Adapted from the underground comic, The Storm Riders follows two young men, each possessed of superhuman fighting skills, who are forcibly apprenticed to a ruthless master following the murder of their parents. Cloud and Wind encounter an enormous cast of fellow warriors and navigate a number of dense soap-opera subplots before turning upon their nemesis for a dazzling climax of effects-laden combat, offering enough hypnotic visuals and virtuosic fight sequences for even the most jaded action fan.
Check It Out Category: Picks by John
John’s Pick: The Long Goodbye
Robert Altman’s pastel-noir subversion of the hard-boiled detective genre, The Long Goodbye, replaces Bogart’s iconic version of Philip Marlowe with a mumbling, likably disheveled portrayal by Elliott Gould. The film’s labyrinthine plot duels a loose, improvisational tone against a backdrop of playful details – until things suddenly get less playful…
John’s Pick: The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye by Sonny Liew
Sonny Liew’s intricately invented graphic history traces the career of fictional comic artist Chan Hock Chye, with the sociopolitical history of Singapore cleverly mirroring the evolution of the comics medium as depicted via a dazzling series of pastiches. Spanning eight decades, The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye finds bittersweet parallels between artistic ambition and political idealism.
John’s Pick: The Young Girls of Rochefort
Possibly one of the most gorgeous motion pictures ever made (and a major inspiration for La La Land), Jacques Demy’s The Young Girls of Rochefort takes the conventional musical off the studio set and envigorates it with colorful sunlit location shooting. Vibrant, occasionally silly, and about as charming a film as you’re ever likely to see, this picture seems to capture the very essence of springtime.
John’s Pick: 24 Hour Party People
Like any number of films “based on a true story,” the docu-comedy 24 Hour Party People frequently exaggerates, distorts, fabricates and otherwise obfuscates the historical truth of its subject matter (in this case, the Manchester music scene of the 80s and 90s). The difference is, this picture does so openly, amusingly, and with a cheerful wink to its audience.