Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings (2021)

The baffling appearance of Ben Kingsley - he turns up about halfway through playing a Shakespearean actor who believes real monkeys were cast in the Planet of the Apes - marks where this, until then by-the-numbers Marvel superhero movie, unravels, descending from that point into a Disney mess aimed at pre-teens involving a massive flying threadworm, ludicrous bow-and-arrow mastery, flip-flopping bad-no-good-no-bad-no-good guys, a headless turwomken (a turkey, wombat, chicken cross) and other cgi Star Wars-style creatures trying to make interesting a lengthy middle stretch of exposition, vague ten-ring powers, and a hero whose martial arts prowess goes viral (but whose friends don't seem to know) and whose early childhood years of training as a ruthless assassin are breezily referenced (but which have no obvious effect upon the present) - all up, a mess of too many hasty, childish ideas in a movie which, like Black Panther, ends without it having been firmly established why the superhero origin story is the lead character's movie and not the movie of one of the other more interesting, more impressive characters (but certainly not that embarrassing Ben Kingsley one).

★★☆☆☆

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Infernal Affairs (無間道) (2002)

This is an exciting Hong Kong action movie bolstered by terrific performances of Tony Leung, open and warm, and Andy Lau, cool and sinister, playing fellow police academy recruits, one who ends up working for years deep undercover as a member of an international drug ring, the other rising through the ranks of the police force while working as a mole for the drug ring's "Mr Big" - a scenario so good this original spawned two sequels (not yet viewed) and a long and boring Hollywood remake, Scorsese's The Departed in 2007.

★★★★☆

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Happy Together (春光乍洩) (Chung gwong cha sit) (1997)

A passionate but dysfunctional relationship plays out in Argentina in Wong Kar-wai's utterly captivating 1997 love story that, with Tony Leung in the lead, with the prominence of a hypnotic soundtrack, with its foreign setting like a timeless other world, and with its whispered secrets (here, whispered into a cassette player, not a hole in a wall at Angkor Wat), feels as much a part of the director's other romantic works, Days of Being Wild, In The Mood For Love, and 2046, which are considered a loose trilogy but for some reason not a tetralogy.

★★★★★

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Hero (2002)

This is a poetic fairytale rendering of the formative days and profound political influence of Emperor Qin's reign over ancient China with Jet Li starring as the hero set to play an important role in the Emperor's plans for a unified country.

★★★★★

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