DVD/Blu-ray Reviews

In which, a watermelon becomes a dangerous weapon!  Or at least its seeds do!  All joking aside, The Invincible Fist is a wonderfully realized wuxia flick that deserves to be recognized.  If not for the incredible use of leafy, green reed fields, then for the fight choreography which has Lo Lieh battling it out  ...

A female-led wuxia film is nothing new.  I know a lot of people want to give that credit to Ang Lee, but history suggests otherwise.  Just because popular American cinema failed to notice what Asian cinema was doing (for a long time!!!) doesn’t mean that it wasn’t happening.  Just look at 1966’s Come  ...

Opening with a gloriously brutal raid on a village, Killer Dart sets the stage for this multi-layered revenge story with gusto.  It is bold with its drama, dynamic with its action sequences, and strong with its characters.  And it is no wonder why, especially when you consider just who is behind the camera ...

And, just like that, the coin-targeting trickshot is introduced!  Now, a lot of people have complained and bellyached about what you have to sit through in order to get to the brutal killing in The Sword of Swords, but - come on, now - the bloodletting begins early on and it never stops, splashing gallons  ...

The blood spatter!  The fearless faces of the warriors!  The sparks as the swords slam together!  The brilliant choreography!  Fighting on top of trees!  The Jade Raksha, directed by Ho Meng-Hua (Killer Darts) has it all!  And, quite honestly, it makes Crouching Tiger, Hidden  ...

Chang Wei Fu (Chang Yi) never should have given Yang Kang (Ku Feng), Ying Tien (Tien Sheng), and Chief Tao Ching Lung (Lam Kau) the directions they needed.  Fu is a simple woodcutter.  He lives by nature’s rules with his family in an isolated location, outside of the nearest  ...

Golden Swallow (Cheng Pei-pei) is just not having it when a mysterious agent from her past returns and starts framing her for some serious heinous activity! She’s ready to take matters into her own hands in 1968’s Golden Swallow (aka The Girl With The Thunderbolt Kick) ...

Meet the meanest and most lethal karate master ever to rule the streets. He's Sonny Chiba, one of the greatest martial arts actors to ignite the screen. In The Street Fighter, Chiba stars as Terry Tsurugi, a mercenary who has been hired by both the yakuza and the mafia to kidnap a wealthy  ...

She’s a one woman army! There are a lot of differing opinions on The Thundering Sword.  Released by The Shaw Brothers in 1967, this martial arts classic (as its Cheng Pei Pei’s first starring role!) flips the script on the whole sword-killing machismo that was dominant in the martial arts ...

This is the story of a working-class hero.  Seriously.  Sure, he may have a top-knot hair style and a shiny blade at his side, but Jimmy Wang Yu is nobody’s sucker.  The Assassin is a blood-soaked suicide letter and, thanks to the talent behind the camera, it comes across as almost effortless in its  ...

I mean, look, The Third Man is a damned classic.  Scripted by Graham Greene and featuring some incredible performances from its leads, Carol Reed’s film is a masterpiece that never falters in its step to wedge paranoia straight down your throat. Holly Martins (played by Joseph Cotten) is thrust ...

“Do it first. Do it yourself. And keep doing it.” When it comes to gangster pictures, there is no better film than Howard Hawks’ Scarface. From the single shot opening in which Italian immigrant gangster Antonio "Tony" Camonte (played ...

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is the tale of a madman told through the eyes of another madman; a film so daunting it’s horrifying. Yes, here it is: the very first horror film and still its influence is felt. There is no argument there. It is also, with its exaggerated backgrounds and sharp angles, German  ...

“At first glance, everything looked the same. It wasn’t. Something evil had taken possession of the town.” Oh, to travel back to the 1950s.  If I could, I would just sit myself in a drive-in theater with a big ol’ bucket of popcorn and watch flick after flick of whatever science fiction schlock ...

"Nine times out of ten, if you follow the money you will get to the truth." Infidelity made private investigator and war veteran Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) the man he is today.  We know this having seen the excellent Chinatown, but Gittes admits as much in the opening line of The Two  ...