Ip Man 4: The Finale

[Drunk Monk]

What? No sword fight? Whaaaaaat?!?

Okay, I only opened with that because I told cf I would. We planned to catch the 6:20 showing but you know what? It was sold out. WTH? Usually we go to Chinese flick and there’s only like a dozen attendees. Glad to see this doing so well on a Thursday. The next showing was 9:10 and the only seats available were front row. But we went for it. It actually worked out well because it gave us like 3 hours to chat over dinner at the great mall food court.

The finale was solid, actually a better franchise conclusion than Skywalker. It was heartfelt and Donnie was on point dramatically and martially, under the masterful direction of Yuen Woo Ping. Engaging story, fine fight choreo. Danny Chan owns Bruce Lee. Always good to see Lo Meng and Kent Cheng as they reprise their supporting roles from previous installments. Chris Collins and Scott Adkins deliver as evil gwailo whitey racist assholes, over the top and yet not so in 2020 (Trumper snowflakes will hate it - the only redeeming non-Chinese is black). It’s set in SF Chinatown where there’s always lion dance. I think they used the same set for Bruce’s Oakland school from Birth of the Dragon. it’s got that Chinese filial nationalism so pervasive in Chinese film today. But ultimately, it delivers as a Kung Fu film with good action and pacing between the fight scenes - quite satisfying. DOOM recommended. Catch it in the theaters if you can.

[Greg]

No Mike Tyson?

[Drunk Monk]

Some of his 3 mins in 3 is shown in flashback. So yeah.

[cranefly]

While I was driving there, I kept thinking, It's a good thing we're not going to Star Wars, because that could be packed.  But Ip Man 4?  The worst problem we might have is getting cold because the theater's so empty.  Who woulda thunk?  Not me.  I was expecting a very weak entry in the franchise, probably because trailers focused on brutish constipated white guys snarling cartoonish insults.  There's that, but as DM points out it's hard to see it as an exaggeration in the current political climate.

But, yeah, when the credits rolled at the end, I understood why the first show was sold out, and why we just made the front row in the next showing.  It works emotionally, has a great story arc, as well as great and escalating fights.

[Drunk Monk]

And to think we almost saw Cats instead. 

It's doing surprisingly well for a Chinese film with whitey villains.  

Friday, January  3, 2020

Chinese martial arts film Ip Man 4: The Finale grosses 1.46 mln USD in 5 days in North America
Source: Xinhua| 2019-12-31 11:13:20|Editor: Wang Yamei

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 30 (Xinhua) -- Ip Man 4: The Finale, the latest installment in the Chinese martial arts film franchise Ip Man, has grossed more than 730,000 U.S. dollars in its opening weekend in North America with a five-day total of 1.46 million dollars through Sunday.
Ip Man 4: The Finale was released by Well Go USA Entertainment in Chinese and English with English and Chinese subtitles in select North American cities including Sacramento, New York and San Francisco.
According to studio figures released on Monday by U.S. analytics firm Comscore, the biographical martial arts film earned 737,718 dollars from 70 locations with a strong per-theater average of 10,539 dollars, ranking 16th among 73 films on the North American weekend box office chart. It landed in second on Comscore Specialized Top 10 Weekend Box Office Actuals Chart for films released in fewer than 1,000 locations.
Directed by Wilson Yip, the new film sees Donnie Yen reprising the title role as the legendary Wing Chun kung fu master. In the film, following the death of his wife, Ip Man travels to the United States in order to ease the tensions between the local kung fu masters and his star student, Bruce Lee, and gets involved in a dispute between local armed forces and a Chinese martial arts school in San Francisco's Chinatown.
The U.S. review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives Ip Man 4: The Finale a score of 90 percent based on 21 critics' reviews and 1,521 Internet Movie Database (IMDb) users have given a weighted average vote of 7.6 out of 10 for the film to date.

Like with the final Star Wars trilogy, I look forward to some point when I can binge the whole Ip Man franchise over a few days.  I'll add Master Z in that too, so it's a quintology.  http://www.brotherhoodofdoom.com/doomFor...p?tid=4908

Greg still wins this franchise with this pic:

[Greg]

And whose T-shirt did I wear?

[Drunk Monk]

And whose T-shirt did I wear?

That would be the shirt of your employer for that gig.  

I confess i'm so jelly of that pic.  I'd so make that my facebook profile pic if I had one...it would give so much cred in the wulin right now.  

Well, only after seeing Ip Man 4.  But it's probably not playing anywhere remotely near the Lynch Lair now.  It'd probably take you longer to get there than it would to see the film.  

I still wanna see Cats.

[Greg]

I see plenty of cats every day.

[Drunk Monk]

But do you see Kit-Tay-Tays?

[Greg]

Shouldn't there be six?

[Drunk Monk]

Shouldn't there be six?