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Ukradená vzducholod (1967)
Technically and artistically flawless children's story
This is an absolutely enchanting, instantly appealing story to anyone who remembers being young: a 5 kids steal an airship from a county fair and embark on various adventures. Karel Zeman captures the adventure of being young without getting sentimental or turning the story into a Dennis the Menace episode. Perhaps the most amazing aspect of this movie is the cinematography, designed to look like moving woodcut pictures from old children's books. It looks and "works" much better than you'd expect it to. The backgrounds are stylized mattes, the foregrounds are painted to look crosshatched, and stop motion paper cutouts are used to depict objects in a stylized yet consistent way. I cannot recommend this movie enough.
Shanty Tramp (1967)
The nadir of the trashy exploitation genre
Set in some random town in the south, Emily the Shanty Tramp prowls from bar to barn looking for any kind of action she can get. Shanty Tramp is filled with the broadest spectrum of unsavory characters I've seen anywhere: a corrupt preacher, a drunk and abusive father, bumbling racist police officers, and a caricatured black mamma straight from the old Aunt Jemima bottle label. The only even slightly savory character in the film is a passion-addled black man who... well, better not spoil it, but let's just say what the only even slightly virtuous character meets a tragic end. Shanty Tramp was a marvelously controversial movie from all angles, serving the same purient, voyeuristic "other people's disasters" interests that Jerry Springer shows have today. Pink Flamingoes lacks the genuine, heartfelt sleaze that this film has in spades. I give this movie a 10 for unbelievably, shamelessly trashy cinematic excellence.
Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies Under America (1992)
an "interesting" film
Directed by Craig Baldwin (Negativland's "Sonic Outlaws"), Trib99 offers a Grand Unified Theory of Conspiracies including Castro, Kennedy, the wolf man, killer bees, the Panama Canal, and the United Fruit Company. As with any good conspiracy theory a surprising amount of the information is 100% fact with a small amount of completely unverifiable speculation to tie it together. Assembled completely from stock footage.
Lung joi tin aai (1989)
Plot problems, flat characters, but still extremely fun.
Not quite as coherent or well-scripted as some of his other films, Jet Li's performance is still quite good. The setting (San Francisco) makes it interesting for bay area viewers, seeing their city through the eyes of Chinese filmmakers as an exotic foreign place. Many of the characters are ridiculously flat and caricature-ish, plot complications are unlikely and unrealistic, and many are left unresolved at the end. Still, if you're a Jet Li fan and you can handle these shortcomings, you'll be as happy as a sandboy. I took two friends to see this and we all loved it.
Hung Hei Kwun: Siu Lam ng zou (1994)
Insane, amazing kung-fu action!
This movie doesn't take itself seriously, but it's one of my favorites of all time. Amazing action sequences with fighters that do not observe the laws of physics, and a plot that gets stranger and stranger.
Lung joi tin aai (1989)
Plot problems, flat characters, but still extremely fun.
Not quite as coherent or well-scripted as some of his other films, Jet Li's performance is still quite good. The setting (San Francisco) makes it interesting for bay area viewers, seeing their city through the eyes of Chinese filmmakers as an exotic foreign place. Many of the characters are ridiculously flat and caricature-ish, plot complications are unlikely and unrealistic, and many are left unresolved at the end. Still, if you're a Jet Li fan and you can handle these shortcomings, you'll be as happy as a sandboy. I took two friends to see this and we all loved it.