Happy Bruce Lee Day!

Yes, the holiday season is upon us, which means it's time to celebrate the birthday of the father of mixed martial arts and general badass: BRUCE LEE.Whaaa!!!


Three minutes of Bruce Lee kicking ass and yelling in people's faces.

Once you're done revisiting last year's Bruce Lee Tribute at Cage Potato, here are a few choice cuts from Netflix to help you fill in the gaps in your Bruce Lee hagiography:

The Big Boss
 Okay, the voiceover is hokey and the opening scenes look like they were shot by a high school student (not to mention the bored translators apparently thought it would be funny to throw in some names like "Chow Mein," "Old Wang," and "Shu Shine.") But Bruce Lee's first movie is worth a watch, if only to see how much more star power this guy has in his little finger than the entire rest of the cast put together. Also, the all-out-brawl between ice house workers and chain-wielding strike breakers - which forces Bruce's country-ass character to break his vow of "no fighting" - is a classic.

 Game of Death
Billed as Bruce Lee's "last movie," this was actually released posthumously by the director of "Enter the Dragon," who took 20 minutes of footage, cobbled together a story around it with a Bruce Lee lookalike (or two or three), and started an entire category of Bruceploitation films.  There are actually quite a lot more Bruceploitation films on Netflix than there are actual Bruce Lee films. Be that as it may, you should at least fast forward to the scene where Bruce Lee fights Kareem Abdul Jabbar while wearing his iconic yellow track suit, which is one of the scenes Lee directed. (It's also worth mentioning that Sammo Hung makes an appearance here, and is credited as fight choreographer on the reshoots.)

Ip Man 2
I have to confess: I still haven't seen Ip Man 1. Maybe you haven't either. THIS WILL IN NO WAY IMPACT YOUR ENJOYMENT OF IP MAN 2. The continuing story of Bruce Lee's mentor, the creator of the Wing Chun style of boxing, is super entertaining and features some of the best martial arts sequences in recent memory as Ip Man defends his school against every other style of kung fu in postwar Hong Kong, and some arrogant Western boxers, as well.

Nuns With Guns

I've never been a big fan of the rape-revenge genre. Inevitably, when people hear that you are a woman who enjoys exploitation films, the conversation immediately turns to "oh! Well have you seen "I Spit on Your Grave," because, you know, the protagonist has a vagina and as a vagina-owner, you probably will love it." Like watching one of the few protagonists I can relate to getting brutally gang-raped in the opening scene is going to be an empowering experience for me. Cause that's the basic rape-revenge plot: girl gets raped, gets angry, and goes on a killing spree to get back at her rapists. At best, it shows a lack of imagination when it comes to writing origin stories for "strong women characters." At worst, it's a cartoon idea of what rape is:  a one-dimensional shorthand for female character motivation.

And that's why it took me so long to get around to Ms. 45.

I came to Abel Ferrara through Bad Lieutenant. Ferrara's sleazy, gritty portrait of a New York cop didn't shy away from portraying all sides of a self-destructive soul, so I suspected Ms. 45 would show the same unflinching commitment. And oh boy, did it ever.  This was not a one-dimensional fantasy of a "strong woman." Zoe Lund's performance is amazing, as she mutates from a mute, washed-out seamstress to a stalking killer, a Travis Bickle of sexual politics whose very existence deconstructs the motivations of everyone around her. She's not strong. She's like Batman having a psychotic break. And of course, it's all wrapped in Ferrara's lapsed Catholic imagery.  So by the time she shows up in a nun's habit and red lipstick and starts firing wildly at a party full of people, we know she's about to self-immolate for our sins.  And it's awesome to watch.

Drafhouse is releasing a new, digitally remastered and uncut print of this 70's classic in December, to theaters, DVD, Blu Ray and VOD. Right now they are giving away two tracks from the soundtrack for free, so hustle on over, baby!

http://drafthousefilms.com/film/ms.-45

(By the way, if you want to see "Bad Lieutenant," it's on Hulu for free. You're welcome.)

Five New Drafthouse Films on Netflix Today!

Is your Netflix queue looking a bit tired and shabby since Warner Brothers pulled its library and left a muddy puddle of C-list product in its wake? Does even looking at it anymore make you feel sad? Well, despair no more. Five new titles from Drafthouse Films hit Netflix today that will make life worth living. Three that I'm particularly looking forward to:

A BAND CALLED DEATH

Kid finds a lost tape in the attic; turns out its his dad's totally brilliant punk band that nobody ever talked about. Excavating an unearthed bit of lost American musical genius: A BAND CALLED DEATH is a documentary about an unlikely DIY punk band in Detroit that you probably never heard of. 

"Joy and redemption aren't exactly punk mantras, but A Band Called Death might just give your heart a thrashing" - Robert Abele, LA Times 

WAKE IN FRIGHT

Martin Scorcese called WAKE IN FRIGHT  "a deeply -- and I mean deeply -- unsettling and disturbing movie. I saw it when it premiered at Cannes in 1971, and it left me speechless. Visually, dramatically, atmospherically and psychologically, it's beautifully calibrated and it gets under your skin one encounter at a time..." 

 Long considered "Australia's great lost film," the restored print screened at last year's Fantastic Fest and got a re-release through Drafthouse. If you can't see it on the big screen, at least turn out all the lights.

WRONG
Director Quentin Dupieux made an assured debut a few years back with RUBBER, the story of a telekinetic rubber tire that likes to blows things up  (also available on Netflix.) Fans of his unhinged and hallucinatory style (of which I am one) will look forward to WRONG, which is, ostensibly, about a man looking for his dog. Let's see how that turns out.

More info, as well as handy links to the Netflix page where you can save these to your queue, are on the Drafthouse Films site.

Twitch talks DRUG WAR

Johnnie To's much-anticipated new film, DRUG WAR, is his first made in mainland China. The folks over at Twitch caught up with To at Toronto Film Fest to ask him about his experience, and pop the hundred million dollar question:

We're getting a time-warning so this is the last question: you are very popular at Twitch, and last week we published an article about us hoping someone would give you a hundred million US dollars to make a movie with. What kind of film would you make with that budget?
What, with one hundred million dollars? [chuckles]
For that amount of money I wouldn't make a film, I would start a new movie studio in Hong Kong! [we all laugh]
 
But if it had to be a film? Many Hollywood blockbusters have a budget like that these days, so we wondered...
Well... no. I would never, ever, make a single film with that sort of budget. I would make plenty of smaller ones. Maybe a hundred! 


C'mon, folks! Surely someone out there can pony up the hundred mil to create Johnny To's new studio in Hong Kong. Hong Kong action film revival? It's Johnnie To, y'all! If one-tenth of you nerds cared as much about this film as you do about Ben Affleck playing Batman, I wouldn't be up on this clock tower with a rifle.