I started watching this today. I watched the first scene where there's a fight in the rain, and I wasn't impressed. I turned it off because it wasn't an English-subtitled or English-dubbed version. The fight was ok, but it used too much of the quick-blur effect to showcase a fast move, and for me that is just cheating the viewer because I know the filmmaker cannot reproduce the desired effect another way. But the close-up shots and how it mixes kineticism with still were well done.

I do love Tony Leung ever since I saw Infernal Affairs, so I will try and catch this in a subtitled version.

I thought this was shit, aside from nice visuals.

One of the greatest living directors, Wong Kar-wai of Hong Kong is known best for films, including In the Mood for Love and 2046, exploring sad, largely unrealized romantic longing and the way people can become isolated and introverted, even ones living amidst the intensity and motion of a city. His stories are told in large part through his atmospheric, seductive, and distinctive visual style, including an iconic step-printing method which results in a disorienting and hypnotic blend of lightning-fast and dream-slow motions. In The Grandmaster, his new feature and tenth to date, his characteristic themes and visual ideas exist alongside exciting, fast-paced martial-arts set pieces. It is his second genre film after the expensive, problematic epic Ashes of Time almost two decades ago.

The Grandmaster stars Wong's consistent, ever charming and subtle leading man Tony Leung as Ip Man, the iconic wing chun practitioner displaced by the Japanese invasion of southern China who later in life trained Bruce Lee, and a soulful Ziyi Zhang as Gong Er, the beautiful and talented daughter of a master who cannot inherit his legacy and power because she is female, urged instead to quietly live as a physician. The film's central concern is their hesitant, tender relationship and the dangerous historical moments transpiring in China and Japan around them, political sea changes which put the continued importance of martial-arts disciplines in Chinese society into question. The film's romantic side finds the director in his creative comfort zone, and he shines as expected, capturing in precise and vivid ways, including the importance prescribed to a small physical object (a button from a coat), the aching and slow tragedy of a long life led apart from one's beloved. The martial-arts elements are just as riveting, however, and on multiple levels. With enormous fascination and respect, The Grandmaster explores the regional, and by extension cultural, dimensions of kung fu as a physical practice and as a philosophy, never regarding it simply as a vehicle for ass-kicking, bone-crunching action sequences. However, asses are indeed kicked and bones crunched, and the unrivaled visual invention Wong has long utilized to tell quiet dramatic stories serves him well as he stages the various fights, ranging from the opening sequence, a brutal and rain swept street melee which pits Ip Man against an entire gang, to his delightful first bout with Gong Er, in which the line separating hand-to-hand combat from playful, sexual dancing almost vanishes.

A

THE GRANDMASTER

I liked Tony Leung and Ziyi Zhang in the film. They both handled their roles well. The action was good, not great. The story was serviceable for a true story, but it wasn't really compelling for me. One thing that did bother me was some of the slow tracking shots in some scenes. It almost seemed like some old camera technology was being used. Hated that. I did like some scenes that were filmed almost like photographic moments. Overall, it was just decent enough for me. Not very memorable however.

Grade - B

I also loathe this effect. It's almost as if they're attempting to disguise the fact that no actual fighting is taking place and that the punches are not very fast at all. It's horrible, and you are quite right, it's old fashioned in a non-retro way.

The effect (a hallucinatory blend of fast and slow motion achieved through step-printing) is used in every Wong Kar-wai film, which does not mean one has to enjoy its use here or in any of the others, but it should be noted it is not a ruse invented for this film and its action sequences. It is a stylistic choice with which he has a 20-year history.

Sure, but it's shit. It was a technique created years ago to fool audiences into thinking that movements are faster than they are. It's horrible and I'm surprised that Kar-wai is still using it. Bad film-making.

You are entitled to your opinion.

I guess.

In my opinion, it is an inspired, dreamy way to convey a sense of motion and chaos.

But you are biased. You were liking The Grandmaster before you even attended the cinema to see it. No matter what happened in the movie, it was always going to receive an "A" from you. If they used the same technique in, say, The Expendables or Jack Ryan, your review would be criticizing it.

If The Grandmaster was Wong Kar-wai's 90-minute feature of him taking a dump, you'd still lap that shit up. I can see the review now: "It was an inspired choice by director Wong Kar-wai to film an every day task such as taking a shit, and he did so with such melancholy...".

I don't know. I would give As Tears Go By and My Blueberry Nights an A-.

And I do not believe I would criticize The Expendables if the action sequences were shot in a Wong Kar-wai type style. It would be a surprise, certainly. I am not a staid, "action cinematography begins and ends with James Cameron's point-and-shoot, meat-and-taters styles" type. I was a huge proponent of Paul Greengrass' action aesthetic when The Bourne Supremacy came out and still am.

If The Expendables 3's action was shot like The Grandmaster's, we'd all need to chip in for anti-depressants for Algren.

C-

Man, this was dull and by far and away the worst Wong Kar-wai-directed film I have ever seen and also the worst Best Foreign Language Oscar-nominee I have seen thus far (I think). Yes, he can make beautiful, sweeping visuals and choreograph fight scenes like ballet, but the film itself is just dull dull dull, with a complicated plot that is never engaging enough for me to follow and with distant, uninteresting characters. It's visuals-porn and nothing else to me. I don't regret watching it on the big screen, but I will never see it again.