The Painted Veil, House of Fury, Vampire Effect, & Gen-X Cops

The Painted Veil is racist. Yeah, I'll come right out and say it. The white man has to come out into the boonies to save the savages (in this case the yellow people) from themselves. But that's not all: the only people noted in the opening credits are white. Even Diana Rigg (who is, admittedly, somewhat famous in the west), who has a tiny role, is mentioned in the opening credits, while Anthony Wong (the first in my little Anthony Wong mini-fest) isn't mentioned, even though he has many scenes, and is actually the third best thing in the film behind the scenery (stunningly gorgeous) and that Toby Jones is having sex with some hot Asian. Which is just funny, since he's basically known for playing Truman Capote. Actually Toby Jones in general is quite good, and I liked him in this. But the love triangle in the center of the film is just overwrought to an extreme, and once you have characters going into an epidemic of some kind, at least one of them has to die. It's just a rule of epidemic films.

House of Fury is stupid. But fun. It stars Gillian Chung (she of the Edison Chen Sex Scandal, and apparently a small role in W. as an escort dancer???) as the daughter of a government agent who has to protect former spies who then has to save her father's life from the American assassin who was crippled by a former spy. Sure, there's other parts to it, like some ridiculous martial arts sequences including a dining room table (of which there were at least three different ones throughout the movie), a remote control, and, for some damn reason, absolutely no dolphins. Why the hell was the brother a dolphin trainer? That doesn't come into use at any point later in the film. Have these people never heard of Chekhov's Gun? The movie did have Charlene Choi in a glorified cameo with some of the only humor in the film, if you consider "Do you want to French kiss?" and then saying, "Time's up" before the guy has a chance to reply. So there was your bit of Twins for the film. Pretty much the only things worth watching were the martial arts sequences. Because the movie was a mess. But on blu-ray. So go Hong Kong, I guess. Maybe put out some better films on it.

Vampire Effect is a Hong Kong vampire film, but not with hopping vampires, but more traditional ones. The version released in the US cut out 19 minutes. Apparently, those scenes make the film make more sense. I would hope so, because it would be hard to make a film that made less sense. This had a good cast, and Donnie Yen is a talented guy, but Edison Chen is kind of a dick, and The Twins were mediocre in this, with about the only bright spots being Anthony Wong (who still is the best thing in any film he's in), and the Special Guest Appearance by Jackie Chan and the Special Friendly Appearance by Karen Mok. But the fight scenes were too wire-based and frequently nonsensical, especially the final one, and the internal consistency was lacking immensely.

Gen-X Cops is another Jackie Chan produced film, this time with him as a fisherman. I have a serious problem with the anti-gay humor in a lot of Hong Kong films. It's like gay people are completely acceptable to make fun of. Well, it bothers me immensely. Also, the HIV joke clearly played into that. The frequent switching from English to Cantonese was distracting as well. But the excuse to have Jaymee Ong speak in her Australian accent... I've long said that Asians with Commonwealth accents are hot. And although the Australian accent was a little off for a Canadian, I didn't care. Basically, the non-gay stereotypical of the three undercover cops were attractive as were their girlfriends, and some of the fight scenes were good. But it was ridiculous and the special effects were pretty bad. I think it's come down to me watching recent Hong Kong action films almost entirely due to the cheese (and cake) factor rather than an expectation of them being watchable.