Movie Recommendation: Anything by 徐皓峰 (Xu Haofeng)

Adam Liu

I'm Hungry Again
So I've been on another binge of four gongfu movies again: The Grandmaster, The Sword Identity, Judge Archer, and The Final Master. The first was written by 徐皓峰, and the other three are written and directed by him. His martial arts movies focus on the setting of a "martial forest" with its own set of very specific rules governing how people lived and acted, and are aesthetically pleasing and just satisfying for me to watch. I could talk forever about these movies; they are extremely dense with cool details and packed with metaphors and deeper meaning. Below are some selected clips, one for each movie.




 

Marin

Lao Tou
Staff member
I think i have only seen Judge Archer and that was great. Where did you watch the others?
 

angryclown

Jingang

This reminded me of a vaguely remembered story I heard many years ago.

A friend of mine met a famous woman martial artist who had been on a train during the Cultural Revolution (I have no idea the name). The story was that she saw some communist police/soldiers/thugs harassing people, so she followed them back down the line of train cars, beat the shit out of a few of them, then escaped by climbing on top of the train, running back up to her car, dropping in through the window, and pretending to be asleep by the time they came back up looking for the perpetrator.

My friend wanted to learn from her. She asked if he was a virgin, and when he said "no" she was like "Bah! Hopeless!" and would have nothing to do with him.
 

Adam Liu

I'm Hungry Again
I think i have only seen Judge Archer and that was great. Where did you watch the others?
I actually downloaded all but one of them (Sword Identity) onto my laptop for a long flight, and now I just have them all. I just checked the usual online streaming platforms I used to use, but they are full of viruses and other stuff now (actually they may have always been like that). If anyone is interested I'm sure I can rustle up some good quality movie files and figure out how to send these 2 gb files.

If anyone is interested in the process, I use a service called put.io that torrents anything onto a web drive at super high speeds and then you can stream or download that file without the hassle of the whole torrenting process. A quick google search shows popcorn time as a free alternative for movies since put.io requires $10/month. I have been using put.io for a while, works well so far.
 

Adam Liu

I'm Hungry Again
Here are the links to the movies mentioned. Most of these movies are pretty hard to understand in Chinese anyways, and I can't imagine that the English translations are any better (I didn't get the plot to these movies until like my third viewing).

Beware, these are from those sketchy streaming websites that are oversaturated with questionable ads. You have been warned.

The Grandmaster: https://kissasian.ac/Drama/The-Grandmaster/Movie?id=21270

Judge Archer: https://kissasian.ac/Drama/Judge-Archer/Movie?id=27001

The Final Master: https://kissasian.ac/Drama/The-Final-Master.37320/Movie?id=28229

The Sword Identity (this one is lower quality, couldn't find a 720p one): https://kissasian.video/watch/the-sword-identity/episode-1.html
 

quangngy

Jingang
This movie is a really weird take on the wuxia drama, it was a commercial failure but has since become a cult classic:
 

quangngy

Jingang
Here is another good scene from an obscure movie where Sammo Hung plays the leader of a wudan sect and he shows his grandson Jet Li Tai chi:
 
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