Hi! Welcome back. Here’s some stuff.
The night before Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024) “dropped” on Netflix, as they say, I watched Beverly Hills Cop III (1994) on Paramount+. You know how some movies will gradually reveal themselves to suck, such that by the end you walk out of the theater bummed out, disappointed, sad, lonely, heartbroken, maybe hungry? And you know how some movies you’ll recognize as giant turds in the first minute or two? That’s Beverly Hills Cop III. It blows from jump. My god! It’s abhorrent. It’s a miserable garbage pile of a movie. Anyway, this is all to say I was lacking confidence in the fourth film, released on streaming only, 30 years later. It didn’t sound good! Why would it? But Axel F is shockingly, captivatingly, very mildly competent. It’s almost a real movie in a time when very few people make real movies. It’s competence is deceptive, though, and it gradually reveals this to you as it pushes on well past a reasonable run time for this kind of thing, hitting all the same beats as the first movie, and, literally, many of the same music cues as the first two Cops. But that’s ok! I’ll take it. Are we back to making a bunch of mediocre, It Was Fine movies again? We’re so back. Sometimes I like to watch movies that mean nothing to me and then I eat dinner and forget about it until years later, and then I think “Oh yeah! That fuckin’ movie.”
My siblings used to think anytime I watched a movie with subtitles it meant I was watching something really brainy. I want them to watch Under Paris (2024) on Netflix and see if they still think that. It’s nice to remember that the French can be dumb too. There’s a really big shark in the Seine! She’s here to ruin “The Triathlon” because you can’t say Olympics. She’s pregnant! Congratulations!! Love the idea of Under Paris, it’s terrific, but the execution is lacking and the shark doesn’t get to kill enough racist Parisians for my taste. Looks nice, though, but too much time is devoted to Shark Politics and I wanted some Shark Action. Finally, I want to note that for dumb shark movie, the ending is hilariously bleak. Really makes you think. About big sharks. You weird French bastards.
Hero (1997) is on Archive.org and, like other Corey Yuen projects, anything goes in this turbo speed movie that could easily be three or four hours but is instead under 90 minutes. I appreciate that, I really do, but this is one of the rare times when I wanted a movie to be a little bit longer. I know, but I wanted to listen to more of the sappy Cantopop, see more of the costumes, the sets, and see some guys get stabbed better and for longer. Because everything is too fast, you get all kinds of gaps in the narrative that could be explored, that would be fun to see, but characters entirely change their motivation in a single cut to the next scene. Moreover, you can't really register or appreciate as much of the excellent choreography as you'd want to because Hero is too busy jumping from one superb set piece to the next. And you'll want to appreciate Yuen Biao popping out of his own casket to shoot dudes. Yet I love the moxie, the chutzpah, the joy with which Corey Yuen seemingly approaches new and increasingly elaborate and labyrinthine ways of kicking butts. He keeps finding new ways! How does he do it?
Tubi has Duel to the Death (1983) and, like almost all martial arts movies, it’s about some virtually pointless fighting style beef. These queens, supposedly the best Chinese and Japanese fighters, want to unify their cute lil championship belts or whatever and fight it out in the name of national pride. How darling of them. Duel to the Death is a hyperactive, Mello Yello-fueled wuxia film, and while there’s plenty to like in this one, including a lot of dismemberment and some perfect bad English dubbing (of the best kind), the ninjas really steal the show. So many ninjas. Hella ninjas. Exploding ninjas. Disappearing purple ninjas. Ninjas riding on kites. In this one scene a monk comes across a big ninja, the biggest damn ninja I ever saw, the big ninja then explodes into five or six smaller ninjas, and then one of the smaller ninjas undresses and it’s a pretty naked lady and the monk bows his head and says “Buddha be praised.” Hey, this is a good movie! I love the ninjas. Such silly little guys.
The Seventh Curse (1986) is on Tubi and it is beautiful, absurd, violent, stupid, gooey, and great. This Hong Kong action-horror… thing is from the same mind as Riki-Oh (1991), which I didn’t like at all even though everyone kept recommending it to me. Leave me alone! I thought Riki-Oh was beyond tedious because it was the same gory thing happening over and over again. The Seventh Curse, meanwhile, is a real movie with tons of weird little things going on, all significantly different from each other, and I didn’t like it just because Maggie Cheung is in it and I like her a whole lot and desperately want her to be mean to me (I’m but a worm). Chow Yun-fat is also in this, along with my girl Sibelle Hu, as well as my main man Dick Wei. Part creature-feature, part Indiana Jones ripoff, part martial arts film, The Seventh Curse is all things to all people. The Seventh Curse is the King of Schlock. Little demon guys fight mutant bat dudes. The main guy has a blood curse he wants to get rid of — naturally, as one would — because his legs just explode with blood every day. The whole thing is gross and barely 80 minutes long. Can’t recommend it enough!