Movieline Online

It seems like there's a new cultural touchstone discovered in the martial arts genre every 6 months or so, such is the impact of home video on a cult of fandom that once traded VHS tapes by mail to hunt down the complete Shaw Brothers library or that rare early appearance by Jackie Chan. So with the induction of Dragon Inn (1967) as part of the Criterion Collection, one might be tempted to dismiss the film as a lesser effort from director King Hu whose poetic A Touch of Zen already made its special edition debut. But as his first project outside of China (Hu started his own company in Taiwan after breaking off from the Shaw Brothers), Dragon Inn is yet another essential title in the ever growing library of wuxia films whose impact lingers far beyond the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon phenomenon. Situated on the edge of open desert, the Dragon Inn is invaded by a small army of assassins hired to ambush the family of a condemned government official. But as they wait, the Inn ...

The film that almost won director Vincent Ward the Alien 3 assignment (although his influence on the screenplay is still strongly felt), 1988's The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey has aged surprisingly poorly. A time travel adventure set during the Black Death, a small village's only hope for survival relies on the visions of a young boy who leads a team deep underground to find the far side of the world. Instead, they pop up in contemporary Auckland, New Zealand, where their desperate mission to place a sacred cross atop the tallest church spire is fraught with all the perils of modern life like highway traffic and elevated trains. Alternately cute, quirky and pretentious, Ward's more overt art film tendencies are relegated to the lead character's visions of the future (which look like leftover footage from Bergman's Wild Strawberries mixed with The Hobbit ) while the rest of the film leans towards an audience friendly fish-out-of-water tale. The director ...

Film critics used to talk a lot about chemistry, that inexplicable pairing of two stars who just seem to "get" each other. With genuine movie stars, particularly of the female variety, all but extinct these days, it's pretty much a moot point; films are packaged around a concept rather than characters. But it wasn't an exact science even then. Take 1942's My Gal Sal , a pretty typical 20th Century Fox musical starring the completely atypical Rita Hayworth. In this based-on-a-true story adaptation of the life of songwriter Paul Dresser, an Indiana born preacher's son who works his way from traveling medicine shows to the toast of New York's high society, she's paired up with Victor Mature, whose rugged features and frankfurter fingers are a poor match for a dashing tunesmith. But such is the charm and allure of Hayworth that it doesn't really matter who she's paired with; she commands her co-star's - and the audience's - a...

Japan pumped out Yakuza films by the hundreds from the late '50s through the '70s, endlessly kick starting careers and franchises to fight off the lure of television until the studio system finally crumbled. Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards ! (1963), starring Jo Shishido as a tough-talking private eye who inserts himself into a gang rivalry, offers up something a bit different. More of an American film noir with musical intermissions, Seijun Suzuki's film is a kitchen sink of private dick clichés, including a misunderstood femme fatale, comic relief sidekicks and some great one liners that would've made Bogart jealous ("I didn't deserve that slap, so I gave it back to you.") After a series of hijackings that pit one gang against the other, Tajima (Shishido) goes undercover to find out who's pulling off these risky Yakuza raids. His investigation requires a phony name and elaborate back-story, dodging old girlfriends, even performing...

It's understandable if spaghetti western fans are a little gun-shy about adding new titles to their collection. After all, the genre cannibalized itself to the point where it was hard to tell a Dollars knock-off from a knock-off of a knock-off. Arrow Video's 5-disc Complete Sartana box set is about at legit as things get in the Italian film industry, gathering the original If You Meet Sartana...Pray for Your Death and four other films in the series, the majority starring Gianni Garko (George Hilton takes over for the final entry) as the dapper, quick-draw, card-sharp whose nose for gold seems to put him in the middle of a dangerous situation wherever he goes. While the series starts off as a Leone clone, things get more interesting with each sequel, particularly Light the Fuse...Sartana is Coming , with a script by giallo innovator Ernesto Gastaldi that blends the two genres brilliantly, layering a series of double-crosses so deep the plot becomes intentionally comical. ...

Furthering their trip down the New Zealand filmmaking rabbit hole, Arrow Films have released Vigil (1984) the debut narrative film from director Vincent Ward whose follow-up, The Navigator (1988), would point him toward a Hollywood career that never fully materialized. But here we see the visionary look that attracted so much attention in its nascent form, set against the almost otherworldly New Zealand landscape. Dealing with sex, death and magic, all intermingled in the mind of a 10-year-old girl on the edge of puberty, Vigil is both a family drama and a dark fantasy. After the death of her father, Toss (Fiona Kay) and her mother struggle to run the family farm with the help of her eccentric grandfather. But the arrival of mysterious handyman, who also was also present at her father's death, sends Toss' already vivid imagination into overdrive. Both attracted and repelled by the stranger, her reality becomes skewed by the domestic disturbance, clinging to promises of...