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| From Across the Pacific, Good Old American Fare | From Across the Pacific, Good Old American Fare |
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| A tense and elaborate crime drama ending in a Peckinpah-style shootout. A classic tear-jerker about a woman doing menial labor to support her ungrateful son. A loopy, candy-colored musical. A warmhearted biopic about a national hero. | A tense and elaborate crime drama ending in a Peckinpah-style shootout. A classic tear-jerker about a woman doing menial labor to support her ungrateful son. A loopy, candy-colored musical. A warmhearted biopic about a national hero. |
| It would take a lot of trips to the multiplex these days to see a collection of traditional Hollywood genre pictures like that, if you could find them among the comic-book and video-game adaptations and post-apocalyptic blockbusters. | It would take a lot of trips to the multiplex these days to see a collection of traditional Hollywood genre pictures like that, if you could find them among the comic-book and video-game adaptations and post-apocalyptic blockbusters. |
| But there’s another way — a one-stop-shopping opportunity for the moviegoer tired of summer’s limited choices. Over the next two weeks the New York Asian Film Festival will offer a panoply of human-scaled, real-world films among its 59 features, many of them inventive takes on styles the American film industry has largely given up on. | But there’s another way — a one-stop-shopping opportunity for the moviegoer tired of summer’s limited choices. Over the next two weeks the New York Asian Film Festival will offer a panoply of human-scaled, real-world films among its 59 features, many of them inventive takes on styles the American film industry has largely given up on. |
| Among the specialty offerings are a selection of recent Filipino films, a salute to Taiwanese exploitation films from the early 1980s and a tribute to the South Korean actor Ryoo Seung-beom. | Among the specialty offerings are a selection of recent Filipino films, a salute to Taiwanese exploitation films from the early 1980s and a tribute to the South Korean actor Ryoo Seung-beom. |
| But the primary value of the festival, which takes place at Lincoln Center, the Japan Society and Asia Society, lies in the opportunity to see a generous sampling of current and recent hits from the vital film cultures of countries like China, Japan and South Korea. And the best of this year’s programs are a strong group, especially among the Chinese-language selections, where the familiar, heavy-handed mix of sentimentality and nationalism seems in abeyance. | But the primary value of the festival, which takes place at Lincoln Center, the Japan Society and Asia Society, lies in the opportunity to see a generous sampling of current and recent hits from the vital film cultures of countries like China, Japan and South Korea. And the best of this year’s programs are a strong group, especially among the Chinese-language selections, where the familiar, heavy-handed mix of sentimentality and nationalism seems in abeyance. |
| One of the best offerings has unlikely roots: “Ip Man: The Final Fight” is the fifth Chinese-language feature released since 2008 based on the life of the martial arts master Ip Man (often spelled Yip Man), whose students included Bruce Lee. The most prominent of those films, directed by Wilson Yip and starring Donnie Yen, have been solidly made but unremarkable for anything besides their fight choreography and anti-Japanese jingoism. | One of the best offerings has unlikely roots: “Ip Man: The Final Fight” is the fifth Chinese-language feature released since 2008 based on the life of the martial arts master Ip Man (often spelled Yip Man), whose students included Bruce Lee. The most prominent of those films, directed by Wilson Yip and starring Donnie Yen, have been solidly made but unremarkable for anything besides their fight choreography and anti-Japanese jingoism. |
| “Final Fight,” a Hong Kong production directed by Herman Yau, is different. Covering Ip Man’s autumn years in the 1950s and ’60s in that region, where he tries to stay out of the spotlight while teaching wing chun kung fu to an assortment of proletarian types — union steward, prison guard, factory worker — it has a melancholy, jazzy vibe appropriate to the period. Loving re-creations of dim sum parlors and dance halls are as important to the feel of the film as the spectacular fights between rival martial arts schools, and the story moves with the rhythms of an old Hollywood musical. | “Final Fight,” a Hong Kong production directed by Herman Yau, is different. Covering Ip Man’s autumn years in the 1950s and ’60s in that region, where he tries to stay out of the spotlight while teaching wing chun kung fu to an assortment of proletarian types — union steward, prison guard, factory worker — it has a melancholy, jazzy vibe appropriate to the period. Loving re-creations of dim sum parlors and dance halls are as important to the feel of the film as the spectacular fights between rival martial arts schools, and the story moves with the rhythms of an old Hollywood musical. |
| The film’s biggest advantage, though, is the casting of the longtime Hong Kong performer Anthony Wong as Ip Man: while he’s not the martial arts star that Mr. Yen is, he’s a far better and more soulful actor. “Final Fight” spells out familiar themes about corruption (represented, in part, by a venal British police superintendent) and cultural heritage, but it does so relatively lightly. It’s more interested in dispensing pleasure than in teaching lessons. | The film’s biggest advantage, though, is the casting of the longtime Hong Kong performer Anthony Wong as Ip Man: while he’s not the martial arts star that Mr. Yen is, he’s a far better and more soulful actor. “Final Fight” spells out familiar themes about corruption (represented, in part, by a venal British police superintendent) and cultural heritage, but it does so relatively lightly. It’s more interested in dispensing pleasure than in teaching lessons. |
| Utterly different but equally enjoyable is the China-Hong Kong co-production “Drug War,” directed by the action and crime master Johnnie To. Set in and around the northern port city of Tianjin, and largely taking place on brutally ugly expressways and country highways, it’s a grim, complex, meticulously designed story about drug dealers and police officers from different jurisdictions who pursue them up and down the country. | Utterly different but equally enjoyable is the China-Hong Kong co-production “Drug War,” directed by the action and crime master Johnnie To. Set in and around the northern port city of Tianjin, and largely taking place on brutally ugly expressways and country highways, it’s a grim, complex, meticulously designed story about drug dealers and police officers from different jurisdictions who pursue them up and down the country. |
| Like all of Mr. To’s films, it’s a celebration of motion, as cars weave through crowds, and cops and drug mules engage in a balletic chase across a crowded expressway, all against a bleak backdrop of toll stations and dark roadside encampments. The Chinese star Sun Honglei plays the most heroic of the officers, perilously going undercover as a gangster with a hyenalike laugh. | Like all of Mr. To’s films, it’s a celebration of motion, as cars weave through crowds, and cops and drug mules engage in a balletic chase across a crowded expressway, all against a bleak backdrop of toll stations and dark roadside encampments. The Chinese star Sun Honglei plays the most heroic of the officers, perilously going undercover as a gangster with a hyenalike laugh. |
| Corruption is again the theme, along with the nobility of the underpaid civil servant, and those ideas are taken to a cartoonish extreme in the final half-hour, a long, bloody sequence of carnage right out of “The Wild Bunch” that ends only when there are, literally, no bullets left. By that point there aren’t many cast members left standing, either. | Corruption is again the theme, along with the nobility of the underpaid civil servant, and those ideas are taken to a cartoonish extreme in the final half-hour, a long, bloody sequence of carnage right out of “The Wild Bunch” that ends only when there are, literally, no bullets left. By that point there aren’t many cast members left standing, either. |
| The violence is emotional in “Feng Shui” (China), directed by Wang Jing and starring Yan Bingyan in a juicy, self-aggrandizing and self-sacrificing role perfectly suited for the middle-aged Joan Crawford. It’s all about bitterness and disappointment, as the shrewish, hypersensitive Baoli ruins her husband’s life and then moves on to her son and mother-in-law. Ms. Yan’s restrained performance helps blunt the story’s melodramatic excesses, as does Mr. Wang’s arm’s-length, faintly documentary-style direction. | The violence is emotional in “Feng Shui” (China), directed by Wang Jing and starring Yan Bingyan in a juicy, self-aggrandizing and self-sacrificing role perfectly suited for the middle-aged Joan Crawford. It’s all about bitterness and disappointment, as the shrewish, hypersensitive Baoli ruins her husband’s life and then moves on to her son and mother-in-law. Ms. Yan’s restrained performance helps blunt the story’s melodramatic excesses, as does Mr. Wang’s arm’s-length, faintly documentary-style direction. |
| A steamier domestic drama plays out in “A Muse,” by the South Korean director Jung Ji-woo, about the triangle that develops among a famous poet, his young protégé and the high school girl who installs herself as the poet’s housemaid and companion. A variation on the Cyrano de Bergerac story, exploring both artistic and sexual jealousy, it features the successful acting debut of Kim Go-eun, who won a number of best new actress awards for her performance as the girl. | |
| South Korea’s conflicted attitudes toward North Korea are the subject of Jang Cheol-Soo’s “Secretly Greatly,” a wicked satire that, like “Drug War,” eventually takes a wrong turn, ending on a maudlin note. The first hour and 20 minutes are consistently funny, though, as Kim Soo-hyun plays a North Korean spy and “master of cruel martial arts” whose cover is distinctly humiliating: he must pose as the village idiot in a backward neighborhood, where he’s subjected to constant abuse. | South Korea’s conflicted attitudes toward North Korea are the subject of Jang Cheol-Soo’s “Secretly Greatly,” a wicked satire that, like “Drug War,” eventually takes a wrong turn, ending on a maudlin note. The first hour and 20 minutes are consistently funny, though, as Kim Soo-hyun plays a North Korean spy and “master of cruel martial arts” whose cover is distinctly humiliating: he must pose as the village idiot in a backward neighborhood, where he’s subjected to constant abuse. |
| Before the predictable, Bourne-like plot twist that sets off the third-act violence, Mr. Kim is quite amusing, muttering highly articulate curses as he pretends to be vanquished by various bullies, some of them in grade school, and carries out instructions to fall down three times a day and urinate in public once a month. His indomitability and resourcefulness put his South Korean neighbors in a bad light: presumably he’s meant to embody qualities that are in short supply in the more prosperous South, and we’re meant to identify with him the way we used to sympathize with the Russians played by Sean Connery in cold war movies. | Before the predictable, Bourne-like plot twist that sets off the third-act violence, Mr. Kim is quite amusing, muttering highly articulate curses as he pretends to be vanquished by various bullies, some of them in grade school, and carries out instructions to fall down three times a day and urinate in public once a month. His indomitability and resourcefulness put his South Korean neighbors in a bad light: presumably he’s meant to embody qualities that are in short supply in the more prosperous South, and we’re meant to identify with him the way we used to sympathize with the Russians played by Sean Connery in cold war movies. |
| Closing the festival on July 15 is one of the oddest and yet most comfortingly familiar of this year’s entries. The Taiwanese musical “The Rooftop,” directed by and starring the pop singer Jay Chou (Kato in the 2011 Hollywood “Green Hornet”), combines a dreamy logic with a frantic pace. Pinballing from one fantastical scenario to another, it’s like a child-safe version of a John Waters movie. | Closing the festival on July 15 is one of the oddest and yet most comfortingly familiar of this year’s entries. The Taiwanese musical “The Rooftop,” directed by and starring the pop singer Jay Chou (Kato in the 2011 Hollywood “Green Hornet”), combines a dreamy logic with a frantic pace. Pinballing from one fantastical scenario to another, it’s like a child-safe version of a John Waters movie. |
| Mr. Chou plays Wax, a resident of the bohemian enclave of the title who’s so cool that he uses a switchblade to smooth his pompadour. In the course of the film he romances a bashful actress and engages in kung fu battles with various thugs. (In a distinctly Asian twist, the main point of contention is a seat on the city housing authority.) The wonderful Eric Tsang plays an amiable charlatan who promotes his herbal medicines with a hip-hop floor show featuring women in mini-cheongsams and men in wheelchairs. | Mr. Chou plays Wax, a resident of the bohemian enclave of the title who’s so cool that he uses a switchblade to smooth his pompadour. In the course of the film he romances a bashful actress and engages in kung fu battles with various thugs. (In a distinctly Asian twist, the main point of contention is a seat on the city housing authority.) The wonderful Eric Tsang plays an amiable charlatan who promotes his herbal medicines with a hip-hop floor show featuring women in mini-cheongsams and men in wheelchairs. |
| Mr. Chou never runs out of ideas: at one point a newspaper page reorients itself and becomes a nightclub stage for a production number about the dangers of the paparazzi. It’s a scene redolent of Busby Berkeley and Fred Astaire, and when was the last time an American movie made you think of them? | Mr. Chou never runs out of ideas: at one point a newspaper page reorients itself and becomes a nightclub stage for a production number about the dangers of the paparazzi. It’s a scene redolent of Busby Berkeley and Fred Astaire, and when was the last time an American movie made you think of them? |
The New York Asian Film Festival continues through July 15; filmlinc.com, subwaycinema.com. | The New York Asian Film Festival continues through July 15; filmlinc.com, subwaycinema.com. |
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