Old Myths, Old Men | Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (2024) Review

There’s a Wikipedia page for the topic “epic film,” which gets into some of the back-and-forth in film scholarship about whether the term applies exclusively to historical-style movies or to those in other genres as well. If the latter, then 2001 is (as designed) a “sci-fi epic,” and The Lord of the Rings is a fantasy epic, though that’s somewhat obvious. What about the less obvious genres, like comedy? I can only think of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. And then there’s action, which might be even trickier. This is our punchy genre, often driven by a single hero rather than an ensemble, and inside a contained scenario instead of sprawled out across time and space. I’d actually make the argument for The Night Comes for Us, for its multiple perspectives, its backstory, and the scale of the fights. Consider, too, Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, running at a touch over two hours and setting its action inside the real-world megastructure Kowloon Walled City. … More Old Myths, Old Men | Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (2024) Review

Underworld Politics

By happenstance, I waited more than a year to revisit the world of Johnnie To’s Election, finally sitting down to watch Election 2 (A.K.A. Triad Election) kind of on a lark. I was all geared up for Reign of Assassins while the world is in Yeoh mode, but then a flip switched in my head. I liked the first Election well enough, despite that its depiction of gangsters took me by surprise. They were always getting hit by cars or eating plates or never, ever firing a gun. I also struggled to keep up with the story, thrown immediately into the deep end with way too many characters all talking about many other characters. But by the end, it weirdly clicked. Oh, shit, that’s a hell of an ending. Now that I kind of understand, I’m wondering if the second and final Election movie will be clearer to start out. Nope! But what is clearer is that it’s phenomenal. … More Underworld Politics