Red Hill This is what the movie, "Jonah Hex," should of been like. Excellent dark western/drama/revenge flick from Australia. It played at Fantastic Fest last year but I was unable to see it. I like the nice set up here. New constable in town and his first day, he has to deal with an escaped convict coming back to kill everyone in that town for his revenge. My favorite scene: Jimmy the killer goes up to the jukebox and selects a song while in the middle of killing the townspeople. Music starts and he shoots someone behind him. There's a lot of other great moments. Unlike the True Grit remake, this western surprised me personally and delivered the goods. Fantastic!
Every fourth Friday of each month is Friday at the Grindhouse. It's been a tradition for me for a couple of years now. Tons of exploitational movies out there to explore. A good excuse to go to I Luv Video.
Tonight, we have a vigilante revenge double feature)
Vigilante Freaking awesome right from the start. When I read that Quentin Tarantino brought a 35mm copy of this film for the Inglourious Basterds premiere with Robert Forster from Jackie Brown present, I knew this was something special. Great grindhouse dialogue. Some awesome kills. The story was a little too easy, but common on, this is grindhouse stuff here. Good use of music. Big time inspiration to Tarantino. It even has Fred Williamson from From Dusk Til Dawn. He stole the show in my opinion.It reminded me of John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13. It was messed to see the bad guy shoot and kill this guy's son. The law didn't do anything about it. I'm there with this vigilante. A must have for the Grindhouse section. Satisfaction guaranteed for fans.
Another great Grindhouse flick. This one was more sleazy and cheesy with 80's music. Linda Blair kicks ass. This one takes a while for the revenge to take place but it also delivers the goods. I can't believe I haven't heard about this one before. I was just doing research on vigilante revenge flicks that can go good with "Vigilante" and I came across this one. Went to I Luv Video and they had it. Love the cover. Love the style. This one is a cross between "I Spit on your Grave" and "Swingin' Cheerleaders."
Another one I got to add to the collection. Man, badass for the first Friday at the Grindhouse of this year.
The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest The end of the trilogy is here. Long but there was some good scenes. This one picks up right after The Girl Who Played With Fire. This one ties part two and three together. Part one (Dragon Tattoo) is still my favorite one. This is supposed to be the end of the trilogy, but, I felt like the ending could of been more dramatic. The courtroom stuff was good, but, the final moments should of closed the trilogy with a bang or something. This one spills all the secrets this girl had in her past. The first two movies gave us hints and a few flashbacks. Like I said, the first one is still my favorite one, the rest of the trilogy is alright with me. I recommend the trilogy if you're in the mood for a long drama/suspense story. It's more towards the drama side. Now, I got to see how the American remake is going to be like (directed none other but David Fincher). It's going to be interesting.
Red Action packed, Pee-wee, action packed!! This is everything the trailer made it out to be. It was a cheesy comedy/action flick. "She Called Me An Old Man" scene was my favorite part. That's when a few people get blown to pieces. I like some of the transitions using postcards with some of the music. I didn't like the score, though. Some good moments. Overall, it didn't suck. In the mood for cheesy action: here it is. Fantastic Fest Graduate. Actually, this week, 3 Fantastic Fest films came out. This one, Enter the Void, and Red Hill. I'll be checking those out soon. I have a date with Red Hill this weekend.
Death Tube First of all, I want to write: I love the ending. The classical music plays while the last guy dies and one of the host dressed up as a yellow bear comes out and plays around a little bit. Only the Japanese people can pull off something like this. I mean, if it were done somewhere else, I would of been bored to death. But not here. Yeah, the acting by most of the people here could of been a whole lot better, but this is like a B-Movie so it's understandable. This ain't that original. Imagine the Saw movies mixed with a dash of Battle Royale and you get this. Love the fake blood stuff. Too ridiculous. And these yellow bears stole the show for me. All we needed was Jigsaw saying, "I want to play another game." Low budget Japanese stuff for experienced Japanese lovers.
Ronin Gai Alright samurai flick that gets really good at the end. Recommended from my brother from another mother, Ramon, for a long time. Finally saw it. I like how it starts. I like that they kept the violence until the end. When people were about to fight we go to another scene. I thought I was watching some kind of edited version, but, samurai action pays off in the third act. Favorite part: When the guy that acted as a dog to be in the clan gets in front of his boss and stabs himself with him at the end. An honorable act from a true samurai. Haven't seen that many samurai films in my life, but, overall feeling: I thought this was pretty good.
Easy A Nice little high school comedy for a Saturday morning. I had this in my to queue since it came out. When it won Best Comedy at the Critic Choice Awards, I decided to check it out this week. There wasn't any good comedies last year, so I was curious why this one won. It was original. It had some good comedic moments. Some laughs and giggles. Nothing major. It's the modern high school version of "The Scarlett Letter." I like the cast here. It's like the movie, "Saved" with "American Teen."
I Stand Alone Hit the cinematic indy jackpot here. This French film was another trippy ride made by Gaspar Noe. This was made before the infamous "Irreversible." The main character here comes out in the beginning of Irreversible. I always wondered why the beginning of that movie felt out of place? Now I kinda know why. This is not as hardcore as Irrerversible but it does have its moments. Crazy intro. The most messed up scene for me was this guy punching his pregnant wife in the belly a whole bunch of times. That was kind of hard to look at. This reminded me little of Taxi Driver. Messed up times!! Another little scar to my head.
Every third Thursday of every month of this year, I'll be watching a yakuza flick. Love the yakuza genre but haven't really seen a whole lot. There's a lot of classics out there. This will help me explore these Japanese movies. I'll be watching a few from directors, Kinji Fukasaku, and Takashi Miike, as well other yakuza flicks from the 60's and to the present.
We kick off Yakuza Night Thursday with a Kinji Fukasaku classic. I did my research and found out this director is the master of yakuza films. For those not familiar, this is the director who's famous for Battle Royale and The Yakuza Papers series. This movie tonight kicked some serious ass. I was hooked right from the start. Love the style. The main yakuza dude here is a ruthless street punk. Then you have all the big shots at the end in a yakuza shootout. This came out in the 70's and it has that Grindhouse touch to it. Love that film grain. I wouldn't want to see a very sharp crisp picture to this movie in blu-ray. That would take away the grindhouse magic. Traditional yakuza stuff: cutting off pinkies as a form of apology and treating women bad.
Highly recommend this for fans of Japanese cinema. A must buy for me. This is a good start for Yakuza Night. I had me 18 pieces of sushi to go with this. Might have to make that a tradition.
I couldn't find a trailer to this movie but I'll post a trailer to another yakuza trailer by this same director. The original Graveyard of Honor:
Animal Kingdom Strong but subtle film. There were some intense moments. And a little unpredictable. This is not a movie that gets all in your face. It has its shiny moments. Love the metaphor of the whole thing. I mean, the title itself is a metaphor. The mom is the lion and she's there to protect her cubs. A lot of the action is done off camera. We mostly see that this family has a criminal background, and there's some crazy moments. Would of love to see more of this crazy family in action. But it's a character-driven movie. One of my favorites parts: where the mother steps in towards the end and orders to get rid of her grandson. Her performance there left me speechless. Pope reminds me of a psychotic Gary Oldman character. If you're in the mood for a strong Australian crime drama check this out. Worth your time. This is a movie that might grow on me. If after a while, this movie has me thinking of some of the scenes, I might have to add this to my "to buy" list. We'll see.
Buried This is a movie experience that I only want to see once in my life and never see it again. Love the concept. We never leave Conway, we're always in the coffin with him until the end. That was cool. But, what I didn't like was, they made this one a little too dramatic. A lot of sudden we have snakes in there and a whole bunch of objects that appear little by little that help Conway and his situation. It didn't feel as real as another movie like it (127 Hours). Ryan Reynolds don't have anything on James Franco. In 127 Hours, I felt more for the character. He looked more like crap, he really looked dehydrated. I just wanted to give him a glass of water. I also prefer 127 Hours more because, at least, after going through that experience, I can still watch it again and again for the shots, for the music, and the style. Buried is just a guy getting buried alive by terrorists and with a bad ass song at the end. Good to watch once. Not recommended for a late night screening. Check out 127 Hours.
City of Lost Souls Another strange flick from Takashi Miike. Love the scene about one hour in where Mario shoots this other guy and the screen goes red. And the climatic scene was cool. Like most of Miike's films, the ending was trippy. This is one that I have to see again to pick up on some of the details. To this day, I own 10 Takashi Miike films. When I'm in the mood for some craziness, I pop one of them in. Check this movie out if you're already a fan of his. If not, start with Audition and Ichi the Killer.
Leaves of Grass Pretty good movie. Edward Norton does good playing identical twins with different personalities. I know this ain't supposed to be a stoner comedy, but, it would been badass if it were. There were some good situations and this gets a little better in the end. I think they should of expanded more on the idea behind the main message. It reminded me of the Coens towards the end, where everything goes down. Overall, alright movie.
The City of Lost Children Trippy movie. I wanted to see this French film because last month I saw Micmacs and I was impressed with director, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who was one of two directors of this film. Love the visuals. Love the experience. A movie that I must see more than once. Lots of weird characters. Cinema doesn't get any better than this.
This is a must buy for me. Got to get Micmacs also. I'm in the phase that I should stop collecting U.S movies f0r a while and instead collect a lot more foreign films. But, we'll go with the flow.
The second Wednesday of every month I'll see a movie that I am ashamed to admit I've never seen before. A movie that most have seen and it's usually referenced in pop culture. As a fan of cinema, I shouldn't have missed these movies, but I did, and shame on me. This will give me the chance to catch up on those movies.
This month I focused on "epic" movies. I had asked three film experts to come up with a list of great epic movies I haven't seen. Two movies were repeated. Braveheart and Lawrence of Arabia. I then asked about 10 other people as well as my experts, which one of the two have they seen? Majority have seen Braveheart. Only a few have seen Lawrence of Arabia. I went with Braveheart. I don't feel too embarrassed to not having seeing it, but feel somewhat guilty as a fan of cinema in general.
Braveheart Three hour epic. I saw this one kind of late tonight. I was dosing off halfway through. But, went back and made it all the way. Great story. I already knew this was going to be a great movie. It came out in 1995. Everyone's seen it. Never heard anything bad about it. Love the battle scenes and that betrayal scene and finally the ending where he says, "Freeeedoooom!!" I don't know why it took me this long to see it. It's not like I was trying to ignore it this whole time. Epic based movies are hard for me to watch sometimes. Got to be in a specific mood. Maybe, because, I know these movies are very long. Average three hours. Enjoyed it. Not to the max, but now I can say, I've seen it. Been there done that. Next Shame on Me movie will be selected differently. I'm going to focus on another genre and choose five movies I'm ashamed to admit. My film experts will help me choose from those specific five movies.
Note: The runner up for tonight's segment is: Lawrence of Arabia. Need to check it out one of these days.
I remember watching part one a few years ago. This one is done the same way. They used archived footage of Bruce Lee to make this movie. He dies way before the first half. The ass kicking done by the main guy who's supposed to be Lee, was cool. Love the music. Had that spaghetti western tune to it. Cheesy dialogue and scenes. This is a good kung fu movie to make fun of.
Not really good but would be alright for a grindhouse night.
FYI: No New Release Tuesday tomorrow.
The Social Network and Piranha are the only interesting new movies
coming out and I've already seen those.
New Release Tuesday will resume next week with Buried.
Knight and Day This was surprisingly fun. The first 30 minutes were awesome. And my favorite part was when Cameron Diaz was drugged for the second time and she ended up in an island. That whole sequence was hilarious. There's some cheesy stuff here but that was expected. The action kept on going. The plot was somewhat confusing at first. This makes a good rental. Don't let the Tom Cruise pop trailer and marketing fool you. It has some good moments.
Catfish Decent original documentary. I didn't know what was going to happen with this. Lots of reviews say this has a crazy outcome. We find out that outcome a little bit after halfway. The rest after that it's just the solution and we move on. I like how it was all put together. I mean we always hear these online dating stories in the news, some with their own unique outcome when the couple finally meet in person. For the first time that I know of, it's now told in a documentary. Kudos for that. This is definitely recommended. Since they referenced Facebook a lot, I recommend a double feature with Social Network.
If you're planning on seeing it, skip the rest of my comments. Below this picture, I will give out the spoilers to this documentary. So, if you want me to spoil it, go for it. Alright, these brothers started making a doc without knowing what was going to happen. The main brother, Nev, meets this 19 year old girl (Megan) online who happens to be the sister of the 8 year old girl who's been painting pictures of Nev's photographs. Nev and Megan have been dating online and through texts and phone calls for a few months. Nev starts getting suspicious that this Megan is not what she seems. So him and his brothers decide to pay a surprise visit and they travel far to do that. There's some suspense. About 30 minutes before it ends, we get the big surprise: Megan was actually this 40 year old married lady named Angela who claimed since the beginning to be Megan's mom. She played Angela and Megan throughout the online dating. And she's actually the painter of his photographs not her 8 year old daughter. She lives a complicated life with her husband and few other kids. She used facebook to kind of live this second life. She's in love with Nev. In the end, we find out there's no Megan. Nev and Angela make peace and go their separate ways. They remain friends on Facebook. That's the main gist of this. So, if you happen to see this, the suspense won't be there no more after reading these spoiler comments. Check it out, good doc.
The Last Exorcism First of all, I like the story. Mainly the concept. But, the way it was put together, bothered me. It took me out of the movie big time. It was shot Blair Witch Style. Nothing wrong with that. But what they did here was, instead of long shots, the camera cuts to different angles. Even in the scary parts where there's crazy crap happening, the camera changes angles, and were supposed to be watching through the lens of this documentary crew. It wasn't believable. If they would of done that differently, then this would of been a whole lot better.
The setup was nice. I was hoping things would turn out a certain way. It kind of did, but didn't blow me away. I like that in the end, the exorcist finally believes in the devil. Oops, that was a spoiler. Well, it's not a new movie anymore. And by reading this post, chances are, you might not watch it. Other movie recommendations instead: "[REC]" and maybe even "Devil" if you haven't seen it. Both of those are at least more enjoyable.
The Way of the Dragon Another Bruce Lee flick this month. Bought the Bruce Lee collection set for my kung fu section and there's this one and four others. This was pretty good. The story was not the best I've seen in kung fu flicks. But this is an old movie so a lot of things in this plot can be found in other kung fu flicks. The highlight here was the famous Bruce Lee vs. Chuck Norris scene. If you kill Chuck Norris, I think you're considered the ultimate badass. Bruce Lee delivers at the end.
This had me laughing in the beginning but then we meet Steve Carrell's character and it goes downhill from there. He's supposed to play an idiot here but it wasn't like his character in Anchorman. Right here, his character annoyed me. The only part I laughed with his character is when he passed the "I'm Wet" sign to the important client. I like all the other characters and cameos like the two people from Flight of the Conchords. Didn't meet my alright expectations.
[To expand my knowledge in this genre and for the sake of trying something different, every first Monday of every month this year, I'll be checking out a musical I've never seen before.]
The Sound of Music To kick off the first Musical Monday, I start with this all time classic. I never seen this before, and I never cared to see it. So, this was the point of starting a Musical night, to give myself a chance to see movies like these. You never know which one will hit me personally. I didn't grow up with Musicals. Over the years, I gained respect for them. Movies like, Across the Universe, Cannibal the Musical, and Romance and Cigarettes, are considered some of my favorite Musicals. Not a big fan, yet. The Sound of Music was very long. About 3 hours. But, some of the songs, I didn't mind. It's got a nice feeling. I remember watching a play to this. So, I'm already somewhat familiar with the story. I liked the main character, Maria. She brought the movie to life. My favorite part was the first 30 minutes. Nice alright musical. It's got music that reminds me of Universal Studios Hollywood.
From Beijing With Love This was one funny spy comedy. I'm impressed with Stephen Chow. Five years ago, I saw Kung Fu Hustle, and ever since that I been wanting to watch all of the films he has directed. I saw Shaolin Soccer, CJ7, King of Comedy, The God of Cookery, and now this one. There's only two more movies I haven't seen yet. This movie today got me hooked since the beginning. Stephen Chow has a distinct style and humor and he uses them so well here. There's comedy, there's action, and some bloody sequences. Loved it. If you're a fan of Kung Fu Hustle, I suggest watching all of his films. They're all addicting in their own way. And they all have certain things in common.
I'm starting this year with A Korean Double Feature.
The Foul King A wrestling comedy from director Kim Ji-Woon (I Saw The Devil). Slow movie. The comedy was great. Didn't impress me as much, but, it was cool to see this director's earlier work. The story was pretty good. Would make a good double feature with "The Wrestler."
I'm A Cyborg, But That's Ok Sweet surreal crazy story by Park Chan-wook. It all takes place inside the mental institution and I happen to love mental institution movies. Everyone in there was different. People rolling on the floor, others pretending to fly, and our main character who think she's a cyborg. The shooting spree was my favorite part. Towards the end, this gets a little romantic. I enjoyed this movie. The last ending shot was a little confusing. I hope they release this on dvd one day for my Park Chan-wook collection.
