14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible (2021)

It appears that most of the features left on my Netflix list are upwards of two hours long. That's one reason I chose this, at 101 minutes. Another is that it's set in cold areas, in contrast to the present weather where I live. Finally, it seemed the closest thing to another Free Solo.

Nirmal Purja, who's also an executive producer, is a high-altitude mountaineer (HAM?). In April 2019, he launches Project Possible, which entails scaling all 14 Asian peaks that exceed 8,000 meters above sea level -- by winter, dramatically breaking several records along the way. At one point, he and his team have to rally to persuade the federal government of China to let them proceed, but that may be the least of their troubles.

Kill Bill: Vols. 1 (2003) & 2 (2004)

Sometimes I bewilder myself. I have now watched every feature film directed in full by Quentin Tarantino, despite not expecting to like them overall. These two are popular -- the first is still in IMDb's top 250 -- but what I knew of them gave me reasons to deprioritize. Perhaps a warning that they would stop streaming on Netflix this month increased my interest, along with a realization that people still talk about them from time to time. I split the four-hour collective runtime over two days. I wasn't sure I'd go on to the second volume, but the first ends very unsatisfying by design.

Beatrix (Uma Thurman) is a globe-trotting hitwoman until a pregnancy inspires her to turn over a new leaf. She tries to marry under an alias, but jealous ex-boss Bill (David Carradine) has everyone at the wedding rehearsal shot. Only Beatrix survives, waking from a four-year coma and swearing to kill all five of her former co-workers (among them Vivica Fox, Lucy Liu, Michael Madsen, and Daryl Hannah) for their part in the massacre, along with anyone else who gets in the way.

Lucy (2014)

So much for my prediction that I wouldn't watch another action crime flick right away. A friend suggested we see this together. Since it runs only 89 minutes, I figured at least it wouldn't be a great loss.

Lucy (Scarlett Johansson), a college student in Taiwan, puts a little too much trust in a guy she's been seeing for a week (Pilou Asbæk). He pressures her to make a mysterious delivery where he's no longer welcome. This gets her the unwelcome attention of ruthless drug lord Jang (Choi Min-sik), who has her knocked out and surgically implanted with a pouch of a fictitious new synthetic drug to smuggle. When the pouch leaks, she acquires superpowers, escapes, and seeks to collect the drug from other known mules. Not all the effects are good, so she'll have to act fast before her body gives out.

Wish Dragon (2021)

While others may or may not watch another animated family feature with "Wish" in the title around now, I opted for something a little more popular if less discussed. Mainly I chose it because it was one of the few movies on my Netflix list that promised to be both cheerful enough for the season and not too insipid. A 98-minute runtime isn't bad either.

In a modern Shanghai slum, Din Song (Jimmy Wong) has been working in food delivery -- at the expense of his education, to the outrage of his mom (Constance Wu) -- in order to afford an appearance upper-class enough to gain entrance to the 19th birthday party of aristocrat Li Na Wang (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), who was his best friend before her father (Will Yun Lee) forced her to move away so he could chase his economic dream. One day, an eccentric customer (Ronny Chieng) pays Din with a jade teapot, which turns out to contain a dragon, Long (John Cho), who's obligated to grant the bearer three wishes. Din has a fair idea of how to spend one wish, but he'll have to watch out for some thugs hired to grab the teapot.

Police Story (1985)

Had I realized I was about to see another action flick, I would not have put this next on my queue. Still, it's not all that similar. No sci-fi here, just the slightly off physics of Jackie Chan.

Hong Kong policeman Chan Ka-Kui (Chan) gets some positive attention for arresting crime lord Chu Tao (Chor Yuen), but convicting him will be tough. Ka-Kui is assigned to guard a reluctant witness, Chu's secretary (Brigitte Lin), who manages to slip away, disbelieving his claims of danger. A subplot involves his girlfriend (Maggie Cheung) getting the wrong idea about the two of them. Not content to beat the charges, Chu arranges to frame Ka-Kui for murder. Chief Inspector Raymond Li (Lam Kwok-Hung) trusts Ka-Kui but is too by-the-book to forgo an arrest, so Ka-Kui runs off to deal with matters irregularly.

Shaolin (2011)

This must be the first movie I've seen because it was excerpted in a video where an expert rates on-screen kung fu veracity. I decided it had been long enough since my last martial art viewing.

In the 1920s, Hou Jie (Andy Lau) is a warlord as brutal and treacherous as the next -- until his daughter (Shimada Runa) gets killed, his wife (Fan Bingbing) walks out on him, and he becomes a powerless fugitive with a bounty on his head. Not knowing what else to do with his life, he joins Shaolin Monastery, which he had recently desecrated, the abbot (Yu Hai) being more forgiving than most of the monks. He finds a new level of emotional peace, but his fighting days aren't over: His former deputy and "sworn brother," Cao Man (Nicholas Tse), is perhaps even worse than Hou used to be, at least with regard to refugees. And these monks are not the hands-off, super-pacifistic kind of Buddhists.

Triple Feature: Smallfoot (2018), Missing Link (2019), Abominable (2019)

When I realized that I could watch all three of these dueling movies on one flight, I couldn't resist. They all came out within a year of each other and are animated adventure comedies involving humans who discover that bigfeet of some sort not only exist but are hardly monsters. Now I would know my personal preference among them.

The Summit of the Gods (2021)

The only reason I knew this title is that it was included on someone's list of best animated features from 2021. The exclusion of Luca was, well, fishy, but I didn't dismiss the whole list on that basis. I chose to watch TSotG when I did partly because it's only 90 minutes and partly because it looked different from anything I'd seen lately. Which it was.

In the '90s, a shady stranger in Tibet offers to sell photojournalist Makoto Fukomachi a camera allegedly belonging to George Mallory, who might have been the first to scale Mt. Everest in 1924 but didn't make it back. Fukomachi refuses, but then he sees the vendor get shaken down for the camera -- by none other than Habu Joji, another famous climber who has been missing for years. Could Joji have come across Mallory's remains? He makes himself scarce before Fukomachi can catch up to him. Anxious for a good story, Fukomachi does detective work on Joji's background. By the time they meet again, it's not just about solving the mystery of Mallory; it's about accompanying Joji to record his next attempt to climb Everest -- in the winter, with no third member of the team.

The Good Earth (1937)

All I really knew going in was that this would be my first viewing from the '30s in nearly four months, that it was based on a Pearl S. Buck novel, and that the Academy nominated it for Best Picture. Of course, Oscar nods from the '30s tend not to look so good anymore, so I tempered my expectations.

The exact period is ambiguous, but sometime after the arrival of trains and before the first World War, northern Chinese farmer Wang Lung (Paul Muni) has an arranged marriage to kitchen slave O-Lan (Luise Rainer, becoming the first winner of consecutive Oscars for leading roles). They have a good life for a while, gaining wealth and kids, until a famine yields tragedy and drives them to seek relief in the south. The chaos of an attempted revolution changes their fortune, but a new high for wealth goes to Lung's head, and his arrogant decisions, not least a second marriage to Lotus (Tilly Losch), threaten to tear the family asunder.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)

Yes, I've been watching comic book movies at an unusual frequency lately. But I wanted to watch another movie in a theater for the first time in months, this one was on at an acceptable time, and I'm pretty sure my dad was willing to pass on it.

The last two words of the title refer to either an East Asian terrorist gang or the magical artifacts worn by its leader, Xu Wenwu (Tony Leung). Xu Shang-Chi (Simu Liu), son of Wenwu, was trained to be an assassin but ran away to San Francisco, where he serves as irresponsible valet Shaun. His long-time friend and co-worker Katy (Awkwafina) has no idea of his background until, after a decade, Wenwu's men come to steal the jade pendant Shang-Chi got from his late mother, Ying Li (Fala Chen). Certain that they'll go after his estranged sister, Xialing (Meng'er Zhang), for her pendant, Shang-Chi heads for Macau, and Katy insists on joining him to learn more. He doesn't know what his dad's up to, but it can't be good.

Yi Yi (2000)

This title translates literally to "One One," which could imply "One by One" or "One After Another." In English, it has sometimes been marketed as A One and a Two. The only interpretation that makes any sense in context to me is "One After Another," and that's still not very specific. In any case, its consistently high ratings caught my attention.

The story is difficult to summarize, because the Jian family in Taipei has a lot of different things going on. Probably the most central arc involves married NJ meeting married ex-girlfriend Sherry for the first time in ages; she's still sore about his sudden disappearance from her life and wants some form of closure. He also struggles with an ailing company, which assigns him to kiss up to potential client Mr. Ota. NJ's mother-in-law goes into a coma, and the family is advised to talk to her in the hopes of guiding her out, but they tend to feel a lot of stress when they do, not least NJ's wife, Min-Min. NJ's teen daughter, Ting-Ting, feels especially guilty because of the circumstances that may have led to the coma; she copes by making a new friend, Lili, but this also draws her into a messy relationship web. NJ's brother-in-law, A-Di, is newly married and expecting but turns to his ex-girlfriend for support when his financial missteps create a marital rift. Finally, NJ's prepubescent son, Yang-Yang (they sure like repetition), gets picked on by bigger girls, and his unorthodox ways get him on his teacher's bad side.

Over the Moon (2020)

This Netflix feature hasn't received great reviews, but the aesthetic in the stills drew me in. Besides, while I expect the next Academy Awards ceremony to be a nothingburger, I wanted to know what might be competition for Onward in the animation category, and A Whisker Away didn't seem mainstream enough. (Update: I was right on all counts.)

In modern China, preteen or possibly early teen Fei Fei (Cathy Ang) is an A student, which leads many to wonder why she still believes a tale of Chang'e, the woman who became the moon goddess. Her reason is personal: She learned it from her late mother (Ruthie Ann Miles). When her more science-minded father (John Cho) starts getting serious with widow Mrs. Zhong (Sandra Oh), Fei Fei feels that he must have lost faith in Mom. Mrs. Zhong's hyperactive eight-year-old son, Chin (Robert G. Chiu), doesn't make the prospect of remarriage any more palatable to Fei Fei. She gets the idea that Dad will call it off if she can just prove Mom right...by building a rocket to the moon and bringing back a photo of Chang'e.

Shanghai Express (1932)

I hadn't seen a '30s picture in more than half a year. Incidentally, that one also depicted East Asians in a way that wouldn't fly today. But this one was far more esteemed in the West back in the day, nominated for Academy Best Picture, awarded Best Cinematography, and remade twice, with neither remake as successful.

Most of the story does indeed take place on a Chinese train, where more than half the shown passengers are international. Captain Harvey (Clive Brook), British military surgeon, is on his way to operate on the governor-general of Shanghai when he discovers his old flame on board: Madeline (Marlene Dietrich), who's since made a name for herself as "Shanghai Lily." This being pre-Code Dietrich, you can guess her reputation. They're still sorting out how to feel about each other when things go wrong for the train as a whole, thanks to the Chinese Civil War....

Five Deadly Venoms (1978)

I'm not sure why I added this cult hit, called merely Five Venoms on Netflix, to my streaming list. Maybe I wanted to ensure that even genres I rarely watch -- martial arts, in this case -- remain available. Maybe the slim lineup of 20th-century features had a hand in my decision. Most likely, it had come up in some discussion of influences on Quentin Tarantino or whatnot. In any event, I watched it recently for the sake of variety.

In what I presume to be several centuries ago in China, a kung fu master on his last legs asks his one remaining student, Yang Tieh, to seek out his long-gone five previous students and, if they've turned to violent crime, kill them. (No middle ground, eh?) He doesn't know what names they're using or even their faces, since they always wore masks, but Yang can meet a man likely to provide further hints and can then keep an eye out for anyone using distinctive fighting moves. Each of the five employs a different style, and Yang has been hastily trained as a jack of all styles and master of none. The master thinks Yang's only hope of defeating any of the five is to ally with one of them, so he'd better hope they're not all evil.

Not One Less (1999)

Zhang Yimou might be best known in the west for directing action flicks, including the wuxia variety, like Hero and House of Flying Daggers. Most recently, he has disappointed audiences with The Great Wall. But I have seen even more of his films in the drama genre, most of them following common hardships of people in China. This is one of those.

In a remote village, the only available substitute teacher at a dwindling elementary school is 13-year-old Wei Minzhi. She has been promised a monetary reward if none of the students drop out during her month of teaching. When 11-year-old Zhang Huike gets sent to the nearest city, Zhangjiakou, for work, Wei and the class put their heads together for the best way to fetch him. Ultimately, Wei alone heads for the city, with very little money to spend.

Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016)

Having enjoyed the first two in the series, I was rather dismayed to sense a lukewarm reception for this. Sure, it blew away Norm of the North in its first duel, but even weeks before Zootopia stole its thunder, few people seemed interested in it. Even the dumb-looking Sing is ahead by a majority of estimates. Well, as one of the minority of viewers who preferred the second movie to the first, I thought I might beg to differ again. Besides, I saw nothing to lose by streaming.

You've likely seen ads indicating that fanboy-turned-champion Po (Jack Black) finally reunites with other pandas, whom he had presumed wiped out. As hinted at the end of KFP2, the first one to find him is his original father, Li (Bryan Cranston), provoking the jealousy of adoptive father Mr. Ping (James Hong). This is not as incidental to the main conflict as you'd think, for the latest national menace, the oddly solid spirit of a bull named Kai (J.K. Simmons), can be defeated only by a "master of qi" -- pandas' historical area of expertise. Po accepts Li's invitation to the hidden panda village, where, if he doesn't master qi in time, at least he'll learn more about his identity, the question of which is plaguing him once more.

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)

AFI's celebration of Dalton Trumbo prompted me to give this some priority, a few months after my last war film viewing. The casting of Robert Mitchum and the direction of Mervyn LeRoy helped intrigue me.

The reportedly mostly true story follows Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle (Spencer Tracy) and his men on the first U.S. Air Force mission of retaliation for Pearl Harbor. The titular period of bombing comes in the middle of the piece, after much preparation. What follows is an effort to stay alive after crashing in China, in an area pretty well hemmed in by the Japanese.

Kung Fu Hustle (2004)

I confess I don't watch many martial arts movies. Even the popular ones rarely rise above average in my estimation, because they tend to have all the plot complexity of an '80s video game. They're almost a kind of porn that substitutes fighting for sex. But they don't hurt to watch once in a while, and I get curious about artists I haven't seen before.

In this case, the director and main actor is Stephen Chow, known for comedies first and foremost. Indeed, this one isn't just on-and-off humor like The Legend of Drunken Master; it tries to be funny pretty much all 99 minutes. And the loose physics and mysticism go beyond Zhang Yimou-style wuxia and straight into cartooniness. Bill Murray praised it supremely on this score.

Before I get into those details, I might as well describe what plot there is. In a stylized version of the '40s, Sing, a young man disillusioned by his childhood attempt at heroism, wants to join the Axe Gang, who reign over all but the poorest neighborhoods of Shanghai. While amazing at picking locks, he and especially his buddy are incompetent at acting like thugs. Sing draws the attention of the real Axe Gang to deal with a slum that won't respect them. Fortunately, the slum has a few excellent fighters to oppose them. It becomes increasingly apparent that Sing will revise his idea that bad guys always win -- and will then discover his untapped potential.

In the Mood for Love (2000)

With a little more foresight, I would have followed my previous viewing with a movie that promised to be exciting, as with action. Instead, I chose something more popular but similarly simple in plot...and thus similarly slow.

My only prior experience with Wong Kar-wai was the singular Chungking Express, which, like so many accomplished foreign films, defies American genre standards. By contrast, ItMfL is a rather straightforward love story that could easily have been set in the modern U.S. instead of various parts of the Far East in 1962. Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung) and Mr. Chow (Tony Chiu Wai Leung) live in neighboring apartments and come to keep each other company while their spouses are on vacation. After they develop strong suspicions of their spouses' prolonged adultery, they are tempted to do likewise with each other in spite of their resolve to be better than that.

The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933)

There's a Frank Capra festival going on, so I decided to check out an earlier work of his than any I'd seen before. It's also his only non-comedy besides Lost Horizon that I've seen. Historically, it's most significant for advancing Barbara Stanwyck's career, along with Capra's The Miracle Woman in 1931.

Of course, the title and year should tell you something about values herein. In fact, it kept reminding me of Broken Blossoms: A Chinese man played by a white man develops feelings for a white woman, they don't really have my idea of a romance, and it doesn't end well. But unlike the saintly other man, Yen is domineering, cynical, and coldly pragmatic in matters of violence. This contrasts as well with Stanwyck's Megan, a missionary who was about to marry another missionary before the chaos of the Chinese Civil War ushered her into Yen's ostensibly protective clutches. Their irrational on-and-off chemistry has a Beauty and the Beast vibe in a bad sense. I was actually relieved to see that they wouldn't end up together, which would carry the ultimate "Nice guys finish last" message.