Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

What are you watching?

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • HELPLESS aka Hwacha - Dir. Byun Young Joo (2012)

    I watched this South Korean suspense thriller without having read any reviews or knowing the plot beforehand & my initial impression was it was going to be a Korean variation of Sluzier's THE VANISHING but it goes off into a totally different direction instead. Still quite satisfying though & kept me guessing to the end. I have since found out it was based on a popular Japanese crime novel titled KASHA, which also spawned a couple of TV series adaptations that I'm going to search out.

    Comment


    • Dream Lover (Nicholas Kazan, 1993). Cocky James Spader's rich, dreamy and on the rebound with foxy Mí¤dchen Amick, full of sly iniquity and after more than his cabbage. Not much of an erotic thriller, it's a slight, dissociative light-Lynch riff on the Nun's Priest's Tale, with red-velvet grotesqueries, carnivalesque fantasies, and Amick's umlauts. Pretty neat, actually. Spaderthon 2013.
      Barry M
      Super Fiend
      Last edited by Barry M; 07-13-2013, 04:03 AM.

      Comment


      • Blackjack - Made for TV in Toronto by John Woo starring Dolph Lundgren. Pretty goofy but entertaining enough. Rips off a lot of Woo's earlier (and better) movies.
        Rock! Shock! Pop!

        Comment


        • THE COLLECTION - Sequel to THE COLLECTOR where the thief from the first film escapes and is hired to track down the killer by the father of the latest abducted girl. These two films are completely ridiculous, with lots of outrageous Rube Goldberg traps (that would take one man years to build, yet are done overnight in many cases) but I somehow really like them both. Lots and lots of gratuitous gore mainly at the start where a nightclub turns into a locked-down meat grinder. The first film is probably a little better though.
          I don't go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.

          Comment


          • Cohen & Tate (Eric Red, 1988). "How old are you, kid?" "Nine." "Nine? How about that." Tense, smart Ransom of Red Chief riff captures exactly the horror & dynamic of a family vacation road trip. Adam Baldwin has no problem holding his own against Roy Scheider; I guess good scripts count for a lot. The blu-ray looks very nice: all-night driving is pretty.

            Wonder Women (Robert Vincent O'Neill, 1973). Nipples.

            America 3000 (David Engelbach, 1983). Enjoyable. Wacky. The big fight at the end is something.

            Comment


            • Rented BROKEN CITY (2013) from the Redbox. It turned out to be worth every penny of the $1.28 I paid for it. I don't know anything about the people who made this movie, except that I like their work. The film puts a new spin on familiar story threads about police and mayor corruption in New York City (although some locations look more like Boston). Mark Wahlberg plays a police detective forced into early retirement over a questionable shooting, so he becomes a private detective. Several years later the mayor (played easily by the pride of Australia, Russell Crowe in his best New Yawker accent) hires Wahlberg to follow his wife (a tired-looking Catherine Zeta-Jones). The Mayor is in a hotly contested re-election campaign, and it comes as no surprise to the private detective that the campaign and the wife's seeming infidelity are related to a real-estate swindle (that piece of real-estate appears to be the same spot where a sniper tried to shoot Popeye Doyle from a roof-top in The French Connection) that may alter the election. When certain decisions have to be made to his detriment, the detective makes them. The film has every element a noir is supposed to have: a flawed protagonist who's going to have to pay in the end, a sense of fatalism, women who are nothing but trouble, double-crosses compounded by double-crosses, and some quotable dialogue that just skipped my mind. There's some savvy writing here, and also some charming un-P.C. dialogue that made me laugh in agreement. The director emphasizes characterization while keeping the plot moving and the action steady, the performances are focused, and the nighttime atmosphere and pictorial composition of my favorite city are neatly accomplished by a dp I never heard of. Mark Wahlberg has matured into a serious, strong, confident actor. His range has expanded a little. He certainly feels his business. I used to think of him as marky mark, but I'm beginning to realize he's one of the few American actors working today who isn't a total wuss. Barry Pepper and Jeffrey Wright are excellent in supporting roles. BROKEN CITY is an authentic neo-noir that is worth your time.
              "I've been to college, but I can still speak English when business demands it."
              - Raymond Chandler, 1939.

              Comment


              • Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story (Jeffrey Schwartz, 2007). Heartwarming.

                The Silencers (Phil Karlson, 1966). RIP, Donald Hamilton; actually loads of fun and way better than I remembered/expected.

                Riot on 42nd Street (Tim Kincaid, 1987). Was that song really called "Uranus Child"? And thanks for making me bother to finally google "rap booth".
                Barry M
                Super Fiend
                Last edited by Barry M; 07-18-2013, 07:37 AM. Reason: ting ting tinger

                Comment


                • BARKING DOGS NEVER BITE aka Dog of Flanders - Dir. Bong Joon Ho (2000)

                  Recently caught this again on Netflix the other day. Ho's debut and it was okay...equal parts satire, black comedy & critique of modern urban living. During the opening credits there is the usual disclaimer about "no animals were hurt during this filming blah, blah, blah" but you really have to wonder after watching this film haha. Bae Doo Na, as the quirky slacker bookkeeper, really stood out as she does in most of her films. She stole every scene of the film IMHO.

                  Comment


                  • The Beach (Danny Boyle, 2000). Yet another movie about Vietnam. Leonardo DiCaprio as Martin Sheen, Robert Carlyle as Dennis Hopper and Marlon Brando, and Thailand as Korea: everybody's perfect. The video game sequence is the best thing in the movie (fake-8-bit Tyger!). It's as much Milton as Blake, I guess, with a theme of we wreck everything, so we can never stay in Paradise, but we always remember it and want it; or, "It became necessary to destroy Paradise to save it." I liked the sudden grounding back into dated reality at the end (SPOILERS): bigass hemorrhoid-shaped pretty Macs and Excite web portal with 5 email messages; so 1999, after the rest of the movie feeling totally out of time. Great summer movie.

                    "Vietnam was what we had instead of happy childhoods." -- Michael Herr

                    I plagiarized most of this review from Scott Ruhl's subconscious. Sorry, Scott.
                    Barry M
                    Super Fiend
                    Last edited by Barry M; 07-18-2013, 08:02 AM.

                    Comment


                    • Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox. DAMN good. Another superb DC Animated flick.
                      "Ah! By god's balls what licentiousness!"

                      Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom.

                      Comment


                      • I saw the docs "Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me" and "A Band Called Death". Both are worth seeing, but the Death one does a better job of introducing it subject to those not aware of them prior to the movie.



                        Comment


                        • NAMELESS GANGSTER: RULES OF THE TIME - Dir. Yoon Jung-bin (2012)

                          I saw this upon its limited US theatrical release last year & re-watched it last night. The second viewing just reinforced my initial feeling that this film is a classic and one of the best "gangster" flicks to come out Korea in recent years. Choi Min Sik is such a superb actor and he is in absolute top form here playing a corrupt low level port inspector who stumbles upon 10 kilos of heroin & decides it is his ticket to the big time. He really got into his character too by putting on a few pounds as he has a noticeable paunch and speaks with a Busan satoori dialect the entire time. A shame it hasn't been picked up by a US distributor or released on R1 DVD or blu ray. I'm probably just going to have to bite the bullet and get the Korean blu ray.

                          Comment


                          • just watched PRIEST. The stilted dialogue and unexplained motivations were baffling. Stupid. How do things like that even get past the script stage?

                            Now watching ROME season 2. It's okay I guess, for a John Milius Soap Opera. Never saw season 1, so I'm slightly lost.

                            Thanks public Library!

                            Comment


                            • GALLANTS - Dir. Clement Cheng & Derek Kwok (2010)

                              A fun & entertaining throwback kung fu comedy flick with a lot of familiar old school Shaw Brothers actors/actresses cast in featured roles. Nice action scenes sans the gimmicky wire work coupled with some hilariously funny moments make this one a winner. Master Law is the one character who really shines & I also enjoyed JJ Jia as well as the lovely Kwai too.

                              Comment


                              • Getting Any? - Dir. Takeshi Kitano (1995)

                                It's been at least a decade since I last saw this but upon re-watching today, I have to say it has lost none of its comedic luster with the passage of time. Just a hilarious slap stick type comedy that is replete with scatological humor and all sorts of satirical pop culture references that covers the gamut of Zatoichi, Ultraman, LW&C, The Fly & even Jo Shishido! I literally couldn't stop laughing during certain scenes.

                                Comment

                                Working...
                                X