Quinoa1984

A Chinese Ghost Story is something special for not only now in the 2020s but for back when it was made; I have not dug deep into interviews or behind the scenes stories, but it can't help but seem like the filmmakers had seen The Evil Dead by this point (as any of the proverbial cool kids were doing by 1986/87) and were totally in the tank for Sam Raimi's intense In-Your-Face-And-Everywhere approach to the camera as a character. This is only a handful of times so hard to miss, but also notice when the film goes into stop-motion animation for several of those unlucky rancid skinny-ragged skeleton ghouls trying to claw their way up part of the haunted Temple only to get thwarted by the (at first) clueless "Scholar" Ling Choi San (played by baby Leslie Cheung).

There is imagination up the wazoo in the filmmaking and I am just impressed and amazed how much the production designers and stunt coordinators and whoever it was on set who had to get the performers from point A to B or even back over to D flying high in the sky by way of camera tricks or wire work, and it is in that last era before computers came in and took away some of the excitement to be had seeing how much some smoke and fog on a set could do wonders, not to mention some great plaster-casters and just how long it could seem Cheung could hold his breath underwater in that tub (sometimes with the cute Joey Wang stepping in amid the subterfuge of that scene, wowzers).

I also really love how the story does take the romance part seriously and it manages to be tender and sweet because the Choi San character is a good person at heart, like the kind of decent dude who can't help it to the point where the ghost Siu Shin even writes him a note pointing out that much as part of the warning for him to leave... but then where's the mpvie in that? There is a certain innocence to what we see them go through on these nights (watch out for snakes!) where he is so close to getting killed this way and that and she is looking out for him while she is also trying to get away from some of the crueler ghosts.

One can even excuse the few minutes around midway through the movie where we see a recap of the cute parts of the human and ghost bonding together in mishaps (maybe to give the couples a moment to neck in the theater, or to get caught up on what they missed while locking lips earlier, not sure if that was a thing back in HK cinemas, I digress). And then the question becomes paramount: can he get her out of this Temple and reincarnated? What is a Scholar to do?

Chinese Ghost Story probably/definitely has some lore that went over my head, but when the entire production and this cast are so entertaining and locked in to creating something really special - up to and including some editing that, Raimi influence aside, also took cues from MTV videos of the era (not a bad thing in this case) - it makes any faults seem miniscule as it all has the handmade quality of supremely talented film students making their go at the Big Time. It has a good bit of philosophy at the center of it too: who is one to judge a ghost as bad when humanity is... what it is?

And ot all goes by so relatively quickly and yet I don't want to see any extra footage, what is here is cut together and paced so briskly and we also get to have a good amount of time with Wu Ma as the swordsman who has so lost his way he may not be sure he is a ghost or a human any more. Wish I had not waited this long to watch it but so very, very glad I did, and especially in the new 4K restoration from Shout!

Honey Don't! Has as its main feature the quality of seeming to be tossed off by the director and writers/producers Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke, as I am sure the latter and certainly the former has inhaled enough detective novels and movies and other forms of seedy pulp fiction to over-fill a small but sturdy bookstore and know the types and tropes in their bones.

If it feels so loose even under 90 minutes that it even could feel like Coen and Cooke wrote this in a few heated days in a trailer in Bakersfield (or at least with some postcards from the city over their walls), that is a feature and not a bug; there is a sneaky confidence to the filmmaking as Coen is at the point after making films for so long that the "plot" doesn't matter so much as giving the actors some strange dialog to make as real as they can (and thus funnier). This and Drive-Away Dolls and, if it happens, the third movie in this unofficial Shaggy Lesbian-and-Liquor-and-Cigarette Soaked Neo-Noir trilogy are "B" level in what is on the page, and if it feels minor it is mostly because of the insanely high quality of work that Coen has in his Hard-Left-Turn Crime movies (and Cooke as well as co-editor on several films by the brothers).

Thankfully, the filmmakers know how sharp Qualley looks in those heels and suits and understand what power she has as a beauty on screen but more importantly how adept she is at the Coen style of snappy patter that often moves into more serious connotations in the next scene or within the scene (the moment when her father comes a knocking straddles the line between funny and sad and is a perfect example of the amusing melancholy that laces many parts of the second half of this at least).

There are also plum parts for a crude Chris Evans, nearly half of his performance half naked - he seems the most to me, for better or worse, like a character that could easily be in a Coen homage or even rip off (tell me he is not a spot on recurring character for the Fargo TV show) - and Aubrey Plaza, who gets to have such a wild monologue late in the film that it makes the turn into this moment justified (though barely, I'm still not sure how I feel about that without giving too much except that it does give a beat for a kind of critique of internalized misogyny maybe the film needed more time to unpack).

Meanwhile, there is some terrific sensuality as well as absurd moments with that (easy pickings for comedy, sure, but still funny), and some horrific violence that shows that this late-era filmmaker can find new ways to make an audience curdle a bit from common household items in panic mode. I also liked the ways that just by flipping gender a bit we see certain tropes in a familiar but skewed light like with Billy Eighner's few scenes (the kind of actor who makes a full meal out of a school lunch worth of characterization). Again, I can't go to bat for this as something greater than what it is, and yet I think it is only trying to be as clever as it is and not much more. Honey Don't is a highly entertaining lark, no more or less.

I would be lying if I said every bit of the storytelling was easy to follow in the first half - or that isn't quite right, more than the pacing is so break-neck you feel like Tsui Hark is a little worried the audience might lose what's happening if he isn't throwing some bit of broad comic or dramatic business - but what he is truly gifted at here, which is staging equally intense comedy and acting and just giving all the room for his totally charismatic and electric and even kind of adorable cast of women and (some) men playing out roles upon roles, makes up the difference for a pretty spectacular thrill ride.

Brigitte Lin is the more grounded dramaric foundation here (quite the departure for me from the Wong Kar Wai I've seen her in previously), but the unabashed joy is seeing Yeh and Chung play off of Lin as an unlikely trio (come to think of it put this on a double with the Heroic Trio and you got... six great performances!) This is a movie that has a terrific backdrop of the Chinese theater of the turn of the 20th century and that is captivating enough, but what keeps one hooked in is the subterfuge and everything the ladies have to do to get this or that item (key, Secret President Papers above all), and that when the action and fights and guns kick in... whoa, baby.

As a story of espionage maybe Hark knows he has to rely on his cast and stunt team to kick it into over-drive, but he understands that this movie is about the kind of Big Dance that someone has to do on a stage, in playing a man or what it even means for a woman to play a woman (where is the spark in that... until it is amazing) that will keep us glued and laughing at how Big it gets.

There is tonal whiplash sometimes, to be sure - we go from a rather harrowing and upsetting torture sequence to a flamboyant seduction to a "this character is totally alive even though they are totally dead" gag - and yet I was into those parts the most, when Hark just gives in to how behind the giant mustaches and wigs these men are total.... dopes and have little chance against our beleaguered heroes.

In short, it takes a few minutes to fully lock in, not to mention sort of let go how we shouldn't care about the possible romantic tension between spies, and once we do we can wholly soak up the balls to the wall action and comedy and (at points) blood-soaked melodrama. This is one of those pulpy delights that shows a director in love with the ways he can throw bodies through the air in visceral displays of bravado and how funny it is seeing someone rearrange a blanket to disguise unwanted guests.