If you want to point to one of the most influential martial arts films ever made, The One-Armed Swordsman has to be near the top of the list. Released in 1967, it was the first film to crack the $1 million barrier at the Hong Kong box office, and helped to usher in a new era of martial arts films that would run through the 1970’s.

The movie itself is fantastic, it features a strong, brooding, charismatic lead in Jimmy Wang Yu, some interesting swordplay, and the emergence of Chang Cheh as one of the leading directors of this new movement.

The film tells the story of a servant’s son who is taken in by a master swordsman after his father is killed while defending the master’s home. In a debt of gratitude the swordsman, Master Qi, takes the boy as his own and promises to raise him. The film jumps ahead in time, as the boy, Fang Gang (Jimmy Wang Yu) is now fully grown, and feeling a bit rebellious due to his decidedly lower class origin (in comparison to his fellow students, not to mention the master’s daughter).

The daughter, Qi Pei Er, conspires with a pair of fellow students to teach this upstart a lesson by luring him into the woods at night to beat him up. Before this can happen, Gang makes the decision to leave this life behind, never able to truly fit in. Even though he decides to leave, he still winds up confronting the trio. His arrogance, coupled with the disgust of Pei, leads her to react with a sword slash which severs Gangs right arm. Thus the One Armed Swordsman is born.

Gang is able to stumble off following the attack, only to be rescued by a peasant woman named Xiaomann who nurses him back to health. Gang then goes about rebuilding his life, learning to fight left handed. This is not the only story, as there are evil things afoot surrounding Master Qi.

The film shifts gears and in addition to Gang’s attempt to reclaim his life, we learn that a rival of Master Qi has developed a new weapon that counteracts his sword style. Plans come to a head as the villian, the evil Long Arm, sets his plan in motion to eliminate all of Qi’s students leaving a showdown between the two. As Long Arm’s men are out murdering Qi’s students, Gang happens into town and witnesses what is going down.

Although Gang may by attempting to leave this life behind and still holds great resentment for Qi Pei, he is still a man of honor. Gang therefore feels he has a duty and an obligation to Master Qi to warn him of the impending danger, and to do what he can to stop it. This includes a dramatic rescue of said dismembering daughter from the clutches of Long Arm’s murderous cronies. Everything leads up to the inevitable showdown between our brooding hero and Long Arm.

The One-Armed Swordsman is a great film. Its story does not offer up any real surprises as it moves along its singular track. What it does do is bring a more realistic vision to martial arts films, delivering a brooding hero who displays great honor and embodies the conflict of class distinctions and the alienation of youth.

Jimmy Wang Yu carries the emotional weight of the film as he struggles to find his place and reconcile his desire to honor his adoptive father, with his desire to leave this world behind and forge ahead with Xiaomann. It also displays Chang Cheh’s vision for realistic martial arts films, as well as his penchant for spurting blood. It does not look terribly realistic, but represents something new to these films, which Cheh loved to poor on. The fights are not nearly as complex as they would later become, but they are nonetheless engaging and exciting.

Audio/Video: Both are superb. I cannot believe that this has looked this good since its theatrical release. For those who have fallen in love with the chopped, dubbed, faded, lousy videos and TV presentations, it is like seeing it for the first time. The colors are still a bit faded, but they are still vibrant and everything is crystal clear. The audio is also very nicely represented in both Mandarin and English dubbed form.

Extras: Dragon Dynasty is doing a great job of bringing these films to region 1 with some nice extras.

• Interviews: There are two interviews here. First up is a new interview with Jimmy Wang Yu, who talks on how he got into movies and his experiences on the set. Secondly there is an interview with critics David Chute and Andy Klein who speak on the importance of this film in Hong Kong.
• Featurette: “The Master Chang Cheh.”A twenty minute featurette on Chang Cheh and his vision. It includes interviews with Tsui Hark, John Woo, and others.

• Commentary: The track is quite informative and interesting. It features David Chute and Andy Klein. The case claims that Quentin Tarantino is on the track, but he is not.

Bottomline: This movie is a blast, with great acting and exciting action. It features some nice cinematography, and camerawork. If you have any interest in martial arts cinema, or just good movies, make a point to see this one. Dragon Dynasty has delivered a fine disk.Recommended.

Christopher Beaumont spends much of his time writing about entertainment when he isn’t sitting in a movie theater. He is known around the office as the “Movie Guy” and is always ready to talk about his favorite form of entertainment and offer up recommendations. Interests include science fiction, horror, and metal music. His writings can be found at Draven99’s Musings, as well as Film School Rejects.

“Death turns all to ash, and thus, frees every soul.”

The Fountain marvelously modernizes the story of Adam and Eve. The Garden of Eden is continually referenced; the Fountain of Youth is persistently sought after; and, the continuation of the couple is ultimately in question. While Adam (meaning “man”) and Eve (meaning “life”) cultivated the Garden, created 56 children, and disobeyed God, a biblical mention of romance between “man” and “life” is absent.

The Fountain is a metaphysical love story between two destined companions determined to display and extend their emotions into the afterlife. The Fountain takes place in three different, yet connective, centuries: the 16th, the 21st, and the 26th. In the 21st century, Tommy (Hugh Jackman) is a clinical researcher who fervently attempts to invent a drug that will cure his wife Izzy’s (Rachel Weisz) terminal brain tumor. Interwoven are scenes circa the 16th century that feature Tommy and Izzy as a Conquistador and Queen respectively from Izzy’s unfinished book entitled The Fountain. In addition, scenes from the 26th century are mingled into the mix—depicting an immortal Tommy and his love rising to be reborn.

The Fountain centers on the existence of the Fountain of Youth and stresses the sentence, “Death is the road to awe.” Director, Darren Aronofsky, chooses to symbolize this paring in the Tree of Life—from the Book of Genesis. Hidden by God, the Tree of Life is said to possess sap that can heal all wounds, cure all diseases, and grant all eternal life.

By balancing this Christian iconography along with a sense of science-fiction and Mayan religiosity (including Shebalba and a gorgeous fable about planting a seed over a grave), The Fountain is reminiscent of Kubrick’s 2001. It’s an earthly, celestial, and almighty force for the human mind, heart, and soul.

Leaving out the picture’s visual perspicacity would be a sin in itself. The Fountain is a visually magnificent, mind-bending mediation on love, life, and death. As a result of compiling original footage of chemical reactions in a Petri dish, and then blowing them up to proportionally fill the background of the universe, Aronofsky creates an intense tone and a unique vision of the future.

What’s more, Aronofsky beautifully gels the three separate timeframes together in a similar overhead camera shot that begins upside-down and follows the focal point toward an awaiting destination. Additionally, a tastefully done sex scene (that retains the clothes and overflows the water), a cluster of stars (that traces the flux capacitor courtesy of Back to the Future), and a perfectly executed sequence in terms of sound (that features Tommy walking over a set of creaking boards) all stand out.

With Aronofsky’s ardor behind the camera, Clint Mansell’s ever-intriguing score, and Jackman and Weisz’s exquisitely emotional performances, The Fountain is an experience to behold. It’s a powerful tale of a loving husband and his dying unafraid wife—fighting for eternal love in three timeframes. The story is sexual, sensual, and sensory. All-in-all, The Fountain is so inspiring, passionate, and forthright that it makes your hair stand on end.

It's the first full day of the Jerusalem International Film Festival and a couple of hundred Israelis and visitors spend more than an hour of a beautiful July Friday afternoon in the auditorium of the Menachem Begin Heritage Center glued to the screen by a moving documentary entitled The Last Jews of Libya.

The film is just one of more than 200 screenings that will take place over the next 10 days as one of the most anticipated cultural events of the year brings to the city world-renowned directors, actors, and screenwriters who mingle with Israeli film buffs and directors of Jewish film festivals from all over the world.

It's always excruciating to sit down at the end of June with the 280-page catalog and a calendar and try to come up with a realistic number of films that will squeeze into your life in July.

My list certainly got off to a good start with The Last Jews of Libya. Produced by Aryeh Bourkoff and his mother, Libyan-born Vivienne Roumani-Denn, the film chronicles three generations of Jews with roots in Benghazi, Libya. Based on the memoirs of Vivienne's mother, Elise Roumani, that were discovered after her death and enhanced by archival footage and interviews, we see 20th century history through the prism of a proud Jewish community that had prospered in a Moslem country for centuries.

This is not the story of poor Eastern European Jews living in shtetls in a predominantly peasant culture. The Jewish families of Benghazi were worldly, sophisticated business people who nevertheless were strong adherents to Jewish tradition and by and large resisted the assimilationist tendencies of their educated Ashkenazic brethren.

Still, the colonial powers of the 20th century combined with the long reach of the Nazis and Arab anger over the founding of the state of Israel all converged to lay waste to this once vibrant Jewish community. Today, unlike Morocco and neighboring Tunisia, there's not a single Jew left in Libya.

Many in the audience at the Festival screening are Jews of Libyan descent, who murmur appreciatively at the Arabic and Italian expressions used by some of the interviewees and gasp as the horror of internment camps and Arab pogroms are recounted.

Despite the fact that the majority of the Roumani family ended up emigrating to America, at their request, Vivienne's parents, Elise and her husband Yosef, are both buried on the Mt of Olives. One of Vivienne's Libyan-born brothers remarks in the film that this was more than a mere gesture — his parents must have wanted to emphasize that Israel is the only place where a Jew can feel totally at home.

Almost the entire Roumani family is present at the screening as Aryeh, a thirty-something Manhattan investment banker, gets up at the end to explain why he produced the film. "I have three kids and I realized I wanted to tell them where we came from," he told the attentive audience. "This was a project celebrating family unity," he continued. The film is dedicated to his grandparents, Elise and Yosef Roumani, who emigrated to America in the 1960s to join two of their sons studying at American universities.

As we file out of the theater, a tall middle-aged man in front of me says to his friend: "Very nice, but why would they only come here to be buried, not to live??"