Movies you've just watched

[lilmanjs]

Armour of God
The sequel is better, but this one is still a fun movie from Jackie. Lola Forner is darn sexy in this one as well!

[emphatic]

Armour of God
The sequel is better, but this one is still a fun movie from Jackie. Lola Forner is darn sexy in this one as well!

The fight scenes are amazing and the slapstick as well. And what about his car!?

[Steamflogger Boss]

Top Secret

WOW. Absolutely hilarious movie. I was laughing throughout. A few weak puns here and there but mostly gold. Thanks to everyone who recommend this earlier in the thread.

[emphatic]

Top Secret

WOW. Absolutely hilarious movie. I was laughing throughout. A few weak puns here and there but mostly gold. Thanks to everyone who recommend this earlier in the thread.

Now, watch it a few more times and try to catch all the small gags throughout the movie.

[Steamflogger Boss]

I was watching pretty intently actually, did a bit of pausing and rewinding. Definitely quite a bit going on in the background at times. It is a movie I will watch again for sure.

[soprano1]

Read emphatic's posts and decided to watch The Lady has Vanished and Rebecca.
The first has amazing witty humour and a delicious script, executed nicely by the actors. Great suspense setting that unravels in a hour and a half.
The second is strange. The first hour and half is spent telling a common story in these old movies, nothing really amazing except for the great performances of Olivier and Fontaine. Then the cottage scene happens, with the double surprise reveal, enhanced by Olivier's mesmerizing speech and the smart camera work.
Thanks, emphatic, time well spent.

[emphatic]

*thumbs up*

[BrianC]

Read emphatic's posts and decided to watch The Lady has Vanished and Rebecca.
The first has amazing witty humour and a delicious script, executed nicely by the actors. Great suspense setting that unravels in a hour and a half.
The second is strange. The first hour and half is spent telling a common story in these old movies, nothing really amazing except for the great performances of Olivier and Fontaine. Then the cottage scene happens, with the double surprise reveal, enhanced by Olivier's mesmerizing speech and the smart camera work.
Thanks, emphatic, time well spent.

I enjoyed both movies quite a bit. I plan to pick up Notorious soon. I bought the digital of Top Secret. Sounds like something right up my alley, clicking all the ZAZ checkmarks.

[lilmanjs]

Armour of God
The sequel is better, but this one is still a fun movie from Jackie. Lola Forner is darn sexy in this one as well!

The fight scenes are amazing and the slapstick as well. And what about his car!?

Ohh yea, the car is fantastic. Glad Hong Kong Rescue picked this to make a custom of. Still can't forget how Jackie tries to be all tough guy at the end and ends up nearly killing himself.

[emphatic]

Singin' In The Rain (1952), 5/5

Oh, this is special. I know many people loathe musicals, I have too in the past, but the few I've watched has been pleasant surprises. A true work of art like this would probably be impossible to make today. I mean, the dancing is incredible to behold and it's just all very funny and joyful. There's a scene shot on a huge stage with matte paintings and while they're dancing together, I'm guessing manned fans are purposefully blowing a long scarf like it's part of the choreography. There are very few cuts, so everything must've fallen into place for the used take(s).

Trigger warning: Does contain black face.

[GaijinPunch]

Glad Hong Kong Rescue picked this

Are these hard to get ahold of?

[drauch]

Singin' In The Rain (1952), 5/5

Trigger warning: Does contain black face.

It does? At what point? It's been years since I've seen it, but I don't remember that at all, and Google isn't pulling anything.

[soprano1]

Jackie Brown (1997)
Cool shit. Pam Grier, motherfucker.

[emphatic]

It does? At what point? It's been years since I've seen it, but I don't remember that at all, and Google isn't pulling anything.

Spoiler

Jackie Brown (1997)
Cool shit. Pam Grier, motherfucker.

Damn fine movie. I can also recommend this one I once saw on TCM, it's like a blaxploitation version of Get Carter: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068704/?r ... lmg_act_97 The movie is great and you will se A LOT of Pam Grier, wink, wink.

[Vexorg]

Johnny English: ***

Rowan Atkinson does a spy movie, and it goes about as well as you might expect for all involved. Johnny English is Britain's best secret agent (by default because he managed to get all the others killed off within the first five minutes of the film) who through a combination of ego and incompetence bungles his way through a plot by a rich Frenchman to take over the country. As is typical of British humor it alternates between being really funny and really cringey, often rather quickly. Has a few good parts though (the car chase near the start is well done). Rather short at under 1:30 run time, would probably wear out its welcome if it ran much longer.

[emphatic]

The 39 Steps (1936), 4/5

I remember watching this in my adolescence years, and being intrigued by it even though back then, I was mostly into stuff like Beverly Hills Cop. A victim of unfortunate circumstances has to fend for himself and think on his feet. Eerie and funny, Hitchcock in many ways feel like the David Lynch of his generation.

[Vexorg]

The Medallion: **

Early 2000s Jackie Chan film that starts off as your typical chop socky police versus bad guys flick, which later devolves into complete nonsense as Chan's character somehow becomes immortal and gains super powers, basically turning him into your average Bollywood action hero. Some good stunt work as usual from Jackie Chan and his team, but ultimately rather stupid as a movie.

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

I'll never understand why Jackie picked this script... his films work because his audience knows he does all the shit he does for real. CGI and a character that is immortal ruin all of the fun.

[lilmanjs]

Glad Hong Kong Rescue picked this

Are these hard to get ahold of?

His Shaolin Chamber 36 thread has been shut down because of so many people complaining as asked by that forum's staff not to, but you can get them here https://hkrservices.lpages.co/hong-kong ... ollection/

[GaijinPunch]

Cheers

[soprano1]

The 39 Steps (1936), 4/5

I remember watching this in my adolescence years, and being intrigued by it even though back then, I was mostly into stuff like Beverly Hills Cop. A victim of unfortunate circumstances has to fend for himself and think on his feet. Eerie and funny, Hitchcock in many ways feel like the David Lynch of his generation.

I believe I saw this one sometime two years ago. Is it the one where the guy goes all over Scotland running away, then along the way makes a brilliant improvised political speech? If yes, this one was great indeed, doesn't feel like a mid 30's movie at all.

[emphatic]

The 39 Steps (1936), 4/5

I remember watching this in my adolescence years, and being intrigued by it even though back then, I was mostly into stuff like Beverly Hills Cop. A victim of unfortunate circumstances has to fend for himself and think on his feet. Eerie and funny, Hitchcock in many ways feel like the David Lynch of his generation.

I believe I saw this one sometime two years ago. Is it the one where the guy goes all over Scotland running away, then along the way makes a brilliant improvised political speech? If yes, this one was great indeed, doesn't feel like a mid 30's movie at all.

Indeed it is. The speech really worked well too.

[soprano1]

Indeed it is. The speech really worked well too.

Ah, good! If you enjoyed it, do watch North by Northwest if you haven't. It's brilliant.

[emphatic]

Indeed it is. The speech really worked well too.

Ah, good! If you enjoyed it, do watch North by Northwest if you haven't. It's brilliant.

Yes, it is. My wife still hasn't seen it, so it'll be watched soon enough.

Tonight, I treated myself to:

The Dead Pool (1988), 3/5

Very surprised to see Jim Carrey in an early role in this Dirty Harry movie. I bet this was all the rage when it was released, they did some clever political commentary in it as well.

[GaijinPunch]

Sans Soleil (1982)

I'm not so well-spoken when it comes to describing something of such caliber, especially when it's been done many times on the internets (if one looks). Technically categorized as documentary, although this is argued quite a bit (and rightfully so). The point of the film is not to educate, but to entertain. That is a pretty lame litmus test, but I think in this case it passes. A third party narrates thoughts and film sequences sent by a traveller.

Anyway, the hypnotic imagery mixed with the sound (which Marker also composed under a psuedonym) becomes dreamlike at times. It is quite easy to lose oneself in it, along with the verbose, but necessary narration. I'm sure I missed a shitload and will need to go back at watch again. Bonus points that the English & French tracks (which are apparently not direct translations) were both created by Marker.

All of the above is what I would write in general. For someone like myself (and a lot of people here) this is a must see for geekier reasons: it is a time capsule back to Tokyo around 1980 (although some footage at least 1976). While it's a "study" of anthropology one cannot miss the throwbacks. They are few and far between in the full hour and 45 minutes, but oh so worth it. Some manga stands with the latest stuff on display (spoiler: Urusei Yatsura was one), rows and rows of Sony CRT TVs, a couple of arcade table tops, a whack-a-mole clone with moles replaced with office management, Studio Alta's original (monochrome!) screen, chicks in kimonos, a video processor that basically does "early 80s effects" [EDIT: Spectron video synthesizer) , and more.

Recommended, but watch it alone.

[BrianC]

Indeed it is. The speech really worked well too.

Ah, good! If you enjoyed it, do watch North by Northwest if you haven't. It's brilliant.

I also recommend Foriegn Correspondent if you enjoy those two. Not as well known, but pure Hitchcock with Joel McCrea.

[blackoak]

Sans Soleil (1982)

I liked it too, but definitely relate to your comments about the Tokyo time capsule. La Jetee is always my answer whenever I'm asked for a "favorite movie", but I've not seen too much of Marker's other work. Eagerly awaiting the Criterion's streaming service this Spring, since filmstruck got unceremoniously nuked...

Nice to hear all this Hitchcock talk, I've seen a few (loved The Lady Vanishes) but he's someone I need to catch up on. I've still never seen The Birds or Vertigo, believe it or not...

Let's see, for me, I'm winding down on my horror kick. Saw It Follows, which was decent enough--might have scared me as a teenager. Good soundtrack though, not just another arpeggiated Carpenter lookalike. Also watched Kairo (Pulse), Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 2001 j-horror movie. Some intriguing ideas but has that tendency towards conceptual obfuscation/dilution which I feel a lot of Japanese filmmakers fall into.

[GaijinPunch]

Sans Soleil (1982)

I liked it too, but definitely relate to your comments about the Tokyo time capsule. La Jetee is always my answer whenever I'm asked for a "favorite movie", but I've not seen too much of Marker's other work. Eagerly awaiting the Criterion's streaming service this Spring, since filmstruck got unceremoniously nuked...

Interesting. Never knew they were going to be doing something like that. Will have to look that up. If you look there are versions "out there" of The Mystery of Koumiko and Tokyo Daze, both of which seem to live up to Marker's statements "all my movies are home movies". (The latter definitely so... as it looks like a bunch of VHS footage). The earlier is a bit better although the quality of everything I've seen total shit.

I know a lot of the footage was done in the 70's, as per Wikipedia. However, in the Tokyo footage there are movie adverts for current offerings at the cinema: separately, we can see Jaws and Raging Bull, which came out in December 1975 and February 1981 respectively.

The film has given me a big kick up the ass to go back and check out some of Japan's 1970's (and earlier) catalog as I'm embarrassingly unversed in it. I've grabbed a couple of pink films that look promising, but we shall see. There's been some recommendations here which I've bookmarked. Now to just make the time.

[Cannonballs]

Any Joe Bob Briggs fans here with Shudder watch his recent specials?

[emphatic]

Shadow Of A Doubt (1943), 5/5

Apparently, this was Hitchcock's personal favourite among his own films. I don't doubt it. It's absolutely fantastic. Sure, some of the actors' performances are amateurish (young woman at bar) but it even adds to it all. A tale from another place in time.

I also recommend Foriegn Correspondent if you enjoy those two. Not as well known, but pure Hitchcock with Joel McCrea.

Added to my watch list, thanks.