No US films, as promised in my last Movie roundup post.

The Five Deadly Venoms, Chang Cheh (1978, China). The title refers to five masked kung fu masters, who each base their style on one of Chinese folklore’s poisonous creatures – the centipede, the snake, the scorpion, the lizard and the toad. A pupil has to figure out the identity of the masters before they join up and rob the clan of its riches. Unfortunately, the two good masters are easy to spot – although film drags out the identity of one them long past time – and the two evil ones are even more obvious. The fifth is not revealed right until the very end, and it doesn’t really come as much of a surprise. An odd film – a treasure hunt but it all takes place on three sets, and the fighting is so mannered it’s just not that exciting. I’m surprised this is considered a classic, to be honest.

The Killer, John Woo (1989, China). Whenever I see this film on best of lists, I have a feeling I’ve seen it. But I can’t actually remember the story. Nor have I recorded it on my list of films I’ve watched. And now I’ve watched it… and I still think I might have seen it before but I’m not sure. Anyway, it’s very very 1980s. Chow Yun Fat plays a hitman who’s had enough. He promises to do one last job, during which he accidentally blinds a nightclub singer while returning fire with one of his target’s goons. He feels sorry for her, and later starts seeing her romantically. She, of course, doesn’t know who he is. You can probably guess the rest.

Adventures of a Plumber’s Mate, Stanley Long (1978, UK). The third and final film in the series, with Christopher Neil still as the lead, but this time he’s a, well, a plumber’s mate. Actually, he seems to be an actual plumber, who works under contract for a plumbing company run by Stephen Lewis, you know, that bloke from On the Buses who used to say, “I’ll get you, Butler!”. Neil is asked to replace the toilet seat in a well-off woman’s house, which leads to the expected sexual shenanigans. However, it turns out her husband has just been released from prison after serving time for a gold robbery. The proceeds were never found. Neil sells the toilet-seat to a junk shop. He thinks it’s brass. It’s the gold from the robbery, of course, melted down into a toilet seat. Comedy ensues. Not great films by any means, but this was probably the best of three, perhaps because it had the most coherent plot.

Wheels on Meals, Sammo Hung (1984, China). And speaking of very 1980s films, here’s another one with Jackie Chan. He and Yuan Biao operate a food van in Barcelona. They become involved with a young woman who proves to be a pickpocket. But there are men after her, and not because of her light fingers. It turns out she’s the heir to a large fortune and the next in line wants her gone. This is easily one of the best Jackie Chan films, with an excellent car chase, and a final fight, against Benny Urquidez, which is generally considered Chan’s best.

Balgandharva, Ravi Jadhav (2011, India). In the nineteenth century in India – or perhaps only parts of India – women were banned from the stage, much as in Elizabethan England. The title refers to one such male actress who became hugely successful. Unfortunately, it went to his head and he insisted on ever bigger spectacles and eventually ended up broke. But his career greatly influenced Bollywood (although it’s Marathi cinema and not Bollywood which made this film). Not a bad film, although the actor playing the lead had a disconcerting resemblance to Leonardo DiCaprio.

High Hopes, Mike Leigh (1988, UK). It’s Thatcher’s Britain and a working-class couple in Camden have to deal with his aged mother, who lives in the only council house in a gentrified street, and whose neighbours are Hooray Henries, and a self-centred social-climbing sister who’s married to a used-car salesman. The central couple, and the mother, are well-drawn, but the rest of the cast are caricatures. Still worth seeing, though.

The Bad Education Movie, Elliot Hegarty (2015, UK). Jake Whitehall plays a teacher who has never grown up, tells stories about his salad days at public school, and takes his class on inappropriate school trips. His latest plan to take them Las Vegas is scuppered by the school, and he has to take them to Cornwall instead. Where Whitehall inadvertently hooks up with the “Cornwall Liberation Army”, who then occupy a local tourist spot castle. The humour is a bit hit and miss, and a lot of it is comedy of shame with Whitehall the butt of the joke. The film has its moments, but it’s hard to really like a film that paints everyone outside London as some sort of intellectually-challenged yokel. Those sort of jokes weren’t funny in the 1970s, and they really haven’t aged well.

In Love with Alma Cogan, Tony Britten (2011, UK). Roger Lloyd-Pack plays the manager of Cromer’s pier-end theatre, which is losing money and the Council are threatening to sell off. The reason it’s losing money is because Lloyd-Pack has kept ticket prices low so the townsfolk can afford them. And it’s the low-key battle between the two that forms the plot of the film. The title refers to a tribute act hired to boost ticket sales at the theatre and, to be honest, while the I know the name Alma Cogan I have no real who she was. So I’m not really sure what this film’s intended audience was – because the story seemed quite contemporary, but anyone who remembers Alma Cogan is going to 70+…

Tracker, Ian Sharp (2011, New Zealand). Shortly after the Boer War, a Boer arrives in New Zealand, hoping to begin a new life. But then a Maori is accused of murder and goes on the run, and the Boer is asked by the local garrison commander, who knew him from the war, to track the runaway. (The Maori is innocent, of course.) The Boer, played by Ray Winstone, eventually captures the Maori, played by Temuera Morrison, and they earn each other’s respect. Some lovely landscape cinematography, solid turns by both Winstone and Morrison, and yet another story that shows the British Empire as it really was.

Five Fingers for Marseilles, Michael Matthews (2017, South Africa). Marseilles is a shanty town in South Africa. A teenager, one of a group of five friends, shoots and kills three police officers who are demanding protection money from the local stores. He runs away. Many years later, he returns, after spending time in prison, and discovers the town has grown, one of his friends is now mayor, and a mysterious gangster now runs everything. It’s all framed explicitly as a Western, although the setting bears no resemblance to the Wild West. An excellent film.