Martial Arts Movies

As someone who knows nothing about Kung Fu, I’m excited to watch some Kung Fu.

• Black Belt (kuro obi) has a pretty good story, see it here free: https://lemm.ee/post/35029047
• Hard Times, with Charles Bronson - note that some cuts remove up to half an hour of fights

Man, that's some iffy ranking lol. As a random batch of amazing martial arts focused movies with good story, it's pretty solid. But the order is dubious. I mean, nobody ever agrees with any movie ranking entirely, but Crouching Tiger not being top three is a bit crazy. And Ip Man not being in the top five is weird, though DM 2 would be the only one I would bump all the way down, so it would still end up at 6 if I rearranged things.

I do, however, wonder if the delineated between movies that are story focused and happened to include kung fu and kung fu movies with good story, because something like kung fu hustle would otherwise be a strong candidate. But, I'd also have to argue that some of these could be viewed that way. CTHD alone is definitely story first, but happens in a setting where kungfu is the only option for the martial arts side of things.

And the fact that it's pretty much devoid of stuff like 7 Samurai is another thing. Or any of Kurosawa's movies for that matter. He used martial arts as the reference point, but the number of times his movies have been retooled as the basis for movies without that reference shows exactly how story focused his work was.

Hmmm.. No Iron Monkey? No Hero? Sus.