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[Oersted]

Important note:

List is in chronical order, so it is first best not neccessarly the best.

Description of Wuxia:

Wuxia is a much older form, based ultimately in the long-tradition of Chinese adventure literature, in classic novels such as The Water Margin or Journey to the West, or more contemporary works by authors like Louis Cha and Gu Long. Its heroes follow a very specific code of honor as they navigate the jianghu, an underworld of outlaws and bandits outside the normal streams of civilization. Wuxia films often incorporate fantasy elements, using special effects to allow their heroes to fly, shoot concentrated chi energy out of their hands (or eyes) and in other ways violate the laws of physics. Strictly speaking, wuxia should probably be confined to stories of code-following traveling knights-errant, but genres are a fluid and conventional thing, especially in Hong Kong, where films regularly mash together comedy, action, romance, melodrama and horror elements into a single impure whole, and as such, stark lines are difficult to draw.

First entries of the list:

1. Come Drink with Me (King Hu, 1966)

In the mid-1960s, the Shaw Brothers studio shifted emphasis from brightly-colored musicals to brightly-colored action films, launching an explosive transformation of the Hong Kong film industry the effects of which are still being felt today. Come Drink with Me wasn’t their first wuxia, but it was their first great one. Cheng Pei-pei plays a woman, a highly-skilled warrior, investigating the capture of her brother. The first half plays out in what would become one of the genre’s most iconic locations (an inn), as she meets an array of increasingly powerful villains. With careful framing and rhythmic editing, director King Hu emphasizes the grace and beauty of Cheng’s movements: she was a trained dancer, not a fighter. The finale erupts in a magical spectacle, equal parts The Wizard of Oz and Kurosawa’s Sanjuro.

2. The One-Armed Swordsman (Chang Cheh, 1967)

Jimmy Wang Yu plays the eponymous swordsman, a terrific fighter who suffers his grievous injury at the petulant hands of his master’s daughter. Resolved to retire from the world of violence, he is sucked back in by the need for revenge. Learning an entirely new fighting technique thanks to an old, mangled manual, he carves a sad swath of destruction through his enemies. Chang brings a morbid psychology to the genre, obsessed with death and honor, his films are bloody and operatic. The action choreography is by Lau Kar-leung, who would spend most of the next decade working for Chang alongside fellow choreographer Tong Gaai. Lau would keep Chang’s early wuxias grounded in realism, but would really come into his own as a choreographer in the mid-70s with Chang’s cycle of Shaolin kung fu films.

3. Dragon Gate Inn (King Hu, 1967)

By the end of the Come Drink with Me shoot, the famously independent-minded Hu had enough of working with the Shaw Brothers and left the colony for Taiwan, in hopes of building a film industry there essentially from the ground-up. His first film in the new country would be one of the genre’s greatest hits, a Sergio Leone-esque adventure set at a remote borderland outpost. A couple of children are on the run from sinister Ming Dynasty agents and an array of heroes gathers to protect them. The first half of the film plays like a mystery, with each new character, good and bad alike, meeting at the inn and eventually revealing their true nature, while the second half is a series of lengthy battle sequences, moving from the inn itself to the surrounding mountains, the bad guys becoming increasingly powerful and magical until the final villain, a sinister eunuch with godlike abilities hampered only by a bit of asthma.

More here

http://theendofcinema.net/2016/02/11/30-essential-wuxia-films/


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[Oersted]

28. A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhangke, 2013)

Jia Zhangke tells a quartet of loosely connected stories set in modern China, all based on
contemporary events. Not a martial arts film, the homage to King Hu in the title is nonetheless deliberate: using the tradition and codes of wuxia as a commentary on the dishonor of our present time, Jia shows men and women turning to violence as the only option in the face of government and corporate corruption. The types are the same: Jiang Wu’s good man pushed into violent reprisal by the state’s criminality, Zhao Tao’s haunted woman seeking revenge on the men who’ve exploited her, Wao Baioqiang’s wandering warrior, but the temporal codes are all mixed up. These modern knights-errant are not heroic, they’re tragic.

29. Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons (Stephen Chow and Derek Kwok, 2013)

Stephen Chow had crossover hits in the US in the early 2000s with Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle, the former badly mangled (as usual) by Miramax, but those films are cartoonish farces, utilizing digital effects to warp the already plastic universes in which Chow performs. This 2013 film though has a surprisingly complex soul, a genuine interest in the Buddhism that motivates its main character: pointedly not played by Chow himself. A kind of a prequel to Journey to the West, it chronicles the early stages in the career of the man who would become the monk Tripitaka, and how he gathered his demon/disciples before embarking on their quest to India in search of Buddhist scriptures. Like the Tai Chi Zero films and Monster Hunt, it presents a new kind of masculine hero, generally incompetent without the help of a strong female companion (played in this case by Shu Qi). Or rather, the type isn’t new, but is instead a rediscovery of the scholar-heroes of King Hu’s greatest films. You can also see hints of this dynamic in Lau Kar-leung’s kung fu films with Kara Hui in the early 1980s.

30. The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2015)

Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien’s long-anticipated 2015 film is a near-perfect melding of his idiosyncratic style, both visual and narrative, and the traditions of the wuxia genre. Told in long, lush and languid takes, the story of a woman trained to kill who decides she’d rather not paints a dense portrait of the intrigues and buried emotions of the late Tang Dynasty. The plot is somewhat knotty, though not nearly as dizzying as Chor Yuen’s late 70s mysteries, with all the exposition conveyed in dialogue while all the emotion lies under the surface, in images and gestures, the conflict between inner and outer selves erupting in spasms of lightning-quick violence. You pulls us away from the destruction, as his assassin recoils from the jianghu. She is a truly new wuxia hero, others in films by King Hu or Chang Cheh had attempted to rejected the world of violence, to retreat into the isolation the monastery (A Touch of Zen) or the remote farmhouse (The ONe-Armed Swordsman), but this is the first time one has fully succeeded in reentering the world.

 

[PassiveObserver]

Was never huge into wuxia because we always had the TVB serials on at our house which my brother loved (and everything he likes is dumb af). That being said, I'm very excited to see The Assassin as well as A Touch of Sin (which is decidedly not wuxia but deals with jiangwu).

 

[afternoon delight]

Shaw Brothers is love, Shaw Brothers is life.

 

[kris.]

El Rey Network shows awesome wuxia films all the time. i watched The One-Armed Swordsman the other day with my dad. great stuff.

 

[Dr.Acula]

Crazy, never knew Hou Hsiao-hsien made Assassin, I just thought it was some big-budget crap. Gonna have to check it out now.

 

[Secret Fawful]

I really just want to see everything Sammo Hung and Wu Ma had a part in, but I'll watch any wuxia anytime. Thanks for starting the topic, btw, OP. This genre of film seems to be heavily underrated and underseen on GAF, even in the film community.