Woman in the Dunes, Flash Point, Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan, & Lost in Beijing

Woman in the Dunes is a metaphorical tale of a teacher who is tricked into living in a house surrounded by sand dunes. It's bizarre and touching, erotic and terrifying, and extremely well-made. Held up to my expectations.

Flash Point is ridiculous. Action scenes... man, I barely remember anything about it. I barely remembered anything about right after I saw it. I remember some of the fight scenes, the one in the driving range, the surprisingly brutal stabbing in the parking garage, and the pretty superb (although completely unbelievable) final fight scene. But the plot? Utterly nonsensical. Not helping: I couldn't tell the bad guys apart.

Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan is not a porno film. It's a Shaw Brothers kung fu film, that just happens to have an evil lesbian who runs a brothel, kidnaps a young innocent girl, has many men rape her, and that woman then comes back and starts killing everyone involved, usually with sex. So, um, the fact that there's actually very little nudity, and most of it is played for laughs isn't going to make me seem any less dirty for adding this to my queue is it? I mean, it's not horrible, by any stretch of the imagination, and the English title just makes it seem much dirtier than it is. It's a fairly standard revenge film, but with kung fu. How can that not be watchable, at least?

Lost in Beijing is a look at how capitalism has destroyed the well-meaning Chinese working man. Basically, money corrupts people. Of course. Somehow, this movie got banned and the producers were banned from filmmaking for two years. Seriously, it's about the problems of capitalism. Reminded me of Blind Shaft, as there was also nudity here. No one in this movie comes out looking all that good. Tony Leung Ka Fei (the not as good Tony Leung) is suitably despicable as the owner of a massage parlor and rapist who starts all this corrupt stuff in motion. I, personally, though, hate the younger husband even more. Tony Leung was always a scumbag, but the husband was worse. The movie itself was very good, and does everything that I think the writers and directors wanted.