Continuing our series on the films that started our passion for Asian film…
It might not have been the first Asian film you saw, or even the best, but was there one that stood out? That light bulb moment when you realised how much you loved Asian movies and had to write/talk/blog/podcast about it? In the second part of our series where we ask friends, critics and our own contributors, and here’s what they said…
Ross Chen a.k.a. Kozo*
Webmaster, LoveHKFilm.com
“I was asked this same question recently for Stefano Locati and Emanuele Sacchi’s new book Il nuovo cinema di Hong Kong, and my answer was translated into Italian before being published. Here it is for the first time in English: Boys Are Easy, directed by Wong Jing. I’m guessing this is not a popular answer.
“A daffy comedy about three sisters who seek fake boyfriends to placate their father who’s lying about his testicular cancer (seriously, that’s the story), Wong Jing’s Boys Are Easy is stupid, politically incorrect and naturally a throwaway movie experience. At the time (1994), I didn’t consider the film to be as essential as the other Asian films I’d seen – namely, the collected works of Akira Kurosawa, John Woo and Jackie Chan – and I still don’t. But the film did leave an impression.
“Like many people, I entered Asian – or more specifically, Hong Kong film as an action geek looking for more genre experiences. But that sort of exploration is limiting, and reduces foreign cinema to an exoticised alternative for western action films. Action alone does not make Hong Kong cinema special. But action mixed with situation comedy, musical sequences, charismatic stars, off-color humor and the kitchen sink? Now we’re talking.
“I was drawn to Boys Are Easy because of its stars, namely Tony Leung Ka-Fai, Brigitte Lin, Maggie Cheung, Jacky Cheung and Chingmy Yau (plus a pre-Young And Dangerous Ekin Cheng). The film is every bit as nutty as it sounds, but what intrigued me was this collection of great actors and popular stars gleefully attacking low-brow material. They seemed to be having enormous fun mugging, screeching and flirting with one another while playing gigolos, impotent triad members and 27 year-old virgins.
“Boys Are Easy introduced me to Hong Kong film’s power as a populist cinema, where the filmmakers crammed in every last crowd-pleasing element, no matter how politically incorrect or nonsensical, to please an audience eager to laugh, smile and be entertained. I found an unpretentious, infectious energy in that crazy little movie – and even with its avowed silliness, it still gave me action. Tony Leung apes Bruce Lee in a hilarious parody of Enter The Dragon, while Brigitte Lin’s tough cop character occasionally beats up bad guys. I credit Jackie Chan and John Woo with the introduction, but Boys Are Easy and Wong Jing made me a fan willing to look deeper into what Hong Kong cinema has to offer.”
*That’s Ross on the left of course. Wesley is the adorable cutie on the right! 
Mike Fury Author, Life of Action
www.facebook.com/lifeofactionbook
www.mikefury.net
“Early in my life, many films had a profound effect on me and helped ignite my passion for movies. Asian cinema played a massive part in this. Although there are many stars I’d cite as favourites, particularly when I was growing up, it was all about Bruce Lee. I used to rent his films constantly on VHS from the local video shop before I ever owned them. Remember, these were the dubbed, heavily cut versions available at the time. They were all we had but they were brilliant (although I’m very grateful for the subsequent DVD releases from Hong Kong Legends!)
“I think my favourite Bruce Lee film at that time was Way of The Dragon (it would later become Fist of Fury). However, I feel each one has its rightful place in any top Martial Arts movie list. Bruce Lee is someone you can appreciate on so many levels. As a kid, I was captivated by his likeable persona, charisma and of course his lightning-fast kicks. I’ve heard this many times, and I’m sure others have said it before me, but when you’re a young kid growing up in the grey of England, this all seems very exotic. I think it’s the same for every generation who watched him, in terms of the impact it had. As an adult, there are more layers to appreciate, like the cultural significance of his work and closely watching the nuances of his fighting abilities. Plus, he totally dominated the screen. He was a star in the truest sense of the word.
“Way of the Dragon was a great showcase for all these traits. We had the exotic setting of Rome, Bruce playing the earnest young Tang Lung in a slightly lighter, comedic turn. He starts off as quiet and passive before fighting back against local gangsters and protecting his family. “Dragon whips his tail!” We also get Jon Benn smoking his giant cigar, Bob Wall (shortly before his return in Enter the Dragon) and let’s not forget the epic coliseum battle with Chuck Norris! The excitement of seeing this stuff for the first time was almost overwhelming. It’s no surprise that these films influenced pretty much every generation of action filmmaker to follow. Long may it continue!”
Hugh David, editor – Cult TV Times, writer on international genre film and anime
“The film that started it all for me was Jackie Chan’s modern-day action classic Police Story (1985). I was 14, and was aware (as other budding movie buffs in my Swiss school were) of Jackie from The Cannonball Run 1 & 2, although admittedly there he was playing a Japanese character. However, his comic stylings and do-it-yourself stuntwork chimed nicely for young viewers raised on Italian action comedy duo Bud Spencer and Terence Hill, while the Francophone locals pointed out to us that Jackie was the only guy since Jean-Paul Belmondo to do ALL his stunts himself. By that point I knew who Belmondo was thanks to French TV, so this was a ringing endorsement.
“The English-language video club had copies of Robert Clouse’ Battlecreek Brawl and James Glickenhaus’ The Protector, both of which I tried out (and I have a soft spot still for the latter). However, I then read somewhere that Chan had been extremely unhappy with the latter, and decided to show how he would do a modern-day cop thriller set in Hong Kong. I had to rent it from a French video club and watch it dubbed in French to see it, as the French market got it well before the Anglophone market released a version. It did, of course, melt my tiny teenage mind, and I had a new cinematic hero and a new standard set for action movies in general.
“I’ve now owned it in at least 4 different versions from around the world across two formats. I have never, ever tired of re-watching it, and I don’t expect to, as I fully intend to invest in a blu-ray when a great one is released. It has never been bettered by the series, although it has been equalled by Police Story 3, and remains one of the greatest cop action movies from anywhere in the world.”
Image credit Iain Boulton Video 2012.
alua, Otherwhere
“I don’t really have a clear answer to this question: there isn’t one film that drew me into the world of Asian cinema, or one moment that made all the difference. I think, rather, it was meant to happen. I grew up as a TCK (Third Culture Kid) and lived in different countries, including southeast Asia (Thailand and Taiwan). I went to international schools. I had (and have) friends from the world around. As a result, I was always interested in different cultures and always watching world cinema. I remember seeing Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Taiwan) and realising that it was a high-quality version of some of those terrible wuxia dramas I had glimpsed on TV as a child.
“There were four years in Costa Rica, when every Friday night I would rent several films. I watched pretty much any world cinema title I could get my hands on – the store clerk even started putting them aside for me. Kikujiro (Japan) was one of them, The King of Masks (China) was another. When I came to London, I joined my university’s film society and although I barely attended their events, the very first screening introduced me (surprisingly late) to Studio Ghibli with Kiki’s Delivery Service (Japan). I also watched 3-Iron (South Korea), which a society member had stumbled upon, already mid-film, when flipping TV channels but could not stop watching. I instantly understood her fascination and 3-Iron remains one of my favourite films.
“Finally, there is also the fact that London is quite generous when it comes to Asian films. It’s not just that there are many film festivals that are either entirely dedicated to them or showing at least several productions each year, but there are many free opportunities. The KCCUK and the Japanese Embassy both deserve a special mention here for pulling me deeper into the world Asian cinema, the former with their fantastic thematic film nights – The Year of the Director in particular – the latter with showing often hard-to-come-by gems like Matasaburo of the Wind.”
Simon McEnteggart, founder/editor at Hanguk Yeonghwa
“As I’m sure most of the other commentators will also say, narrowing the list of Asian films to the one that made the difference is a huge challenge…so I’m going to cheat a little bit and discuss two films that impacted me the most in a professional sense.
“The first film came while I was studying Film Theory at university. The courses largely centred on American and European cinema, relegating Asian cinema to something of a cult status between my friends and I, so when an Asian Film festival arrived at my local cinema I, along with two friends, decided to check it out. Not really knowing what we were doing, we bought tickets for Kim Jee-woon’s A Bittersweet Life and upon entering the screening we were shocked to discover that we were the only people there; I later found out that the festival had been a huge flop as locals were put off by subtitles. Foolish people. As the lights dimmed I was captivated by the film, and was exposed to director Kim’s phenomenal vision, Lee Byeong-heon as an action star, and the spellbinding beauty of Shin Min-ah. When I decided I’d had enough of living in England, this memory was critical in my decision to move to South Korea.
“Living and working in South Korea meant that I was exposed to much more cinematic output than the content that arrived in the UK, as well as learning about the cultural issues within the country. It was around the time I started to take a keener interest in such issues that I stumbled across Lee Chang-dong’s Poetry. It’s difficult to describe how deeply this magnificent film affected me. Director Lee’s film was such a poignant exploration of a serious social issue, one that I was, disturbingly, starting to hear more and more about, but rather than accept the situation as others did, he was directly challenging it. Poetry was more than a film to me; it was art. I was so moved that I realized I wanted to get back into writing about films again, prompting me to think about creating a website dedicated to Korean cinema, and Hanguk Yeonghwa was born.”
James Mudge, Chinese Visual Festival director, reviewer Beyond Hollywood
“Though I’d caught a few kung fu and Jackie Chan flicks back when knee-high to a grasshopper, mostly dubbed or westernised versions, the first proper step on my cinematic journey to the East came as a result of something far more gruesome and macabre. Having seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre at a stupidly young age (blame parents too naïve to wonder what their young son was watching on the new family VCR after they went to bed), my interest in horror had already taken a turn for the gory, which, as it doubtless did for many others of my generation meant delving nervously into video piracy via trawling unnamed shops, sinister record fairs and car boot sales. One fateful day in my early teens, this led me to the purchase of a tape featuring what appeared to be a very real film of an unfortunate young woman being butchered by a leering samurai, with no plot, no narrative, and no reason given for the slaughter.
“It’s fair to say that this early viewing of what I later learned was the notorious Japanese Guinea Pig: Flower of Flesh and Blood left its mark, and I spent the following days in a kind of pre-Ringu cursed video guilt daze, half-convinced that someone, somewhere knew what dreadful horrors I’d watched and was coming for me (I can even remember hiding the tape under my bed before going on a school trip, terrified that my parents would find it and for some inexplicable reason decide to watch it). While Texas Chainsaw, Alien, Friday 13th and others I’d seen were intense and horrific in their own right, they were clearly fictional, and there was something monstrously different and real about Guinea Pig, accentuated no doubt by the grainy quality of the tape I’d watched and the lack of any subtitles. Even now, though extreme gore and horror has spread its wings and become more widely available and to a degree accepted, very few films have ever managed to match its single-minded, almost demonic evil – so much so that most viewers aren’t aware that the film is actually the second in a series, which gets progressively sillier and features mermaids, androids and splattery slapstick comedy.
“One of the reasons Guinea Pig had such an impact on me and part of its impenetrability was the simple fact that it was Japanese, and this led me to venture further into the world of Asian horror, albeit down a more traditional and more wholesome route. Like a lot of others my age, this came mainly through screenings on Channel 4 of Hong Kong ghost films during the early 1990s, with images of hopping vampires, impossibly acrobatic martial arts, flying tree roots and exotic Taoist magic being burned into my impressionable mind and leaving me hungry for more. Many of these films still remain amongst my very favourites, in particular Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain, Encounters of the Spooky Kind, Mr. Vampire, and of course, A Chinese Ghost Story – I’ve had a soft spot Joey Wang ever since and still regularly embarrass myself trying to sing the theme song at karaoke after too much erguotou (no mean feat, given that I barely speak any Cantonese), and indeed, I at least have that to thank or blame Guinea Pig for.”
Timothy Holm, East Asian culture promoter (twitter: @paratize)
“Recalling my earliest memories of watching Asian cinema is not easy for me, for two reasons. First, I’m still in my twenties (barely), and second, I only really started getting addicted to Asian films about 11 or 12 years ago, which was right around the time when the dominant markets of Hong Kong and Japan were on the wane to some extent, while other countries like South Korea and China began to show more strength. If I reach farther back into my memory banks, I come up with only a few early influences from East Asia, including Godzilla, Jackie Chan movies, and the occasional anime (Akira and Princess Mononoke come to mind). I don’t think I can fairly include The Karate Kid in that bunch, but was there anyone who didn’t fall in love with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon at the turn of the millennium?
“It was only when I came across a (sadly short-lived) video store in my hometown which was devoted entirely to Asian cinema, however, that I seriously began to investigate the true riches that the region had to offer. Eventually I would come to know the great masters of Japanese film history (Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Ozu) and other legends of the past, but at first, the films that struck me the most were relatively recent ones from China (anything by Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige) or the fresh-from-the-theatre films of Korea (My Sassy Girl, Shiri, JSA), which seemed to come from a different universe altogether and ultimately led to me moving to Seoul as I was so infatuated with what I had seen of it on screen.
“As for Hong Kong, I liked John Woo, but I loved Wong Kar Wai and his luridly colourful and kinetic style in Chungking Express and Fallen Angels. The intoxication really began with him. Although I was a bit late to the game, for me, 1990s Asian cinema in general will always be linked to his work and his aesthetic. I can remember being enthralled by his use of light and shadow, fast-and-slow cutting, and most of all, the music. What a genius he was (and still is) with music. That’s the main thing that made his films so memorable for me; particularly so in Chungking Express. Even now, whenever I hear California Dreamin‘ by the Mamas & the Papas, or Dreams by The Cranberries (turned into Dreamlover by lead actress/singer Faye Wong) on the radio, I immediately go back to that time in my life when Asia was almost entirely unknown to me, a vast continent with vast potential in my imagination. Ironic considering that those songs were not Asian in origin, but that’s beside the point… I was hooked, and I’ve been hooked ever since. I eventually visited Hong Kong in real life, but it wasn’t the same as the Hong Kong of my dreams. That city remains only in the films of Wong Kar Wai.”
Kristof Boghe, easternKicks contributor
“Warui yatsu hodo yoku nemuru/The Bad Sleep Well (1960, Kurosawa) was certainly not the first Asian film I saw, but it started my true appreciation of director Kurosawa and it kick-started my drive to look for more Japanese and Asian movies in general. Being a fairly young teenager in 2004 and in the midst of my over-the-top Tarantino-adoration (everyone has its faults), Oldeuboi/Oldboy (2003, Park) was probably my first taste of Asian cinema. Back then, Tarantino praised Park’s picture in Cannes, causing a real boost for the director overseas. I was shocked by Oldboy’s visuals, charmed by its twisted Freudian twist (sex always works with adolescent boys) and soon more Asian pictures became a regular part of my movie diet.
“Pretty soon I saw Seven Samurai (1954, Kurosawa), but it was a little bit too slow-paced for my MTV-fed brain which was accustomed to fast cutting and flashy visuals. Actually, when it comes to samurai-flicks, Harakiri (1962, Kobayashi) is still the one I turn back to instead of Kurosawa’s epic. I acknowledge its greatness nowadays, but the more moral ambiguous (and often more cynical) sixties will always excite me more than most of the 1950’s output. Just a couple of weeks later, I witnessed what a perfect movie must look like: The Bad Sleep Well.
“Bleak and merciless for its protagonists, I thought it was an exceptional tour de force when I first saw it. It had intense human drama and one of the most compelling visuals caught on film I ever witnessed. It had social commentary on bureaucracy and the corrupt nature of power, which corresponded nicely with my worldview back then. It was a film noir in heart and soul and it had everything to please a somewhat cynical teenager: trauma, a haunted past, revenge, shadows (lots of them), pessimism and the acknowledgement that the twists and turns of our fate know no moral code: shit happens. This was not Hollywood, this was (to some extent) reality as it is. After indulging myself with most of Kurosawa’s filmography, I realised I’m more a fan of Kurosawa’s thrillers and contemporary dramas instead of his more well-known historical pictures. Yoidore tenshi/Drunken Angel (1948, Kurosawa), Tengoku to jigoku/High and Low (1963, Kurosawa) and Nora inu/Stray Dog (1949, Kurosawa) are almost evenly riveting and exciting as The Bad Sleep Well.
“Right now, I turn to Asian cinema for a number of reasons and directors: the visual flamboyance and romanticism of Wong Kar Wai, the humanism of Edward Yang, the melodrama and hyperkinetic editing of John Woo, the ingenious plots and narrative style of Johnnie To, the contemplative action flicks of Takeshi Kitano, the way Ozu, Koreeda and many others shed a light on the unbearable lightness of being…the list is endless and the amount of hidden gems I still need to discover excite me.
Dr. Stan Glick, AsianCineFest
“The film that really started my passion for Asian film was Tokyo Blue – Case 1 (1998; it’s a.k.a. Metropolitan Police Branch 82). My interest in Asian films had been kindled in the mid-1990s after I’d started studying Tai Chi Chuan. Towards the end of 1999, I came across a VHS tape of Tokyo Blue at a Kinokuniya bookstore near Rockefeller Center in New York City. (It’s long since relocated.) I’d been reading Asian Cult Cinema magazine for some time and, after watching the tape, I’d thought that this was just the kind of film I would have liked to read about. So I wrote to Thomas Weisser, A.C.C.’s editor/publisher and – long story short – my review appeared in Issue #27 in the spring of 2000.
“I described the film as ‘a delightful lighthearted flick that successfully explores the girls with guns genre in a way that is both titillating and humorous.’ It stars Cheiko Shiratori and Tomomi Kuribayashi as a pair of mismatched police detectives. Shiratori, a former nude model who turned to acting, is Mika, the taller, more mature partner who carries a big gun. Kuribayashi portrays Rin, who is much more of a free spirit and who favours a smaller pistol, in part because it can be concealed in a very private part of her anatomy.
“Weisser liked my review and the ones that followed. So much so that a year and a half later, in issue #32, I was given my own column, which Weisser dubbed ‘Trash Taken Seriously – Scholarly Reviews of Exploitation, Guilty Pleasures & Junk.’ I was thrilled to join A.C.C.’s other two much more experienced columnists, Max Allan Collins and Ric Meyers. I began covering festivals and film series in New York and have interviewed some terrific Asian actors and directors, such as Jo Shishido, Tsui Hark, and Lee Chang-dong. Since June 2006 I’ve been writing a blog, AsianCineFest, and have also written for the VCinema and 24Framespersecond websites.
“And it all started with Tokyo Blue – Case 1.”
Paul Quinn, Hangul Celluloid
“I guess the film that caused the biggest and most important turnaround for me was Kim Jee-woon’s A Tale of Two Sisters. Prior to it, I had of course been an Asian film fan but I hadn’t particularly differentiated; viewing Asian cinema output as great, good or less so regardless of country of origin. However, in the wake of sitting jaw-dropped at the end of A Tale of Two Sisters, I went through all my DVDs to separate the ones that had noticeably blown me away and I found that one after another after another was Korean.
“Long story short, that led me to review three or four Korean movies in a row (at that time my site was called Burnt Celluloid and consisted of reviews from any country that caught my attention) and not long after that a work colleague asked “Why do you only review Korean films?”. Instantly, the penny dropped and I knew without hesitation that I wanted my site to focus on Korean cinema exclusively. Within 24hrs I’d changed the site’s name and Hangul Celluloid was officially born.”
Fausto Vernazzani, easternKicks contributor
“Dinner time. My mother yelled ‘dinner’ as she always did and the five years old version of me walked to the kitchen and sat down waiting for his hateful portion of whatever vegetable was lying on the table. Only one thing was out of place: there was no Friends on TV, nor Murder She Wrote or any US TV productions as usually, but an Italian comedy trio doing a voice over for a Japanese TV programme called Mai dire Banzai (Never say Banzai) and suddenly my passionate love for Asia began: what the hell were they doing all crammed inside a phone booth in the middle of the road while another guy outside was eating noodles?
It would have taken a few years before I realized that the main guy’s name was Takeshi Kitano and that Mai dire Banzai was the Italian name for Takeshi’s Castle, one of my favourite TV programmes of all time. But it helped me to realize there was something completely different from us on the other side of the world and it all became clear when family friends suggested my parents to avoid Hero, a totally boring Chinese movie they had seen because Quentin Tarantino presented it on a worldwide scale. Luckily my parents decided to watch it anyway and for me and them was love at first sight: Zhang Yimou was the one who started it all.
Hero wasn’t just action or martial arts; those characters were poets and not simple fighters. Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Jet Li were truly fighting with their hearts and not spitting one-liners like Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger had done for decades. I would have loved to have more, but Italy at the time was not interested in having their screens busy with Asian flicks until Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was released. Then things changed, Asian movies won the battle and the DVD revolution opened a new world: Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy and Kim Ki-duk’s Iron-3 joined my memory of Kitano and Yimou, teaching me how Asian productions were different from country to country.
In Italy when we eat something small before lunch or dinner we use to say that it might “open our stomach” meaning that the belly monster living inside us all has been awaken and its hunger has to be satisfied now. That’s exactly what happened when I saw Oldboy and Iron-3, they opened my stomach and I don’t think it’ll ever close down.”
Andrew Heskins, founder/editor at easternKicks
“The ground had easily been laid by watching Monkey and the lesser-known Water Margin TV series in that prime-time slot on BBC2 at the age of five or six; followed by running around in the playground with my friends, pretending to be Monkey, Pigsy or Sandy. (Sure everyone wanted to be Monkey, but Pigsy was so much more fun to imitate.) There was the omnipresence of Bruce Lee, spotted even on the walls of Tony Manero beside Al Pacino in Saturday Night Fever. Oddly I just seemed to understand he was cool; I remember pestering my parents for a poster magazine at a fair long before I actually had a chance to watch Bruce Lee in the early days of video. (When I did, it was as the terrible American dub of Fists Of Fury, aka The Big Boss, all pan and scanned, and I actually wasn’t that impressed.)
“Access to films like that was limited, and like most in Britain my first real exposure came via the Chinese Ghost Stories season playing late night on Channel 4 in the Christmas of 1990. An offshoot of The Incredible Strange Picture Show, each film was presented by Jonathan Ross. I’ve no doubt there was a cumulative effect to watching films like Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain and Mr. Vampire on successive nights, but the tipping point for me was Stanley Kwan’s Rouge.
“The film is now famous for the spellbinding onscreen romance between its stars Leslie Cheung and Anita Mui set in 1930s Hong Kong, who both died tragically young, but I always found Man and Chu’s relationship in the present is no less sweet – it just lacks the melodrama of the former (which they constantly argue about). The film works on so many levels: lost romance; nostalgia of the lost Hong Kong laced with the Western/Americanised picture of what it had become; sly in jokes about the wire fu film that Cheung had just been a part of. Kwan manages to pack the films with all these thoughts and ideas, and yet still tell a simple tale exceptionally well without distraction. I realised not only what I liked most in film, but that there was somewhere that made films just like that; and from there my love for Asian film grew.”
Do you have a film that started your passion for Asian movies? Let us know below in comments, on Facebook, or tweet #filmThatStartedItAll to @easternKicks.
Just like they have a habit of saying on the Bond films, ‘The film that started it all’ will return…
Big thanks to everyone that agreed to take part in this feature! And thanks to eK’s own Stephen for the idea!
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