Movie Talk - The Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Movies

Next up for the month is a look at a kung fu movie that’s critically acclaimed. Not many in the genre can say that, but this one can. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a movie I’ve heard things about but never saw it until this year. Yeah, I’m kinda lame like that. I think I may have said “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Negro” at some point in my life. I know one reason I didn’t watch it was because it wasn’t dubbed. Also, I know I wasn’t the biggest fan of the wuxia style of martial arts films. It took me a while to get there, folks. I think movies like Iron Monkey, Hero, and Fearless helped get me there.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was released in 2000, and it was directed by Ang Lee. It was based on a novel of the same name. It ended up getting nominated for some major awards. It was even nominated for 10 Academy Awards, and it won four of them. The movie starred some big names like Chow Yun-fat and Michelle Yeoh. It also brought acclaim to actress Zhang Ziyi. A sequel was also released a couple of years ago called Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny. It wasn’t as critically acclaimed, but it did bring back Michelle Yeoh in her role. It also stars recognizable names like Donnie Yen and Jason Scott Lee.

Movie Talk - More Jackie Chan Movies

Next up is a return to Jackie Chan, the martial arts actor who by the grace of God is still alive. Seriously, look up some of the stunts that didn’t go well! The guy’s broken almost every bone in his body. I don’t know how he's still here!

Last year, I looked at a few movies from his career. This time, I’m going to do the same, but three of them are a part of a series. First up is the 1973 movie, Police Woman. Then, I got the Police Story movies. These movies were basically done in the same vein as 1985’s The Protector, one of the movies I talked about last year. Chan wasn’t happy with that movie and I can’t blame him because I wasn’t happy with it either. So, he decided to redo the concept with Police Story in 1985. It spawned a few sequels, but I’m only looking at Police Story 2 (1988) and Police Story 3: Supercop (1991/1996). He also directed the first two Police Story movies.