Fearless review

 Number 597 on the top 1000 films of all time is the Hong Kong Wuxia film 'Fearless.'

Fearless tells the true-life story of martial arts legend Huo Yuanjia (Jet Li.) He became a hero across China by restoring national pride after China lost cultural status to Europe, the US and Russia in the dying years of the Qing Dynasty.

Wuxia films have never been my thing. Although they always look great with terrific fight choreography and beautiful cinematography like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon or Hero - also starring Jet Li. I've always found the storylines lacking. The exception might be IP Man, but it wasn't as good.

I think much of this was down to the character of Huo Yuanjia who wasn't as interesting as he could have been. The film started a little too early in his life as we see the effect his father had on his life. It was important backstory that fed into Yuanjia's motivations, but it could have been excised. It removed too much focus from Yuanjia.

This wasn't necessarily the fault of Jet Li, but of the direction of Ronny Yu. Jet Li was perfectly fine as the hero of this film and at least Fearless had more forward momentum than Jet Li's earlier martial arts epic 'Hero.' Although, a bit like IP man, the villains could have used more work. The actors they hired to play the foreign fighters were cliched to the max.

Like I said, I'm not a big fan of Wuxia films and I'm not sure that Fearless is going to do anything to change that.

Shine film

 Number 593 on the top 1000 films of all time is the musical biopic 'Shine.'

Shine ells the true-life story of famed Australian pianist David Helfgott from his childhood to the start of his career, where he was played by Noah Taylor, to his eventual mental breakdown where Geoffrey Rush took over the mantle.

Shine is perhaps best-known for its success at the 69th Academy awards where it generated seven nominations and one win. Armin Mueller-Stahl was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for playing David's tyrannical father Peter. For playing David, Geoffrey Rush took home the Best Actor gong.

Sure Rush was great, but did he shine enough to merit an Oscar? I'm not so sure. And I think that's more because he wasn't given a chance to shine. He shared the role of David with Noah Taylor and I'd argue that Taylor dominated the role. He had the more interesting parts. We see the fledgling beginnings of David's career, his tempestuous relationship with his father - more on that later - and the beginnings of David's breakdown. Rush takes over the latter half of the film, as we see David's life post-breakdown. It wasn't as interesting. Noah Taylor was more deserving of the Oscar nod, not because of the difference in acting quality, but in screen-time ratio.

However, Armin Mueller-Stahl was well-deserving of his Best Supporting Actor nomination. He cut a well-intentioned if misguided father figure trying to live out his failed dreams through his children. A toxic parent, but a great performance. Ultimately, Mueller-Stahl lost to Cuba Gooding Jr in Jerry Maguire, but this was still a memorable performance.

In some ways, Shine reminded me of Ron Howard's later film 'A Beautiful Mind,' which explored similar tortured genius mathematician John Nash. Although David was a more likable character and the plus side of having two actors portray him was that we got a well-rounded, three-dimensional character.

I'm not sure if Shine shone bright enough to be truly Oscar-worthy, but it was a good film nonetheless.