greatest hits (and kicks)

Everybody is kung fu fighting in this new Houston outdoor movie series

Martial arts icon Bruce Lee kicks things off with Enter the Dragon.

Photo courtesy of Asia Society Texas

For certain Houston kids of the ’80s, few things were more joyous than Saturday morning cartoons, then a switch that afternoon to Kung Fu Theater on UHF channels.

Dubbed “chopsocky” flicks, these martial arts movies boasted over-the-top storylines, special effects, and dialogue, and copious amounts of violence—in short, a paradise for boisterous fans, especially those acting scenes out in front of their TV.

Now, fans of all ages can relive that kung fu glory as Asia Society Texas presents Kung Fu Film Nights a showcase of Hong Kong martial arts films — all screened outdoors. This showcase centers less on the campy flicks made famous for lines such as “your kung fu is pretty good,” and instead focuses on seminal, groundbreaking, and historically significant titles.

The high-flying fun gets started at 8 pm Friday, April 8 and continues on select Fridays through June. Guests are invited to bring their chairs and blankets to spread out on the Asia Society center’s lawn. Free refreshments come courtesy of Asahi Beer (apropos), while food, other drinks, and snacks will be on sale.

Tickets run $5 for Asia Society members; $10 for non-members. Here is the lineup, description, and schedule.

Enter the Dragon: Friday, April 8
Fittingly, the series kicks off on April 8 with martial arts’ biggest icon, Bruce Lee, and his 1973 action-packed release that catapulted the legendary actor from regional hero to international superstar.

Though fans need no reminder, Enter the Dragon pits Lee in a brutal tournament on a remote island fortress, as he attempts to bring the drug lord responsible for his sister’s death to justice. Dragon is especially memorable for its memorable, mirrored maze fight scenes.

The Grandmaster: May 13
Tony Leung stars in the action epic inspired by the life of legendary kung fu master Ip Man. Grandmaster features stunning locales of northeast China’s snow-swept landscapes and the region’s subtropical south, as well as riveting performances and action sequences. The story spans the tumultuous Republican era that followed the fall of China’s last dynasty.

Once Upon a Time in China: May 27at 8:30 pm
This blockbuster helped cement this enormously talented Jet Li as the arguably the greatest martial-arts superstar of his generation. Set in 19th-century China, this film finds martial-arts teacher and doctor Wong Fei hung and his band of disciples facing off with enemy forces—foreign and local—who are threatening Chinese sovereignty, just as British and American imperialists encroach upon the country.

Once Upon a Time is heralded for its blend of comedy, romance, melodrama, and of course, martial arts mastery.

Police Story: June 17 at 8:30 pm
Jackie Chan spins, flips, kicks, and flies his way into international superstardom with his inventive martial arts prowess and equally acerbic comic timing. Chan directs and stars — and does his own breakneck stunts — in the rock-’em-sock-’em story of a Hong Kong police inspector trying to protect a star witness from a nefarious drug lord.

Expect Chan’s trademark goofball, slapstick hijinks and seemingly impossible choreography, especially in a shopping mall melee scene. Released in 1985, Police Story would become a widely copied standard in Hong Kong and Hollywood.

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Asia Society’s Kung Fu Film Nights runs select Fridays through June at Asia Society Texas, 1370 Southmore Blvd. For tickets and more information, visit the official series website. $5 to $10.

Tony Leung in the epic film, The Grandmaster.

Photo courtesy of Asia Society Texas

Tony Leung in the epic film, The Grandmaster.

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Movie Review

New Pixar film Elio is fun but falls short of Disney's top tier

Photo courtesy of Pixar

Elio (Yonas Kibreab) and Glordon (Remy Edgerly) in Elio.

Pixar has done a ton of different things in the 28 feature films they’ve released over the past 30 years, but the one they’d never done is deal with aliens (and, no, the alien toys in Toy Story don’t count). Now they’re going where many storytellers have gone before, but in their own unique way, in the new film Elio.

Elio (voiced by Yonas Kibreab) is a space fanatic who has recently lost both of his parents in an unnamed event. His Aunt Olga (Zoe Saldaña) is now his guardian, and because she happens to be a member of the U.S. Space Force, Elio finds himself tantalizingly close to communications from space. With a desire to be abducted by aliens for both curiosity and sentimental reasons, Elio sends a message into space, hoping for some kind of response.

He gets that and more when a ship full of multiple types of beings takes him into space, believing him to be a leader instead of a child. An encounter with a hostile force led by Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett) gives Elio both a new friend, Grigon’s son Glordon (Remy Edgerly), and responsibility for maintaining peace during an unexpected galactic crisis.

Pixar has not typically followed the route of many Disney movies of giving their child protagonist the trauma of dead parents, and doing so here is the first of a few minor missteps. Having Olga be his mom instead of his aunt would have altered their dynamic, but only slightly. While Elio is shown to miss his parents, his major focus is on making contact with aliens. Since the film only briefly deals with his grief, it would have been better served by excising it altogether.

For the most part, the film is goofy, with Elio’s enthusiasm for aliens matched by the oddness of the creatures he meets in space. The filmmakers - there are three credited directors and three credited writers - seem to have taken inspiration from sea creatures and Pixar’s own history, as the main bad guy emulates Mike and Sully’s boss from Monsters, Inc. Almost every character in the film is heightened to a degree that makes for funny situations, but not as much sentimentality as other Pixar offerings.

Surprisingly, especially since the film ends with a voiceover from notable astronomer Carl Sagan, the filmmakers play fast and loose with real-life science. Elio’s journeys to and from the alien spaceship are treated as close-to-instantaneous trips, even involving portals directly to Earth. The idea of the story doesn’t allow them to delve into things like relativistic time dilation, but there still could have been other scientific references to keep the story aboveboard.

There are very few stars to be found among the film’s voice cast other than Saldaña and Garrett, who are each fine if unmemorable. Kibreab and Edgerly are given many more scenes than anyone else, and they each do a great job of bringing out both the joy and naivete of their characters. Some lesser-known actors like Jameela Jamil, Atsuko Okatsuka, and Brendan Hunt show up in minor roles, but they don’t stand out in any way.

The story and characters in Elio are sweet and fun, but the film as a whole falls well short of the top tier Pixar movies. The filmmakers could have gone many different directions with a story about a boy who wants to be abducted by aliens, and the way they chose ended up being innocuous and less than compelling.

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Elio opens in theaters on June 20.

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