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zwolanerd

I guess I just like liking things

A movie about kung fu movies.

Netflix has this weird thing where they recommend things to me that I’ve already seen. Seen and rated on Netflix, even.  Right now it’s four out of the ten it’s currently recommending, but it’s been as high as nine of ten.  I guess the system needs some work?  I know it’s complicated stuff, so I won’t pretend to have an answer for them, other than “maybe don’t include stuff that I’ve already seen and rated on Netflix.”

It’s not a complete loss, though. Every once in a while the system comes through for me.

I had just finished watch Jet Li’s Fearless (Does that mean the Fearless belongs to Jet Li? Or is Jet Li fearless? It works either way, really), and Netflix suggested three other movie I might like. One of them was Films of Fury: The Kung Fu Movie Movie. I think I was drawn to give it a try based on the title alone.

It’s a documentary of sorts about the history of kung fu movies.  What I mean by “of sorts” is that it doesn’t really have many “behind the scenes” info, and it doesn’t have any interviews with anybody – it just goes through the history of kung fu movies, touching on major stars and major films by those stars.  That’s pretty much it. And I loved it.

If you’ve read the About page on the site, you’ve seen that I describe myself as a “low-level geek.” In my mind, that means I have a working knowledge of a lot of topics that are generally described as “geeky,” but I don’t know a huge amount about any one particular topic.  I know enough about most topics to converse briefly about them, but I can always learn something new in the conversation.  And that’s where I am with kung fu films. I know the big names, of course, and have seen a lot of the major movies in the genre, but I don’t have detailed knowledge of the complete history.

This film won’t completely fill anyone in on everything that’s ever happened in kung fu movies, but for anyone looking to fill in some blanks in their viewing, this is a great bibliography to peruse. I immediately added a couple more movies to my queue because of it.

I’m surprised there isn’t much info about this movie online in the usual places (IMDb and Wikipedia). There is a trailer, and the movie is apparently based on book by Ric Meyers. It would be nice to have a list of the actors and films mentioned in the movie so a person could make a checklist if they so desire. I have to say, I enjoyed the movie enough that I’m considering creating the Wikipedia article myself and doing just that.

Your results may vary, of course, depending on how much you like kung fu movies.

 

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