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The Shadow You Are & Deep Within, the Shadow You Aren’t

Zhang Yimou’s Shadow is a kind of wuxia film to be best watched on the big screen for its details and colour contrasts.

By Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

Released Aug 13, 2019
Well GO USA

Zhang Yimou’s Shadow is a kind of wuxia film to be best watched on the big screen for its details and colour contrasts. After being enthralled, it should be viewed again on home video to understand its complex narrative. I certainly needed it especially since it last played theatrically at Fantasia Fest 2019.

This tragic tale of court drama is the type I feel Shakespeare will love, and if there is a person whom I feel is damned, that would be the king’s Commander Ziyu (Deng Chao). He challenged General Yang (Hu Jun) from a nearby settlement to a duel without royal authorization and this battle complicates things.

King Peiliang (Zhang Kai) wants that city back under his rule. He goes as far as offering his sister Princess Qingping (Guan Xiaotong) as a wife for Yang’s son, and she doesn’t like the idea at all. To make matters worse, the shadow (to which this movie gets its name) is a doppelgänger masquerading as Ziyu while the real one is recovering. Only his wife Madam (Sun Li) knows and if things are not bad enough, she has feelings for the lookalike.

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Keeping the Faith with Divine Fury at Fantasia 2019, Theatrical Debut & DVD Specs

By Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

Distributor:
Well GO USA

Screening at select theatres (for list, please visit the official website), beginning August 16th, 2019

Official DVD/Blu-ray release November 19th

Spoiler Alert

Marvel Comic’s Blade and Shang-Chi will never hold a candle to the Divine Fury (사자), a South Korean film which looks like it can upend any supernatural mixed martial art blockbuster any time of this and the next decade. The reason is that it has a solid grounding in creating a hero and it does not waste a whole ton of time (a whole film) doing so. Yong-hu (Park Seo-Joon) lost his father, a police officer who got injured on duty. As a child, he prayed hard to God; he didn’t want papa to die. Sadly, reality bites and he lost his faith.

Twenty years have passed and this young man channelled his anger in his rise to become a champion fighter. He has everything, but he’s still feeling empty inside. When a stigmata forms, he doesn’t know what it means or what to do; he hopes Father Ahn (Sung-Ki Ahn) can provide answers. Instead, what he stumbles into leads into discovering an evil force wants to make a foothold in our reality.

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[2019 Fantasia] Beware the Ak-in-jeon

The Gangster The Cop and The Devil (Ak-in-jeon) is a mix of a crime and thriller genre, and it’s hard boiled enough to have me guess who is worse.

Well Go USA

Plenty of idioms come to mind with this handsomely suave and sinister film from South Korea. The Gangster, The Cop and The Devil (also known as Ak-in-jeon) is a mix of a crime and thriller genre, and it’s hard boiled enough to have me guess who is worse. We have Tae-suk (Kim Moon-yul), a brutal policeman going vigilante on organized crime, Dong-soo (Dong-seok Ma), a gangster who could probably put musician Psy to shame for his sense of style, and K (Kim Sung-kyu) the serial killer who made the mistake of targeting Dong-soo. When this Al Capone wannabe’s reputation is tarnished, he has to do what’s right, and the film is a twisted cat-and-mouse game where no matter who gets whose desserts, the bloody outcome is going to be more than cherry red.

Cop and thief gang up, for lack of a better term, to go after the killer. The action is intense, and the film is all fortune for lots of glory! Plenty of action takes place in the streets, and the wry black humour is sharp. Even though the slow moments drag out the film, the wait for the next bloody conflict makes up for it.

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[Fantasia 2019] Master Z is the Bee’s Knees with the IP Man Legacy

Zhang’s acrobatics puts Jackie Chan’s early work to shame and in, Master Z: IP Man Legacy, I feel he is an action star on the rise.

Master Z The IP Man Movie Poster Release Date: July 23, 2019
Well GO USA

Master Z: IP Man Legacy is a fast-paced, hard-hitting spinoff from the films about the legendary Wing Chun master Yip Man. Instead of this master of martial arts, we have another sifu whose style (wushu) can rival that of the other; this time, it’s the life of Cheung Tin Chi (Max Zhang) that we follow. This rival from Ip Man 3 gets his own film. He is trying to escape his life as a trainer.

Despite having lost to Yip, Chi believes his time in the arena is over. He’d rather pursue a simpler life with his son in an unassuming part of late 50s Hong Kong. However, trouble always comes up, and he has to serve up vengeance, Batman-style.

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Beware the Fists of ‘Furie’

Furie Blu-Ray + DVD Cover — Available to purchase on Amazon

Release Date: June 25, 2019
WELL GO USA

Spoiler Alert

When a young girl gets kidnapped and mom is nearby, hell hath no Furie than a woman scorned. This idiom gets an all new meaning in this movie starring Veronica Ngo. She appeared in The Tailor (2017) and had a supporting role in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. She shines as a tough as nails ex-gang member wanting a simple life in the countryside of Vietnam but has to be John Wick.

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Tanks for the Memories, T-34 roars into Home Video this Week!

Despite being glued to the action than the drama, the story of hope is what drives T-34 forward.

All-Formats-T34-front — Available to purchase on Amazon

Available Now
Released by Well GO Entertainment

T-34 is not your Hogan’s Heroes. This Russian made film about such a resilient war machine is more about the people who can drive this tank, than anything else. It’s less about comedy or propaganda. The latter is inevitable, but more often than not, no matter which country the film is made in, the focus is often about the brotherhood forged.

Here, Nikolay Ivushkin (Alexander Petrov) is in the front lines. He quickly gets promoted to tank commander and despite being able to defeat a German Panzer attack, he and driver Stepan Vasilyonok (Viktor Dobronravov) are captured. They are sent to a concentration camp. Three years later, he meets his rival, Klaus Jäger (Vinzenz Kiefer) and is “coerced” to take part in local war games.

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