Hey folks, Harry here... I'm so happy that KUNG FU HUSTLE is properly kicking ass at Sundance, just as it did at Buttnumbathon 6 last year. I was so excited to get it early, before it opened in China, something that is nearly impossible to do, especially with the bounties that the triads put on getting early prints of these movies. I found it to be hilariously perfect. As for THE MATADOR - sounds like a pretty nifty...
Hey Harry,
Never written before but I’ve also never had anything worthy to talk about. This week is different. You see, I’m a film student at the U of U and if there’s one thing you can count on a film student doing in Utah, in January, it’s going to Sundance. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to check out some of the smaller Sundance style films, but so far I have been to a couple of the coolest flicks I’ve seen in a while.
Kung Fu Hustle
I’ll just say it. This movie made my nuts tingle. Shamefully I had never heard of Steven Chow until recently and have never seen any of his movies even though I consider myself a fan of chop-socky flicks. From some of your other reviews I’m sure everyone knows the basic story. A wannabe gangster tries to break into the notorious Axe Gang and so on… But to be totally honest, it isn’t the story that rocks about this movie. But it is everything else. Everything is so wildly over the top that it crosses the line, looks back at it, takes a wiz on it and runs screaming as far past it as it can. The fight scenes are out of this world, totally unbelievable and completely awesome. It’s stuff that any Matrix fan has been dying to see again, but were afraid they wouldn’t be able to since nobody wants to “copy” the Matrix. The “love interest” was so corny that it’s totally obvious he’s poking fun at corny love interests. The CGI was overused but it didn’t even matter. If I had to pick one favorite part it would be the cool little Axe Gang dance number at beginning… or would it be the high speed, roadrunner style, foot chase with the landlady… or maybe the fight scene with the musician hitmen. Fuck, I don’t know, there are about a hundred fantastic things that are competing for number one in my head. But that was a couple days ago and right now I just got back from…
The Matador
This one didn’t make my nuts tingle, but it was still quite good. I knew few things about it before I saw it. I knew it had Greg Kinnear. I know Pierce Brosnan was a hit man. But mostly I knew he pranced around in a sombrero, boots and a speedo. WHAT’S NOT TO LOVE ABOUT THAT!? The speedo/boot scene totally paid off, by the way. I liked the story about the hitman with no friends, having a crisis in his profession and making friends with regular business man. That was good. They also managed to not include some clichés in the whole hitman thing that I was sure they heading for. I only really have one complaint and that was the pacing in a few spots. Much of the movie had a real kinetic style, lots of movement between locations, fun stuff. But then it would settle down into some real drawn out dialogue scenes. They were scenes that could have been taken care of in 2 minutes, which were drug out into 10 or more. But don’t get me wrong it was still very good and very funny and both Kinnear and Brosnan are in top form.
So, to recap, Kung Fu Hustle is a strong 4 out of 4 and The Matador is a 3 1/2 out of 4.
I noticed you haven’t had any reviews of Brothers or Mysterious Skin so I’ll drop you another line in a couple of days once I’ve seen these two and hopefully get you the first reviews of those. If you use this you can call me A-Bone.
