In Last Hero in China, Jet Li reprises his role as Wong Fei-Hong, a legendary figure in China. Both a doctor and a teacher of martial arts, Wong has just moved his school in Canton, only to discover that the neighbouring house is a brothel. Though Wong's students are delighted and the earnest brothel master only wants to study with him, Wong feels he has lost face. But this becomes the least of his troubles: soon he's fighting a corrupt police chief, a temple of slave-trading monks, and a deafness-causing medicine sold to children-and that's just in the first hour. Last Hero in China is a grand melodrama, featuring exaggerated heroes and villains, goofy humour and hyperbolic kung fu action. The plot takes some hard-to-follow turns, but the action is so non-stop it hardly matters. The lion vs. centipede dance/fight has to be seen to be believed, to say nothing of the priest with a floating lotus chariot and a flying claw. Jet Li is in fine form, Gordon Liu (as the venal top cop) is maniacal and despicable, and the lovely Cheung Man plays an expert martial artist looking for her kidnapped sister. The character of Wong Fei-Hong also appears in the Once Upon a Time in China series (where he was first played by Li) and in Jackie Chan's Drunken Master movies. [+]

The Evil Cult (aka "Lord of the Wu Tang") is a wildly and wacky supernatural epic in which Jet Li masquerades as Mo-kei, a weakling warrior orphaned as a child when his parents are killed by two evil Jinx warlords. Chased out of the Wu Tang compound by a leader who considers him a liability, Mo-kei (and his female protectress) find themselves trapped in a dark abyss where they stumble upon a "cooking monk" trapped in a massive boulder who holds the secret to a lost form of Shaolin kung fu. They trick him into teaching Mo-kei the secret of his "solar stance". Newly empowered, Mo-kei sets off to find his maternal grandfather, King of the Gold Lion (de facto leader of the Evil Cult), to rally his clan with the Wu Tang in order to defeat the stifling government forces and exact revenge on the terrible Jinxes. Martial Law's Sammo Hung appears as Chang San Fung, Tai Chi Master of the Wu Tang clan (Hung also choreographed the action sequences for this film). Director Wong Jing (who also helmed the God of Gamblers series, Hard Boiled 2, and Return to a Better Tomorrow) just about keeps a handle on the plot and ably directs the stunning action sequences, some of which occur on battlefields swarming with soldiers. On the DVD: the main feature is presented in letterboxed format with original Cantonese dialogue and English subtitles. The print is generally of good quality but afflicted with blemishes and white flecks throughout. The subtitles are clear but their awkward translation and speed of transition serve at times to make an already convoluted plot harder to understand. It's a shame that an option to listen to a dubbed soundtrack wasn't added as the dubbed theatrical trailer (included here) enhances the daffiness of the movie. [+]

Tsui Hark is the definitive moviemaker of the Hong Kong New Wave, and it could be argued that The Blade (1995) is his best film to date, a visually dense and morally muscular martial arts epic that just about reinvents the genre from the ground up. Loosely based on the picture that launched the entire kung fu cycle, Chang Cheh's 1967 classic The One-Armed Swordsman, the movie goes beyond the visceral rush of conflict to question the basic assumptions of the form. The central character, Ding On (boyish Chiu Man-Cheuk, who took over the Wong Fei-hung role from Jet Li in the Once Upon a Time in China series), is a skilled swordsmith who begins to wonder if craftsmanship alone is all that matters. Perhaps it is also worth considering how the finished weapon is going to be used? (A theme that seems more apt every day. ) In a dusty, noisy, cluttered landscape reminiscent of Wong Kar-Wai's Ashes of Time, Ding seeks to avenge the death of a selfless martial monk who was murdered after thwarting the rape of a young girl. In the process the hero loses a limb, struggles to learn new skills to compensate and comes back stronger than ever-with the implication that mental dexterity trumps brute force every time. The long final showdown, which makes judicious use of slow motion to turn battling bodies into heroic sculptural forms, ranks with the best work of masters like King Hu and Akira Kurosawa-that is, with the greatest martial fight footage ever filmed. -David Chute, Amazon. com.