Full transparency: all Blu-rays reviewed were provided by Fun City Editions, 88 Films, Arrow Video, and the Criterion Collection.
It’s a juicy season for the devotees of the disc. Movies of all makes and models find their way on this month’s round up. From Fun City Editions, we have the end-of-the-’70’s-tinged neo-noir starring Lisa Eichhorn, Jeff Bridges, and the late great John Heard in an electrifying performance, Cutter’s Way. 88 Films US brings us the follow-up to everyone’s favorite Shaw Brothers movie about lovely weapons designed for clean decapitations in the form of Flying Guillotine 2. Arrow Video delivers a long-awaited crime epic stateside for the first time called A Fugitive From the Past, as well as a double dose of Johnnie To’s stylish action with Running Out of Time 1 & 2. Lastly, Criterion brings us some welcome moody pieces of cinema: Atom Egoyan’s entrancing Exotica and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure.
Sit back, relax, and let me tell you about some fine films to get you through these autumn nights.
Based on Newton Thornburg’s 1976 novel Cutter and Bone, Cutter’s Way feels like the last vestige before mystery and noir films became more about mood, aesthetic, and sensuality in the ’80s and feels more like the cynical, conspiracy-laden noir of the ’70s. We follow Jeff Bridges as Richard Bone, a yacht salesman with little ambition, and his friend and Vietnam vet Alex Cutter (played blisteringly by John Heard), who’s as irascible and volatile as Bone is easygoing, as they uncover the cover-up behind the disposal of a body unfortunately witnessed by Bone. However, the film is so much less about cabals and treason and way more about the interpersonal relationships of three broken expats of the ’60s and their need to hold on to what little romanticism they have left.
You can find Cutter’s Way from Fun City Editions.
Directed by Chen Kang and Hua Shan (most famous for the sick-as-hell Infra-man ), Flying Guillotine 2 is an odder movie than its predecessor, 1975’s Master of the Flying Guillotine. It’s not so much a direct sequel but more of a continuation that gives the audience what we’ve been chanting: “GIVE US MORE FLYING GUILLOTINES!” And baby girl, they absolutely deliver on that request. Following the expansion of the Emperor Yung Cheng’s (Feng Ku) reign of terror and arsenal of flying guillotines and protagonist Ma Teng’s (Lung Ti) partnership with a group of female rebels whose leader has to decide where her real loyalties lie, the film is your standard Shaw Brothers stuff: clans, fighting, development of countertactics, some great grindhouse-y violence. But, for all the promise the early scenes show, most of the film gets bogged down in that melodrama that some B-tier Shaw joints are wont to do. Yet this movie shines with its cinematography that keeps things moving, even in those scenes of political and personal deliberation. Shoutouts to the camera operators of this film, going for zooms into short tracking shots around a room into a close-up. Sometimes that type of craft is enough to keep something from being dull and instead making it amusing to watch.
You can pick up Flying Guillotine 2 from 88 Films.
A Fugitive From the Past is largely considered to be the magnum opus of director Tomu Uchida, best known for his incredible film Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji. A Fugitive From the Past is a three-hour crime epic based on the 1,700-page epic of the same name by writer Tsutomu Minakami about a criminal’s journey not for redemption but for escape from his past sins. Shot on 16mm and blown up to 35mm to give the film a grainy and intense look, the film is a character study about a man who betrayed his fellow thieves during the chaos of a typhoon only to escape with the help of a struggling sex worker and the passage of time. A decade later, after two new dead bodies are found, the case is reopened.
It’s an absolute gift that this film has found its way stateside finally. Even though it is a police procedural (it is often compared to Kurosawa’s High and Low), it’s so much more about the lengths the human spirit will go to to pursue justice or conversely break free from justice, even if it spells your doom. An enthralling watch and worth all 183 minutes of your time.
You can find Fugitive From the Past through Arrow Video.
Although the films of Hong Kong cinema have certain distinctive traits they share, its filmmakers like Johnnie To that remind me that no genre or regional movement is a monolith. To’s films feel like they fall somewhere between John Woo and Stephen Chow, stylized and slick but goofy and even occasionally unhinged-as-hell in the most amusing ways. The Running Out of Time films are no different. Both films follow career hostage negotiator Ho Sheung Sang (Lau Ching Wan) and his cat-and-mouse games with two criminal masterminds. The first film (from which these movies owe their title) features Andy Lau (who I would say was an even bigger star than the likes of Jackie Chan for a period of time) as the cancer-ridden thief with only weeks to live who leads Detective Sang on an intricately plotted trail, its end only known to him.
The second film tries to recapture that magic by having Detective Sang go up against a bombastic and theatrical art thief played by Ekin Cheng. Having been co-directed by Law Wing-cheung as well as To after the production started to drift astray, it’s not as tight as the first movie and it’s more unfocused. As the excellent essay by David West that comes with the films about Johnnie To and Hong Kong cinema points out, not only is Andy Lau a more magnetic presence but the film so clearly paints him as the protagonist by giving him an arc and a heavier dose of screen time. Even with that divide in quality, both films are must-haves for those who enjoy the operatic and disorienting stylizations of one of Hong Kong’s best. It also doesn’t hurt to have Arrow’s onslaught of special features to keep you company after the credits roll.
You can find Running Out of Time 1 & 2 from Arrow Video.
“All-enveloping” and “hypnotic” doesn’t even begin to describe Atom Egoyan’s landmark independent film Exotica. When watching the film, it feels as if you’re cloaked in neon, bathed in atmosphere, and submerged in emotion. We follow the opaquely interconnected lives of a closeted gay man and pet store owner (Don McKellar) under investigation for illegal smuggling and tax evasion and his auditing officer (Bruce Greenwood) who is a regular at the lavish strip club Exotica, where he gets emotionally fascinating dances from the performer Christina (Mia Kirshner), who is maybe romantically involved with the DJ and MC of Exotica (Elias Koteas).
The film ambles along sensually with a slow but taxing narrative about people with hidden pasts and desires that seemingly can’t be fulfilled in any truly satisfying way. Its faux Middle Eastern-music score flows over you as you watch people onscreen hide truths from others and themselves.
Featuring a plethora of great special features, including an interview between Egoyan and filmmaker and actress Sarah Polley, who is a young girl in the film and pivotal to one character’s arc, you can find Exotica through Criterion.
Finally, my pick of the month is one I’ve waited for quite some time to hit Blu-ray. Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure feels like a one-of-a-kind movie, deeply bleak and surprisingly understated. Off-putting as it is mesmerizing, the plot is about the game between a detective (Koji Yakusho) with a grim home life and an enigmatic amnesiac (Hagiwara) as the detective investigates murders that seem to have no link between them until it’s discovered that the amnesiac may be the one directly and indirectly responsible for them. Their dynamic leads the detective down dark paths of his soul as he’s forced to reconcile how the traumas of his life are infecting him and those around him, exacerbated by the amnesiac and his unique set of skills.
I won’t give too much away about how this story unfolds, but the plotting is as much the point as the hypnotic journey is. Kurosawa, who directed the equally as bleak and unsettling Pulse, is a master of this tone. He’s good at portraying the isolation of the human soul, a concept so much more terrifying than any monster could be.
You won’t be disappointed picking this up from Criterion.
I’ll see you next month with more great films and mediocre commentary.
Created in a dark room after being exposed to images from infinite worlds, Aja Essex seeks to engender thought, conversation, and possibility through film. Co-founder of Establishing Shot as well as co-founder and co-operator of Bloomington’s own Cicada Cinema, she has always aimed to spotlight the underseen, underscreened, and underappreciated. She hosts, edits, and produces the IU Cinema podcast, Footage Not Found, with the same haphazard but enthusiastic zeal as her writing. She loves getting lost in a song and despite her namesake being her favorite Steely Dan album, she has probably listened to Countdown to Ecstasy more.