Best of Criterion’s New Releases: November 2023

The Young Master

Year: 1980
Director: Jackie Chan
Stars: Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao, Fung Fung, Shih Kien
Genre: Action

Jackie Chan’s second go as director, but first time under the Golden Harvest banner that would vaunt his career, The Young Master is a primordial stew of Hong Kong action-comedy hijinks—unrefined but incredible, an unadulterated early glimpse of an icon beginning to hurl his body through the crucible of his country’s movie industry. Barely supported by a plot, more a series of challenges our innocent martial arts student/orphan, Dragon (Chan), must face to save the soul of his errant brother Tiger (Wei Pai), Chan’s movie offers shenanigans galore, from the opening Lion Dance competition to the concluding some-20-minute battle, during which—pummeled to a pulp by final boss Kam (Hwang In-Shik)—Dragon drinks water from an opium pipe gifted him by a weird old man, giving him super-charged mania that contorts his face into a freakish gurn, his kung fu shrieks the stuff of nightmares. It’s odd and off-putting and exhilarating, and it began a decade of true martial arts movie-making mastery for the young star.—Dom Sinacola

My Lucky Stars

Year: 1985
Director: Sammo Hung
Stars: Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao, Eric Tsang, Richard Ng, Charlie Chin, Stanley Fung, Sibelle Hu
Genre: Action, Comedy

Though bookended by action scenes elevated by Jackie Chan, My Lucky Stars is really a movie for filmmaker/star Sammo Hung’s troupe of goobers: Richard Ng, Charlie Chin, Eric Tsang and Stanley Fung. Along with Hung, this unwieldy group of longtime collaborators formed the 5 Lucky Stars who would appear in several films starting with 1983’s Winners & Sinners. My Lucky Stars is an unofficial follow-up to that film, filled with lowbrow horndog comedy befitting its overwhelming ensemble of doofus men. Playing a group of lowlifes recruited to stop some jewel thieves, the gang gets into car accidents, tries to mime-order food at a Japanese restaurant, and stages an endless series of “robberies” so that they can tie themselves to their pretty handler (Sibelle Hu). It’s dumb action jock comedy, but with moments of magic courtesy of Chan. The few fights he’s in are suitably pleasing, but it’s in the opening scene–an acrobatic amusement park chase that’s a precursor to his “let’s see if I can die this time” stuntwork found in films like Police Story–that he fills us with awe. Clambering up and then down Fuji-Q Highland’s Ferris wheel, Chan’s courageous go-for-broke movements are a true spectacle. Even though the rest of the film is shot with Hung’s admittedly admirable sense of scale and humor, nothing ever beats its opening minutes.–Jacob Oller

Half a Loaf of Kung Fu

Year: 1978
Director: Chen Chi-hwa
Stars: Jackie Chan, Dean Shek, James Tien, Doris Lung, Wu Ma
Genre: Action, Comedy

A two-star movie with five-star credits, Half a Loaf of Kung Fu is most notable for being the movie that finally let Jackie Chan get silly. Breaking him out of the Bruce Lee mold, where he was placed after Lee’s death, Half a Loaf of Kung Fu was co-written by Chan, who must’ve fought hard to blend his ridiculous knack for parody with his action abilities. This is never better than in this film’s opening moments. As we learn who created this movie, we’re treated to black-box, Looney Tunes-like martial arts demonstration gags that are downright incredible, referencing everything from Jesus Christ Superstar to other martial arts movies. Later, we even get a Popeye gag with spinach and the theme song. This irreverence is completely let down by the plotty silliness to come, which centers on a bumbler, trying to pass himself off as a whip-wielding hero, who must learn discipline from a beggar savant. It’s unpolished and peppered with cartoonish sound design, ranging from hilarious to intolerable, but those opening credits have a spark: You can really see how special, and how massive, Jackie Chan was going to be. All it took was for him to take matters into his own hands.–Jacob Oller

The Last Picture Show

Year: 1971
Director: Peter Bogdanovich
Stars: Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Ellen Burstyn, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, Cybill Shepherd
Genre: Drama

At the end of Peter Bogdanovich’s 1971 film The Last Picture Show, Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) and Duane (Jeff Bridges) sit at their local cinema and watch Howard Hawks’ iconic Western Red River. Above all else, Red River is the ultimate ode to masculinity. Barren, virginal terrain stretches behind a hunky, gun-slinging John Wayne. A mysterious, brooding Montgomery Clift effortlessly mounts a horse. Beautiful women fawn for their attention. But what is so potent about Sonny and Duane watching this film in 1951, exactly a century after Red River’s 1851 setting, is that kind of masculinity is rapidly becoming obsolete—and even passé. This was largely a product of the swift suburbanization of America that followed the post-World War II industrial boom, paired with the introduction of television into the American household, which changed the way we watched Westerns forever. These changes ultimately left men whose identities relied on a heightened sense of masculinity feeling stranded. Men like The Last Picture Show’s Sam the Lion, for example, the town’s middle-aged cowboy (portrayed by legendary Western actor Ben Johnson) who bask in memories of how life in Texas used to be, knowing full well that their days are numbered, and that they are among the last of their kind. For near high school graduates Sonny and Duane, this cultural shift makes finding footing in the world difficult. And so they do everything they can to cling to masculine ideals: They play football, they disappear to Mexico on a bender, and, of course, they chase after girls. Unsurprisingly, their relationships with women are pivotal to their relationship with their own masculinity. Up until that point, ingrained in their society was the expectation that a “manly man” be a chick magnet—bonus points if he’s in a relationship with a woman where he acts as the provider. Both men chase after the most beautiful girl in town, Jacy Farrow (Cybill Shepherd). But unbeknownst to them, Jacy is already living in a post-masculine world. While Sonny and Duane romanticize their faux-Western lifestyle by playing pool and driving a rickety pick-up truck, Jacy is comfortably settling into her life as one of Texas’s first suburbanites. Sonny and Duane frequent the movie theater; Jacy watches sitcoms on her television set. By the time Sonny and Duane start coming into adulthood, their town of Anarene almost feels like a parody of itself. The landscape is flat and barren, shown frequently in wide, languid pans. A lone Texaco stands tragically in the middle of a parking lot. Tumbleweeds lazily dance through the empty streets. Stoplights creek in the breeze. Characters wear cowboy hats. And it’s no coincidence that Bogdanovich chose to shoot the film in dusty black-and-white. Like its protagonists, the film is stuck in the past. But where Red River’s small towns appear as stoic landmarks that pop up on the way to a new frontier, The Last Picture Show’s small town is lonely, sad and looks a lot like a novelty town that was restored for contemporary visitors as a landmark—a gimmick.–Aurora Amidon

Mean Streets

Year: 1973
Director: Martin Scorsese
Stars: Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro, David Proval, Amy Robinson, Richard Romanus, Cesare Danova
Genre: Drama

The Martin Scorsese revolution officially began with Mean Streets. Oh sure, he already had two features under his belt: His indie debut Who’s That Knocking at My Door and the Roger Corman-produced Bonnie and Clyde ripoff Boxcar Bertha (like many of the New Hollywood kids who invaded Tinseltown in the ‘70s, Scorsese got his start working for the B-movie king). But Mean Streets is where it all began. Everything you know, love or despise about Scorsese’s filmmaking style can be found here: Loose, semi-improvised acting, pop-music needle drops, slo-mo shots, male characters behaving badly, moments of startling violence chased with moments of laugh-out-loud hilarity, themes of family, loyalty and Catholic guilt—and, of course, New York City. (However, interior scenes were shot in L.A.) Made for a half-million dollars (it eventually grossed $3 million), Mean Streets is the movie that made people take notice of the asthmatic filmmaker from the East Coast. He based the film on his experiences growing up in Little Italy in the late 1950s. (This explains why the soundtrack is littered with doo-wop and R&B songs from that era.) Harvey Keitel, who starred in Who’s That Knocking at My Door, plays Scorsese stand-in Charlie. A standard-issue conflicted Catholic (much like his character in Who’s That Knocking at My Door), Charlie is the closest-to-moral member of the gang of hoods who are front-and-center of this story. We are introduced to each one of them during an opening sequence: There’s go-go bar owner Tony (David Proval), inventory-moving hustler Michael (Richard Romanus) and mailbox-exploding loose cannon Johnny Boy (a shaggy-haired Robert De Niro). We meet Charlie at the end of this sequence, praying at a church, having an interior conversation with God which he goes in and out of throughout the film. Mean Streets is, to borrow a term from obvious Scorsese disciple Quentin Tarantino, a hangout movie. You spend nearly two hours with these hoodlum homies as they scam naïve buyers for moviegoing money, get blitzed at Tony’s bar (for a memorable shot where Charlie spirals into a drunken stupor, Keitel was strapped to a homemade camera harness) and raise all kinds of loud ruckus, from fighting with trash can lids to popping off gunshots on a rooftop. These man-children don’t incite violence so much as they get swept up into it. Mean Streets isn’t just a love letter to Scorsese’s Italian-American upbringing. It’s also a valentine to the Italian neorealism films of the ‘40s and ‘50s. From Rossellini to Antonioni to, of course, Fellini (Mean Streets is practically Scorsese’s grimy remake of Fellini’s hangout movie I Vitelloni), their influence is all over Mean Streets.–Craig D. Lindsey

La Cérémonie

Year: 1995
Director: Claude Chabrol
Stars: Isabelle Huppert, Sandrine Bonnaire, Jacqueline Bisset, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Virginie Ledoyen, Valentin Merlet, Serge Rousseau
Genre: Drama

Director Claude Chabrol is often referred to as the French Hitchcock, but a film like the unsettling La Ceremonie reveals the distinct difference between the two filmmakers. Though Chabrol, like many French New Wave directors, is an admitted devotee of the suspense master (having authored a study of Hitchcock’s work with Eric Rohmer), he went on to develop his own, more understated style. While La Ceremonie is a tale of suspense and psychological drama, it also functions as a portrait of class warfare and a subtle character study. Catherine (Jacqueline Bisset) hires Sophie (Sandrine Bonnaire) as a maid to her family’s estate outside a small French village. The family is initially pleased with Sophie’s hard work until her increasing isolation and clandestine illiteracy create a widening gap with her employers. When a nosy postal worker (Isabelle Huppert) befriends her, the tension begins to slowly rise, leading to a shocking climax. However, anyone seeking Hitchcockian thrills will likely be disappointed. Where Hitchcock built his suspense through mounting stakes in an inherently suspenseful situation (mistaken identity, the early introduction of a sociopath, etc.), Chabrol lets a languid pace and socially awkward interactions establish an unsettling tone. It’s the offhanded nature of the final violence that makes the film so effective. —Tim Sheridan