The Movie Thread Reloaded

[Bedrockbrendan]

Watched Killer Darts from the Shaw Brothers Collection Boxed set. Still haven't had a chance to listen to the commentary track (but checked out the first few minutes and seems promising). Believe it is also up on prime. Killer Darts is a 1968 Ho Meng-Hua movie. Yueh Hua and Fang Mian are both in it. But the star of the show is Chin Ping (who had a big role in the Temple of the Red Lotus trilogy and was in a number of movies before quickly retiring in the early 70s). She is great. Chin Ping can use a sword convincingly and also has a lot of charisma. In this movie she plays Jin Yu-Sien, the adopted daughter of a master, Liu Wen-Lung, whose disciple killed her parents. Because the disciple used the master's own darts to do the job, this leads to a misunderstanding later in Jin Yu-Sien's life that provides much of the drama. Ho Meng-Hua tells a good story and this movie is no exception. With him, one rarely feels lost or confused, and most things that are introduced early in the movie, pay off later. There is also always an effective emotional core, so you care about the characters. The action is good, but more in the 60s Shaw Brothers mold. I happen to like that style but it really does require a compelling lead to make it work and I think Chin Ping is on par with other great leads from this time. In my review I gave it a 6.5. I was basically struggling between a 6 and 7. In the last half hour I decided I would give it a 7 if the emotional ending had a lot of heft. It was a good ending, but wasn't enough for me to push it to 7. I mention this just to say, I could see someone else rating this higher. And I think that 6.5 requires some explanation as it is a genuinely good film.

Did a review on the blog too: https://thebedrockblog.blogspot.com/2025/03/killer-darts-casual-review.html

[Lurkndog]

Season 3 of Reacher is going pretty well.

In particular, the opening episode has a good twist in it, so by all means watch the entire episode before casting judgment.

New episodes drop early Thursday mornings.

[Bedrockbrendan]

Watched The Crimson Charm. This one was surprisingly enjoyable. Basically a master swordsman and hid daughter save a woman from getting raped by the son of Yellow Robed Chief of The Crimson Charm Gang, but kill the son in the process. So Yellow Robed King shows up at the sect headquarters on the masters birthday and slaughters everyone. Three of the surviving heroes regroup three years later to get revenge against the gang (though each one has someone different motivation as we get development during that three year period). The fights did have a few sloppy moments but they were still fun. And there were plenty of cool weapons. The evil sect in this one is one of those groups that has a lot of guys with names like White Faced Yama King.

[Bedrockbrendan]

That does look pretty heavy on the CGI lol. 

It is and it's TV tier which is another reason I think it was probably a TV series.

I can handle a certain amount of that. But that looks like the kind of show where they use it even when it isn't needed (i.e. using CGI to remove blemishes and such). I was watching a lot of wuxia and chinese fantasy shows in the 2010s and they were loaded to the teeth with CGI. It was often questionable, but I will say they tended to avoid that muddy look a lot of US shows have, so even if the CGI wasn't great, it was like the colors at least matched lol. Also one thing I think CGI works very well for is Qi. It sucks when they use it to replace wirework, but when they use it for Qi blasts, that looks pretty cool even if the effect is kind of iffy.