Last Movie Watched Thread

Need For Speed: I think Scott Waugh is a modern Hal Needham. He's a former stuntman who does some downright fantastic action sequences - the first race alone was worth watching the movie - but if it doesn't involve any kind of action he really doesn't know what to do.

Roadhouse?

Captain Blood (1935) - Bloody revelatory. Smart dialogue. Swashfuckingbuckling. Hot damn deHavilland.

It changes things that happened before the beginning of the first film, so I guess all that is out of the window now. Or as much as they want to change, which is the only real correct answer. I just got the blu-ray X-Men box set for Christmas (everything before "DOFP") and watched em all, so it's still moderately fresh in my mind. 

There was a whole Rogue segment cut from "DOFP", so I read, which makes her bizarrely tiny appearance in the finished film a little more reasonable. 

Best guess for the next film - they do some time-switcheroo so the series can continue with McAvoy and Fassbender. 

That was the one where hannah Murray basically wandered over from Skins to play Cassie in another film, correct? 

I watched Stoker and I liked it. I appreciate that seemingly everyone on the Internet has agreed not to spoil its story, since I thought it was just another quirky Wes Anderson-type movie. Good job, Internet, give yourself a pat on the back.

I also recently saw Mockingjay part 1. I liked it, but was it just me or were the movie's musical choices really obvious? I don't normally notice these things, but it felt like whenever a scene needed music, it was always the expected sort of music for that particular type of scene (tragic wailing for a scene of destruction, heroic bombast for action scenes, etc). I remember the first movie had some unique musical choices so I'm surprised that this one was undistinguished musically. Did something happen with the music director or what?

I just got around to watching Ninja and Ninja 2. Both good, although Ninja 2 was definitely better. Adkins is like, uninitiated in Ninja, he's innocent and just got thrown into something over his head. In Ninja 2 he's past that, some shit goes down in the beginning, and he spends the rest of the movie out for revenge. It gets pretty brutal, plus even more fights. There's a good long take where he fights like 6 guys at once, it's awesome.

It's also interesting too, because when you watch them close to one another you notice that Adkin's character has a full on arc. I mean, it's nothing super deep, but I thought it was interesting that they actually bothered to give him some development over the course of the two films.

Apparently Isaac Florentine and Adkins want to make an Undisputed 4, but can't because Undisputed 3 didn't make enough money thanks to internet piracy. In my own ignorance, I had never thought about how piracy could actually do some serious damage to independent film, and not only that, but DTV especially. It seems even further down the scale than the sort of indies you see playing at festivals, DTV action doesn't even get that much respect. Makes me sad. I hope more light gets shined upon this evolving little subset of action films. Would be even better to see people like Florentine and Adkins get more mainstream respect. Considering how decently well more "traditional" action films like Winter Soldier or John Wick did, maybe there's some growing room in the market for more action films of the type.

Game of Death

Obviously this doesn't count as a "real" Bruce Lee movie and it's not close to his best, but this is very nearly a masterpiece. It's bizarrely surreal, metatextual, and borders on post modern filmmaking. Plus it KICKS ASS. Game of Death is hella underrated.

*fires 100 arrows at PatBat*

I just looked up the plot synopsis: An honest and good-hearted priest (Brendan Gleeson) wrestles with a cynical, spiteful community after he receives a death threat from an unknown parishioner.

Subtlety sounds like an uphill battle here. Sorry to hear it was disappointing.

I was only mildly disappointed. Brendon Gleason was really good in it, and Kelly Reilly is a heartstopper. Aiden Gillen, though, was transfixingly bad, for some reason. Still worth watching, but I'd heard good things that weren't fully delivered.

That's a pretty poorly laid out post. Sorry. I was trying to get across that more choice from our legal download / streaming places would be better, and would no doubt reduce piracy, giving more money to producers of low-budget films.

I also got around to watching Wheels on Meals last night, a older Jackie Chan flick from back in his Hong Kong days. The title would make more sense the other way around, but apparently the producers were superstitious because their last two films beginning with an "M" bombed, so they changed the words around. It's a little unfair to just refer to this as a Jackie Chan film though, as Sammo Hung and Biao Yuen also star. Sammo Hung directs and choreographs as well. It's not as action packed as some of their other films are, but it makes up for it with its comedy and other great stunts. Plus the action climax is as good as anything you've ever seen, and more than makes up for any lack of action in the first half. Best part is when a bunch of henchmen are playing baseball in their suits, like some kinda precursor to The Room, but then they get told to go back on alert. Jackie jumps them all, steals their bat, and starts swinging. He knocks one guy onto his stomach, as Sammo Hung jumps on his back, holds his head up, and then Jackie just takes a swing right at his jaw. A really brutal scene in an otherwise tame movie. Like that's a cold movie, Jackie, daaaaaamn.

Great fight sequences in this one. I remember being impressed at the core muscles on the one guy who sprang to a full leap from a reclining position on a couch. He probably had an eight-pack under that shirt. Also liked the duel between Sammo Hung and the fencer as being a showdown between two completely different styles of sword fighting.