Film Illiterate, wherein the proprietor records movies seen, and sporadic progress through assorted lists of the "best". Originally started after regretfully renting something forgettable for the third time. I've forgotten what, but never again! A tedious endeavour since 2005. Hello. 🙂
Annals of the Chinese-American Creole Appreciation Club
Big Trouble in Little China is a dreadful, cheesy action flick, but it's cleverer than it looks. Oh, it's racist, Orientalist nonsense, but it's self-consciously so -- so exaggerated, so open in its bastardization of Chinese culture that it must be intentional. It's not an insulting view of Chinese beliefs, but an affectionate look at the quintessential American "Little China", or at least of the white American view of it, as a mysterious alien enclave where you're as likely to find discount imported electronics as you are ancient herbal remedies.
Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) and Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) take on Fu Manchu the Merciless (i.e. Lo Pan, played by James Hong) in his whorehouse/palace, a kitschy, opulent, palace festooned with neon lights and rows of golden Buddha statues, hidden inside a factory. It's a Vegas clone of the Forbidden City, and the perfect setting for what is, essentially, a Vegas wuxia: a gaudy, grotesque parody of the original, with the gall to affect the same pomp as its source material.
It's saved from total failure by its comedy, and it's got a little of the same B-movie charm as its Shaw Brothers influences, but it's just irredeemably stupid. It's the kind of movie you watch with friends. Drunk friends.