One actor a year, Stephen Chow for a hundred years.
Among many film genres, comedies have always occupies an unshakable important position.
Looking at the Chinese film world, there are only a handful of filmmakers who can reach the master level in the field of comedy.
Known as the "King of Comedy", Stephen Chow is definitely the most respected and loved comedy filmmaker.
Whether you are an actor or a director, Stephen Chow's film works have always achieved extraordinary commercial success. People's fascination with him has long since risen to a feeling.
Zhou Xingchi's works are extremely large, and the stories involved are even more diverse, but as the saying goes, comedy is always his most passionate form of artistic expression.
Many people will habitually regard the "Western Journey" series as a masterpiece of Stephen Chow, because this series once derived a cultural phenomenon, and it is also among the best on major movie rating websites.
However, in the eyes of many senior movie fans and professionals, the "Journey to the West" series does not fully represent Zhou Xingchi's artistic height.
Zhou Xingchi's true "pinnacle work" should be "Kung Fu" released in 2004.
Let's take a look at the awards of "Kung Fu" first. After all, the recognition of authoritative awards is far more convincing than the subjective speculation of film critics.
At the 24th Hong Kong Awards and the 42nd Taiwan Golden Horse Awards, "Kung Fu" won a total of 26 nominations.
Among them, won 6 awards including best picture at the Golden Horse Awards, and won 5 awards including best picture and best director at the Golden Horse Awards.
Not only that, "Kung Fu" was also very rewarding at the popular film Hundred Flowers Award that year, and even nominated the British "Oscar" for the best foreign language film award.
is no exaggeration to say that "Kung Fu" almost swept the major domestic film festivals in 2004, and it is also very popular in Europe and America.
If only talking about awards, "Kung Fu" is undoubtedly the work of Stephen Chow with the most awards.
Let's take a look at the word-of-mouth ratings of "Kung Fu" on major movie rating websites, mainly based on Douban and IMDb.
on Douban, "Kung Fu" scored as high as 8.4, ranking 191st on Douban TOP250.
Some people may say that the Douban score of "A Chinese Journey to the West" is higher than that of "Kung Fu". Why is it "the pinnacle of work" by Stephen Chow?
In fact, the rating of "Kung Fu" on Douban has undergone a "counter-attack" process. At the beginning of its release, the Douban rating of "Kung Fu" was only 7.2.
At that time, many people could not accept Stephen Chow's extensive use of special effects in movies, and his role in "Kung Fu" was far less than his role in previous works.
plus the jokes presented in "Kung Fu" tend to be more "black humor", which is clearly different from Zhou Xingchi's past "nonsensical" comedy style.
Therefore, although "Kung Fu" broke the box office record for Chinese-language movies that year, it failed to win public praise.
However, with the progress of the times, the audience's viewing level is also constantly improving. When people revisited "Kung Fu" again, they suddenly discovered that this is a film with no shortcomings!
So the Douban score of "Kung Fu" began to gradually rise, but unfortunately the early scoring did affect its score.
This cannot be blamed on the audience at the time for being "ignorant", but Zhou Xingchi's thinking is too advanced.
on IMDb, the score of "Kung Fu" is 7.7.
has won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", and the score on IMDb is only 7.8.
Of course, foreign audiences cannot fully understand the comedy elements in "Kung Fu". Their love for this movie is more from the shocking visual action scenes in the film.
Finally, we come back to the movie itself.
As mentioned in the previous article, "Kung Fu" is a film with no shortcomings.
From narrative rhythm to camera language, from scene management to character creation, from line design to background music, this is a perfect film.
On narration, the plot of "Kung Fu" is actually notIt is often simple, but Stephen Chow can tell this simple story extremely fascinating and even memorable.
On the lens, "Kung Fu" uses a lot of rotating lens, the scene transition is natural and smooth, it will not deliberately show off skills, and it can let the audience understand the emotions of the characters and the causes and consequences of the event within a limited time.
On the scenes, several action scenes in "Kung Fu" can be described as wonderful, combining computer special effects technology with traditional Chinese martial arts, especially the final battle, the visual effects are not inferior to the Hollywood blockbuster "The Matrix."
On the characters, any character in "Kung Fu" has a distinct personality, and even a supporting role with few appearances can leave an extremely deep impression on the audience.
On the lines, there are countless classic lines in "Kung Fu", such as "Let go of that girl", "A cloud-piercing arrow, thousands of horses will meet each other" and "Who else?" and so on. They are still online today. Popular terms.
On music, "Kung Fu" boldly uses folk music and symphony. Under various film atmospheres, it can be accompanied by a suitable and emotional background music, which is majestic or sad.
In addition, "Kung Fu" also interspersed to pay tribute to some classic films in film history, such as "The Shining" and "Top Hat".
All in all, even if we re-examine this "Kung Fu" from the current perspective, it can still be regarded as a well-made top commercial film.
said that it is Zhou Xingchi's real "pinnacle work", which is not an exaggeration. If
has to find a "small problem" in "Kung Fu", it is that it seems very unfriendly to people who wear glasses.
