Foreign film RECOMENDATIONS..

[FeaRpb]

I don't know if they have been mentioned, but

The Holy Mountain
El Topo

Both great movies, tho I cant remember if the films are foreign or if its just the writer.

[bluemax_1]

BTW, for folks interested in checking out some of Jackie Chan's older movies:

Police Story 1 - Great action, great fight scenes and impressive stunts typical of Jackie Chan's best, coupled with Jackie's comedic flair. One of the car stunts was replicated in Bad Boys II.
Police Story 2 - Once again, great action and fight scenes.
Police Story 3 - IMO, not quite as good as the first 2 but still entertaining and definitely worth watching nonetheless (some folks I know preferred PS 3 to PS 2).

Project A - One of Jackie's finest examples of martial arts action comedy. Also considered a classic because it's one of the collaborations between the 'Trio', Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao. This movie is one of the main movies that displays Jackie's fondness for the comedic flair of Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton and some of the stunts are crazy (falling 3-4 stories from a clock tower and landing on his head in one uncut take. The insane thing is, he wasn't happy with the first take of this stunt, so he did it again!). One of his most inspired movies (love the bicycle chase), it was fueled by his disappointment with his failure to break into the US/Western movie market with appearances in Cannonball Run and starring in the (pretty crappy) Battle Creek Brawl.
Project A 2 - Another fine example of Jackie's style of combining action, comedy and martial arts

The Young Master - try to find the original Asian releases of this movie. The last fight with the bad guy is very long and impressive, but the US release cuts out a chunk of it.
Dragon Lord - Another entertaining movie with more Jackie style fun and intricate fight choreography.

Meals On Wheels - Another Terrific Trio collaboration with some great fight scenes, in particular, some of my favorite Jackie fights ever against Benny 'The Jet Urquidez, who is still, IMHO, one of the most impressive Western fighters EVER. When Benny retired from full contact competition, he was undefeated, with 57 KO's from 63 sanctioned fights. He fought full contact MMA before there even was such a thing as MMA. In '74, the US Karate circuit first began running full contact tournaments, as opposed to the limited point contact tournaments. The pussy known as Chuck Norris (who competed in and won many point contact tournaments) retired from competition, Benny on the other hand embraced full contact kickboxing and at one point, held 6 World Titles in 5 weight divisions.

In the early days of those full contact competitions, they hadn't quite fleshed out the rules, so grappling and throws were allowed along with kickboxing. Benny was one of the main reasons the tournament rules were later revised to kickboxing only. He won many of those early fights by KO with a throw that dropped opponents on their heads. The US Karate association began changing the rules to restrict the matches to kickboxing. I've seen footage of both Benny's And Chuck Norris's competition fights. Benny was one aggressive, fast and powerful. fighter If Chuck had had the balls to face him in a full contact bout, he would've been put to sleep too, like most of Benny's opponents.

Dragons Forever - Another Terrific Trio collaboration and another terrific match between Jackie and Benny 'The Jet'.

Drunken Master and Drunken Master II - The first movie is old school and fun. DM II (also titled 'The Return Of Drunken Master') was even more impressive. One of my favorite fights is between Jackie Chan and Lau Kar Leung, who is acknowledged as one of the all-time greats in HK martial arts theater (both in ability and fight choreography). The scene I'm talking about was particularly impressive for LKL's demonstration of how to use a long weapon against a short weapon in very confined spaces (where to the average person, the long weapon would be cumbersome and at a huge disadvantage).


Max

P.S. These are not Jackie Chan movies but definitely worth watching nonetheless:

36th Chamber of Shaolin - considered one of the classics of the Wuxia genre, starring Gordon Liu (adopted martial brothe of Lau Kar Leung who directed this movie).

Jet Li movies:
The Shaolin Temple series 1, 2 and 3 - You can see the difference between mainland China's style of Wuxia and movies in the martial arts genre compared to the HK movies. These were Jet Li's intro to his martial arts movie career (he'd already won Wushu Championships) and these movies feature numerous Wushu instructors, champions and masters, including Pan Qing Fu, one of the most well known Wushu Masters/instructors in China.

My Father's a Hero - The rest of this movie is pretty good but there is one outstanding fight scene that shows just how devastating a fighter can be if they REALLY know how to handle the weapon called Tonfa (which is now recognizable as the PR24 side handled police baton).

[sketch]

Hero - this was an absolutely phenomenal movie. if anyone hasn't seen it, i highly recommend it.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Das Boot (watch the extended directors cut, I know it's like 4.5 hours but it's totally worth it.)

Shichinin No Samurai (Seven Samurai, 1954)

Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo

[carbonfiberhoods.com]

These are some of my favourite movies:

Tell No One - French Thriller - A guy's wife vanishes, he has to find out what happened to her
Run Lola Run - German Thriller (someone already mentioned this one, really good)
The Orphanage - Spanish Thriller / Mystery (really good movie, a kid has an invisible friend, ghosts etc..)
Timecrimes - Spanish This is a really good movie, a total mind #%$ck ,
Let the Right One In - Swedish vampire movie, pretty good

[19Eclipse90]

- Banlieue 13 & B13 Ultimatum: (David Belle, Cyril Raffaelli): Storylines are meh... standard action fare. The action is where the fun is. David Belle is one of the co-founders of Parkour (sometimes called freerunning). Cyril Raffaelli ('Kiss of the Dragon', and the 'hamster' in 'Live Free or Die Hard' is just cool, combining, the agility and acrobatics of freerunning with karate and wushu.

I watched Banlieue 13 (District B13) last night and this is fairly accurate. The story is pretty terrible; the acting isn't terrific either. But it sure is fun watching the freerunning, especially these two characters physically matching each other move for move.