Come Drink with Me.

Review #2498: Come Drink with Me.

Cast: 

Cheng Pei-pei ("Golden Swallow" Zheng), Yueh Hua ("Drunken Cat" Fan Da-pei), Chan Hung-lit (Jade-Faced Tiger), Lee Wan-chung ("Smiling-Tiger" Tsu Kan), Yeung Chi-hing (Abbot Liao Kung), Wong Chung (Zheng Bi-qiu), Shum Lo ("Number Five", bandit), and Wang Ruo-Ping ("Baldie", bandit) Directed by King Hu.

Review: 

Sure, let's pick at least one perceived Hong Kong classic. Well, actually King Hu was born in Beijing to an affluent family that had an interest in Peking opera from a young age more than movies. He moved to Hong Kong (then under British rule) in 1949 that found him take a variety of odd jobs, one of which was with set design. By the mid-1950s, he was appearing as an actor in films but eventually found his way working with the Shaw Brothers and their noted studio, which saw him take on assistant duties with films such as The Love Eterne (1963). Hu became a director with Sons of the Good Earth (1965). However, Come Drink with Me (1966) ended up being the one with noted success. this film was written by Hu and Ting Shan-hsi; the decision to cast Cheng Pei-pei in the film was because of her background in dance and ballet in what was her breakout role. In 1968, Cheng reprised her role in Golden Swallow, which had Jimmy Wang as co-star that was directed by Chang Cheh. Hu left the Shaws and travelled aboard to direct that resulted in roughly a dozen movies of varying cult curiosity, whether that involved Taiwan with classics such as Dragon Inn (1966) and his cult classic A Touch of Zen (1970-71) or South Korea with Raining in the Mountain (1979). Hu directed on-and-off all the way until Painted Skin (1992); he died in 1997 at the age of 64. Films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (which happened to have Cheng in a supporting role) are reported to have taken influence from Hu's films.

Okay I guess I forgot to mention the movie is called a "wuxia" for its genre, which basically is an adventure with martial arts and also elements of historical fantasy, which is, well, why you see swords and stuff.* Honestly, I wish I liked the movie more, but a solid 7 is still a solid film to seek out. The action that comes through basically is timed to rhythm that would basically qualify as a crowd-pleaser for 91 minutes, right down to its blend of studio sets and frontier viewing. You get a little musical interlude to go along with the proceedings, which basically go about the way you might expect in terms of good vs. evil. I suppose it will mean a good deal more for those familiar with opera or zen or, well, those who know their Mandarin. But one appreciates the editing and positioning to make the action feel enough like it is coming from a certain kind of quickness to really pop out to you. The best parts of the film basically are the staging of the action more so than the characters themselves, mainly because at a certain point it becomes more focused on Yueh rather than Cheng, although at least you get a sense that both are trying to maintain that sense of balance in trying to not be consumed by violence, at least when compared to Chan and Lee. The first half basically holds it together a bit more in curiosity (gee, a drunken master, I wonder) than the second half, arguably. It is relatively charming as a movie to see eventually play out, I just wish it was a bit more focused with its characters, although at least the climax is swift enough to let the film close on a relatively high note. As a whole, Come Drink with Me has a certain kind of appeal for those who like a bit of mystical charm within their action movies that rolls with rhythm and the energy to make the entertainment just click in a way that doesn't seem antiquated.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

*There are essays about Hu and wuxia that might be more helpful in you are curious: Hu, King – Senses of Cinema

Or, alternatively, if you like reviews of stuff in horror or action from a source definitely more experienced: http://www.1000misspenthours.com/reviews/reviewsa-d/comedrinkwithme.htm Never let it be said that I don't try to recommend others

The Lady from Shanghai.

Review #2373: The Lady from Shanghai.

Cast: 

Rita Hayworth (Elsa "Rosalie" Bannister; singing voice by Anita Kert Ellis), Orson Welles (Michael O'Hara), Everett Sloane (Arthur Bannister), Glenn Anders (George Grisby), Ted de Corsia (Sidney Broome), Erskine Sanford (Judge), Gus Schilling ("Goldie" Goldfish), Carl Frank (District Attorney Galloway), Louis Merrill (Jake), Evelyn Ellis (Bessie), Harry Shannon (Cab Driver), and Wong Chung (Li) Produced and Directed by Orson Welles (#200 - Citizen Kane, #1366 - The Stranger)

Review: 

Sure, let's talk about Orson Welles. Citizen Kane (1941) is probably the most electrifying debut for any director to start out with, much less make for a career, and the fame it gained later is endless. But, well, one film does not define a career, so what happened next? Welles had his next film with The Magnificent Ambersons in 1942, complete with a mansion set that apparently had walls that could be rolled or lowered to deal with the camera. Unfortunately, Welles did not have the final cut privilege that cut the movie pretty down, but even in an edited form, people still like to talk about the movie. For a few years, Welles acted in film along with doing plenty of work in radio before he came back into directing with The Stranger, released in 1946 to general success (so much so that you can even find the movie in the public domain). For this movie, apparently it came at the behest of needing money. Specifically, Welles was directing a musical with Around the World and asked Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures if he could borrow money and in exchange would do a movie for no further fee. When it came to adaptation material, the movie is based on the 1938 novel If I Die Before I Wake, as originally written by Raymond Sherwood King. Apparently, William Castle had brought the book to the attention of Welles. Apparently, Cohn did not like the rough cut done by Welles (after shooting had ended in early 1947) and insisted on studio-reshoots (Cohn was not particularly big on a movie described in a Welles biography as having "expressly Brechtian aspirations" and apparently found the movie hard to comprehend) that inflated the budget to go along with extensive editing ordered that basically cut a sequence of mirrors from twenty minutes to about three (stills survive); William Castle, Charles Lederer, and Fletcher Markle apparently did uncredited work on the script. The movie indeed was shot in various locations, ranging from San Francisco to Acapulco and on the actual yacht Zaca. The result was a movie that was not particularly loved in America but found favor in Europe before getting people to look further into it in later years (as one does with certain "flops"). Welles would direct seven further movies (along with a special case and a documentary about one of his own films) in his lifetime. A remake was considered in the early 2000s but never got off the ground.

Sure, it is an oblique kind of noir, filled with varying moments of general interest in the ruminations that come with guilt and innocence. But it is a really entertaining movie that entraps you for 88 minutes with efficiency that comes in the web of mystery and strangeness present here. It is a dreamy doom that is all successful because of the efforts of Welles behind and ahead of the camera, one that keeps attention for most of its time not so much in where the plot is going to go but where the web is really going to end up with these people. Somehow, it never occurred to me that I hadn't watched a Rita Hayworth movie before. There were a handful of movies she became known for from Only Angels Have Wings (1939) to Separate Tables (1958), but Gilda (1946) was the one that most probably know because of her femme fatale role (the long and short version of Hayworth is that she was the daughter of dancers), although, well, this is a movie where her hair was cut short and bleached to be platinum blonde (evidently, Cohn was aghast at this decision). Her aura of mystery and wandering nature is pretty neat here though, hair or otherwise (I'll be real, I am not too big on appearances anyway, how do you think hair reflects on me?). She glides through the film with the efficiency of a jagged knife that you can understand in why someone would just drop themselves for (or in the case of Welles, narration for a good chunk of it). Sloane and Anders round out the important parts of the cast in worthwhile scuzzy jaggedness (the former was a noted regular actor on film/radio), popping in and out with resounding amusement at the absurd world one is inhabited in with dubious lawyers and weird ambitions. The movie benefits greatly from the on location filming, because, well, you can't have every noir involve the same four walls, locale does help. The courtroom stuff is probably the only part of the film that comes close to being sluggish, but the chase sequence to cap the movie off, complete with a devastatingly beautiful sequence of mirrors (which obviously people can recognize in other stuff that "borrowed" from it) that you really need to see for yourself. The ending closes it all down in a sort of irony that could only come in wanting to ensure that even getting to live is not the way to total freedom. As a whole, this is a fun movie, bewildering in its strange scenarios and webs with committed people to hold it all together that is more than just a studio-cut movie but a curiosity all on its own.

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.