Film reviews
Men In Black 3
It’s not a sequel that needed to be made, but thanks to the charm of its leads and a tone that harks back to the wit and humour of the original, it’s a pretty enjoyable trip.
Bel Ami
The excellent female support cast saves this patchy effort, which is let down by its leading man and a flat screenplay.
The Dictator
A disappointing, often repulsive and mean-spirited mess of a film with seemingly only one real criterion on its agenda: to shock and offend.
The Woman In Black
Packed with atmosphere, this old-fashioned but deftly told ghost story delivers ample chills and thrills.
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The Butcher, The Chef And The Swordsman (Film)
Rating: M
Country: China
Director: Wuershan
Cast: You Benchang , Masanobu Ando , Liu Xiaoye
Distributor: China Lion
Release Date: March 17, 2011
Film Worth: $16.00
FILMINK rates movies out of $20 - the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worthA bold and original work which utilises an unconventional narrative, frantic pace and a brazen use of styles and visuals.
With Chinese cinema of late amounting to little more than flag-waving propaganda and historical melodrama, The Butcher, the Chef and the Swordsman is a refreshingly original entry into China's cinematic landscape. Co-funded and produced by Twentieth Century Fox International and executive produced by Doug Liman (director of Mr. & Mrs. Smith and The Bourne Identity), this hyper-stylised martial arts comedy heralds the directorial début of Wuershan, who serves up a trilogy of receding vignettes that shrewdly reveal the origins of a mystical, black iron meat cleaver.
As the title alludes, the film follows three stories, the first being that of The Butcher (Liu Xiaoye), an unkempt peasant obsessed with the courtesan Miss Mei (Kitty Zhang). However, in his attempts to purchase her from the brothel's obese madam he finds himself challenged and beaten by a giant bearded man. Humiliated, the Butcher steals a cleaver from a crazed vagrant to extract his revenge, but not before being made aware of the blade's cursed past.
The Chef, the second and arguably the most engaging of the three tales follows the story of a mute (Japan's Masanobu Ando) who becomes the apprentice of Master Chef (Mi Dan) after it's announced that the Eunuch Liu, a grotesque nobleman renowned for murdering celebrity chefs, wishes to sample his famous eight dish banquet. As the mute learns his master's craft, a series of betrayals reveal the blade's origins from the forge of Fat Tang, a master swordsmith forced by a power-hungry swordsman (Ashton Xu) to craft a powerful weapon from the blades of China's most brutal warlords.
Adapted from An Changhe's novella Legend of the Kitchen Knife, Wuershan brazenly assails his audience from the first frame with an array of visual trickery and feverish editing hinting at the energetic non-linear narrative about to be unleashed. And while his use of contemporary graphics, crude animation, intrusive musical numbers and cruel comedy might jolt some viewers; Wuershan's bitter love story of greed, obsession and revenge is a bold entry onto the world cinematic stage.
