Day: June 26, 2015

Friday June 26th – Thursday July 2nd

~ Sean Gilman

Featured Film:

A Better Tomorrow at Scarecrow Video

John Woo, Chow Yun-fat and Tsui Hark revolutionized the modern crime film with a barrage of bullets, driving rain, brotherly bonds and slow-motion melodrama. Woo’s breakthrough film after a decade kicking around Hong Kong, it’s the film that made Chow an international icon. Also featuring Shaw Brothers superstar Ti Lung, up and coming genius Leslie Cheung and Waise Lee. We’ll be discussing the film this weekend on The George Sanders Show (along with Michael Mann’s Blackhat), but until then: Our Preview.
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Playing This Week:

Central Cinema:

Desperately Seeking Susan (Susan Seidelman, 1985) Fri-Weds 
Spice World (Bob Spiers, 1997) Fri-Weds

SIFF Cinema Egyptian:

The Wolfpack (Crystal Moselle) Fri-Thurs
Paris is Burning (Jennie Livingston, 1990) Fri Midnight Only
Hairspray (John Waters, 1988) Sat Midnight Only

AMC Loews Factoria 8:

Dil Dhadakne Do (Zoya Akhtar) Fri-Thurs

Grand Cinema:

Far from Men (David Oelhoffen) Tues Only

Grand Illusion Cinema:

Güeros (Alonso Ruiz Palacios) Fri-Thurs
7 Minutes (Jay Martin) Fri & Sat Only

Cinemark Lincoln Square Cinemas:

ABCD 2 (Remo D’Souza) Fri-Thurs

Northwest Film Forum:

Fresh Dressed (Sacha Jenkins) Fri-Thurs
Tenet: Daisy Heroin VHS Release Fri Only
Dishonesty (Yael Melamede) Sun Only

Regal Parkway Plaza:

Dil Dhadakne Do (Zoya Akhtar) Fri-Thurs
Just the Way You Are (Theodore Boborol) Fri-Thurs

Scarecrow Video Screening Lounge:

Diva (Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1981) Fri Only
A Better Tomorrow (John Woo, 1986) Sun Only Our Preview
Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers (Les Blank, 1980) Mon Only
Dial M for Murder (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954) Tues Only

Landmark Seven Gables:

The Wolfpack (Crystal Moselle) Fri-Thurs

SIFF Film Center:

Sunshine Superman (Marah Strauch) Fri-Thurs
Dark Star: HR Giger’s World (Belinda Sallin) Fri-Thurs

Sundance Cinemas Seattle:

A Little Chaos (Alan Rickman) Fri-Thurs

A Better Tomorrow (John Woo, 1986)

~ Sean Gilman ~ 4 Comments

a-better-tomorrow

After an up and down decade as a director for hire in the last days of the Shaw Brothers, working alternately in the wuxia and wacky comedy genres, John Woo finally hit it big in 1986 when he teamed up with Tsui Hark and the Cinema City studio to remake Patrick Lung Kong’s 1967 drama The Story of a Discharged Prisoner. One of the most influential films of the past 30 years, A Better Tomorrow established the formal and thematic template for a new era of crime movie: everything that has followed, from Woo’s follow-up masterpieces The Killer and Hard-Boiled to the triad films of Johnnie To, to myriad international imitators, has in some way been a response to it. Its impact on the Hollywood film has been less specific but no less real: raising the stakes of athleticism and complexity in action sequences, the bullet ballet being much more adaptable to the limited physical skills of American actors than Jackie Chan’s kung fu.

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