Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao together again.
I have watched a lot of Jackie Chan movies. He was charismatic, a competent actor, a good fighter, set himself apart with how he used sets and props (probably inspired by Chaplin), his movies had good vibes, and he is the greatest stunt actor of all time, never to be outdone because he performed his insane stunts before all the CG became common. Which makes it frustrating that he (sometimes with Sammo Hung) never hired decent writers. I found it contemptible of him when I watched Drunken Master II (1994) six weeks ago. Sixteen years since the original movie and STILL.
Chan's fight with Benny Urquidez in the last thirteen minutes is amazing.
The last movie I watched was "The Lovely Bones." It's a hauntingly beautiful film that delves into the themes of life, loss, and the afterlife. The storytelling and visuals in this movie are simply mesmerizing. If you enjoy movies with a touch of the supernatural and a profound emotional impact, The Lovely Bones similar movies is definitely worth a watch. https://filmbreez.com/movies-like-the-lovely-bones/
John Woo movie where the themes of brotherhood and honor are perhaps the strongest in his career, and although I don't think the story is as good as The Killer and Hard Boiled's (Need to rewatch Bullet in the Head.), when Ti Lung's character gives his brother (Leslie Cheung) the gun to do what he must do, showing that he finally understands him, it's a powerful moment.
Upgraded this again. If you haven't known these movies for years, you won't understand how important this restoration is. Until 2019 when I watched the Criterion Blu-ray of Police Story, I thought these Hong Kong action movies would rot in the hands of a company that doesn't care or is in too much disarray. Even thought at one complete sets of the celluloid were unrecoverable. But Fortune Star has done a lot of good these last few years. Hope Hard Boiled and The Killer (Golden Princess) aren't in rights hell. I have a rip of the Japanese Hard Boiled Blu-ray from a few years ago, which looks fine. Imported the Hong Kong Blu-ray of The Killer a few years ago, which is supposedly the best version, but looks pretty poor.
The Hunger (1983)
Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie and Susan Sarandon, directed by Tony Scott. Visually interesting, and Bowie's story is an effective nightmare, but feels hollow, like a music video pretending to be a movie almost. Tony Scott just wasn't as interesting as his brother, as much as he wanted to be like him. Part of the seduction (the T-shirt) felt like softcore porn.
I wonder what the movie really looked like. If the moody blue filter was as strong in 1983.
Millennium Mambo (2001)
Taiwanese movie. A young, pretty woman letting herself get dragged down by a jobless, emotional loser who's addicted to drugs and plays his electronic music loud all the time, an incomprehensible relationship, filmed realistically, meaning the kind of cinematography where there will be a long shot of the characters just preparing dinner for each other and smoking while going back and forth to the kitchen. Some of the movie also takes place in snow-covered Hokkaido, as she becomes attached to a crime boss who has family in Japan. I don't know if I even like this movie. Found there was a kind of dullness over it, described by others as meditative, and I didn't get what the ending was trying to say, if anything.
King Kong (1933)
Nice sense of adventure. Too crudely constructed to ever be shocking, but it's violent, savage, probably pre-code. The religious/parent groups forcing movie censorship are awful. I didn't like Anne. Yes, Kong was a monster, he was evil, but she came off as unsympathetic herself, having the same oblivious, merry attitude even during his captivity, after all the times he saved her. Peter Jackson's take went extreme in the other direction, peaking probably with idiotic ice skating scene.
The music as they come upon the island is very similar to John William'sThe Lost World: Jurassic Parkscore, when the team is just beginning to explore Isla Sorna. Considering the similarities between the two movies (even the first dinosaurs they discover being the same), obviously intentional.
I was too lazy to watch intellectual cinema that I recently downloaded and chose instead Spielberg's Ready Player One, and was so bored that I wish I had watched intellectual cinema. Had trouble relating to any of it because everything in the virtual world was pop-culture geekdom in the kind of stiffly animated CG you see in pre-rendered video game cutscenes from ten years ago. When there are no limitations to what can happen on the screen and to what the characters can do almost, engagement drops. You have little reason to care at that point. Nothing that happens thrills when all is artificial and over the top. When the character can jump across platforms perfectly and drive cars with almost precognition and skill that less than a percent of gamers possess. (He barely looks ahead as he is talking to the girl and speeding his Back to the Future car through the battlefield.) Their avatars are aesthetically too alien/toon and the CG isn't convincing enough.
How does the book this movie is based on work? I mean, video games, comics, movies and anime are visual. Does it randomly say that there is the Swordfish from Cowboy Bebop or the car from Batman while the character's focus and motivation are elsewhere? I don't know what a lot of this stuff was, like the bomb looking like a weird face that she throws into Mecha Godzilla. How do normal people not feel alienated by the nerd overload? If you're telling me that it's only for nerds, the budget is too high for just them. Or am I underestimating how mainstream geekdom has become thanks to people's lives being so empty in the modern times?
A man this obsessed with movies, video games, music and cartoons would never be able to create this virtual reality known as the Oasis. His brain would be too stunted to be a true innovator and mathematical/programming genius.
Could have rolled my eyes at the girl thinking he would be disappointed when he saw her in real life, that he wouldn't like her, for a moderate discoloration over part of her pretty face. Try being a guy.
The single "****" that the MPA allows PG-13 movies to have is worse than not saying "****" at all, since the power of the ratings board is so transparent when the character says it.
In all the mayhem and confusing exposition, I forgot why the good guys had to win.
Average. All over the place. I don't know what this was supposed to be about. It doesn't stay on any character. Schultz, Melendez and Mendelson had been making these short films for almost two decades at this point. I don't think I've watched any more recent Charlie Brown, so don't know if they got their spark back. Wasn't even funny.
Unforgiven. 9/10. First time watching it since it first came out. Clint Eastwood was fantastic in it so was Morgan Freeman. Such good acting at a time when movies were at an all time high for viewing. The 1990’s were crappy for music in my opinion but movies were at an all time great.
It's, uhm... good. How the hell is this corny, unbelievable movie almost Peter Weir's most beloved movie, above Master and Commander, Picnic at Hanging Rock and Witness, beneath only The Truman Show (which I quite enjoy)? Free points for Robin Williams?
Kurtwood Smith doesn't have much range as an actor.
The last movie I watched was Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning. I have watched every MI movie (and even completed a PS2 game; MI Operation Surma) so watching this was a must for me.
Although the movie was not as great as Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation, or Fallout, I enjoyed watching the same old cast in action. I rate it above the first three but below the last three.
This year I also watched Indiana Jones (boring as usual), Guardians of Galaxy 3 (enjoyed it), Super Mario Bros. (great 👍), and Transformers (not good). 2023 was a good (although not great) year for both movies and games.
The last mission impossible movie, which i've only watched the first 15 minutes. As of now, not bad at all. Before that it was Oppenheimer and before that it was The Killer, best movie in 2023.
Rewatched Steven Spielberg's Duel, released in 1971. A driver from the city overtakes a trucker in the country twice, who then becomes enraged and makes the driver's day a nightmare. We never see the trucker's face and never hear him speak. This was very good. Would have been interesting if he had made more simple movies like this, but then his masterpiece Jaws happened. I wanted the 4:3 TV version to be remastered as well, since it's a TV movie. I had no delusions, though, zero expectation that he would want to revisit his television years. The disc only has an Atmos track. I watched it with the old mono that someone synced. When studios and labels don't go the extra mile, pirates win.
Tender Mercies (1983). Liked it much. Is this the best movie with Robert Duvall in the lead role? Or is the question unfair because he was supporting in almost everything he did?
Childish. Stupidly whitewashed, rose-tinted American rah-rah version of history. All the slaves are treated so nicely by the rebels, who all speak with American accents for no reason. Some of the action is silly. I don't remember what cartoon it was where the protagonist and Mel Gibson meet with the executives of a studio for a proposition for a movie and they are all disgusted, probably Simpsons, but that scene where he uses the American flag as a spear is why that scene was written that way in the cartoon. That canon ball tearing the guy's lower leg off, they should have just made the ball with CG, because it rolls so slowly that it looks comical. Found it farfetched even as a kid that he knew he was gonna meet the villain on the battlefield, that he could promise to kill him before the war ended. That villain is so tastelessly written and acted; totally lacks credibility for being so over-the-top cold. He even looks evil when he's shaving or shaves just to make him more evil. They had to write the character as displeasing his superior Cornwallis with his cruelty because even they (the creators) knew he was absurd.
I don't exactly dislike it, or I wouldn't have watched it so many times in the early 2000s that I remembered everything, but it's kind of dull for being so immature and simplistic.
Heath Ledger was good. Authentic, I mean. He didn't overdo it. Mel Gibson not so much, acting-wise.
Watched The Peanuts Movie yesterday, only twenty-one minutes of 85, not just because I was tired. I don't know if I'll finish. Feels soulless.
The simplistic 2D hair of the comics looks so strange rendered in 3D with texture. Sally Brown looks like some strange punk from behind. Linus's wild hair in 3D, holy shit. The heads too, spherical and realistically lit rather than circular and one color.
The jokes feel regurgitated, feels like a remix of stories already told, only not as funny.
There are at least four previous feature length movies. The title doesn't respect what came before.
I also don't care for the generic orchestral music throughout. To me it's noise, unneeded in Peanuts.
It really seems like a virus has infected American animation studios' (and a large number of the viewers') brains, to think only three-dimensional CG has a place, no matter the art style. It makes NO sense here.
I didn't know this was the studio that made Song of the Sea and Secret of Kells until afterward when I looked for other movies from them, and that should make me a little sad because it means one less studio than I thought making mature hand-drawn animated features. (Yes, I know these movies are made with computers, but they are drawn on surfaces with pens by hand, as opposed to the three-dimensional computer renders throughout a Disney movie.) This one isn't really for the kids, though, even though it kind of has that spirit. A young girl trying to get her father back from the Taliban and telling a children's story to her little brother. Expected it to be more of a downer as it was starting out, but was impressed. Ending doesn't feel like a cheat either.
Finished the Peanuts Movie in three sittings. It looks so weird. Spherical heads with flat lines drawn in for expressions around the eyes. Empty chasms for the mouths. Look at the hair. Like an AI tried to estimate what simple lines for hair would look like made real. Linus's hair is partly the original lines and partly realism, and the two clash hard.
On top of the annoying orchestral music, they shoved electronic R&B-type shit into a story with 1950s fashion and sensibilities. Several songs.
Snoopy's flying ace segments were too busy.
Story wasn't too bad, but I rate the movie 1.5/5 for the tasteless artistic (or corporate) decisions and feeling like such a remix rather than anything deserving to exist for its own merits. It has no style.
High Risk (1995 film) - This was a SHITTON of fun. The movie doesn't really make much logical sense, that goes out the window. But it is fun as hell. Hong Kong Die Hard with almost consistent dunking on Jackie Chan
Nuke Em High - This was alright, like Troma but prefer Cannon as they are better made and not really self-aware at how ridiculous they are, where as this is purposefully going for it
Jean-Claude Van Damme is surprisingly good in it. The villain Ron Silver basically steals every scene he's in.
But, for something that's an action movie, with Jean-Claude Van Damme, the fight scenes are absolute dog shit. Poorly cut together, paced and just boring.
Watched Scorsese's 1973 Mean Streets again. Very good, depressing, more musical than I remember (only licensed music), but yelling and talking back is a little bit forced, with some of the small escalations happening over nothing.
BS that Robert De Niro is credited before Harvey Keitel, who has a much more prominent role. I'm sure it's all very political in Hollywood. Wonder how much Keitel built his body. Remember he was pretty buff and good-looking even as late as The Piano twenty years later.
I rather like how the UHD looks. Some are/will be bothered by the color grade, a little bit of a "piss filter." The abundant night scenes look way better than before.
That's the old WB disc on top. Was it stretched before? I think they stretched the 1.85 image to 1.78:1 (16:9) before. I mean, the old image is less cropped, but I see stretching too.
Couldn't tell any difference between WB's mono track and Criterion's. I turned off the optical audio on my Zidoo media player a few weeks ago and that stopped the awful stutters I had when rewinding and seeking to different spots in 4K movies too much. I had the optical audio turned on all the time in case I felt like using my headphones through the headphone amp connected to the media player, but I haven't watched anything with headphones in forever. I waited and waited to watch a Criterion UHD because those always stuttered badly and sometimes even crashed whenever the picture went black (I think Blue and/or White by Kieslowski was one of the ones that crashed in the end credits.), obviously meaning that they encode their discs in such a way that the bitrate drops to almost nothing when the picture goes black. So finally I was able to test with Criterion's Mean Streets UHD and was happy that the issue is resolved. Almost comical how long I put up with this crap without thinking maybe having two different audio streams always turned on was too much for the Zidoo.
I like also that WB replaced the CG logo that was on the BD with the old red one before sending this to Criterion.
Played MGS3 again and know way more of Paramedic's movies than when I was young.
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Never watched Jason and the Argonauts (Well, except on TV so long ago that I can't remember most of it.), disappointed to find out the BD is out of print and the only remux I found is dead. Edit: Also added The Day the Earth Stood Still. Need to listen to this vid again and pay more attention.
Shot Caller. Came out in 2017. Its about a well-to-do stockbroker that makes a poor decision that ends up killing his friend and he ends up in prison for manslaughter. A series of other poor decisions gets him connected with a skinhead gang in order to survive.
I have no idea what prison is like, but movies like this make me wonder if inmates are truly forced into positions like this in order to make it out alive.
Ghost In The Shell (2017) - I think the thing I think this movie does better than the anime, I care more about what is going on.
In the anime people talk like Mr.Spock students who have just done a PhD in philosophy. And while it's high concept stuff it's trying to do, it ironically completely lacks the human element.
This movie, doesn't have that problem. It's better in that regard.
Where it falls short is in the visuals are audio. It can't touch the anime, not even close and when it directly copies or loosely follows sequences like the opening, the fight on the water, the roof-jump, the spider-tank, the diving scene etc.. etc... etc.. it just looks like shit in comparison, no getting around it.
The city looks like some shit from Back To The Future 2, really poor.
But.... I like that it takes the basic themes and ideas and tells a slightly different story. And mostly tells it well. Barring a shitty literal anime villain.
Comedy. Band of soldiers after gold for themselves. Honestly didn't like it that much, but would still recommend.
3/5
Wow.
The surround mix was kind of annoying. Almost halfway into the movie, I went into my settings and switched from 5.1 to 4.1, because I didn't like how the dialogue was so in the center and the rest of the mix was mostly more open. Whoever edited the IMDB page claims this movie was originally in stereo. A 5.1 mix would make more sense then, but who knows if this is really true to that or revisionist? The dialogue definitely sounded more low fidelity than the theme song and some of the sound effects, so I'm thinking it's revisionist. My center speaker is too low. It's inside a cabinet and the TV is on top of the cabinet. I removed the doors for the speaker two or three years ago. Just ordered this:
Tourist movie. See and fight in famous European places (masked in heavy color filters), strangely ignored by the police and even generally bystanders. At the Berlin rave everybody just kept dancing as they hacked and shot at each other and then suddenly for some reason they ran. I heard screams, but all their faces were calm. At the famous Arc de Triomphe, everybody drives really fast and nobody stops in spite of all the shooting. The scene looks very fake. Famous cathedral is almost totally empty of tourists so that the society of criminals can talk in peace. As staged as the the action... Nobody aims, takes a moment to steady on John Wick's head. He is constantly exposed. They just charge into his line of sight.
There are scenes I would watch again, but they are in a B-rate straight to video quality written, kind of boring movie. Only watched the first John Wick before this and was not going to check out 2 and 3 just because my brother wanted to watch 4 together. They're not good. Cool sometimes, but not good.
I think Keannu Reeves is trying less at acting with age.
The 4/5 (Letterboxd) and 7.7/10 (IMDB) averages with viewers are strange. I think it's partly because this fourth movie is curated, if I'm using the word correctly. I mean that mostly people who are really into these movies will watch up to this point in the series.
Finished the Peanuts Movie in three sittings. It looks so weird. Spherical heads with flat lines drawn in for expressions around the eyes. Empty chasms for the mouths. Look at the hair. Like an AI tried to estimate what simple lines for hair would look like made real. Linus's hair is partly the original lines and partly realism, and the two clash hard.
On top of the annoying orchestral music, they shoved electronic R&B-type shit into a story with 1950s fashion and sensibilities. Several songs.
Snoopy's flying ace segments were too busy.
Story wasn't too bad, but I rate the movie 1.5/5 for the tasteless artistic (or corporate) decisions and feeling like such a remix rather than anything deserving to exist for its own merits. It has no style.
Late to the party, but just want to point out the absolute worst taste in art by this post.
The amazingly faithful and stylistic art of The Peanuts Movie is its standout feature.
Finished the Peanuts Movie in three sittings. It looks so weird. Spherical heads with flat lines drawn in for expressions around the eyes. Empty chasms for the mouths. Look at the hair. Like an AI tried to estimate what simple lines for hair would look like made real. Linus's hair is partly the original lines and partly realism, and the two clash hard.
On top of the annoying orchestral music, they shoved electronic R&B-type shit into a story with 1950s fashion and sensibilities. Several songs.
Snoopy's flying ace segments were too busy.
Story wasn't too bad, but I rate the movie 1.5/5 for the tasteless artistic (or corporate) decisions and feeling like such a remix rather than anything deserving to exist for its own merits. It has no style.
Late to the party, but just want to point out the absolute worst taste in art by this post.
The amazingly faithful and stylistic art of The Peanuts Movie is its standout feature.
If it was amazingly faithful, it would be in 2D, without this weird realism needing to be added because of the third dimension. The ugliest modern CG-animated movie I have watched. The comics and old animations were cute.
Hair looks like shit and can't even decide if it wants to be 2D or 3D with the faces.
Entertaining movie about an alien who looks like us (because the atmosphere on his world is the same), boarding with a WWII widow and her son, trying to tell humanity a message as the government/military is tense about his presence. (Not tense enough to have more than two guards stationed around his spaceship.) I don't agree with the message, though. The aliens of the different planets are forced to live in peace with each other (by robots that can destroy all) and fear what humanity will bring to their system once they achieve space travel (quite soon). But their system would mean being made to suffer when oppressed (Because, how do they define peace?) or when the only solution to a sad condition is conflict. I agree that humans are foolish and greedy to the point of self-degradation, but find this a bit shallow. Not as spooky/interesting as something like physical instrumentality and the id in Forbidden Planet a few years later. The alien said something like, "Only the almighty can do that," which I found too human and embarrassing. The actor playing the alien was a sympathetic new one for me, though, and the minimalist robot (imposing because of the minimalism in his design) could have been pretty impressive with a few more years of special effects and costume improvements in movies.
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