts to like her after she's hired to spend time with them and pretends to be interested in a sumo match.  But remember, she's not a prostitute.  

The next plot point of the film involves Chiyo (now named Sayuri) becoming a full geisha, and in order to do this, Mameha starts a bidding war for her mizuage, which is the right to take her virginity.  Umm, how is she not a prostitute?  The Baron and a guy named Dr. Crab (I was a bit disappointed that he was a human, and not a crab in a doctor's outfit) start bidding on her virginity, and one guy wants her so bad that he brings her a kimono and makes her change into it, while he watches.  But again, she's not a prostitute?  I'm starting to think that maybe she's a prostitute. 

There are more complications in her story, but her geisha career is cut short by the start of World War II. The geisha houses are closed down, and the geisha girls are (for some reason) moved to Japanese cities that are also bomb targets.  The film doesn't really explain this, if this is a part of the culture that they wanted to preserve, shouldn't the geishas be moved to cities that are NOT bomb targets?  I don't know, move them out to the country or something, Japan has a countryside, right?  Or if they want to move you to a city that's a bomb target, maybe don't go there, and just go somewhere else?  I guess that's what happened, because the Chairman (the businessman she likes) does send her out to the sticks to work for a kimono maker.  Maybe he does care about her after all - but after the war, Nobu finds her again, and asks for her help to impress an American colonel who could approve funding for their post-war business.  OK, if by "impress" he meant "seduce" then I think by now Sayuri is totally a prostitute.  

But it turns out that Nobu really cares for her, though he's got a funny way of showing it, by asking her to sleep with an American soldier just so his business deal will go through.  Or, he could NOT do that, then she might know that he cares for her, just saying.  Jeez, can these crazy mixed-up kids get any type of relationship right in pre- and post-war Japan?  The system has been broken from the start, and the odds have been stacked against Sayuri in all kinds of ways, but then again, it IS a movie, so maybe some form of love wins out in the end, who can say?  

Speaking of the odds being stacked against it, this movie got very mixed reviews, despite being based on a very popular best-selling novel.  Part of the problem seems to have involved hiring a bunch of Chinese actors to play Japanese characters, and then asking them to say all of their lines in English.  Yeah, I get that most Americans don't like to watch films with subtitles, but if this was the work-around, it's not a very good one. Plus, this film got a very bad reaction in China, it was banned by the government there, something about the film describing a particular Japanese soldier as a "war hero", plus the topic apparently brought up memories of that time that Japan captured a bunch of Chinese women and forced them to work as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers. And as I mentioned the other day, if your film doesn't play in China, good-bye international box office. 

Also starring Zhang Ziyi (last seen in "Godzilla; King of the Monsters"), Ken Watanabe (ditto), Michelle Yeoh (last seen in "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings"), Tsai Chin (ditto), Koji Yakusho (last seen in "Babel"), Kaori Momoi (last seen in "Ghost in the Shell"), Yuki Kudo (last seen in "The Limits of Control"), Samantha Futerman (last seen in "Going the Distance"), Mako (last seen in "Seven Years in Tibet"), Elizabeth Sung (last seen in "Lethal Weapon 4"), Kotoko Kawamura, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (last heard in "Kubo and the Two Strings"), Kenneth Tsang (last seen in "Die Another Day"), Eugenia Yuan (last seen in "The Great Raid"), Karl Yune, Ted Levine (last seen in "Birth"), Paul Adelstein (last seen in "The Grifters"), Togo Igawa (last seen in "The Gentlemen"), Randall Duk Kim (last seen in "John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum"), Navia Nguyen, Faith Shin, Yoko Narahashi, Takayo Fischer (last seen in "Pacific Heights"), Nobu Matsuhisa, Suzuka Ohgo, Zoe Weizenbaum, Thomas Ikeda, and the voice of Shizuko Hoshi

RATING: 4 out of 10 rickshaws

Mulan (2020)

Year 14, Day 9 - 1/9/22 - Movie #4,010

BEFORE: Last night for dinner, my wife said she wanted to order in Chinese food, so of course I leapt at the chance - this was after watching "The Farewell", of course, and all that delicious food seen in that film!  It was kind of like "Big Night", only that featured Italian food.  Hey, the way to big box office is through everyone's stomach, or something like that.  I had Chinese food with a friend last Wednesday, too, just some soup dumplings and scallion pancakes with beef - and last night I had some boneless rib tips over fried rice, an egg roll and some shrimp toast.  I guess if you add all that up, it's kind of like I've been to the Chinese buffet over the last week - but of course, I'd rather go to the buffet. 

I'm kind of pissed at my parents because they've both tested positive for COVID, they're both double-vaxxed and boosted, of course, so they're asymptomatic, but still... They're in an assisted living facility for the time being, and while this seemed like a smart decision back in November, so they could be together and not get separated by any medical issues, now this decision seems rather dumb to me.  Now they have to quarantine together in a tiny apartment for a week, and so they can't go down to the dining area or leave the facility, and we certainly can't come visit them now, as we planned to do this month.  My advice to my father after his positive test was to go and sleep at the old house for a few days, so he wouldn't infect my mother, but he wouldn't hear of it, he doesn't want to leave her alone, and he admitted he was being selfish.  What's the big deal, he could come visit her during the day, I just didn't want them breathing the same air all night.  But he's abiding by the strict rules of the facility, which means they have quarantine together, as a unit.  

Sure enough, two days later, my mother tested positive - well, what did they THINK was going to happen, with two people sharing the same small space?  This was dumb, dumb, dumb, they should have separated from each other as soon as one got a positive test.  My wife and I kept saying that if one of us tests positive, we should go get a hotel room and not come back to the house, it's just common sense, right?  So now I have to check in on them, hopefully they stay symptom-free and this just means they were both exposed to COVID-19 and they don't count as breakthrough cases, and we hope the vaccines do what they're supposed to, which is lessen the severity of any illness. 

Tzi Ma carries over from "The Farewell".  Yes, the irony of my elderly mother potentially getting sick right after I watched yesterday's movie is not lost on me. 

THE PLOT: A young Chinese maiden disguises herself as a male warrior in order to save her father. 

AFTER: The "Mulan" remake was one of the big hits of 2020 - I'm looking through the list now of all the most popular films released in 2021, and there just aren't a lot of them.  I guess that even after the pandemic hit, the studios had a backlog of films that were completed in 2019 and just released them over time, once the theaters opened up again, or they went straight to streaming.  But from what I gather, at some point in 2021 that well started to run dry, because that list of popular films released in 2021 has a bunch of foreign films and Lifetime Network Christmas movies on it.  Here's how it works by the numbers - for 2019, I've seen about 110 of the most popular films, with 6 more currently on the list.  For 2020, I've only seen 47, with 17 currently on the list. And for 2021, I've barely made a dent, I've only seen 8 of them, with 5 on the list right now.  Now, part of that process is natural, most of the 2021 films aren't streaming yet, and for those that are, I need time to add the cast lists into my system, and then it takes more time for me to link to them.  

Still, I can't help but think that 2021 is essentially a rebuilding year in so many ways, and if I don't end up seeing a lot of them right away, that's kind of OK. I'm going to knock off a couple of them in January, but then February of course gets turned over to romance films, both old and new.  So I have to start thinking about what my next benchmark will be after that, and how I want to get there. I'll keep adding the films dated 2021 as they become available to me, but I'm not in a hurry, I think I'd rather clear off some older films that have been on the list for some time. 

"Mulan", of course, was controversially made available on the Disney+ platform, instead of being released in real theaters in the U.S.. So there are no real box office figures for how much money it made, but even the Disney subscribers had to pay an additional $30 if they wanted to see it early - for me, once again being late to the party paid off, because I waited until it became available on the service for no extra cost, and we're in our third year of getting Disney+ for free, thanks to a birthday gift from my BFF and two phone upgrades that each came with a free year of that service.  (Next year we might have to start paying for the service, though.). Word is that "Mulan" made about $70 million in countries where it WAS theatrically released, and those were countries that didn't have the streaming platform.  This was back in September 2020, and the next year other distribution companies like Warner Bros. experimented with a two-prong release, both in theaters and on the HBO Max streaming platform at the same time.  Look, I don't want to tell any big media company how to run their business, but in the middle of a pandemic, people want their movies without risking their safety, and at minimal extra cost. Now I suppose at the end of the day, paying $30 to see "Mulan" at home is cheaper than four movie tickets (assuming a double-parent household with two kids) plus popcorn, candy, drinks, gas and parking.  Look at it from that angle, and it's quite a deal - and if you invite the neighbors into your bubble, the cost per person goes down even more.  

The question then became, regardless of the potential savings vs. a trip to the movie theater, was the MOVIE worth the cost, you know, as a movie.  I'm just not sure, because we've SEEN this story before, in animated form, sure, but it's the same story as before, right?  Well, not exactly - there are a few notable changes from the 1998 animated film.  First off, all of the animated sidekicks were cut out - no talking dragon, no horse sidekick, no cricket sidekick. (Basically, the Disney animated film was just "Pocahontas" in China, and "Pocahontas" was just "The Little Mermaid" on land.  Go ahead, prove me wrong.). There is a "Cricket" here, but he's a human soldier - I can't tell if that's an homage or an in-joke.

The original animated film also had the Chinese army battling the Huns - in this new version, the invading army is made up of Rourans, and I'm not sure what those are, but it seems that revisions to the script were made in order to not piss off the current Chinese government, who I guess are all descended from Huns.  Look, I know that one of these years, China's going to take over the world for real, and that will be that for the EU and the U.S., among others.  So clearly DisneyCorp didn't want to anger their future overlords, I get that - they want to still be standing once the other governments crumble, and the way to do that is to make movies that will play in Beijing.  It's a smart business strategy in the short term, too, because it's easier to make back your budget when the film plays in China.  This may explain why Disney filmed partially in the Xinjiang region, and got some blowback in the U.S. because of known human rights abuses that happen there. 

More controversy came when the public found out that the majority of the production team for this film were not of Asian descent (sure, the actors were, but actors are a dime a dozen, and they aren't the decision-makers during film production...).  No Asian director, no Asian screenwriter, what kind of message does that send?  Then another controversy arose when Disney removed the character of Li Shang from the story, it seems that they felt having Mulan fall in love with her superior officer (and having him fall in love with her, especially when he thought "her" was a "him") sent the wrong message to the kids - clearly they were trying to avoid a "me too" backlash with a person in power being attracted to someone under his command.  But, in the years since the first "Mulan" film, Li Shang became something of an LGBTQ icon, a man who fell in love with a woman, only he thought the woman was a man.  So now Disney got dinged for trying to straight-wash the attraction between two soldiers, by splitting the Li Shang character into two new characters, Commander Tung and Chen Honghui.  Oh, like I suppose having a fellow soldier, not her commander, with feelings for Mulan/Hua Jun is that much better?  

There's another new character, a female witch working for the opposing army who can turn into a falcon - the original film had a falcon character, but not one that could turn into a human.  This witch character, Xianniang, seems quite problematic where Mulan's own story is concerned, because now she acts as sort of a foil character for Mulan herself, since they're both talented, powerful females who are struggling to advance in a man's world.  So, are they enemies, or allies, or what?  This, unfortunately, is anything but clear.  Xianniang seems to see right through Mulan's disguise of a male soldier, and appears to encourage her to come out as female, even though that's against the rules of the army.  (To be fair, Mulan's caught in a no-win situation here, she can't tell the truth, that would get her kicked out of the army, but lying is also an infraction, so that would get her kicked out, too.). Xianniang seems to suggest that Mulan's never going to succeed or become her best self unless she fights as a strong woman - which seems to be a better message to send out to the kids, but it's also a bit murky.

Further evidence that this Xianniang character doesn't make any sense - she's a woman, so therefore her talents are undervalued by the patriarchal society.  Except she is treated as an equal by Bori Khan, which explains why she is in his service.  But then she betrays Khan by aiding Mulan?  This character is all over the place, her loyalties don't follow any pattern, completely inconsistent. 

What is "Chi", anyway?  It's some kind of energy, but it's like The Force in "Star Wars", it doesn't really exist, right?  I know millions of Chinese people do those tai chi exercises and try to harness this invisible energy, but it's a load of crap, right?  The movie falls into the narrative trap of suggesting that "chi" is real, that it allows people to do amazing things if they can just tap into it and harness it, and as far as I can tell, this is a bunch of hooey.  I see people breaking bricks and boards with karate chops and I'm quite sure this is all a bunch of simple magic tricks, like they pre-cut the boards or something, or they can tell just where to hit them.  The only place I've seen people do really amazing martial arts stunts is in the movies, and I know that's all wire-work and special effects, so again, that's a form of magic trick.  Show me somebody, just one person, doing real, seemingly impossible martial arts tricks in the REAL world.  Didn't think so. 

So the story's a bit wonky here, if you ask me, because Mulan's success depends on one of the villains turning the tables on her commanders, just because she wants ALL women to succeed, and that's not possible for Xianniang, because she's being held back and controlled by men.  Why can't we have Mulan figure this out for herself, why does she need a villain's help to get further in the man's world?  

While I'm at it, they really downplayed how difficult it would have been for a woman to pass as a man - where was the hair-cutting scene, isn't that an essential part of the story?  Sure, I get that they wanted to have a big movie moment where she reveals her gender to her fellow soldiers, and for that she needs long hair, but she could have grown it back by then.  The biggest inconvenience for her in this films seems to be an obvious need to avoid showering with the other soldiers, for fear of revealing her gender, and then after a while, she smells pretty bad.  It's a wonder that her bunkmates didn't carry her out to the showers themselves, or drop her in the river just to make camp life more bearable.  

Also, when all the soldiers were having difficulty carrying buckets of water up that big hill, wouldn't it have made sense to show that Mulan was able to do this, because she'd been doing "womanly" chores for so many years, thus she had an unpredictable advantage during basic training?  Seems like that would have made sense here, only this Mulan was clearly raised as an upper-middle class girl, and I guess they don't do chores?  All she needed to do was to prepare for marriage and children - I know that's patriarchal and awful, but I guess it beats fighting in the army, doesn't it?  Again, really unclear, foggy messages here where gender roles are concerned.  In order for the "old ways" to be seen as in need of being replaced, they need to be portrayed as more awful, and it seems that Fa Mulan had a pretty nice life, if all she had to do was practice gymnastics and get ready for marriage. Just saying. 

Another NITPICK POINT - along with this mystical "chi" energy that Mulan supposedly has, and again it's unclear if this is a human thing, a female thing, or a witch thing - I mean, Mulan can't transform into a falcon, but she can balance on a horse and kick a spear thrown at her right into an enemy soldier, which is pretty cool, and none of the other men seem to be able to do this.  So if women have this weird energy which can be harnessed to do cool stunts and near-magic things, why aren't they allowed to fight?  Right, it's the patriarchal system, I get it, and you keep raging against that machine, girls. But in this fictional world where women can do magic and cool weapon stuff that men can't do, it wouldn't seem to make sense to keep them off the battlefield, if the men knew their was a tactical advantage and women could kick spears back at their opponents, shouldn't the rules change to take better advantage of that resource?  

We keep hearing about how professional sports are sexist, because the major league sports are still 99% men, possibly even 100%.  Sure, there's the WNBA now, and women's soccer is more popular than men's soccer in many circles, but where's the integration?  Shouldn't there be a female "Jackie Robinson" type that can break the gender barrier in pro sports?  Track and field, swimming, all the Olympics, everything's still separated by gender, especially gymnastics - men's gymnastics and women's gymnastics aren't even the same events!  There was that female baseball team a few years back, the Silver Bullets, but who do they play?  Only men, in exhibition events, the last I heard.  I think maybe a few women play hockey, but that's it - but if a woman came along and could throw a knuckleball, or kick a field goal, better than any man, don't you think that would go a long way towards integration?  That's kind of what I'm saying about Mulan, if she (and other women) could do things on the battlefield that no man could do, you'd better believe the rules are going to change, and very quickly. 

And another thing, wouldn't it make sense for the story to take further advantage of Mulan's real gender?  Couldn't one of the villains have an enchantment on him (or her) that said he can't be killed by any man?  Then she'd be more valuable, from a tactical loophole perspective, because she could kill that villain when none of the other soldiers could - that's the thing about magic, it's very literal and an evil sorcerer who was also sexist might think that "man" meant all of mankind, and not think for a second that a woman would be any threat to him.  I remember some story that took advantage of this loophole, but now I can't remember which one, maybe I've just seen too many movies. Ah, right, this was the Witch King in "Lord of the Rings", I just looked it up.  He was defeated by Eowyn, who of course was a woman.  OK, so maybe the makers of "Mulan" didn't want to rip off Tolkien, but I still think this could have been a cool addition to the story. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that when you strip this story down to the basics, and JUST make it about a woman dressing like a man to fight in the Chinese army AND you take away the sidekicks as comic relief AND you take away the songs, it's a bit boring by comparison.  Anyway, we've had lots of strong woman characters since the first "Mulan" film came out, like Wonder Woman, Black Widow and Captain Marvel, so this isn't necessarily the same ground-breaking idea that it once was, especially if we have to all remind ourselves that this was a different time, with different rules, before we can appreciate it. I'd love to say it's no longer necessary, but I'm not really sure, of course girls can enjoy watching girls kick ass on film, they should feel represented in the action genre, but it's close to normalized now, not like it was in 1998. 

Now the transvestite (almost transgender, but obviously they're not going THERE) issues seem more important than the equal rights ones, but I don't think they really focused on that enough here to really take advantage of any cultural relevance.  Now, in the NEXT remake of "Mulan", her gender reveal should be followed by her commander and/or love interest saying, "Well, nobody's perfect!" in a sort of reverse homage to "Some Like It Hot".  But then, I suppose that would be problematic, too, for a number of reasons. 

Also starring Yifei Lui, Donnie Yen (last seen in "xXx: Return of Xander Cage"), Gong Li (last seen in "Miami Vice"), Jason Scott Lee (last seen in "Seventh Son"), Yoson An (last seen in "Mortal Engines"), Jet Li (last seen in "The Expendables 3"), Rosalind Chao (last seen in "The Laundromat"), Xana Tang, Ron Yuan (last seen in "The Accountant"), Jun Yu, Jimmy Wong (last seen in "The Circle"), Chen Tang (last seen in "Let's Be Cops"), Doua Moua (last seen in "Gran Torino"), Nelson Lee, Cheng Pei-Pei, Vincent Feng, Roger Yuan (last seen in "John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum"), Jenson Cheng, Akra Das, Jen Sung (last seen in "The Happytime Murders"), King Lau, Crystal Rao, Elena Askin, with a cameo from Ming-Na Wen (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 imperial outposts