Movies you've just watched

[BIL]

Ran (1985)

This one lived up to it's title. Quite the shit show, in a good way. One day I'll find out why all blood in Japanese cinema is so damn bright.

Grand movie. Hard to pick between this and Throne of Blood for Samurai Shakespeare. Tatsuya Nakadai is cool! Speaking of blood, Kurosawa and Nakadai (ending spoilers for Sanjuro), I wonder what this gushing outrage looked like in colour.

[Squire Grooktook]

Ran is the only Kurosawa film I've seen, and as soon as I finished I ran out and bought all the other ones (which I haven't had time to watch yet unfortunately, rainy day etc.)

Absolutely glued to the screen the whole time, and had to rewatch immediately after.

[Mischief Maker]

Ran is the only Kurosawa film I've seen, and as soon as I finished I ran out and bought all the other ones (which I haven't had time to watch yet unfortunately, rainy day etc.)

Absolutely glued to the screen the whole time, and had to rewatch immediately after.

It's hard to go wrong by starting with Seven Samurai. It ain't called the crown jewel of classic Japanese cinema for nothing. And don't let the length intimidate you, it has an intermission.

Hidden Fortress is worth watching to realize why none of the Star Wars movies have been any good since the original trilogy.

It's also worth watching Yojimbo and Sergio Leone's "Fist Full of Dollars" back-to-back. (Don't give Kurosawa all the credit, the plot was borrowed from an American Hard Boiled Detective story "Red Harvest")

As for the gushing in Sanjuro, that film was a spoof/deconstruction of Samurai movie cliches.

[BIL]

^ It is indeed, though even Kurosawa himself was said to have been shocked by the fire hydrant effect. I would call it what Werner Herzog termed "inexplicable magic of cinema."

[it290]

Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter

Not a bad late-era Hammer romp here at all. A devilish vampiric plot stirs in a remote English village, and only Kronos and his stalwart hunchback friend Professor Hieronymus Grost are here to save the day. Features a prime appearance by Caroline Munro (rrroowar) and some rather choice bits of dialogue—my personal favorite being:

What he doesn't know about vampires, you couldn't put in a flea's codpiece.

[dan76]

Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter

Not a bad late-era Hammer romp here at all. A devilish vampiric plot stirs in a remote English village, and only Kronos and his stalwart hunchback friend Professor Hieronymus Grost are here to save the day. Features a prime appearance by Caroline Munro (rrroowar) and some rather choice bits of dialogue—my personal favorite being:

What he doesn't know about vampires, you couldn't put in a flea's codpiece.

Weird, I just watched this too. It was on YouTube, pretty good, it was supposed to be the first if a series of films but they never happened. Kronos is cool, the hair, and Caroline Munro....

On a side note, when I first moved to London in the 90's I met Caroline Munro at a supermarket. I went running up to her and exclaimed "you're Caroline Munro!" To which she replied, "why, yes I am". I chatted to her about Star Crash and Joe Spinell (he was "lovely") and pushed her trolley to the car. Rock and roll.

[GaijinPunch]

I never thought much of Aguirre, Klaus Kinski as.... Klaus Kinski.

Again, knowing only of his shenanigans from this thread a week or two prior, that's what it felt like.

Grand movie. Hard to pick between this and Throne of Blood for Samurai Shakespeare. Tatsuya Nakadai is cool!

Will have to check Throne of Blood. I've got quite the watch list for old Japanese films. This one was pretty damn dope. And yes, Tatsuya Nakadai is fantastic in just about all of it!

It's hard to go wrong by starting with Seven Samurai. It ain't called the crown jewel of classic Japanese cinema for nothing. And don't let the length intimidate you, it has an intermission.

I watched this on my last sick day... when I threw out my fucking back. How's that for aging gracefully?

[it290]

On a side note, when I first moved to London in the 90's I met Caroline Munro at a supermarket. I went running up to her and exclaimed "you're Caroline Munro!" To which she replied, "why, yes I am". I chatted to her about Star Crash and Joe Spinell (he was "lovely") and pushed her trolley to the car. Rock and roll.

Whoa, awesome! Have to say had it been me in your shoes my line would likely have been every bit as pithy

[Steamflogger Boss]

Ran is the only Kurosawa film I've seen, and as soon as I finished I ran out and bought all the other ones (which I haven't had time to watch yet unfortunately, rainy day etc.)

Absolutely glued to the screen the whole time, and had to rewatch immediately after.

It's hard to go wrong by starting with Seven Samurai. It ain't called the crown jewel of classic Japanese cinema for nothing. And don't let the length intimidate you, it has an intermission.

Yar. Great flick. It's a movie that is worthy of multiple viewings to pick up on all the nuances. Which is saying a lot given the run time you already mentioned.

Hidden Fortress is worth watching to realize why none of the Star Wars movies have been any good since the original trilogy.

I'd agree with this. Honestly they should have left Star Wars alone and never made the PT. The story was told, but money and shit. Whenever I watch through the OT I think about watching more and just stop myself.

It's also worth watching Yojimbo and Sergio Leone's "Fist Full of Dollars" back-to-back. (Don't give Kurosawa all the credit, the plot was borrowed from an American Hard Boiled Detective story "Red Harvest")

As for the gushing in Sanjuro, that film was a spoof/deconstruction of Samurai movie cliches.

All 5 are good movies.

@GP: Yeah dude definitely watch Throne of Blood.

[Jonny2x4]

Highlander II: The Quickening - Got this as part of a cheap 5-movie pack that had all the Highlander movies on 2 DVD discs. For years, I deliberately avoided it since I really liked the first one as a kid and didn't want to ruin my image of it, since I already heard II was pretty bad. I'm not as attached the franchise as once was, so I decided to get it just to see if it's a bad as they claim it is.

The version that came with the collection is apparently a third cut of the movie released on DVD in 2004, following the 1995 "Renegade Version" and the original theatrical cut, which is akin to polishing a turd twice. Most of the changes basically revolve around re-editing and redubbing parts of the movie in order to change the origins of the immortals from space aliens to time travelers from the past, which shows how tone deaf the producers were when they seriously thought that the Highlander being an alien was the only issue people had with the story (if anything, this retcon of a retcon makes even less sense). The fact that they even bothered to make a "Renegade Version" when they already made a replacement sequel that undoes the second movie anyway is even more baffling.

I seriously wonder if anyone even read the final script before they gave the go-ahead for shooting. Did they even have a script? Did the screenwriters even saw the first movie or did they just have some vague idea about it? At some point, the actors and director (since it's the same guy who directed the first one) must've realized the story they were given was rubbish, because they stop taking it seriously at some point and they end up pointing all the plot holes throughout the course of the movie. Everything with Sean Connery is just comic relief and he dies as cheaply as he comes back and Michael Ironside, who is supposed to be a threatening villain named General Katana, hams it up. There is a scene where he kills a bunch of innocent civilians by driving a train too fast, but unlike the scene in the first movie where the Kurgan kidnaps Connor's girlfriends and ends up driving over a bunch of pedestrians, it ends up being more funny than scary.

It's a rubbish movie that shits all over the original, but it's actually enjoyable if you think of it as a parody.

[NYN]

Aye, the second 'lander is a travesty. Romps in the same vein as 2010- the sequel to 2001. I'm not in the habit to wonder what exactly elected people to give it a go. Greed maybe. To be attached to something great, even in a shell of a husk? There's another example in that same stack I can't seem to remember. Excorcist II: The Heretic maybe, though I haven't seen that. That's the wrong kind of spooky as a premise.

[GaijinPunch]

@GP: Yeah dude definitely watch Throne of Blood.

Kinda like the original title: Spider Web Castle. Added to ye old watch list.

[drauch]

On a side note, when I first moved to London in the 90's I met Caroline Munro at a supermarket. I went running up to her and exclaimed "you're Caroline Munro!" To which she replied, "why, yes I am". I chatted to her about Star Crash and Joe Spinell (he was "lovely") and pushed her trolley to the car. Rock and roll.

Damn man, jealous. Love all her movies, especially Starcrash.

[Jonny2x4]

Aye, the second 'lander is a travesty. Romps in the same vein as 2010- the sequel to 2001. I'm not in the habit to wonder what exactly elected people to give it a go. Greed maybe. To be attached to something great, even in a shell of a husk? There's another example in that same stack I can't seem to remember. Excorcist II: The Heretic maybe, though I haven't seen that. That's the wrong kind of spooky as a premise.

The funniest thing about Highlander II is that no one involved wants to take responsibility for it. The producers, Panzer & Davis, claimed that the sequel only existed because of demands from video distributors and they were reluctant to make a sequel at first, even though they kept trying to turn Highlander into a cash-cow franchise after the second movie and ended up making even more bad sequels, while the director blames the funding company that took over the production of the movie after they ran out of budget, even though most of the movie's bad ideas were already in place before they took over (since they didn't actually film any new material).

If you think about it though, introducing immortals from space was pretty much the only way you could've kept the story going besides going for the safer prequel route. Connor already beheaded every immortal on Earth, so why not have him behead other immortals from other planets too? Have it set thousands of years in the future where inter-planetary travel is possible and make it into a space fantasy like Star Wars or something, but still have the Highlander as an immortal from Earth instead of adding the convoluted Zeist backstory. I'm guessing they didn't have enough budget to film alien planets though.

If nothing else, Highlander II is probably the most memorable of all the sequels, if only for all the wrong reasons. I've never seen Highlander III (aka "Highlander: Too Many Alternate Titles To Keep Track Of") but from what I read, it seems to be an overly safe rehash of the first movie and I remember being disappointed at Endgame since the TV ads had the antagonist doing a bunch of crazy superpowered shit that made him look like the franchise's ultimate final boss, but in the actual movie he's just another angry guy with a sword like every other Highlander bad guy.

I always forget that there was a sequel to 2001. Must've been pretty bad or forgettable, since it rarely gets brought up (although the review on Blu-ray.com seems pretty positive).

[drauch]

I really like the sequel myself. I'm not too partial to 2001; I like it, not love it, so it was easy to distance myself and not constantly compare it. 2010 is quite pretty and even a bit creepy; it's really solid space exploration. I think it's largely forgotten simply because people just haven't watched it--that, and Kubrick fans are absolutely nutzoid.

[EmperorIng]

Excorcist II: The Heretic maybe, though I haven't seen that. That's the wrong kind of spooky as a premise.

I have the blu-ray coming in the mail. I'm looking forward to it. I can't hate John Boorman. The movie strikes me as an exorcism-flavored Zardoz, rife with insanity.

[BIL]

Although I've never seen it, Highlander II has an odd footnote in my childhood. For whatever reason EGM ran a glowing preview of it... so I grew up assuming it had some merit and forgot all about it. A couple decades later I learn it's a legendary shitmovie. I want to track down that old issue just to puzzle out why it was there. Terminator 2 got coverage as well, for obvious reasons with all the game tie-ins.

EDIT: ah, here we go. Elect6ronic Gaming Monthly #17.

Highlander 2 sounds like it may be better than the first!!

Spoiler

"Precision cuts across the neck" lmao

OMAKE#1 TG16 Ninja Spirit

Spoiler

OMAKE#2 Shadow of Teh Ninja

Spoiler

Yo, fuck a sweepstakes! I would play those games FO FREE! LMAO @ Ninja Spirit score competition, more like big boobs milkathon. TG16 ver don't even have a time limit! Shoulda been a no-miss decided by time! For a tie-break, fly the players to EGM HQ for an IRL ninja fight to the death in the parking lot. An unrivalled extravaganza of science-fiction and fantasy!

[Mischief Maker]

When talking about Highlander 2, I'm reminded of a comment a friend once made in their review of Best Worst Movie:

Troll 2 gets called the worst movie of all time, but it can’t be the worst movie of all time because it’s not boring and it has tons of fans. [...] This is a complaint that I’ve always had with the people that call Ed Wood a bad filmmaker. Watch Glen Or Glenda? sometime, and then watch The Story of Us some time, and ask yourself which one you would ever watch again. QUESTION: Does that mean that Rob Reiner is the worst filmmaker of all time, because he made a movie that was worse than a movie made by history’s worst director?

On the same lines, while Highlander 2 has the worst reputation of the (universally) terrible Highlander sequels, it's the only one I'd ever rewatch with even a flicker of enthusiasm.

While fans of the first movie will note that the ending leaves the possibilities of a sequel hard to find, the creative force behind the sequel...

This is a factual statement. For all its flaws, the last thing you can accuse Highlander 2 of is a lack of creativity. Watch it blind and stay away from the Renegade Cut.

[EmperorIng]

Yeah, I agree in that. If you are going to watch Highlander 2, avoid all the recuts that try to make it something it's not. Unfortunately the original version can be hard to find. They had a lot of weird ideas with the sequel and they all prove that some things don't need a sequel, but Highlander 2's failures are not due to a lack of 'trying,' ha ha. I feel similarly about the Super Mario Bros. movie. Everyone says it's "so bad," but surface-level mouth breathers can never really go past internet programming to enjoy something.

Highlander 3 is, in my opinion, kind of lame. It has a few fun scenes but mostly it is the same movie as the first!

[BIL]

On the subject of classic Japanese cinema (｀ω´メ)



Contains ending spoilers for Sanjuro and The Human Condition:

Spoiler

Great interview with Tatsuya Nakadai for Criterion, on Kurosawa and four other renowned directors.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=YVvx9jQ5FcM

Besides lots of insights on film-making, there's plenty of good films and names to check out, several I've long meant to myself.

Good memories of bundling up on the couch on a freezing-ass January day watching Seven Samurai for the first time, perfect movie for that sort of "fuck going out!" environment.

[Jonny2x4]

Highlander 2 sounds like it may be better than the first!!

Spoiler

It's not just "better than the first", it's also "the smartest sci-fi thriller since Blade Runner" if the VHS blurb is to be believed.

Yeah, I agree in that. If you are going to watch Highlander 2, avoid all the recuts that try to make it something it's not. Unfortunately the original version can be hard to find. They had a lot of weird ideas with the sequel and they all prove that some things don't need a sequel, but Highlander 2's failures are not due to a lack of 'trying,' ha ha.

The Renegade Cut is the version I've watched and honestly, it doesn't really make the film that much better. If anything, making the Highlander into a time traveler vanished from some distant past instead of an alien only brings up more plot holes than it fixes and makes the story more nonsensical than the theatrical cut ever was. Like somehow General Katana can only view the future up to a certain point that coincides with the present events of the movie's narrative. Can his future-telling device rewind or fast-forward to any other point at the future? Like, surely he would've known MacLeod had no intention to return to Past/Zeist and was content with dying old on Earth if he had never time-traveled himself. I'm probably giving more thought to these changes than the director ever did. Either way, they still let it slip that Ramirez and Connor are from another planet in the opening flashback.

Not only is the Renegade Version the only cut of Highlander 2 on DVD (and apparently Blu-ray), they actually pulled a George Lucas and re-edited it to add CGI effects for a Special Edition released in 2004. I wasn't kidding when I said they were really trying to polish a turd.

I found a page that discusses all the different versions of Highlander II and found this little gem.
http://www.figmentfly.com/published/hig ... ticle.html

Russell Mulcahy, the director of HIGHLANDER and HIGHLANDER II, summed it up very well at the time when he said, "All I can remember about (the original) HIGHLANDER is lots of guys in various eras bashing swords about.

It shows!

[BIL]

BIRU PANZER, rad name!

The question we were most asked by fans after the first film was, 'Where did the immortals come from?' It made sense to answer that question in the second film. What we didn't realize at the time was that the fans didn't really want to know their (the immortals) origins because then the romanticism and mystery of the story was stripped away.

Reminds me of this great misfortune from one Jon Spaihts, re: Prometheus

[The aliens] are interesting entities not fully explained, but to keep an audience interested in those things it couldn’t be abstraction, it couldn’t be a purely ‘alien story’ about things we can’t relate to. It was going to have to be connected to our own story. Somehow the story of those creatures was going to have to be connected to the human story, not just our history but our fate to come.

Though to be fair to Mr. Panzer, Highlander's Immortals are at least not cosmic horror. And while Mr. Spaihts appears to be a genuinely oblivious hack, Panzer at least has the good sense to blame his fans for his bad idea!

(decent essay on the dangers of over-explaining cosmic horror, and fantasy in general TBH)

[Jonny2x4]

I always thought of the immortals as reincarnations of gods who were fighting over supreme godhood. Incidentally, an earlier version of the Highlander II script apparently explained that MacLeod and Ramirez were actually reincarnated as infants on Earth when they were exiled from Zeist, but they left out that part from the movie. It still doesn't explain why they're called MacLeod and Ramirez on Zeist though.

Also, Clancy Brown (The Kurgan from the first movie) was asked to appear in the sequel, but he was smart enough not to take the bait after they refused to send him a copy of the full script. It seems they were going to turn his character into a lackey of General Katana.
http://www.highlander-community.com/for ... ghlander-2

Just saw Highlander: The Final Dimension, otherwise known as Highlander III: The Sorcerer in the UK, a title which goes against the whole point of ignoring the previous movie, since the numbering acknowledges that there was a No. 2. It's much more competently-made than II, but it tries so hard to play it safe that it ends up being bland and unremarkable . It's not even "so bad, it's good" like II was, just really forgettable.

The plot is pretty much the complete rehash of the first movie that I was expecting it to be. The bad guy is a Kurgan knockoff (played by Mario Van Peebles) with magic powers that he gained from killing Connor's other mentor (played by Mako), but he never really does anything to make him seem like a serious threat in the same way the Kurgan was. Also, Connor has an adoptive son that the movie ignores for most of its screentime until the bad guy conveniently needs a kidnapping victim to lure Connor out, because the writer realized that having him kidnapping the love interest would've made it even more similar to the first one.

The only thing of note in the movie was a cameo by a MERCS cabinet in one brief scene.

[Mischief Maker]

Also, Connor has an adoptive son that the movie ignores for most of its screentime until the bad guy conveniently needs a kidnapping victim to lure Connor out,

Even more lame, they redo the "playing chicken" driving scene from the first. But instead of running over pedestrians in nightmarish strobelight editing, giving a glimpse of the horrors awaiting humanity if the Kurgan gets the prize, Van Peebles just scares the kid with illusions of oncoming vehicles.

Like I said, as awful as 2 is, it's the only sequel that will genuinely surprise you at points.

[BryanM]

(decent essay on the dangers of over-explaining cosmic horror, and fantasy in general TBH)

Explaining things can be good if it serves an actual purpose. Prometheus's issue is that it... spends a lot of time on things that don't matter. It's a gross shallow kind of narcissism all ultimately in the service of saying "Michael Fassbender is a hottie".

I've often remarked how much better a movie it would be if the writer just made the erotic robot movie he was dying to write - if the writer doesn't care about what he's putting on the page, how can we?

... huh, that's kind of meta. You know how in Silent Hill 2 or in Worth The Candle the protagonist finds himself in a hell largely of his own creation? Set upon with his deep-seeded personal issues and interests? Writing... writing is kind of like that, isn't it?

[Rob]

deep-seeded

seated

[BryanM]

deep-seeded

seated

I used "seated" in the original comment, but hit the "edit button" in order to use a different nuance.

Human beings are mirrors of their environment, the factors of which are experienced very early in childhood. Nothing comes from nothing - ergo, these inputs later blossom into various desires, neuroses, delusions, and fetishes.

Cause and effect, man.

[EmperorIng]

I'm glad I was able to watch all those loony tunes cartoons as a tiny tyke without turning into a furry. Maybe some formative Roger Rabbit scenes got me out of that jam.

[BIL]

I thank Capcom personally, I was throttling my cockerel to Chun Li's crouching pivot frames before I knew what hit me

[Steamflogger Boss]

Edit: Post no longer relevant