Up first is the new Jackie Chan movie Kung Fu Yoga. It came out in 2017 and it's written and directed by Stanley Tong. This is a sequel of sorts to The Myth, Jackie plays the same archeologist in both films. I'd forgotten that, The Myth isn't near the top of favorite Jackie movies. Stanley directed The Myth and it was the last film he directed before Kung Fu Yoga.
Jackie is one of the better archeologists in China. He tells a story, that's show in CGI animation, about India's lost Magadha treasure and how it was lost. This happened in Tibet over 1500 years ago. Then the movie takes up to the Terracotta Warrior Museum.
Jackie and his team find the treasure under the ice, they dig down, pull out a huge core of ice, and descend to the treasure. A greedy guy from India thinks the treasure should be his because he's a descendant of one of the people who died while carrying the treasure. He attacks the group and they fight back. The baddies plans are thwarted for now.
One of Jackie's team runs off with a big ass diamond. It turns up at auction and one of Jackie's team steals it. Everyone goes to India and gets treasure hunting. They find that big ass treasure and the baddie shows up again. There's a good bit of fighting, that looks OK, the archeology stuff is pretty goofy. In fact the whole movie is goofy and cartoon like. Some of the CGI isn't up to the better work we've been seeing out of China. There's a nice car chase in Dubai with all the cars being really expensive super cars. Some get wrecked a bit. No one gets hurt to bad, and I don't think anyone died. It's entertaining enough, kind of mindless fun, but it's not good enough to to get more than a 6 out of me. I was being kind because it only scores a 5.3 on the IMDb, that's pretty low for Jackie. The Myth gets a 6.2 and I gave it a 7. I'll pick up Kung Fu Yoga but I'll wait until it gets cheap.
I decided to order a copy of the Beat Girl Blu-Ray after seeing it again. We are watching the BFI restoration of the movie, it contains both a Blu-Ray and DVD. It's a 1960 British film that was called Wild For Kicks in the US. It's written by Dail Amber and directed by Edmond T Gréville. Dail didn't write more than 4 movies and a couple of TV shows. I haven't seen any of his other material. I did see the movie that Edmond directed right after Beat Girl, it was The Hands Of Orlac. You might have seen it. Most of his work was in the 1930s in France.
Beat Girl about a rich, spoilt teen, called Jennifer, who goes wild when her father brings home his French bride. It's been a couple of years since she died so he's not out of line or anything but his selfish daughter is only interested in wrecking the marriage. She is quite a bitch. You'd want to slap her if you met her.
She hangs out with some other beats, Oliver Reed is one of them, he plays Plaid Shirt, according to the credits. Pop star Adam Faith plays the beat with a heart of pacifism, he's got the guitar up above. They all hang out at a subterranean beat club. David Farr plays Jennifer's dad, Noëlle Adam plays the French bride Nichole, Christopher Lee plays sleazy strip club owner Kenny, Nigel Green is Kenny's right hand man at the strip club, which is called Les Girls. Scenes in the club are pretty sedate and there are so many lights on that the old men can't get a wank in. The girls never strip down too far, they have panties on and pasties. It's all rather innocent, in it's way.
I'd seen this last year, on YouTube, and enjoyed it. I couldn't remember the title but once a bit of the story played out it was starting to get familiar. There's some nice extras, part of what's driving my picking up a copy of the Blu-Ray. It comes with a DVD of the movie and it's only about 11 bucks with exchange and shipping. BFI has a few DVD/Blu-Ray combo titles for the same price. Of course I'll need to get an all region Blu-ray but that's been on the back burner for a while. I'm going to need one eventually, I was thinking it won't be long before I want a movie that I can only get in the UK or Europe.
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