LazBro
Prolific Poster
Posts: 10,181
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Post by LazBro on Aug 17, 2020 9:52:24 GMT -5
The NeverEnding Story (1984)For any parents out there looking to traumatize their children with the ghosts of their own nostalgia, this is the movie for you. It has everything: - Large, unsettling puppets that move in that mechanical, Disney ride way that is just slightly unnerving.
- Child actors weeping and pleading for their lives, at one point directly down the lens.
- A haunted school attic with SO much taxidermy.
- A man making and then drinking an orange juice and raw egg smoothie.
- Travelling montages with helicopter shots!
- The haunting and effective death of a beloved animal that was introduced a full 2 minutes earlier.
- A protagonist who falls out of frame and disappears during the movie's climax and is only seen again during a travelling montage via helicopter shot.
- An unconnected narrator that just chimes in at the end to I guess wrap things up with a couple of sentences.
- So many slow pushes in on actors faces.
- That thing where hopelessness and the death of literature is manifested as a world rending apocalypse.
I summary, it's only 94 minutes long, has a very solid synth-y soundtrack, and will make your children cry. Highly recommend.
We showed this to my six year old some months back, and she did not cry and was not scared, but that stuff is so hit or miss. Like this movie, nothing, but that Jack Black Goosebumps movie terrifies her.
One thing that I noticed during this rewatch, which you also mentioned, is how Artax dies almost immediately. I've seen the movie many times, but it'd be at least a decade since, and I'd forgotten that it's more or less the first thing that happens on his journey.
Great film.
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Post by chalkdevil 😈 on Aug 17, 2020 11:14:00 GMT -5
The NeverEnding Story (1984)For any parents out there looking to traumatize their children with the ghosts of their own nostalgia, this is the movie for you. It has everything: - Large, unsettling puppets that move in that mechanical, Disney ride way that is just slightly unnerving.
- Child actors weeping and pleading for their lives, at one point directly down the lens.
- A haunted school attic with SO much taxidermy.
- A man making and then drinking an orange juice and raw egg smoothie.
- Travelling montages with helicopter shots!
- The haunting and effective death of a beloved animal that was introduced a full 2 minutes earlier.
- A protagonist who falls out of frame and disappears during the movie's climax and is only seen again during a travelling montage via helicopter shot.
- An unconnected narrator that just chimes in at the end to I guess wrap things up with a couple of sentences.
- So many slow pushes in on actors faces.
- That thing where hopelessness and the death of literature is manifested as a world rending apocalypse.
I summary, it's only 94 minutes long, has a very solid synth-y soundtrack, and will make your children cry. Highly recommend.
We showed this to my six year old some months back, and she did not cry and was not scared, but that stuff is so hit or miss. Like this movie, nothing, but that Jack Black Goosebumps movie terrifies her.
One thing that I noticed during this rewatch, which you also mentioned, is how Artax dies almost immediately. I've seen the movie many times, but it'd be at least a decade since, and I'd forgotten that it's more or less the first thing that happens on his journey.
Great film.
Yeah, we'll see where we end up on showing our daughter these types of things when she gets older. Seems like most kids entertainment now is pretty low stakes. Maybe that bit in Toy Story 3 where your beloved characters have to their own impeding death for a few seconds. I can't speak to the scariness of Goosebumps movies though. Are the infused with a lot of dread and menace? God, that Artax scene is so effective, too. My wife can't even watch it. I was, also, somewhat unsettled by the end when the Child-like Empress is staring directly down the camera while crying and pleading for Bastian, the audience surrogate, not to let her die.
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Post by MyNameIsNoneOfYourGoddamnBusin on Aug 17, 2020 12:32:11 GMT -5
covid week 22 movies
Moby Dick (1956) Not bad but of course an imperfect adaptation that can't help but leave out most of the best parts of the book (the regular and dangerous operations of a whaling vessel, not really great cinematic material). Other major changes are the absence of the Zoroastrians and using Fedalla's death for Ahab's. On the former I guess the producers figured they couldn't have a non-Christian foretelling doom (that's the white Elijah's job, and Queequeg's bones notably are inaccurate), and on the latter Ahab's book death would have looked too gruesome on-screen. Hey wait this screenplay is by Ray Bradbury! I guess he wanted to keep only the God & Man themes from the book. Gregory Peck as Ahab makes the big speeches and chews the big oceanic scenery. They found a tall Austrian to play Queequeg, the coolest character in the book by far, and he does a good enough job that I wish the movie were longer so he could do more.
Apparently in adapting it, neither Orson Welles nor Ray Bradbury has actually read the source novel and were just kind of working off bits and pieces they'd skimmed through, so I'm not surprised it's not the most faithful version.
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Post by Nudeviking on Aug 17, 2020 17:56:33 GMT -5
The NeverEnding Story (1984)For any parents out there looking to traumatize their children with the ghosts of their own nostalgia, this is the movie for you. It has everything: - Large, unsettling puppets that move in that mechanical, Disney ride way that is just slightly unnerving.
- Child actors weeping and pleading for their lives, at one point directly down the lens.
- A haunted school attic with SO much taxidermy.
- A man making and then drinking an orange juice and raw egg smoothie.
- Travelling montages with helicopter shots!
- The haunting and effective death of a beloved animal that was introduced a full 2 minutes earlier.
- A protagonist who falls out of frame and disappears during the movie's climax and is only seen again during a travelling montage via helicopter shot.
- An unconnected narrator that just chimes in at the end to I guess wrap things up with a couple of sentences.
- So many slow pushes in on actors faces.
- That thing where hopelessness and the death of literature is manifested as a world rending apocalypse.
I summary, it's only 94 minutes long, has a very solid synth-y soundtrack, and will make your children cry. Highly recommend.
When I was a child weren’t allowed to watch this when my youngest sister was about because the big ass turtle monster thing (of all the shit in that movie) gave her nightmares.
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Post by chalkdevil 😈 on Aug 18, 2020 8:48:49 GMT -5
The NeverEnding Story (1984)For any parents out there looking to traumatize their children with the ghosts of their own nostalgia, this is the movie for you. It has everything: - Large, unsettling puppets that move in that mechanical, Disney ride way that is just slightly unnerving.
- Child actors weeping and pleading for their lives, at one point directly down the lens.
- A haunted school attic with SO much taxidermy.
- A man making and then drinking an orange juice and raw egg smoothie.
- Travelling montages with helicopter shots!
- The haunting and effective death of a beloved animal that was introduced a full 2 minutes earlier.
- A protagonist who falls out of frame and disappears during the movie's climax and is only seen again during a travelling montage via helicopter shot.
- An unconnected narrator that just chimes in at the end to I guess wrap things up with a couple of sentences.
- So many slow pushes in on actors faces.
- That thing where hopelessness and the death of literature is manifested as a world rending apocalypse.
I summary, it's only 94 minutes long, has a very solid synth-y soundtrack, and will make your children cry. Highly recommend.
When I was a child weren’t allowed to watch this when my youngest sister was about because the big ass turtle monster thing (of all the shit in that movie) gave her nightmares. I get the turtle fear. The turtle is creepy. My older brother didn't like the wolf. He had a thing about wolves for a little while and kept having nightmares about them.
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Crash Test Dumbass
AV Clubber
ffc what now
Posts: 7,058
Gender (additional): mostly snacks
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Post by Crash Test Dumbass on Aug 18, 2020 9:54:20 GMT -5
The NeverEnding Story (1984)For any parents out there looking to traumatize their children with the ghosts of their own nostalgia, this is the movie for you. It has everything: - Large, unsettling puppets that move in that mechanical, Disney ride way that is just slightly unnerving.
- Child actors weeping and pleading for their lives, at one point directly down the lens.
- A haunted school attic with SO much taxidermy.
- A man making and then drinking an orange juice and raw egg smoothie.
- Travelling montages with helicopter shots!
- The haunting and effective death of a beloved animal that was introduced a full 2 minutes earlier.
- A protagonist who falls out of frame and disappears during the movie's climax and is only seen again during a travelling montage via helicopter shot.
- An unconnected narrator that just chimes in at the end to I guess wrap things up with a couple of sentences.
- So many slow pushes in on actors faces.
- That thing where hopelessness and the death of literature is manifested as a world rending apocalypse.
I summary, it's only 94 minutes long, has a very solid synth-y soundtrack, and will make your children cry. Highly recommend.
When I was a child weren’t allowed to watch this when my youngest sister was about because the big ass turtle monster thing (of all the shit in that movie) gave her nightmares. That turtle grew up to be the senior senator from Kentucky, so perhaps her fears were valid.
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Post by MrsLangdonAlger on Aug 18, 2020 9:56:45 GMT -5
They Look Like People
An underrated psychological thriller and movie about how far you'll go to help a friend. Seriously, check it out!
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Post by Nudeviking on Aug 19, 2020 19:04:59 GMT -5
Two Champions of Shaolin (1980) - This is a random Shaw Brothers jam that was on Netflix and is one of the few that I'd never seen before or even heard of. Netflix has it listed as, "Sword Masters: Two Champions of Shaolin." I'm not entirely sure why it has this title since there's about 15 seconds of any of the main characters actually using swords. Also I'm not entirely sure which two of the seven or eight Shaolin characters are the titular two champions. Is it the two dudes who seemed about two seconds away from fucking the entire film or the two minor characters who were the only survivors of the spine-snapping, "monkey pole" swinging carnage that closed out the movie?
Wonky titling aside it was fine kung fu action though the story and characters were kind of introduced and killed off seemingly at random so you never really cared about anyone that was punch-kicking on screen at any point but I, for one, am not really watching these movies for deep, meaningful plots that speak to the human condition, I'm watching them for lurid, over the top violence and boy howdy did we get that here!
There were flying daggers, disembowelments, "monkey poles," and a dude getting his spine broken via being bent in half, but all that pales in comparison to the single greatest thing I've ever seen in a kung fu flick and that was early on in the movie a dude got his cock ripped off while attempting a flying sidekick.
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Post by Nudeviking on Aug 20, 2020 19:30:59 GMT -5
No Retreat, No Surrender (1986) - A few nights ago I happened to see the last ten minutes of this movie on the random cable channel I get that plays nothing but old kung fu movies and 80s American action flicks. Having not seen No Retreat, No Surrender in many a year this serendipitous viewing of the final fight lead to me digging out a DVD to again view it in full. Here in no particular order are some thoughts about the movie.
1. I'd forgotten how much of the plot of this was lifted wholesale from The Karate Kid. The evil dojo of assholes who bother a kid who just moved to town. The older Asian dude who trains the new kid in town in secret. A girl that likes the new kid in town who constantly gets sexually harassed by one of the assholes from the evil dojo. It's all a bunch of Karate Kid shit if Mr. Miyagi was replaced by Bruce Lee's ghost. Speaking of which...
2. The new kid in town, Jason, repeatedly visits Bruce Lee's grave and prays to it for the strength to persevere which leads to Bruce Lee's ghost visiting him to teach him kung fu. Having seen more "Bruceploitation" movies than any one man probably should, I have to say that the fake Bruce they have here, Tai Chung Kim, might be one of the worst Not Actually Bruce Lees out of all the Bruce Lis and Bruce Lys and Bruce Leis that populated the genre. The dude looks nothing at all like Lee in terms of his face or build or even fighting style.
3. There are a couple points in the movie where at first I thought something was wrong with my DVD and it skipped a scene or something only for a later bit of dialogue to reveal that no, the DVD was fine it was just a really poorly made movie. Chief among these is the scene where Jason goes to Kelly's party right after arriving in Seattle and on camera having never encountered Kelly before. They make out and talk about going to a pet store at some point together and I'm all like "WTF are they talking about," but later Kelly explains to her friends that she totally met Jason and befriended him over the summer when she was visiting Los Angeles.
4. I love how absolutely none of the conflicts in the movie were actually resolved by the end of the movie. Based on the rules of the karate contest at the end the mobsters should still be able to take control of the Seattle dojo in their quest to take over every karate dojo as a front for organized crime (yes, that's their actual plan). Also nothing between Jason and the evil dojo assholes really got resolved by Jason jumping into the ring and beating up JCVD unlike Karate Kid where after Daniel beats Johnny in the tournament Johnny has respect for Daniel-san.
5. RJ and Jason repeatedly use "No retreat! No surrender!" Yet every single time they get in a scrape they immediately haul ass. I'm not saying they're dumb for doing so it's just that their catchphrase is about never giving up or running away and that's usually what they end up doing.
Anyway if you want a Brucesploitation Karate Kid rip-off with JCVD breaking legs you can't do much better than No Retreat, No Surrender.
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Post by nowimnothing on Aug 20, 2020 21:08:53 GMT -5
No Retreat, No Surrender (1986) - A few nights ago I happened to see the last ten minutes of this movie on the random cable channel I get that plays nothing but old kung fu movies and 80s American action flicks. Having not seen No Retreat, No Surrender in many a year this serendipitous viewing of the final fight lead to me digging out a DVD to again view it in full. Here in no particular order are some thoughts about the movie. 1. I'd forgotten how much of the plot of this was lifted wholesale from The Karate Kid. The evil dojo of assholes who bother a kid who just moved to town. The older Asian dude who trains the new kid in town in secret. A girl that likes the new kid in town who constantly gets sexually harassed by one of the assholes from the evil dojo. It's all a bunch of Karate Kid shit if Mr. Miyagi was replaced by Bruce Lee's ghost. Speaking of which... 2. The new kid in town, Jason, repeatedly visits Bruce Lee's grave and prays to it for the strength to persevere which leads to Bruce Lee's ghost visiting him to teach him kung fu. Having seen more "Bruceploitation" movies than any one man probably should, I have to say that the fake Bruce they have here, Tai Chung Kim, might be one of the worst Not Actually Bruce Lees out of all the Bruce Lis and Bruce Lys and Bruce Leis that populated the genre. The dude looks nothing at all like Lee in terms of his face or build or even fighting style. 3. There are a couple points in the movie where at first I thought something was wrong with my DVD and it skipped a scene or something only for a later bit of dialogue to reveal that no, the DVD was fine it was just a really poorly made movie. Chief among these is the scene where Jason goes to Kelly's party right after arriving in Seattle and on camera having never encountered Kelly before. They make out and talk about going to a pet store at some point together and I'm all like "WTF are they talking about," but later Kelly explains to her friends that she totally met Jason and befriended him over the summer when she was visiting Los Angeles. 4. I love how absolutely none of the conflicts in the movie were actually resolved by the end of the movie. Based on the rules of the karate contest at the end the mobsters should still be able to take control of the Seattle dojo in their quest to take over every karate dojo as a front for organized crime (yes, that's their actual plan). Also nothing between Jason and the evil dojo assholes really got resolved by Jason jumping into the ring and beating up JCVD unlike Karate Kid where after Daniel beats Johnny in the tournament Johnny has respect for Daniel-san. 5. RJ and Jason repeatedly use "No retreat! No surrender!" Yet every single time they get in a scrape they immediately haul ass. I'm not saying they're dumb for doing so it's just that their catchphrase is about never giving up or running away and that's usually what they end up doing. Anyway if you want a Brucesploitation Karate Kid rip-off with JCVD breaking legs you can't do much better than No Retreat, No Surrender. For no real reason except maybe that they came out the same year and the number of American flags, I always mix this one up in my mind with American Anthem with Mitch Gaylord as a gymnast overcoming something or other.
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Post by Powerthirteen on Aug 21, 2020 11:11:05 GMT -5
Mikey and Nicky (1976, Elaine May)
Not your daddy's Columbo episode. Seriously, though, Falk is just so good in this as a guy wrestling with his decision to betray his friend, it's insane. Plus Ned Beatty as the world's least glamourous hitman.
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Post by Nudeviking on Aug 21, 2020 17:47:25 GMT -5
The Battle Wizard (1977) - The first five minutes of this movie feature a dude discovering his wife fucking another dude and getting into a kung fu battle. The dude who was laying pipe is some kind of kung fu wizard and promptly lasers the cuckold dude’s legs off. The guy who got cuckolded vows revenge and the wizard dude who is a prince or some shit leaves with his fiancé much to the dismay of the lady he was fucking around with.
Fast forward twenty years and the prince has a son who hates kung fu. Unbelievable, I know. His dad wants him to learn some kung fu but he prefers poetry so he bounces to prove to his old man that he can survive in the real world without knowing how to fight. What follows is a ridiculously over the top series of events the culminate with the poetry son becoming invincible by drinking the blood of some giant snake and the eating a poisonous frog and then battling it out with the dude his dad cuckolded twenty years early in a battle of kung fu wizard shit.
I’m not going to go into great detail about all the wild shit that goes down here but some of the highlights include:
1. The legless cuckolded guy replacing his limbs with metal chicken legs that work like Inspector Gadget legs. 2. The kung fu girl with the power to control snakes. She uses them both to battle bandits and like a carrier pigeon (she writes a note on the snake’s belly and sends it on its way). 3. Kung fu gorilla. 4. The chicken legged cuckold guy bellowing gleefully about getting to see some incest. 5. A bone that shoots laser darts and the fact that it’s never explained. 6. The cuckold dude’s minion with vampire teeth, green skin, and hook hands like that Godzilla enemy Gigan. He could shoot his hands at people and wrap them folks up with chains. His head exploded in the final fight. 7. A dude melting into a puddle of black light poster swirls.
Overall the kung fu wizard sub-genre of kung fu flicks is pretty great in a way too over the top sort of way. I think I’m going to have to seek some more of them out.
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oppy all along
TI Forumite
Who's been messing up everything? It was oppy all along
Posts: 2,767
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Post by oppy all along on Aug 21, 2020 23:28:36 GMT -5
Tenet (2020): Imagine if the guy that wrote Memento and Inception wrote a time travel movie directed by the guy who did The Dark Knight trilogy. Visually spectacular, heart-pounding action scenes, great performances, and as soon as I read a plot summary and figure out what the story is I'll have a comment on that as well.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Aug 22, 2020 23:29:17 GMT -5
Saw Tenet yesterday, but found it ehh so won't talk about it. More worryingly, the movie opened with a "Welcome back to the Movies!" message... from Mel Gibson. Bit disconcerting, but that's Australia for you, and I filed it under "probably won't think about again unless I'm realllly bored"
So I looked into it today, and it turns out my favourite almost-arthouse cinema (Dendy, for those playing along at home- it's the best/cheapest my town's got most of the time and is like 5 minutes from my place) is owned by Icon Productions, Mel Gibson's production company. Hmm. I should boycott Mel Gibson's cinemas right? Like I'm a worse person for supporting that fucking monster. But it's got a loyalty program where you get the ticket for the fifth movie for a dollar!
Fuck I really wish I'd just forgotten to follow up. Oh well.
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Post by Nudeviking on Aug 23, 2020 4:35:10 GMT -5
The Warriors (1979) - The Warriors is the story of a group of friends taking the train from the Bronx to Coney Island. During their commute they are harangued by skinheads, dirt bags in shitty jeans, baseball super fans, police-cops, lesbians with umbrellas, Dexy’s Midnight Runners and finally Civil War reenactors. The Warriors ruled but it made me miss New York City being depicted as a disgusting deathtrap in film.
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Post by Ben Grimm on Aug 23, 2020 10:17:12 GMT -5
The Battle Wizard (1977) - The first five minutes of this movie feature a dude discovering his wife fucking another dude and getting into a kung fu battle. The dude who was laying pipe is some kind of kung fu wizard and promptly lasers the cuckold dude’s legs off. The guy who got cuckolded vows revenge and the wizard dude who is a prince or some shit leaves with his fiancé much to the dismay of the lady he was fucking around with. Fast forward twenty years and the prince has a son who hates kung fu. Unbelievable, I know. His dad wants him to learn some kung fu but he prefers poetry so he bounces to prove to his old man that he can survive in the real world without knowing how to fight. What follows is a ridiculously over the top series of events the culminate with the poetry son becoming invincible by drinking the blood of some giant snake and the eating a poisonous frog and then battling it out with the dude his dad cuckolded twenty years early in a battle of kung fu wizard shit. I’m not going to go into great detail about all the wild shit that goes down here but some of the highlights include: 1. The legless cuckolded guy replacing his limbs with metal chicken legs that work like Inspector Gadget legs. 2. The kung fu girl with the power to control snakes. She uses them both to battle bandits and like a carrier pigeon (she writes a note on the snake’s belly and sends it on its way). 3. Kung fu gorilla. 4. The chicken legged cuckold guy bellowing gleefully about getting to see some incest. 5. A bone that shoots laser darts and the fact that it’s never explained. 6. The cuckold dude’s minion with vampire teeth, green skin, and hook hands like that Godzilla enemy Gigan. He could shoot his hands at people and wrap them folks up with chains. His head exploded in the final fight. 7. A dude melting into a puddle of black light poster swirls. Overall the kung fu wizard sub-genre of kung fu flicks is pretty great in a way too over the top sort of way. I think I’m going to have to seek some more of them out. You convinced me to give it a watch and it lived up (down?) to my expectations for it.
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repulsionist
TI Forumite
actively disinterested
Posts: 3,635
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Post by repulsionist on Aug 23, 2020 17:29:37 GMT -5
Good Burger (1997)
Seems my eight-year-old has reached the period in his appreciation of comedy where films like this appeal. He identified strongly with Ed (Kel Mitchell). He understood Dexter's motivations and comic situations, but he preferred Ed. Shout out to late 1990s day-glo set design. Lookin' good! Please note that I purposely elide the unsavoury accusations leveled against Dan Schneider. I also neglect to mention that this is directed by the current President (of Nickelodeon). George Clinton crackin' moves on crack in the dance number at the asylum.
See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989)
I only saw Silver Streak and Stir Crazy as a yoof. This is adequate fun with a creepy Kevin Spacey as pursuant villain. Gene Wilder gets second billing, but does more work. Pryor delivered excellent 'lack of vision' performances.
Roma (2018)
Cuarón made a brilliant film. The black-and-white as nostalgic veil. The tender story derived from his own life. The arc of drama, subtle yet taut. The cinematography of Colonia Roma brilliant. The trip to Veracruz made me yearn to visit Mexico. Cleo was such a sweet, strong person (see her ability to do tree pose during Los Halcones' training).
Borras! The word can mean 'wipe out' or 'erase'. I choose 'wipe out', because that damned dog layin' bombs for all to skid and slip on.
Since I'm a griper (one who is prone to gripe), I must say the end titles pissed me off. White on greyscale skewing lighter? C'mon. Still, I was amazed by so much, especially at the ability to get all the outside shots to have temporal continuity. Can you imagine all the people displaced for a day's shooting in Mexico City?
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Post by Nudeviking on Aug 23, 2020 17:57:12 GMT -5
The Battle Wizard (1977) - The first five minutes of this movie feature a dude discovering his wife fucking another dude and getting into a kung fu battle. The dude who was laying pipe is some kind of kung fu wizard and promptly lasers the cuckold dude’s legs off. The guy who got cuckolded vows revenge and the wizard dude who is a prince or some shit leaves with his fiancé much to the dismay of the lady he was fucking around with. Fast forward twenty years and the prince has a son who hates kung fu. Unbelievable, I know. His dad wants him to learn some kung fu but he prefers poetry so he bounces to prove to his old man that he can survive in the real world without knowing how to fight. What follows is a ridiculously over the top series of events the culminate with the poetry son becoming invincible by drinking the blood of some giant snake and the eating a poisonous frog and then battling it out with the dude his dad cuckolded twenty years early in a battle of kung fu wizard shit. I’m not going to go into great detail about all the wild shit that goes down here but some of the highlights include: 1. The legless cuckolded guy replacing his limbs with metal chicken legs that work like Inspector Gadget legs. 2. The kung fu girl with the power to control snakes. She uses them both to battle bandits and like a carrier pigeon (she writes a note on the snake’s belly and sends it on its way). 3. Kung fu gorilla. 4. The chicken legged cuckold guy bellowing gleefully about getting to see some incest. 5. A bone that shoots laser darts and the fact that it’s never explained. 6. The cuckold dude’s minion with vampire teeth, green skin, and hook hands like that Godzilla enemy Gigan. He could shoot his hands at people and wrap them folks up with chains. His head exploded in the final fight. 7. A dude melting into a puddle of black light poster swirls. Overall the kung fu wizard sub-genre of kung fu flicks is pretty great in a way too over the top sort of way. I think I’m going to have to seek some more of them out. You convinced me to give it a watch and it lived up (down?) to my expectations for it. If you enjoyed this one you might also like Buddha’s Palm, another equally bonkers Shaw Bros. kung fu wizard shit movie. It’s got fewer kung fu gorillas but has some tin foil and cardboard golems and while the evil wizard guy might lack Inspector Gadget extend-o chicken legs he does have a foot that grows to enormous proportions to crush fools.
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Post by ganews on Aug 23, 2020 19:15:32 GMT -5
covid week 23 movies
Fantastic Planet (La Planète Sauvage) René Laloux's style is extremely French: rich cut-out animation, freeform jazz soundtrack, nudity for no reason (and not just on humans - the female alien clothing has tit windows like Mean Girls but all the way). I'm a fan of the earlier short Les Escargots which has a lot of humor and absurdity. The way the giant aliens mistreat the animal humans is terrible to watch, which I guess is the point, but you wouldn't treat a pet this way. The plotline is almost a takeoff on Dune - adolescent boy with special knowledge is outcast and brought by a native girl to an oppressed tribe, he fights a duel, and he ultimately unites and leads his adopted people to freedom in battle. Amusingly the aliens who seem to spend all their time meditating are actually sending their consciousness off to have avatar sex, and when the humans threaten this the aliens are forced to sue for peace. Interstitials are full of drug-trip design for flora and fauna. Rolling Stone ranked this the 36th greatest animated movie at some point, but I bet I could name more than 40 that are better.
Valkyrie I've actually seen all of it but the very beginning before. It's a very tight thriller based on one of the real plots to assassinate Hitler. Tom Cruise plays the classic different-from-actor's-nationality protagonist where everyone else has a fairly consistent accent except the big star (not limited to Americans - hello Sean Connery). He does quite well though. Cruise has always been a better actor than the popcorn and Scientology would have you believe, and his best scene here is when he tries to contain his fury that his co-conspirators are sitting on their hands while he tries to kill fucking Hitler and save fucking Germany. Everyone's been in a group project where most of the group is bums good for taking direction at best, but the job is too big for the only person showing initiative. Another good casting job for Goebbels, like Inglourious Basterds. I think it's sweet how the assistant symbolically steps in front of Cruise at the end.
Jojo Rabbit Good double feature with Valkyrie as Tom Cruise's historical character gets a mention. I'm a little disappointed, because I was under the impression that this was either loved or hated, and I don't have strong feelings. The tone is kind of all over the place, though mainly it's a Wes Anderson knockoff. Rebel Wilson is the main driver of the Wacky Nazi theme; ScarJo pulls a Life is Beautiful; Sam Rockwell turns in yet another drunk and depressed but flamboyant and pseudo-redeemed character; Alfie Allen has virtually nothing to do; Taiki Waititi doesn't really add or subtract from imaginary Hitler; the title kid is okay; his best friend looks like a child Nick Frost. It's oddly bloodless. Nobody does a decent German accent. I do admit Stephen Merchant was a good choice for Gestapo.
Queen and Slim Alert: white guy commenting ahead. This was simultaneously nuts and highly (depressingly) plausible. Most of the nuts part comes from the title woman, one of the iciest ice queens on film, prompting Slim's refrain "damn...". She makes just an amazing series of terrible decisions, from antagonizing the cop who's already got his gun drawn (took if from a Contempt of Cop arrest & release to fugitive death sentence), to forgetting her ID and money in the car (she wasn't even IDed in the initial encounter), to jumping out a high window without taking her own advice of how to fall safely, to hanging out the damn car window. And she's a lawyer! Not that Slim does much better, but it does give Daniel Kaluuya an opportunity to put some new twists on his usual "can you believe this shit" face. That is not how you set a dislocated shoulder, I speak from experience. Maybe the most interesting part of the movie is the way three different black cops interact with white cops and other black folks. Bokeem Woodbine as a pimp is amusing. There are a lot of interesting setpieces in the south I appreciate: a juke joint with Little Freddie King that I would love to visit if they had existed in the past 20 years, a mechanic who rips them off, a Florida dude in a Caprice, frankly just the countryside. The idea that the car is hiding in plain sight is ridiculous, the idea that the cops will shoot them is not.
Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey Or whatever it's called. It's unavoidable to compare this to Suicide Squad, with which it shares crummy editing, long digressions, and a bunch of musical cues that are either boringly on the nose or fairly nonsensical. No Joker though, and that's just fine. The best music, as a matter of fact, is the cover of "It's a Man's World" by Jurnee Smollet (wow, this is the same actress as Lovecraft Country? what a difference a period piece makes). At least some of the set pieces are good. The big brawl has a lot of Adam West feeling, and I don't think anyone else has done a high-speed roller skate chase. The Harley Quinn character is canonically annoying, so Margot Robbie's great portrayal aside, the movie tilts on your tolerance of that character. A two-hour focus on DC's premier Cool Girl is a bit much for me. Cool to see 55-year-old Rosie Perez mixing it up in at least her second big-screen comeback ( Pineapple Express was over ten years ago!). Steven Williams, Mr. X himself, gets a part too.
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Post by Nudeviking on Aug 24, 2020 8:51:31 GMT -5
No Retreat, No Surrender 2: Raging Thunder (1987) - What can be said about No Retreat, No Surrender 2 that hasn’t been said a million times before? It has fuck all to do with the first movie because JCVD and the dude who got trained by a ghost Bruce Lee in the first one thought running around in the jungles of Cambodia was too dangerous? No, everyone knows that already. That late 80s Cynthia Rothrock was Goddamn adorable? No everyone with eyes knows that. That none of the plot makes a lick of sense? Anyone who has seen it knows that. I know!
Last year on a trip to Bangkok I ended up eating at the same restaurant Scott and his girlfriend eat at in the beginning of this movie and can say that as of 2019 tiger balls are no longer on the menu.
Blatant Temple of Doom dinner scene ripoffs not withstanding this movie ruled ass. No Retreat, No Surrender 1 wasted too much time fucking around with training montages and thus featured very little karate shit. Not so with the sequel which the only takes a break from kick-punching to do some 80s action flick machine gunning rebels bullshit. Shit is all action from the jump!
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Post by The Sensational She-Hulk on Aug 25, 2020 8:58:57 GMT -5
I watched three movies this weekend of varying quality.
Monterey Pop - I can see how the Woodstock movie came about from this predecessor. I actually wish it had been longer, which is a weird thing to say, but it was only about 80 minutes and you either get a single full song from one of the performers, or part of a song. The festival is so legendary that I'd have liked to have seen more performers and more of their sets. I know the cinematography was considered innovative at the time, but it was sort of weird how the camera would linger on just one member of the band, often from a strange angle. I thought I was going to have a stroke by the time Otis Redding was onstage.
The Two Killings of Sam Cooke - I knew two things about Sam Cooke before I saw this documentary on Netflix, and they were 1) he had a voice like an angel and 2) he died under some very weird circumstances. Now that I have seen the documentary, I can confirm that his death was indeed very weird and I would not at all be surprised if the FBI actually worked with the Mafia to suppress Cooke by having him murdered. After all, he was starting to get above his station, talking about civil rights and how maybe little kids shouldn't be beaten to death and dumped in a river because some white woman made up a bunch of horseshit, instead of just churning out hit singles for middle America. I finished the film rather depressed about what we lost when Cooke died and how things could be different if he were still alive both musically and politically, but it was excellent and I do recommend it.
Jojo Rabbit - So, I read the book Caging Skies that this movie is based on, and I absolutely fucking hated it. The narrator isn't a flawed hero or even an antihero. He's an entitled, fanatical, cruel little prick who never learns a goddamn thing or grows emotionally in the least. Taika Waititi wisely jettisoned the second half of the novel, AKA the part where you lose all hope that Johannes will question and reject his beliefs, and the movie was beautifully shot - and quite funny at times - but it never quite took off for me. As ganews says, it's oddly bloodless. I was hoping for something with a bit more bite to it.
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Post by Nudeviking on Aug 25, 2020 20:00:33 GMT -5
Black Magic 2 (1976) - So today I'm following up on No Retreat, No Surrender 2 with another "in name only" sequel with the Shaw Bros.' Black Magic 2. Like Black Magic the sequel is an explotative horror film about Southeast Asian black magic but other than that and some shared cast (though every actor is playing a different character) there's nothing connecting the two films so you could watch them in any order without missing out on anything.
So what do we got in Black Magic 2? Well some doctors from Hong Kong show up in Singapore to join their doctor buddy and his wife at the hospital he works in. The doctor who has been in Singapore for awhile tells them about all the mysterious medical conditions that have been popping up and how he assumes them to be caused by the titular black magic. The Hong Kongers are skeptical but ultimately learn the horrible truth about black magic: that it's real and generally involves nails and bodily fluids. Like the first Black Magic film, the plot is honestly pretty unimportant. What really matters is the off the wall visuals you're treated to over the course of the film. Here are some highlights!
1. The film opens with a gaggle of women washing clothes in a pond. The promptly get their tits out and decide to engage in some horseplay until an alligator shows up and eats one of them. Moments later an old man shows up and catches the alligator on a fishhook. He then stabs it in the head, flips it over and cuts it open. The old man fishes some sandles and bones out of the alligator's guts and then pulls out a bracelet or something that he gives to the morning washer women.
2. Early on in the film the doctors visit a go-go club. The scene is soundtracked by the Incredible Bongo Band's "Last Bongo in Belgium," specifically the hook that the Beastie Boys used on "Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun." I'm going to be completely honest with you; I was a bit disappointed when Mike D. and the Boys didn't start bellowing bullshit about dying harder than their man Bruce Willis and what have you.
3. This movie had a kung fu fight on a cable car. The first Black Magic didn't have much in the way of the kung fu that the Shaw Bros. are best known for in the west but this one upped the fisticuffs.
4. Also increased? The amount of nude boobs present in this flick. While the first one certainly didn't shy away from T&A there a lot more of it here and generally presented in a sexier manner than it was in the first.
5. The magic shown is by and large less disgusting than it was in the first one. Here it's a lot less "sticking rice in a vagina" and a lot more spitting red Kool-Aid (blood) at a voodoo doll. Some of the results of the spells are still gross (a dude's finger nails all fall off at one point) but the mechanics to cause that stuff to happen is generally pretty tame this time around.
6. Tanny Tien-Ni gets wailed on by an old man with a bloody weasel. This apparently stops her from being possessed.
7. The same old man later gouges his eyes out and implores the dude playing Tanny's husband to eat his eyeballs so he can see black magic or some shit.
8. Hopping vampires all up in this mug.
If you want weird shit and corpses turning into skeletons via shitty stop-animation watch Black Magic but if you've already seen that and want more neon red blood, voodoo battles, dudes drinking breast milk, zombies, and random dismemberment Black Magic 2 is not a bad choice.
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repulsionist
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Post by repulsionist on Aug 25, 2020 20:08:33 GMT -5
Nudeviking, you're doing the Dark Lord's work here. Keep it up!
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repulsionist
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Post by repulsionist on Aug 27, 2020 17:43:48 GMT -5
Miami Blues (1990)
I was missing Florida. I grew up there. I watched this to sate my saudade. Director George Armitage came up in the Roger Corman milieu. This film has some tightly staged beatdowns. Some good acting from a young Alec Baldwin and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Fred Ward plays the homicide detective. Ward was an Executive Producer on this one. The film is an adaptation from a Charles Willeford book that is part of a literary series about homicide detective Hoke Moseley. Willeford's work has been recently maladapted as recent failure The Burnt Orange Heresy. Miami Blues is not a failure. It is a well-paced film with some good ol' South Florida backdrops.
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Post by Nudeviking on Aug 27, 2020 19:13:00 GMT -5
Belladonna of Saddness (1973) - CW: Rape Someone, I can't recall who, recommended this to me due to my love of weird bullshit movies and this certainly was a weird bullshit movie! A Japanese prog-rock musical cartoon from the 1970s about a medieval French woman who makes a deal with the devil and becomes a witch? Sign me up!
Jean and Jeanne are a couple of farmers who are madly in love with each other and get married and because this is medieval times they then go to the lord's castle to get their marriage blessed or something. They offer to give him a cow but he wants ten cows. They do not have ten cows so instead he decides to take advantage of prima nocta and rapes Jeanne.
While prima nocta actually being a thing in medieval Europe in real life is complete bullshit (medieval historians correct me if I'm wrong about this) as a plot device it works pretty good since it causes the previously happy lovebirds to be driven to despair and leads to Jeanne to make a deal with the devil (depicted here as a literal penis).
This goes about as well as most deals with the devil go with Jeanne ending up escaping into the wilds to avoid being burned alive at the stake as a witch, but a funny thing happens on the way to becoming a hedge witch: the Black Death comes to town and Jeanne, after using herbs to cure someone assumed to be dead becomes a hero to the townfolk who had previously shunned her.
Countless orgies follow, as they do, until the lord of the castle realizes that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em and proposes an alliance with Jeanne, offering her land, wealth, and power in exchange for her teaching his men of science the secrets of herbcraft. It's not enough for Jeanne though. When the Lord asks her what more she could possibly want Jeanne replies, "Everything. The entire world." She is promptly burned alive at the stake.
In conclusion, being a woman in society seems to be pretty shitty. When you're meek you're going to be taken advantage of, harassed and abused but if you exert any power or exude strength at all there are going to be a mess of menfolk there to "put you in your place."
With regards to the technical stuff, this might be the weirdest cartoon I've ever seen due to how little of it was actually animated. A lot of it honestly reminded me of the reading segments on Reading Rainbow where they'd mostly just pan across still images while someone delivered dialogue and occasionally there'd be some rudimentary animation. Meanwhile other segments were just while psychedelic swirls of colors while fucking bodies became indistinguishable blobs as dissonant psychrock played and skronky horns blared.
If you can deal with sex crime, boobs, animation, witchcraft, Japanese language and prog-rock this movie is definitely worth checking out just due to how unique it looks.
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Post by sarapen on Aug 29, 2020 18:14:10 GMT -5
They Live from TIF movie night.
Spoilers, obviously, but okay, so the premise is that alien capitalists control the US from the shadows, right? However, this movie came out in 1988, when the Soviet Union still existed. In fact, the USSR is even alluded to when the human resistance mentions that the authorities have marked them for death among the duped populace by falsely branding the rebels as commies.
So is the USSR also controlled by alien capitalists? How would that work? Or are the Soviets the last holdout of free humans on Earth? And if the Soviets are free of alien control, do they know what's up with the US? If not, how did they react to revelation that aliens control the other global superpower? If there's ever an unwarranted sequel, I think this angle could give it a fresh direction.
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Post by Ben Grimm on Aug 29, 2020 18:36:23 GMT -5
Pom Poko
That was an odd one. I'm not sure I've ever been as aware I was missing a ton of cultural context watching a movie as I was during this one. We both enjoyed it, but I couldn't tell how much of the seemingly muddled message was genuine muddling and how much was lack of context. Plus, this could probably be called tonal whiplash, the movie, as often as they jumped between celebration and tragedy.
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repulsionist
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Post by repulsionist on Aug 30, 2020 16:49:30 GMT -5
Ben Grimm, I started Pom Poko about a month back. I haven't finished it. I liked the magical raccoons at first when they're learning their shapeshifting powers. I kinda lost interest once they began to successfully emulate human life.
Other Netflix crap:
Latte and the Magic Waterstone (2019)
Not bad. Cookie cutter hero's journey with capable squirrel sidekick/equal. We watched this last weekend. Turns out the kids watched this again at their school last week when they were there and I was at work because I'm deemed an essential worker (as is my wife).
Fe@rless (2020)
Ever get the feeling that Evangelical Christians are blithely co-opting necessary changes to diversity in entertainment to administer their own ministrations? Well, you might not, but I bend my optical lens to see that here. Done by Hoodwinked guy. Lame, lame state of the art in 2010 CGI-animation. Dull movie that institutionalises dull gamer snark as drama. Just really not that good.
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Post by Nudeviking on Aug 30, 2020 18:52:25 GMT -5
South Korea is on lockdown again so I stayed home and watched a bunch of shlocky movies.
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) - This movie is everything one could possibly want out of a movie: boobs, swords, hippie chicks rockin' out, more boobs, cool cars, lesbians, a Nazi bartender, more drugs, butts, even more boobs, a triple wedding, and still more boobs. I thing the wildest thing about this wild-ass ALL SCHLOCK movie though is the fact that it was penned by noted, serious about cinema guy, Roger Ebert.
The Oily Maniac (1976) - I’ve been looking for this Shaw Bros. horror flick for a few years now and finally was able to procure a copy of it and frankly was a bit disappointed. The movie tells the tale of an incel with polio crutches who gains the power to transform into an orang minyak (a Malaysian supernatural creature whose name literally means “oily man”).
The Oily Maniac kind of looks a bit like the Toxic Avenger and thematically has a lot in common with that movie as well since the polio crutch guy immediately uses his new powers to mete out “justice” to those he deemed to have wronged him. Not surprisingly a large number of these people end up being women (one a woman who leveled false rape allegations against a guy and another a female plastic surgeon who botched a boob job and also gives women surgeries so men will think they’re still virgins when they’re not).
There’s also a plot about scummy real estate dealings that the Oily Maniac gets involved in after the people involved in the scummy dealings sexually assaulted the woman he liked (that wanted nothing to do with him) driving her to suicide. The Oily Maniac’s coworker, a woman who liked him from day one in spite him telling her that he only had eyes for a girl that was engaged to someone else, figures out the Oily Maniac’s secret and alerts the authorities of his murderous plans leading to a final showdown in an oil factory. She sets him on fire and that’s the end of that chapter.
Like I said, I wasn’t that into this flick but might have enjoyed it more if it had been easier to procure. The amount of time I spent trying to acquire it might have raised my expectations a bit too high. That being said I think that the orang minyak is a cool monster to have in a horror movie and it looks like there are a few Malaysian movies that feature it that I’m going to have to seek out.
Godzilla vs. Gigan (1972) - Sometimes you just want to see a couple Japanese dudes in dodgy latex monster costumes wail one each other and stomp on model tanks. I was in such a mood and so decided to check out Godzilla vs. Gigan.
It’s a 70s Godzilla movie so of course the central conceit is an alien invasion. This time the aliens in question are some sort of sentient cockroaches whose planet is a polluted mess and so they plan to take over Earth and live here instead even though they, in the film, declare Earth to be well on its way down the same road their planet went down to become a toxic, polluted mess. Regardless, for reasons that are never really made clear in the movie they decide that the best way to go about taking over the planet is by developing an amusement park for children based on the theme of "peace."
Eventually these aliens use some reel to reel tapes to summon King Ghidorah and newcomer, Gigan, to smash up Tokyo. Fortunately Godzilla and Anguirus show up to brawl with the invading space monsters while a random crew of humans deal with the cockroach aliens with an elevator full of TNT.
Overall this was a pretty lackluster Godzilla flick. I think the biggest problem was that it took way too long for anything to happen with regards to monsters smashing junk up, and when it finally did happen that too was not particularly inspired.
First off I’m pretty sure that some of the footage of Godzilla mixing it up with Ghidorah came from earlier movies which you never really want to see outside of a flashback which this wasn’t. Secondly Godzilla got his ass best for far too long. To compare the final fight to a professional wrestling match the heels got the heat on Godzilla and Anguirus for way to long so by the time they made their comeback I was already bored.
That being said we got Godzilla suplexing Ghidorah multiple times, a monster with a buzzsaw in its tummy, Godzilla gushing blood like a geyser, a karate girl, cardboard boxes of TNT, and a closing theme song about how great Godzilla is that the subtitles declared included a line about his “droopy eyes,” so it wasn’t a total bust.
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Post by ganews on Aug 30, 2020 21:33:14 GMT -5
covid week 24 movies
Police Story I'm convinced Jackie Chan has some deep love for Vaudeville and Harold Lloyd films. He does amazing and dangerous stunts himself to satisfy the latter and fills his movies with goofy comedy schtick to satisfy the former. And the stunts and fights are amazing - no one uses found objects in hand-to-hand combat or shows the hero taking hits like Jackie Chan. These elements don't exactly make the kung fu realistic, but I guess you could say it does feel lived in. The big mall stunt capper was so cool they had to show it three times in the movie proper and once again in the credits. Meanwhile the comedy that occupies half the runtime is broad and just doesn't fit - or maybe it's the attempt at Dirty Harry grittiness in the last 20 minutes that doesn't fit. The movie really tries to do it all, including a Jackie Chan strip and ass shot. It's weird on the ears for this subtitled movie to use only the English phrases "yes sir", "I object!", and "bye-bye". Particularly that last sounds silly, especially during one of the comedic bits with flute music that sounds like a 1985 children's cartoon. The rest of the soundtrack is very 80s guitar and pop. The credits roll bloopers and stunt rehearsals, which are infinitely better than the comedy.
The Conspirator I had never heard of this, and yet it's a stacked cast directed by Robert Redford. Union veteran James McAvoy reluctantly defends Robin Wright, the mother of a John Wilkes Booth co-conspirator, and all kinds of character actors show up: Danny Huston as the prosecutor, Evan Rachel Wood as the daughter, Colm Meaney as the hardass judge, reliable period bit players Stephen Root and Shea Whigam, and historical politicians Kevin Kline and Tom Wilkinson. And a bunch more, but I'm not IMDB. The acting is serviceable, the directing is not very inspired (the first half in particular looks made for TV), the history is not exactly enthralling - the epilogue of "next year the Supreme Court said trials have to have a jury even during war" is all you need to know. It is one of the increasingly rare screen portrayals of proper hanging where the fall snaps the neck instead of a slow strangulation. In a movie about confederate sympathizers in DC and the end of the civil war there is exactly one line by the only black dude anywhere and one mention of a prisoner refusing food "served by a Negro". The whole movie, released in 2010, is about fighting for constitutional principles and not one mention of slavery. It would seem like a cash-in on Lincoln except the latter didn't come out until two years later.
The Wind Rises One of the more recent Ghibli movies I haven't seen. For all of Miyazaki's love of flying this is the first movie of his that I know of to feature any kind of technical or historical craft. It's a fictionalized biography of the Japanese aeronautical engineer who designed the Zero fighter, although all of the plot leads up to the design that came before that one. The real figure was pretty anti-war, but they don't have much for the adaptation except everyone repeating "but we just want to make beautiful airplanes". The engineer's personal life is apparently totally fictitious and appended on from a 30s novel, I guess to give the audience something else to do. Lots of dream sequences which are pretty neat. Most of the sound effects sound like a Foley artist made them with his mouth.
Righteous Kill Old Italians pretend they are younger, but 11 years before The Irishman when everyone agreed that they are in fact old. What a disappointment this must have been for all the fans excited for De Niro and Pachino to work across from each other. It's sort of a blend of L.A. Confidential, Raging Bull, and a bunch of generic thrillers (I guess Lance Henrikson wasn't Italian enough to be in this). De Niro takes the Russell Crowe cop role from the former, a part he gives about as deep a characterization as his guest appearance on SNL's "The Joe Pesci Show". Pachino plays the better-half partner, Pesci's role in Raging Bull. Carla Gugino plays the sexy 25-years-younger cop who likes rough sex with De Niro and later gets assaulted by apparently De Niro - you can bet money that this led to her role in Watchmen as a sexy sexual assault victim who later had a relationship with her attacker. All the guys are asshole cops, even Brian Denehy, the only one to not do anything outright illegal. The fact that there's a SHOCKING TWIST doesn't change that. Go watch Pachino's Insomnia remake instead.
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