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Reviews
Ying xiong (2002)
Beautiful, elegiac, mythic, reminded me of "Alexander Nevsky"
The obvious comparison everyone is going to make will be with "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". Like that movie, "Hero" features gorgeous cinematography, fantastic wire-fu wushu action, and a tragic story full of odd and unexpected plot twists. This is a great martial-arts film, even (perhaps especially) if you ignore the political subtext.
But the references I kept seeing (intentional or not) were to Sergei Eisenstein's "Alexander Nevsky". The beautiful, deadly, machinelike Qin armies are very reminiscent of the Teutonic Knights in Eisenstein's epic -- but this time, there's a twist. More I can't say without uttering a spoiler, but I'd bet money the thousands of extras in this movie were subsidized by the Communist Chinese government as a propaganda maneuver against Taiwanese, Tibetan, and Uighur nationalism. "One under Heaven", indeed.
Warlock (1959)
Surprisingly complex and intelligent film
What looks at first like it will be an enjoyable but mindless genre Western turns gradually into something rather darker and more nuanced. Almost nobody in this film is who they seem at first, and several characters undergrow gradual inversions, with results ranging from noble to deeply creepy. Who are the heroes? Who are the villains? You'll leave this movie much less certain than you were when you arrived.
Henry Fonda and Anthony Quinn are nearly upstaged by -- of all people -- DeForest Kelley, seen here just a few years before his career would be wrenched sideways by the role of Leonard McCoy in the original Star Trek.