Michael Lee Movies
- 2000
Billed as a motorcycle kung fu love story, this film, the first for critic-turned-director Kelvin Tong, aptly captures the listless, pop culture-obsessed lives of Asia's youth. Boy (Benjamin Heng) works at a dead-end job while fantasizing about being a martial arts master. After his buddy, Ah Gu (Joseph Cheong), who has ambitions of being a motorcycle gangster, gets involved in a drug deal that quickly goes south, he begs Boy for help. Meanwhile, Boy happens upon the shy, though beautiful Girl (Alvina Toh), a student who works at her mother's copy shop. This film was screened at the 2000 Rotterdam Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
This third feature film version of Joseph Conrad's tragic romantic drama (the best of which remains John Cromwell's 1940 adaptation) is the one that stick's closest to the original story of a reclusive, hard-hearted fellow living on a private island in the Dutch East Indies who must protect his home, and the woman he comes to love, from two brutish villains. The story is told by a sea captain and begins at a turn-of-the century hotel in the port town of Surabaya where the Dutch entrepreneurs come to drink and wind down while listening to an all-female orchestra led by creepy conductor Sam Giancomo (Simon Callow). The joint is owned by an unpleasant, bigoted German named Schomberg (Jean Yanne) who constantly pesters the conductor to sell him Alma (Irene Jacob), the prettiest girl in the band. Eventually Sam relents, causing the frightened Alma to beseech taciturn patron Axel Heyst (Willem Dafoe) to help her escape. At first Axel refuses, but then has a change of heart and takes her with him to his lonely island where she will live with himself and his valet Wang (Ho Yi). Initially, Axel wants nothing to do with Alma, but things change and they become lovers. Meanwhile, the vengeful Schomberg plots revenge. He gets a chance to enact it with the arrival of the villainous Mr. Jones (Sam Neill) and his henchmen who turn Schomberg's bar into a gambling house. Seeing that Jones is ruthless and avaricious, Schomberg casually mentions that there is an untapped fortune lying in an abandoned mine located on Axel's island. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
This old fashioned service comedy is suitable for the whole family. It is set in Vietnam during the war and chronicles the efforts of a small band of Green Berets as they endeavor to help out a beleaguered village located next to a major supply route for the Viet Cong. The leader, Capt. Sam Cahill has been working overtime to create good relations between the American soldiers and the villagers so he can use their little town to monitor enemy activities. Unfortunately, Cahill is slated to retire and his replacement is shaping up to be the classic Ugly American. It is he who accidentally lets the North Vietnamese know that the hapless villagers have been harboring American soldiers. To punish them, the VC shoot the only elephant in the village. To help the villagers, Cahill goes against the wishes of the new leader and promises to replace the slaughtered beast in time for an important local ritual. The trouble is, the Americans have only five days in which to find and bring back an elephant; they find one, but it is 200 miles from the village. The men decide the only way to do it is to load the beast aboard a transport plane and send it to the village via parachute. Now all they have to do is figure how to engineer this feat. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Danny Glover, Ray Liotta, (more)
- 1993
- NR
This melodramatic epic martial arts outing from Hong Kong filmmaker Clara Law is set in 7th-century China and center's on a disgraced warrior's quest for redemption. Formerly a general, he trustingly made a devil's bargain with a rival general that resulted in the assassination of his troops and the prince he was sworn to protect. Though every part of him aches for bloody vengeance, the fallen fighter follows his mother's advice and becomes a peaceful wanderer. He tries, but things don't go the way he hoped for everywhere he goes. His nemesis attacks, and, before long, kills everyone the good general cares about, including his lover, a beautiful princess. He finally finds solace in a remote Buddhist temple where he undergoes instruction from elderly monks. This time trouble comes in the form of a beautiful widow, a woman who looks exactly like his slain love. On the heels of her betrayal comes the wicked general and before the heroic warrior can find lasting peace, he must survive one last battle. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Joan Chen, Wu Hsing-Kuo, (more)
With Heaven and Earth -- cobbled together from two autobiographical reminiscences (When Heaven and Earth Changed Places and Child of War, Woman of Peace by Le Ly Hayslip -- Oliver Stone completes his self-declared "Vietnam Trilogy" (the other films being Platoon and Born On the Fourth of July) of films examining the Vietnam War from different perspectives. Heaven and Earth begins in the central Vietnamese village of Ky La during the 1950s. Phung Le Ly (Hiep Thi Le) is an innocent peasant girl, helping her mother (Joan Chen) to tend the rice paddies while being lectured in the ways of life by her father (Haing Ngor). The idyllic peace of the village is disrupted when a jet bomber crosses the skies. Soon the village is decimated as the American-backed South Vietnamese government troops and the Viet Cong engage in brutal warfare in which the victims are the innocent villagers. Le Ly is both tortured and raped. She leaves Ky La for Danang for a life as a prostitute. There she meets the tall and craggy American soldier Steve Butler (Tommy Lee Jones), a kind but lonely man who isn't looking for sex but for someone to settle down with -- as he says, "I want an Oriental wife." They marry, and Steve takes her back to the United States, where her in-laws look at her not as a wife but as a pet. In the harsh glare of 1970s U.S. culture, Le Ly has trouble adjusting to the American way of life. But not as hard a time as her husband, who, after twenty years in Vietnam, discovers he cannot adapt to civilian life. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tommy Lee Jones, Joan Chen, (more)
Jean Claude Van Damme kicks up his heels once again in this action film. Van Damme plays Kurt Sloane, the brother of American kickboxing champion Eric Sloane (Dennis Alexio). Having bested the best in the United States, Eric takes off to Bangkok with little brother Kurt to defeat the kickboxing champion of Thailand. However, while Eric wins the fight, his career is finished for good when his opponent, the malicious Tong Po (Michel Qissi) breaks his spine after the final bell sounds, putting Eric permanently in a wheelchair. Kurt learns the sport of kickboxing himself, so he can get in the ring and teach the Thai champ a lesson. An old man who is a master at kickboxing, instructs Kurt in the brutal art, along with gentle bromides of Zen philosophy and spiritual peace. Kurt finally becomes a pro and lines up a match with Tong Po, but to insure victory, Tong Po's cohorts rape Kurt's girlfriend, kidnap his crippled brother, and even kill his dog. But Kurt is unbowed and is ready for the champ to meet his match. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dennis Alexio, (more)
Based on a true story, Bat 21 follows the harrowing adventures of Lt. Colonel Iceal Hambleton (Gene Hackman), whose plane is shot down over enemy territory while on reconnaissance behind enemy lines in Vietnam. Because Hambleton used to call the shots from behind a desk, he lacks combat survival experience and is forced to adapt while the enemy surrounds him on all sides. As the Air Force plans a risky rescue mission, he is befriended by pilot Bartholomew Clark (Danny Glover), who can't land to pick up Hambleton due to the enemy activity but keeps him company by radio. Hambleton's plight takes a turn for the worse once the brass decide to execute an intensive bombing mission in the area, whether or not they can rescue Hambleton. The colonel, meanwhile, confronted for the first time by the horrors of war, begins to reassess his role in the bloodshed. An overlooked film at the time of its release, Bat 21 is a smaller war picture that focuses on an ordinary man in an excruciating situation, and how it ultimately changes his life. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gene Hackman, Danny Glover, (more)
This routine, relatively low-budget horror film with a few well-known actors (Peter Graves, Keenan Wynn) unfolds a tale that has echoes in George Orwell's 1984 or in various sci-fi movies. The premise: Americans have not realized that their government is in cahoots with certain industrial and medical giants to clone the citizens and thereby create a society that is easily controlled. Richard, one of the clones (Tim Donnelly) slowly comes to believe that the normal human society is much better than the cloned version and starts a rebellion against the powerful forces in control. What happens after that is about as hard to believe as what has happened before. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Timothy Donnelly, Dick Sargent, (more)
- 1979
Set to Tchaikovsky's score, this Japanese animated effort chronicles the adventures of a young girl dreaming of a magical land of anthropomorphic mice that are under the spell of a wicked two-headed mouse. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Lee, Melissa Gilbert, (more)
- 1965
This convoluted crime drama chronicles the exploits of an ingenious trio of car thieves who work out of a junkyard. There they write bad checks to the people who sell their cars. A young man is killed in a car and one of the thieves takes the wreck to the yard. There he removes the plates, which say KIL 1, puts them on another wreck of the same make, paints it to look like the other, and then tries to sell it. Meanwhile a mechanic for the mob is discovered sleeping with the thief's girl friend and is beaten up. The mechanic gets revenge by killing the thief. He then steals the newly painted car and sets off with the girl. Unfortunately, the dead boy's father sees the plate, and believing it is his son's car, reports the sighting to Scotland Yard. The news is sent to the Yard inspector assigned to the check fraud scam. Meanwhile the mechanic continues to flee. He sees a police roadblock, and as he tries to avoid it the car careens over a cliff. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
