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It doesn’t happen often, but there have been a few instances where Jackie Chan’s characters haven’t survived their movies. Over the years, Chan’s protagonists have endured death-defying falls, fights with dozens of armed henchmen, and all sorts of other deadly encounters, but they seem to almost always come out them alive. Even in The Medallion when Chan’s Eddie Yang actually did die, his character was resurrected shortly afterward.

In the 1970s and 1980s, it became all too common for Hong Kong martial arts movies to end with their heroes making the ultimate sacrifice to oppose an oppressive government. One of the biggest examples of this was 1971’s Fist of Fury, which saw Bruce Lee’s Chen Zhen go down in a blaze of glory. Chan, though, didn’t really follow the trend and mostly starred in family-oriented, wholesome films that avoided the tropes frequently seen in other kung fu movies.

After starring in and directing the hugely successful “One Armed Boxer Vs the Flying Guillotine / Master of the Flying Guillotine” (1976) Jimmy Wang Yu was back with both arms and fighting yet another version of the famed Shaw Brothers flying guillotine in this low-budget Taiwanese clone.

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Nicknamed the Silver Spear, Lung Fei Yung is a ruthless assassin for hire and he only kills people who deserve to die. Apparently during a massacre ten years ago, a trio of powerful experts known as The Devil’s Three was responsible for the downfall of one hundred and twenty members from eight kung fu schools. Now for some unknown reason, a certain female clan leader has decided to have them killed and trusting that Lung the Spearman is the only one who can do the job, she promptly hires him.

Lung easily dispatches...

Exploitation cinema is filled with titles that can lead to expectations of how a film will play out, only to be frequently let down due to a lack of budget or just plain chicanery from the producers. “The Korean Connection”, to give this feature its United States distribution title, sounds very bland and is a rip off from one of Bruce Lee’s features “The Chinese Connection (1972) which is better known to audiences as “Way of the Dragon”. That inevitably leads to certain expectations of Kung Fu Korean style. That doesn’t sound so bad and there is every possibility it will deliver. Now in Korea it was released as “He Who Returned with One Leg” or in the version I saw “Return of Single Legged Man”. Now this is a completely different expectation all together. A one-legged Taekwondo exponent? We’ve had one armed boxers and swordsmen but a...

The Shaw Brothers Studio and Ho Meng Hua unleashed their deadly decapitating flying machine film “The Flying Guillotine” in 1975 and it was a hit. However released in 1978 due to several actors dropping out and rewritten during production, their problematic official follow-up almost died a horrible death. Meanwhile, Jimmy Wang Yu was quick to let loose his action packed but outrageous flying guillotine related version “One Armed Boxer Vs the Flying Guillotine” which was in fact a sequel to his “One Armed Boxer” (1971). Acknowledged in the West as “Master of the Flying Guillotine” it went on to become a cult favorite with fans.

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Again set in the Qing Dynasty, besides having his own guillotine team in the palace, Emperor Yung Cheng also sends out his trusted flying guillotine wielding assassin Fung Sheng Wu Ji (Kam Kang) to kill off any remaining rebels.

Keep track of all the submissions for best international feature at the 2023 Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2023 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

Scroll down for profiles of each Oscar entry

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between January 1, 2022 and November 30, 2022. The deadline for submissions to the Academy is October 3, 2022.

A shortlist of 15 finalists is...

One-sheet for Death Machines (1976). Artist unknown.Movie-lovers!Welcome back to The Deuce Notebook, a collaboration between Mubi's Notebook and The Deuce Film Series, our monthly event at Nitehawk Williamsburg that excavates the facts and fantasies of cinema's most infamous block in the world: 42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues. For each screening, my co-hosts and I pick a title that we think embodies the era of 24-hour theater hopping, and present the venue at which it premiered…Our friend and guest collaborator Chris Poggiali (of Temple of Schlock fame) takes the helm once again; last July, he contributed to our column with an incredible piece about Japanese samurai films and their entry into the US mainstream. This month, Chris introduces us to the world of director Paul Kyriazi.Chris is an authority on genre films and we’re excited to promote his recent book, co-written by Grady Hendrix,...

Often presented as a glossy corporate fantasia in the country’s government-approved commercial cinema, China tends to look like a very different place in the independent films that manage to escape its borders (and receive prominent exposure at festivals around the world).

Hardly a new phenomenon, this dichotomy seems to have grown even more severe with the last two generations of Chinese directors — while googly-eyed studio claptrap like “Monster Hunt” slays at the box office, scrappy, auteur-driven fare like Li Yang’s “Blind Mountain” and Diao Yinan’s “Black Coal, Thin Ice” paint the People’s Republic as a bleak wasteland where many laws don’t apply, and the ones that do seem sadistically designed to test the morality of the people they’re imposed upon. And, of course, to serve as prompts for some very dark thrillers.

Read More: Exclusive: Zeitgeist Films Picks Up Johnny Ma’s Debut Feature...

The date to set the record button is January 15th, 2016 as Film 4 bring us some classic movies from Shaw Brothers, from the world of Kung Fu and Wu Xia.

It starts with a Classic

The season will kick off with a Gordon Liu classic “The 36th Chamber of Shaolin”, then will continue for a further 3 Friday nights which will include Shaw Brothers classics such as King Boxer (Lo Lieh), Come Drink With Me (Cheng Pei-Pei) and The One Armed Swordsman (Wang Yu).

I have to say, they have chosen some great movies and anyone who is a fan of Kung Fu and Wu Xia cinema need to watch these and record then watch again. The second season (Which stars in April) will include The Five Deadly Venoms and The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter, so far.

Also every movie will play with original language and English Subtitles.

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin...

To understand what state America is in, just watch two documentaries about the death penalty and Sesame Street's Elmo

'The more he looks at it, there's nothing there," says John Hughes in what is probably my favourite thing on the whole of the internet: a clip in which he records a commentary over the famous museum scene in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Hughes, obviously, is talking about the moment that Cameron gets lost in Georges Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, but the description is eerily applicable to the current Republican presidential candidates.

Never before have there been so many Republican presidential candidate debates, which, in turn, has given the campaign the feel of not so much an important political event but rather a reality TV show. Which contestant will flub tonight? And as with Cameron and Seurat's painted child, the more the electorate looks at these candidates,...

WSJ

Do you want 500,000 frequent-flier miles for free? In the age of Occupy Wall Street, how will the rich spend the holiday season? And how is it possible that someone can buy a $43 million house and not live there? A look at the most fascinating stories from the Wall Street Journal blogs.

Miles for Nothing and Your Trips for Free: Do you want 500,000 frequent-flier miles for free? It can be done, fairly easily. Hard-core frequent-flier junkies are churning credit card...