Limitless 2011 Neil Burger

See if you can wrap your head around this premise:  Guy down on his luck starts taking drugs, feels unstoppable and invincible, has a good few months and then starts the downward spiral that always happens in movies about guys (or girls) who take drugs.  Now, instead of a run of the mill drug like cocaine or heroin, imagine for a minute a more science fiction-y drug that allows you to use all of your brain.....and there you have Limitless.

It wasn't marketed as a drug movie - but it definitely is.  That's not a bad thing, though.  Drug movies can be entertaining if done well.  No one's gonna say Requiem for a Dream isn't a great movie.  Now Limitless isn't in the same league as that film, but it's not trying to be.  It really is just a slightly science fiction-y take on your standard American drug drama.

Bradley Cooper is the loser who starts winning thanks to his little pills.  Robert De Niro is the financial tycoon who takes an interest in his theories regarding the stock market.  There's also a Russian loan shark, a disapproving girlfriend, and lots of random good looking people who populate the parts of the movie when Bradley Cooper is successful.

So far, it's pretty average.  Entertaining, but average.  And just when you think it's going to be another moralistic tale, it takes a turn towards an extremely satisfying conclusion the likes of which aren't seen in American drug movies.   It's then that I realized why the trailers for this movie completely downplayed the whole drug angle in favor of the science fiction aspects.  If people knew what this movie advocated, they would be morally outraged.  That outrage would be ridiculous and completely without merit, but this is America, so being uninformed and furious is expected.  Watch it and see for yourself.  Tell me I'm wrong.

Tarkan Versus the Vikings 1971 Mehmet Aslan

I haven't seen too many Turkish movies.  The ones I have seen - Three Monkeys, Distant, and Dry Summer - are all serious dramas.  I knew that wacky Turkish exploitation movies existed, but I never saw one before today.

And what a movie!  It's not a good movie or even well made, but it is something else.  It concerns  Tarkan the Barbarian.  He's a Turk, and he's quite the badass.  He's escorting the Yonca, the daughter of Atilla the Hun, with his two trusty dogs by his side.  His main friend is his older dog, Kurt.  The younger dog is around, but he's learning how to be a good Turkish dog from his father, the aforementioned Kurt.

When Yonca and Tarkan the Barbarian stop at a local Hun (Turk) fortress, they're attacked by Commander Toro of the Vikings.  You can tell their Vikings, because they arrive in a ship that looks exactly like the magic boat tht took Jimmy and Freddy the Magic Flute to Living Island in H.R. Pufnstuf.  That, and they wear cutoffs.  They're Vikings.

The Vikings attack, killing all the men, women, and children.  Well, not all the women....In true Viking style, they snatch up the foxiest ones - Yonca included - and take them back to Viking Land.
They also manage to put Tarkan out of commission with a few well placed arrows and even kill Kurt Sr.  When Tarkan comes to, that's when you find out that the younger dog is named Kurt, also.  Not Kurt, Jr. - just Kurt.  Kurt is dead, long live Kurt.

This is where the movie gets truly weird.  Tarkan is all but forgotten for about twenty minutes while he recuperates from his injuries, and we get to see the inflatable octopus that the Vikings worship, along with secret Chinese torture rituals.  Then Commander Toro becomes king, sacrifices are made to the octopus balloon, and oh yeah, Tarkan feels better.

He's still pretty incompetent, though, so Kurt becomes the Gromit to his Wallace.  Seriously, how many times can the hero of the movie be captured (lots, apparently) and be saved by his wall climbing, throat biting, door opening buddy Kurt (lots, again)?

Just when you start getting into Tarkan and this being a Tarkan movie (there were 7 of them), he gets knocked out and misses the next twenty minutes or so.  So not only has it become a live action Wallace and Gromit cartoon, it's also quite a bit like a barbarian Ronsencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.  It's more fun to wonder if Tarkan really is the star of his own movie or not.  I guess maybe Kurt Versus the Vikings wouldn't have been as popular.  That Kurt is one resourceful dog.....

Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen 2010 Andrew Lau

Have you seen Bruce Lee's Fist of Fury?  Or, as it's known in it's dubbed American version, The Chinese Connection?  This movie is a sequel to that movie.  I'm not saying that you have to see the original Bruce Lee movie to have fun with this one, but it helps.  If you're too lazy to watch that one, I'll catch you up to speed:  Bruce Lee is a character named Chen Zhen.  Chen Zhen has been away for a while, and when he comes back he finds out that his kung fu master is dead.  He had been killed in a kung fu vs. karate showdown with the Japanese.  That makes Bruce Lee mad.  He goes over to the Japanese karate school, kicks all their asses, and leaves.  The Japanese have never been nice to the Chinese, so of course they retaliate against Bruce Lee and his kung fu school.  The law gets involved and the Japanese quite literally get away with murder.  This makes Bruce Lee so mad he's just gotta kill back.  So he does.  Lots.  The police and Japanese soldiers come to take him away, at which point he fills with Nationalist Pride and charges the armed soldiers.  The screen freezes mid-charge, but you hear the guns firing, so you know that Bruce eats it in the end for his country.

Or does he?

See, that original movie has been remade quite a few times - notably Jet Li's Fist of Legend - so it was up to savvy movie producers to find a new angle for a new generation.  "Maybe he lived!", they thought, and a new movie was born.  To make it classy, they hired the guy who made the Infernal Affairs movies, Andrew Lau ( you know those movies better as The Departed by Marty Scorsese.  That's right - The Departed was a remake), and they got current kung fu golden boy (and member of the previous generation) Donnie Yen to star in it.

It seems Chen Zhen survived and is now helping the French in World War I.  It would all seem kind of silly if the filmmakers didn't pull out all the stops and put in an incredible action set piece to get everything started.  Once the audience (and the Germans) knows who they're dealing with, it's back to Shanghai for Chen Zhen and his buddies, armed only with a false name and Nationalistic Pride.  In another nod to the great Bruce Lee, the costume that Chen Zhen wears when he hands the Japanese their collective asses is the same one Bruce Lee wore as Kato on TV's The Green Hornet.  He's known as The Masked Avenger, and he's a hero to all the downtrodden Chinese everywhere.

 So far, it's pretty entertaining.  Then things take the requisite bad turn in the second act, and the end is all kung fu ass-kicking glory.  Really, you need to see Fist of Fury to appreciate what they've done here.  You don't even need to see all of it.  Watch the fights.  Skip around if you have to (Shame on you.  That movie's awesome!  Watch it all!).  See that suit he's wearing in the poster?  It's a copy of the same one Bruce Lee wore in the original.  They even reference the original in the poster, for god's sakes!  It's like the Great Chinese Story!  Everybody knows it!  Don't be left out!  Watch this movie!

Oh, and for anybody who says that it's all a pean to Communism or Socialism or whatever -ism is the bad -ism for the week, just shut up.  It's a movie.  There's no hidden agenda.  You're not too smart for the Chinese and their sneaky ways.  Hero was a great movie and you missed it.  Legend of the Fist is pretty great and you're gonna miss it, too.  Think about that when you go see Captain America, smart guy.