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‘John Wick’ kicks butt

John Wick is a beautiful ballet of death and destruction. It combines the brutal hand-to-hand combat of Jason Bourne with Ridley Scott’s visual sensibilities to create the perfect vehicle for Keanu Reeves. Here, Reeves struts his physicality and underrated comic timing to ratchet up the fun while he amasses a huge body count. It’s an ultra-slick, violence-worshipping extravaganza that will have you eating from the palm of its bloodstained hand.

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The restoration of King Hu’s ‘Dragon Inn’ is sensational (Review)

One of the distinct pleasures of a feast of film is the screening of vintage classics, restored and resurrected for a new generation of film lovers. This year the London Film Festival is screening glossy new prints of George Cukor’s airy comedy Born Yesterday, John Schlesinger’s 1967 Hardy adaptation Far from the Madding Crowd, and unveiling another collaboration with the Scorsese Foundation to bring Michael Powell’s The Tales of Hoffman to a new generation of cinephiles. Following a more international bend, the Thrill strand of the programme is also hosting a lavish 4K restoration of Dragon Inn, a Chinese world cinema classic which has been re-issued through the Chinese Taipei Film Archive at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in Bologna, culling a new digital dervish which has been colour-supervised by original director of photography Hui-ying Hua.

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‘The Raid 2’ a breathless, if overlong, action-packed follow-up

The Raid 2 Written and directed by Gareth Evans Indonesia, 2014 The first reaction to Gareth Evans’ highly anticipated sequel to his blistering 2012 action movie is to complain to the Advertising Standards Authority. Despite the title’s implication, there is no specific raid here, at least not upon a single, individual location, a design mandated by the …

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The Grandmaster is More Art Film than Action, and a Beautiful One at That

In the last several years, Hong Kong cinema has had a fascination with legendary Wing Chun martial artist Ip Man that borders on manic obsession, to the point where it wouldn’t be surprising to find out that Hong Kong cinema spent a week secretly living in Ip Man’s pool house and going through his garbage.

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Fantasia 2012: ‘The Kick’ Makes Martial Arts a Family Affair

The Kick  Written by Jong-suk Lee, based on a story by Prachya Pinkaew Directed by Prachya Pinkaew Thailand/South Korea 2011 Fantasia imdb Traditionally, films that pit one country’s martial arts against the martial arts from other countries are blood-soaked chauvinistic affairs like One Armed Boxer and its sequel Master of the Flying Guillotine. Both great films, they up the ante on the Kung …

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Fantasia 2012: ‘Dragon’ an unusually human martial-arts showcase

Dragon aka Wu Xia aka The Swordsmen Written by Oi Wah Lam Directed by Peter Chan 2011 Hong Kong/China Fantasia imdb In a strange way, Dragon is a perfect companion film for the Shaw Brothers classic The Fists of the White Lotus that Fantasia presented this year. (Expect Edgar Chaput to review that film as part of his Shaw Brothers Saturday series soon.) Both films are about the never-ending cycle …

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