Movie Festival

Some guys would take the absence of their families as an excuse to go party. Or maybe drive to the coast and surf, for all I know. But I'm a boring kind of guy, so I've been playing Dungeon Siege and watching a bunch of Asian movies. I don't feel like writing a review, so I'll just link to a few:

Attack the Gas Station. This is the best of the bunch I've watched so far. Filmed in Korea, it recounts one night of criminal mischief at a 24 hour gas station. We get flashbacks into the life of each of the criminals, as well as a bunch of silly interaction between the civvies and the criminals. You're not supposed to root for criminals, but go with the flow on this one...

Eastern Condors. Mostly notable for having Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao in substantive roles, this is a fairly conventional 'dirty dozen' style war drama, with the usual generous helping of corny acting found in lots of Hong Kong martial arts films. The climactic fight scene in the final fifteen minutes is worth getting the DVD for, however.

Ashes of Time. One big wu xia soap opera. To borrow a quote from the link:

The scenary is beautiful, the music is haunting, the fighting is stylish, all the main actors and actresses from Hong Kong in 1990s acted in the movie and the plot is based on one of the most popular wuxia books in the Chinese culture. The story is a tad slow. For Condor Heroes, it is best to stick to the TV series and the comics. This story is too complicated to be compressed into a movie.

This is not Wong Kar Wai's best picture (I say this even though I've only ever seen three of his films that I know of, since either of the other two are better). But it does have Brigette Lin in a starring role, and I've had a crush on her ever since I saw Bride with White Hair, the movie which started me on my Hong Kong movie journey.