In our last episode of this mini-season, we have reached the end of our focus on the Martial Arts genre, with 2011’s THE RAID. After some perhaps surprising reviews, we talk about how who/where we are in life has a huge effect on our reception of the films we watch, as well as some discussions of cinematic violence and consequences.
Our next mini-season is vampire films, and we kick off with 1922’s seminal NOSFERATU: A SYMPHONY OF HORROR. (It’s not the first vampire film, but it is the earliest ‘mainstream’ hit...and the first we could readily get hold of, for viewing purposes!)
WASHINGTON BLACK (2018): Esi Edugyan
MEGA TIME SQUAD (2018): Tim van Dammen, Morgan Albrecht, Yoson An
THE NIGHT COMES FOR US (2018): Timo Tjahjanto, Iko Uwais, Joe Taslim
DREDD (2012): Pete Travis, John Wagner, Karl Urban
STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS (2015): J.J. Abrams, Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill
OLDBOY (2003): Park Chan-wook, Garon Tsuchiya, Choi Min-sik
Firstly, the Marlon James interview with Adam Buxton is here: (Marlon’s thoughts on filmed violence are towards the end, but the whole interview is an excellent listen). Here’s a reminder of that Jackie Chan video referred to in our DRUNKEN MASTER episode, and again today. This is worth reading, thinking about the idea of cinematic claustrophobia — as Rob mentions when talking about the way this film is shot. We also talked about the idea of the underdog — a through-line which you can see from a character like Jirokichi, nearly a hundred years ago, to Rama; you can read a lot more here
Finally, in a good place to end our focus on the Martial Arts genre, here’s a good summary article (including some films we’ve covered, and some we haven’t been able to).