Eat, Drink, Man, Woman

Eat, Drink, Man, Woman (1994)

Directed by Ang Lee

Master Chu is a master chef and a stay at home widow father of three daughters named Chien, Ning, and Jen. Each daughter has their own jobs and subplots. Jen has barricaded from other, except for her students as a teacher of chemistry class. Chien is an audio flight attendant and wanted to be a chef. The youngest, Ning works at Wendy’s (who looks more like Pipi Longstocking’s Fast Food), has a French class, and has a boyfriend. Once in a while, Chu’s relatives of Mrs. Liang, Liang, and her little Shan-Shan arrive at Chu’s place for dinner or meeting. Chu was a manager and head chef at the Grand Hotel with his friend, until his friend died as well as his sense of taste. Will this family support together, or they’ll be separated as much as their subplot?

The father is a good chef, as he showed his love to his family through his meals. Two of the daughters of Chien and Ning are boring, their love interests are immediately forgotten, and their subplots are close to identical as the daughter’s overall features. It was almost impossible to keep track which sisters are which. I thought Chien was the oldest, but she was the second oldest, as it’s the red lips did throw me off. It’s just like how adding red lips in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland suddenly makes her older opposed to her original lips being faded pink. I thought Jen was the youngest with her ponytail, but she’s the oldest and was the unique until she cut her ponytail off to look like her sisters, and she was my favorite out of the sisters. Ning is probably the most forgettable of the sisters, as I couldn’t recall a moment. Lust is one of the other themes for the daughters, to the point it feels like a Sex in the City episode, they even play similar music before that show existed. The criticism said the family interaction, but I rarely see any moments together aside from the dinner scenes. Then again, the father has spent the majority of his time isolated in his home cooking with endless supplies and animals such as fish, chickens, frogs, and geese, while twice or thrice in the film he has went to the hotel’s kitchen. The film gets repetitive with many dating scene and every scenes with Master Chu and Mrs. Liang ends with Chu getting a rough massage from someone else. It does get real slow with the conversations that would carry less from Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger Hidden Tiger, and too much in The Hulk, including the stare blankly at the object. I’ve seen better films that have a family theme and interest such as Wolf Children, The Simpsons, Life With Louise, The Adams Family, and Kramer Vs Kramer. This is one Soul Food I would have eat the least. 

Autumn's Tale

An Autumn’s Tale

A doll maker named Jenifer (played by Cherry Chung) travels from Hong Kong to New York for a job. She was picked up from Newark Airport by a crazy taxi driver named Figurehead (or Figgy for short, played by Chow Yun Fat) to take Jenifer to her apartment where he lives in New York near a train line. Jenifer met her old boyfriend with the dolls she made for him, who’s now her ex when Vincent has a girlfriend. One night, there was a gas leak in Jenifer’s room, so Figgy saved her. Jenifer and Figgy hang out and often relate through lunch, giving gifts, and helping each other. Jenifer has a job as babysitter and waitress at her mom’s ex’s restaurant, she studies acting, and a sculpture artist in front of the New York Public Library. One day on a date at the beach, Figgy brings folklore that when a sailor dies, they get reincarnated into a seagull. Then at November 9, Figgy throw a party partly to get closer to Jenifer (despite decorations are plastic pumpkins), but Vincent lightly crashed the party as Jenifer has some conversation that may lead to misunderstanding to Figgy for him to storm out of the party to gamble, smoke, and get drunk while breaking his commitment. Little does Jenifer know that the party was Figgy’s birthday? Will they get back together just like every Romantic Film, or will they be separated with one of them dead?

As romantic comedy goes, it’s standard from all other in the genre with the dating, relationship, and destiny (destiny being the word I drink every time it’s said as much as “faith of the world”). Then again, I’ve haven’t seen a unique romance films I couldn’t predict yet in my life. What stand out are our two main characters. Chow Yung- Fat is seen as comedic, and it’s quite refreshing and interesting to see what a dramatic actor used to be, as well as passionate to his goals. His passion is mostly relatable that after life as a sailor and being alive for 28, he should expect greatness, but reality continues to be a dick by giving him the conflict onto everything such as being yourself for the girlfriend, only to realize that she’s either taken or her ex is having a boomerang relationship. Expectation of what we wanted isn’t going to be set in natural stone, the people and environment will always change it mostly for the worst and rarely for the best. Cherry Chung is likable as she’s adapting from Hong Kong to New York, as she’s a skilled artist and does her best from selling her work to babysitting to a waitress to be paid to keep her rent until the end. It’s close to Lost in Translation in reverse where it’s foreigner in US, had problems adapting. It could be possible that Figgy died off-screen and became a seagull, but it could be any sailor such as Bluto after being punched by Popeye to death after eating a can of spinach. Autumn Tale might be a decent romantic with only the main leads to watch around September or November. October I don’t see much people watching it unless they need a relaxing film from the scary films.

Not One Less (1999)

Not One Less (1999)

A 13 year old graduated girl named Wei Minzhu becomes a teacher in a rundown school. She teaches the kids on a limited budget, as well as lives with them. One of the 26 students named Zhung Huike is the “class clown”/ trouble making punk (aren’t they the same thing?) made some conflict of making mess with the other students in the cost of the chalks they have little of, and constantly tries to run away from school. One day, Wei loses one of her students to sports school to Mr. Zhang’s group. Zhung (not to be confused with Zhang from the previous sentence) successfully ran away from school to his “sick mother” in the city. Wei needed to get Zhung back, but needed money for transportation to get him back. Will Wei get the Zhung back to sustain her class, job, and sanity?

The moral is to keep your job with responsibility, no matter the setting and conflict you’ll get. If you don’t, then you’ll lose it all.

I feel sorry for Wei for her teaching in a terribly crooked school at a young age. She’s actually trying her best to teach and save her students with emotions, and physically does her job than spoke or waves her finger.

I don’t sense compassion onto Zhung, he’s just an annoying, snot nose, little brat with little to no redeemable factor what so ever. He could have been redeemable when we see him with “sick mom”, but we never did as is the reason why I said “sick mom” very loosely. You can argue that she’s dead as Zhung is mentally destroyed, but usually they have at least some sorrow or mentioning of dead mom or less likely having vengeance.

The rest of the kids are very forgettable. The problem with kid characters as side characters is they’re mostly range from bland to annoying. They’re rarely good unique kid characters in films aside from animated films that starred kids, maybe ET, Monster Squad, The Goonies,

There’s rarely a film that focus on the teacher than the students such as an episode of Simpsons, King and I (the live action version, not the crappy Richard Rich animated version), (next example I might kick myself with an ice skate) a Goofy Cartoon- Teachers Are People, School of Rock (the movie, not the many crappy Nickelodeon live action shows), and Bad Teacher. However, we’ve never see the teacher be as young as 13, since they’re mostly 25 or older.

Usually my closer friend in high school was the teacher or teacher’s assistant than the students, because majority of them are obnoxious. So I befriend them since they’re most sane to some extent. This film I’m okay with, the twerp I’m not.

Dragon Inn

(The original title as New Dragon Gate Inn.)

      In 1457, during the 8 year of Emperor Jing Tai, the Eunuchs controlled both the government and the power of two agencies. The officer lead by Tsou Siu-yan has tortured many people (including the father of a family we’re focusing on) to death with arrows and wood crushing onto his limbs and the emperor sends his troops to aim for the father’s bloodline and family to banish or to death. The family (the mother named Mo-yan, and her two kids) ran away separately with hired guards from the troops. The family recovered to the Dark, Dreaded, Dragon Inn, where they won’t find anything but scum and villainy there. The Dragon Inn is run by Jade, with her guards, and her family members such as Dao as their chef. The family met their uncle Chow (as friend, not actual relative), as Tsou stays in the Dragon Inn unaware on the father’s family are at the same Inn. What follows is ways for the family to escape the Inn from the troops, including Chow getting a deal to escape as long he marries Jade. The climax has Chow, Jade, and Mo-yan fighting the Tsou in the desert to the death.  

I would have thought the film would be a family survival film starring the kids, at least which would be the case if the poster on the DVD has their Mo-yan, Chow, and Jade on it, but Mo-yan (the character in the foreground of the poster) not even the star of the film nor Mo-yan does much in the film aside from being defensive, silent, and drank a full barrel of wine, and Chow came in half way from the film as he spend most the screen time being charming and marrying and defensive to Tsou and Jade. The kids are just there, and just there to be saved, as they should be, yet don’t make an impact. The star of the film is more on Jade than anyone else. That’s Maggie Cheung, who’s more entertaining than her later film, In the Mood for Love. She’s shady, sneaky, hyper, and is controlled when she’s in business. The villain (Tsou) is devious, and his skills does show why he’s a threat with his sword play and heat sneaky arrow (on loan from Robin Hood: Men in Tights, which the film did a similar shadow scene with Chow and Jade), but he’s not as scary as Jade’s brother, Dao. Dao is a scary chef that reminds me of Sweeny Todd, in that some of the food he made is made from dead unwanted guests, except for a goat he cut from whole to pieces, even to what he does to Tsou.

The action scenes are too fast, too close, and isn’t well focus until the climax. Some of the people’s clothing in the fast scenes are too close that we can’t tell whose fighting. It’s very similar to the climax of Tsui Hark’s (the producer, who would later be the director of this film as Flying Swords of Dragon Gate) other work, Double Team. Jean Claude Van Dam confronts with Mickey Rourke in a coliseum filled with landmines with a ferocious tiger circling the field, because Jean is rescuing his newborn son. It’s basically a film where the action isn’t focus until the climax where it’s done in an over-the-top action. 

If the film was a POV of the two kids, the film would be stronger and scarier of an idea of an army off to kill you in your short young life. The idea is best compared with Land Before Time and Dinosaur (2000), one with young characters surviving in scary world, the other with older characters surviving in a dull world. If you wanted a see a film with sword fighting and chaos, this is the film for you.  If you want to see more control and better visuals, the original Dragon Gate has more control with older kids than this version are aged around 10 years, as the 2011 remake of Flying Swords of Dragon Gate has both control and visuals with the focus on the wives than kids. However, watching the original or remake will cost you a Jade.