The Mystery of Chess Boxing (1979)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Mystery of Chess Boxing (1979) – J. Kuo

Not from the Shaw Brothers’ studio nor from Golden Harvest, this independent production from Joseph Kuo famously inspired the Wu-Tang Clan (the main baddie is called Ghost Face Killer).  But what struck me first is how closely this film is modelled on Jackie Chan’s earlier hit (for Golden Harvest), Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow (1978).  Li Yi-Min takes the Jackie role of wet-behind-the-ears youngster who wants to join a famous kung fu school but is bullied by the senior student and then trained in secret by the school’s cook – played by Simon Yuen, who also comically played the old man who trained Jackie in both Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow and Drunken Master (also 1978).  I found out today that Simon Yuen (Yuen Siu-tien) was also the real-life father of director Yuen Woo-ping who did the choreography for the fight scenes in The Matrix (1999).  In any event, The Mystery of Chess Boxing follows the same general plot of Snake in that Li Yi-Min ultimately needs to fight the final boss (Kuan Wu-lung) with the help of his ailing master (Jack Long); perhaps it isn’t entirely fair that they double-team the Ghost Face Killer, but he needs defeating by any means necessary.  The old-school hand-to-hand fighting here is outstanding which helps the film rise above its copycat origins; the comedy feels ordinary at best (but as I only had access to a dubbed version, that brought some unintentional (?) humor too). Chess boxing itself, as a new style, does not really make much sense!

 

Wife (1953)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Wife (1953) – M. Naruse

If this were the first film by Mikio Naruse that you watched, it might floor you.  But as someone who has now seen 20 of his films, I think it isn’t quite in a class with his best films.  Yes, it draws you into its world and its ordinary characters experiencing ordinary human drama. It might be interesting for you to see Japan in the 1950s, where characters still talk about having lost their husbands or brothers in the war. Some women still wear kimonos but others have taken to Western dress. There’s a certain desperation about economic circumstances that pervades this film (the central couple runs a boarding house) and many of Naruse’s works (in almost every one of his films characters talk about money). This is heightened because women are the leads and focus of his oeuvre.  His best films often star Hideko Takamine (or sometimes Setsuko Hara, who was Ozu’s muse) but this one features Mieko Takamine (no relation) who took the part when Hideko declined.  She plays the titular wife and Ken Uehara (another Naruse regular) plays her husband.  Their 10-year-old childless marriage is coming apart.  Both are unsatisfied with the other and with their lives.  Eventually the husband starts an affair with his widowed secretary which continues even after she moves away to Osaka (from Tokyo), when they travel to visit each other.  The film shows us what happens when the wife finds out.  Naruse’s point-of-view seems to be that everyone has their reasons and no one is completely right or wrong.  Yet, society has (or had) strong views about this situation and how it should play out. Naruse’s films have a strong vein of pessimism and there’s a melancholy feel that can’t be avoided when you see how society’s shackles block characters from pursuing their dreams. People end up in dead ends and inertia keeps them there.  It’s no different in Wife but the bluntness of the ending might catch you by surprise (if this were your first Naruse film).  For mature audiences.

Groundhog Day (1993)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Groundhog Day (1993) – H. Ramis

I suspect it has been 30 years since I saw Groundhog Day, which does cast a different light on its take home message (that we need to live each day as if it is the only one we get – or possibly to use each day productively so they add up to a more meaningful life).  Have I achieved this? (Does anyone ever feel they have?). The plot famously involves arrogant weatherman Phil Connors (Bill Murray) getting stuck in a time-loop where he has to re-live the same day over and over and over again; that day is Groundhog Day (2 February – also my wife’s birthday) with its portentous omen about the future being wintry or nice depending on whether the rodent sees his shadow. The film takes place in Punxsutawney, PA (NE of Pittsburgh), a small town, presented as they were in the early ‘90s.  As directed by Harold Ramis (who takes a brief cameo), it is pretty mundane, even cheesily cringeworthy. Phil is above it all, but his new producer Rita (Andie MacDowall) is on a different wavelength, open to finding positivity in everything.  Cameraman Larry (Chris Elliott) is around to provide Phil-deflating comments.  So, what would you do if each day was just a repeat of the previous day with every moment fully predictable? The screenplay (by Ramis and Danny Rubin) intelligently conjectures what the average person might do: freak out, then take advantage of the lack of consequences for one’s actions, then fall into despair, then try to use time more wisely (to learn skills and stuff).  Phil decides to pursue Rita who he comes to know in depth (even if, for her, it is still just one day), with expected results, given she thinks he is an arrogant jerk. But eventually, he grows as a person, becoming his better self.  This helps him with Rita.  Amon (aged 13) felt the film was corny.  I liked the “high concept” but it feels dated, sentimental, with little edge (and not really too many laughs).  That said, it is probably a good thing to take a moment to reflect on a more existential way of being. In this way, the film “works”.

The Red House (1947)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Red House (1947) – D. Daves

The Red House is loosely categorized as “film noir” (a very broad category, as we know) but it begins rather cheerfully with some high school kids (real ages: 19 to 24) flirting on the school bus (albeit with a voiceover noting that kids take longer to finish school because of farm chores that take them away from their studies).  Nath Storm (Lon McCallister) is one of those kids who takes up a job working for odd Pete Morgan (Edward G. Robinson) and his sister (Judith Anderson) at the insistence of their adopted daughter Meg (Allene Roberts), even though Nath is going steady with Tibby Rinton (Julie London), a “bad girl” who also flirts with older Teller (Rory Calhoun).  So far, a bit ordinary, unusual family structure aside.  But when Nath tells Pete about his plans to take a shortcut through the nearby woods to get home in the evening, Pete over-reacts (there are rumours that his wooden leg is a result of an incident in the woods).  Of course, Nath goes anyway and something whacks him on the back of the head.  This only makes him want to investigate further, especially after hearing about a haunted red house somewhere in the middle of the woods.  He and Meg and Tibby search for it to no avail.  Later Meg sneaks in there on her own and gets shot at.  All the while, Pete may be losing his grip on reality, Tibby hooks up with Teller, and Nath is falling for Meg (who is keen).  Director Delmer Daves builds up suspense around the red house and its secret, somehow making it seem almost Freudian, with the not-so-hidden sexual motivations of the teens and the creepy obsession of Pete for Meg hanging heavy over the proceedings. The teens want to find the red house but Pete won’t let them!  The tension builds and eventually we learn all, which fortunately doesn’t feel anti-climactic but more like an inevitable culmination as the pieces fall into place.  Uneven but weird enough to recommend.  

WarGames (1983)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

WarGames (1983) – J. Badham

No doubt this film is making the rounds of the streaming services now to remind us that Artificial Intelligence is hardly new (although the accessibility of Gen AI programs surely is bringing on the next industrial revolution).  I suppose I must have seen this in the cinema back then (since this was the time in high school when we didn’t have a VCR) but I hadn’t thought much about it since then.  Matthew Broderick is the computer whiz with the complete set-up in his bedroom (including 12 bps modem) which, when he isn’t playing Galaga down at the local arcade, he uses to hack into his high school’s computer to change his failing grades.  (Did our high school even have a computer in 1983?  That was contactable via phone lines?) Reality constraints aside, it is probably true that NORAD (North American Air Defense Command) would have had some honking big IBM machine hooked up to nuclear missile launchers, as in the film. But would said computer play anything more complicated than chess? In this film, it is ready to play global thermonuclear war with Broderick, featuring the USA vs. the Soviet Union. (The Day After was shown on TV this same year, featuring the consequences of such a war).  Director John Badham avoids dwelling on any consequences and seems to be channeling E.T.-era Spielberg here, as the film slowly morphs from small-town family/school life (with Ally Sheedy as sidekick/girlfriend material) to a sort of PG action-adventure when Broderick is arrested by the FBI (oops, spoiler) and needs to track down the computer scientist who created the AI computer (called Joshua) in the first place (on an island off the coast of the Pacific NW). It all comes down to retraining the computer using a series of games of tic-tac-toe. If only averting the end of the world were so easy.  Less than 20 years later, filmmakers were already positive that sentient machines would be treating humans as batteries instead (solving two problems at once).

Bring Her Back (2025)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Bring Her Back (2025) – D. Philippou & M. Philippou

I liked the first feature by Australian brothers Danny and Michael Philippou (Talk to Me, 2022) enough to check out this, their second, although I knew there was a risk that it might have more blood and gore than I would like.  I was right, but I gritted my teeth and occasionally looked away. The plot finds 17-year-old Andy (Billy Barratt) and 12-year-old Piper (Sora Wong, who is blind) orphaned when their dad is found dead in the shower. Social Services find them a foster mother, Laura (Sally Hawkins), who is more than a little intense. Very quickly she has Andy offside, showing a preference for Piper; another foster child Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips) acts bizarrely and is often kept locked in his room. Andy becomes our identification figure as he (and we) puzzle out what Laura is up to; we see a bit more than he can, so we know she is up to no good.  A disturbing VHS tape seems to be a sort of blueprint for Laura’s actions, as she may be invoking a ritual of sorts.  Since this is a horror film, the supernatural is at hand. The directors ratchet up the tension and things spiral out of control. I might have preferred more spooky, less gross, but there is no denying Hawkins’ acting chops here. And as with their first film, the Philippou brothers know that horror lies in our vulnerabilities (emotional as well as physical) and they don’t let the audience off the hook.

 

Cover Up (1949)

 ☆ ☆ ½

Cover Up (1949) – A. E. Green

The vault of films noir runs very deep and you never know what gems are left to be found (after all the prime viewing has been done).  I thought a film starring Dennis O’Keefe (T-Men, 1947; Raw Deal, 1948) and William Bendix (Lifeboat, 1944; The Blue Dahlia, 1946) had got to be good but alas t’was not so.  What looked like noir on the surface, judging by the time, the stars, and the plot (insurance investigator discovers that apparent suicide is actually a murder being covered up by seemingly a whole town), turns out to be quite jaunty and even light-hearted rather than the dark existential fare I sought.  In retrospect, director Albert E. Green might have been better known for musicals.  Perhaps O’Keefe was looking for something to change his image into more of a romantic leading man type. He seems to have demanded that the Christmas setting be kept (another ingredient tipping this toward sentimentality) when a producer threatened to jettison it.  Only Bendix maintains his edge, as the sheriff who may or may not be in on the conspiracy (and could even be the killer) – he’s got the sly sense of humor that he flashes in his best films while also not afraid to be rough-edged or a bit of a lunk. Barbara Britton is fine as the love interest/daughter of the town banker. But viewers looking for “menace meets small town norms” in their noir had best start with Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943).