Movies you've just watched

[Mischief Maker]

Don Juan DeMarco

What a fantastic performance from Johnny Depp.

What a terrible performance from Marlon Brando.

Probably the ultimate date movie.

[GaijinPunch]

~7. This really needs to be an 8 or 9.

Word. Need to bust this out again. I busted out in that one part and my GF was like, "Wha?"

On the plane ride.
Place Beyond the Pines

Wow -- as everyone has been saying. Definitely man crushing on Ryan Gosseling a bit. I need to work out more. Bradley Cooper also proving (again) he can do more than The Hangover movies. Really entertaining, and I did it a disservice by watching it on an airplane.

Things went downhill from there...

Side Effects
Jude Law, some other chic, Channing Tatum, and a bit of Catherine Zeta Jones. Decent airplane entertainment I guess.

The Call
Halle Berry (and not her tits). Pretty predictable airplane fodder. Could have gone to some dark places, and while it definitely had some skin crawling moments, it was a bit of a let down. Oh, well.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Johnny Guitar was badass. Trucolor for the win. Snappy dialogue, too. Whoever wrote those lines, must have had the knack for dialogues.

[EinhanderZwei]

Guess what, I've started a series of micro reviews on my blog, reserved exactly for threads like this one: http://e-u-l-mk2.blogspot.com/search?q=oneliners

[Mischief Maker]

The King's Speech.

I know I'm in the minority here, but I found this movie to be deeply fucked up.

The central conflict is that Prince Edward has fallen in love with the common woman Wallis Simpson and is considering abdicating the throne to marry her, a course of action that would force speech-impaired Prince George to make speeches over the wireless.

The royals practically spit whenever they mention Wallis Simpson. "Make her Lady Simpson of Baltimore?!! How common!" They refuse to acknowledge that there is genuine love between her and Edward, settling instead on the explanation that this slutty commoner has placed him under some sort of sexual spell. They beg Edward to pay her off and make her an unacknowledged mistress rather than enshrine their love through marriage. When Wallis Simpson tries to make conversation with the royals at social events they give her the iciest cold shoulder possible.

In any other movie, the royals would have been the bad guys, speech impediment or no.

This was like watching a version of "The Graduate" where Dustin Hoffman was the bad guy, willfully blaspheming by using the holy cross to fight off a church full of fine upstanding citizens.

[spadgy]

Small Apartments, and it was surprisingly ace. I was expecting something of a 'faux indie movie', in that it has such archetypical indie branding and a cast of high profile actors, it seemed like it couldn't be the real thing; just an impression of one. But funny, brilliant to look at and plenty of interesting stuff going on. Highly recommended and wonderfully characterful. I'm not normally a Matt Lucas fan at all, and I don't warm to Johnny Knoxville. And I'd not be attracted to a movie starring them, but they shone in this, and it wasn;t what I expected. Billy Crystal was superb in it too.

The same night I watched Road House (Mrs. Spadgy really did not like the bit Swayze used a piece of music to seduce a women that he also used for the same purpose in Dirty Dancing), and Cloud Atlas, which was enjoyable enough and pretty to stare at, but nothing too exciting; if you took away all the hopping and swapping, you'd have five very average, glossy movies. And as I'm bad with faces, the whole 'Hollywood A-listers Where's Wally/Waldo' thing screwed me totally.

EDITS: Extra opinions added.

[system11]

Oblivion - ****

Makes a change to see a somewhat intelligent sci-fi film with a decent budget, even if some elements were a little predictable. I thought Tom Cruise was brilliant in it too.

[Moniker]

The King's Speech.

I know I'm in the minority here, but I found this movie to be deeply fucked up.

My beef with the movie is far more profane (in the widest sense). The several severely contrived moments - notably the "I have a voice!" line, and Geoffrey Rush's (intentionally, but still cringeworthy) lame attempt at Caliban prevent me from rewatching it. Like most Americans, presumably, I find the continued existence of British Royalty to be quaint, superfluous, and frankly very stupid. While it's kind of admirable that George 6 was able to do something useful with his title, it's hard not to view the whole affair as a more respectable version of Bradjelina or the Kardashians. And yes, America needs to do away with the Kardashians as much, or even more, than Britain needs to do away with the House of Windsor.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

The Blu-Ray version of Oblivion does contain a bit of deleted scenes worth a viewing, especially the "Med Kit" scene with Jack Harper being operated on.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[boagman]

Oblivion - ****

Makes a change to see a somewhat intelligent sci-fi film with a decent budget, even if some elements were a little predictable. I thought Tom Cruise was brilliant in it too.

I'm not sure I can disagree with this any more than I do. Was this movie being shown in your native tongue?

[GaijinPunch]

Was finna say. I"ve not seen it but everything I"ve read about Oblivion has been pretty mediocre at best.

[system11]

Was finna say. I"ve not seen it but everything I"ve read about Oblivion has been pretty mediocre at best.

There's the key - I don't really read about films before going to see them. Open mind, no expectations. I found it really enjoyable. Good story, good pacing, good acting, good visuals.

[Vexorg]

I think I already covered my opinion on Oblivion earlier in the thread, but I thought it was a movie with some really cool visual design (I want one of those bubble ships) and decent action, but it just left way too much fridge logic in its wake to be taken seriously.

As for what I've been watching lately:

Airplane! ***1/2
A classic "Check your brain at the door" movie that managed to completely kill off disaster films for decades because nobody could take them seriously anymore. Probably not the kind of movie you could make today, if for no other reason than the fact that 3/4 of the material that modern Hollywood screenwriters would put into a film like this would just fall flat.

Airplane II: The Sequel: **
...And tThen they tried to make basically the same movie (while recycling half the jokes) all over again, this time in space. Didn't work so well.

[Skykid]

Was finna say. I"ve not seen it but everything I"ve read about Oblivion has been pretty mediocre at best.

It's perfectly watchable, just gravitates into complete baloney by the end. It's definitely got good intrigue for the first hour though.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

I think I already covered my opinion on Oblivion earlier in the thread, but I thought it was a movie with some really cool visual design (I want one of those bubble ships) and decent action, but it just left way too much fridge logic in its wake to be taken seriously.

As for what I've been watching lately:

Airplane! ***1/2
A classic "Check your brain at the door" movie that managed to completely kill off disaster films for decades because nobody could take them seriously anymore. Probably not the kind of movie you could make today, if for no other reason than the fact that 3/4 of the material that modern Hollywood screenwriters would put into a film like this would just fall flat.

Airplane II: The Sequel: **
...And tThen they tried to make basically the same movie (while recycling half the jokes) all over again, this time in space. Didn't work so well.

And at the end of Airplane II, there was a teaser scene for an upcoming Airplane III that never materialized. Of course, Top Secret! (circa 1984) ended up being the next follow-up to the Airplane flicks indeed (look for the Billy Mitchell of Pac-Man fame cameo).

At the very least, there're are some eye-popping tit shots in the orignal Airplance flick that can't be topped (like with the topless gal jumping in front of the camera in the passenger cabin when all hell breaks loose).

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[system11]

The Hobbit - ***

Well it looks lovely, but it felt too much like a 2 hour long chase scene. Orcs! Goblins! Orcs! Storm Giants! More Orcs!

[Moniker]

Woody Allen: A Documentary

Kind of a fluff piece, to be honest. With a runtime of well over 3 hours I was expecting something more incisive.. instead they spend about 15 minutes per film going over the cast reactions, directorial style, that kind of thing. I guess I'm partly disappointed that they didn't really dig into his personal life much, and I'm partly ashamed that that's what I really wanted out of it. But I'm a big Woody Allen fan, and insight into his personal ethical rationale for some of his actions and how it ties into the quasi-nihilistic philosophy that runs through all his films would've been amazing. Not saying I wanted a VHS Behind the Music/Real Hollywood Story out of it, but I don't feel that I came out of it knowing Woody much better than I did going in.

tl;dr: Rewatch Annie Hall, Crimes & Misdemeanors, and Matchpoint instead.

[boagman]

Was finna say. I"ve not seen it but everything I"ve read about Oblivion has been pretty mediocre at best.

It's perfectly watchable, just gravitates into complete baloney by the end. It's definitely got good intrigue for the first hour though.

Oh, come on...your watch must run *mighty* fast. The baloney started very, very early, from the introduction of the supervisor on the other end of the communications. If that wasn't enough, the whole "Restricted Radiation Area" thing was just so, so unbelievably ridiculous. They might as well have had flashing, epileptic-seizure-inducing, 7-foot-tall letters saying, "Important Foreshadowing Point" instead of the way they did things. "Oooo, he's intrigued by what's beyond the barrier!"

To those who want to give the movie props for its visuals? No problem with that. It was, in fact, pretty slick looking. Writing and plot-wise, though? Painfully bad.

[emphatic]

Woody Allen: A Documentary

Kind of a fluff piece, to be honest. With a runtime of well over 3 hours I was expecting something more incisive.. instead they spend about 15 minutes per film going over the cast reactions, directorial style, that kind of thing. I guess I'm partly disappointed that they didn't really dig into his personal life much, and I'm partly ashamed that that's what I really wanted out of it. But I'm a big Woody Allen fan, and insight into his personal ethical rationale for some of his actions and how it ties into the quasi-nihilistic philosophy that runs through all his films would've been amazing. Not saying I wanted a VHS Behind the Music/Real Hollywood Story out of it, but I don't feel that I came out of it knowing Woody much better than I did going in.

tl;dr: Rewatch Annie Hall, Crimes & Misdemeanors, and Matchpoint instead.

I read a biography on him about 10 years ago, it was very interesting. I started the documentary a couple of months ago, but the streaming site I was watching it on wouldn't let me resume it 1.5 hours into it, so I had to give it up.

[Skykid]

Oh, come on....

Since I repeat myself way too much on this forum, Circa May 10th:

Oblivion

About equal to Tron: Legacy in its pros and cons. Starts well, ends flatly and predictably. Extremely formulaic and often silly dialogue undermines any potential seriousness. Attempts too much layering with its plot, failing to outdo all the stuff it rips off.

Early intrigue loses momentum about half way through and the Russian girl is an awful actor.

It is utterly beautiful to look at though, worth watching for the audio/visual blend.

[BPzeBanshee]

Ghost In The Shell 2.0 - *****

Well, it was always still going to be a top marks film, some of the best science fiction ever made. 2.0 contains some tinkering, honestly the original is better. The CGI replacements for some of the hand drawn animation are well done, but they're very noticeably out of place and have been recoloured. The other big change I noticed was the audio - the mix is different and the soundtrack has been changed in places. There's some kind of surround sound added I think, but the end result at least on the Netflix version I watched, was in some scenes the voices just reduce to a whisper depending on location.

Oh man, I can't help but agree with you on this part. I bought this expecting it to look amazing, and frankly I felt the inconsistency left me (and my family members who were watching it with me) rather confused. Volume balancing felt all over the place, though my flatscreen's audio distortion issue probably didn't help - some music seemed really loud while other stuff like conversations was quiet, almost like trying to watch Constantine.

[lilmanjs]

The Enforcer.
First movie I've bought released by Dragon Dynasty that hasn't been the original version of the movie. This claimed to be widescreen, but in fact was an international release with dubbed english in full screen. Such a letdown, but at least the commentary during my second watch was really good. Good action flick, and Jet Li doesn't disappoint in this. I also liked the filming and color choices used in both of the main locations in the movie.

[drauch]

The Enforcer.
First movie I've bought released by Dragon Dynasty that hasn't been the original version of the movie. This claimed to be widescreen, but in fact was an international release with dubbed english in full screen. Such a letdown, but at least the commentary during my second watch was really good. Good action flick, and Jet Li doesn't disappoint in this. I also liked the filming and color choices used in both of the main locations in the movie.

Dragon Dynasy are the ultimate lying pieces of shit when it comes to releasing HK cinema. They have plenty of good releases and nice transfers, but a lot of their more popular releases are full of atrocious dubtitles and edits. The John Woo, Jackie Chan and Jet Li releases are the most apparently awful. Fong Sai Yuk is nearly unwatchable, for at times random dialogue just fills the screen as the cast remains silent. Supercop is the Americanized, edited version of Police Story 3. Hard-boiled and The Killer are both full of disgusting dubtitles. Their Bluray releases are typically just upconverts, so you're practically paying extra for the same quality as their cheapo DVDs. And to top all this shit off, those bastards own the rights to a ton of unreleased material! Hapkido, Lady is the Boss, Boxer From Shantung, Painted Faces, Vengeance and a ton of other classics! They haven't released anything new in about two years or so, and at this point it looks like they're pretty much done for.

Such potential, and a ton of good releases for a very affordable price for fans of classic martial-arts. Probably gone--good riddance, in a sense--but I'd love to see some R1 releases of their enormous catalog that they own...

[andsuchisdeath]

Shooterfighter 2.

It's WMAC Masters :The Movie with Bolo Yeung, and it's horribly executed. I wish I knew that the main antagonist played by Joe Son, was just as bad a guy in real life before I started watching it.

[emphatic]

The Enforcer.
First movie I've bought released by Dragon Dynasty that hasn't been the original version of the movie. This claimed to be widescreen, but in fact was an international release with dubbed english in full screen. Such a letdown, but at least the commentary during my second watch was really good. Good action flick, and Jet Li doesn't disappoint in this. I also liked the filming and color choices used in both of the main locations in the movie.

Dragon Dynasy are the ultimate lying pieces of shit when it comes to releasing HK cinema. They have plenty of good releases and nice transfers, but a lot of their more popular releases are full of atrocious dubtitles and edits. The John Woo, Jackie Chan and Jet Li releases are the most apparently awful. Fong Sai Yuk is nearly unwatchable, for at times random dialogue just fills the screen as the cast remains silent. Supercop is the Americanized, edited version of Police Story 3. Hard-boiled and The Killer are both full of disgusting dubtitles. Their Bluray releases are typically just upconverts, so you're practically paying extra for the same quality as their cheapo DVDs. And to top all this shit off, those bastards own the rights to a ton of unreleased material! Hapkido, Lady is the Boss, Boxer From Shantung, Painted Faces, Vengeance and a ton of other classics! They haven't released anything new in about two years or so, and at this point it looks like they're pretty much done for.

Such potential, and a ton of good releases for a very affordable price for fans of classic martial-arts. Probably gone--good riddance, in a sense--but I'd love to see some R1 releases of their enormous catalog that they own...

Damn, I hate cheap, crappy DVD releases. I wish Hong Kong Legends were still in business.

[lilmanjs]

Dragon Dynasy are the ultimate lying pieces of shit when it comes to releasing HK cinema. They have plenty of good releases and nice transfers, but a lot of their more popular releases are full of atrocious dubtitles and edits. The John Woo, Jackie Chan and Jet Li releases are the most apparently awful. Fong Sai Yuk is nearly unwatchable, for at times random dialogue just fills the screen as the cast remains silent. Supercop is the Americanized, edited version of Police Story 3. Hard-boiled and The Killer are both full of disgusting dubtitles. Their Bluray releases are typically just upconverts, so you're practically paying extra for the same quality as their cheapo DVDs. And to top all this shit off, those bastards own the rights to a ton of unreleased material! Hapkido, Lady is the Boss, Boxer From Shantung, Painted Faces, Vengeance and a ton of other classics! They haven't released anything new in about two years or so, and at this point it looks like they're pretty much done for.

Such potential, and a ton of good releases for a very affordable price for fans of classic martial-arts. Probably gone--good riddance, in a sense--but I'd love to see some R1 releases of their enormous catalog that they own...

I have a few movies from them, but I have to say, you must really not have gotten much from them. They managed to get the director of Crime Story to do commentary for the movie along side their usual guy, and sure all the releases have really bad english dubs on them, but all the ones I have save for the last one have the original audio tracks and converted surround sound audio options. I wonder what stuff you've grabbed from them man, because They aren't as bad as some of the companies that seem to be releasing HK stuff in their absence.

[drauch]

Dragon Dynasy are the ultimate lying pieces of shit when it comes to releasing HK cinema. They have plenty of good releases and nice transfers, but a lot of their more popular releases are full of atrocious dubtitles and edits. The John Woo, Jackie Chan and Jet Li releases are the most apparently awful. Fong Sai Yuk is nearly unwatchable, for at times random dialogue just fills the screen as the cast remains silent. Supercop is the Americanized, edited version of Police Story 3. Hard-boiled and The Killer are both full of disgusting dubtitles. Their Bluray releases are typically just upconverts, so you're practically paying extra for the same quality as their cheapo DVDs. And to top all this shit off, those bastards own the rights to a ton of unreleased material! Hapkido, Lady is the Boss, Boxer From Shantung, Painted Faces, Vengeance and a ton of other classics! They haven't released anything new in about two years or so, and at this point it looks like they're pretty much done for.

Such potential, and a ton of good releases for a very affordable price for fans of classic martial-arts. Probably gone--good riddance, in a sense--but I'd love to see some R1 releases of their enormous catalog that they own...

I have a few movies from them, but I have to say, you must really not have gotten much from them. They managed to get the director of Crime Story to do commentary for the movie along side their usual guy, and sure all the releases have really bad english dubs on them, but all the ones I have save for the last one have the original audio tracks and converted surround sound audio options. I wonder what stuff you've grabbed from them man, because They aren't as bad as some of the companies that seem to be releasing HK stuff in their absence.

I have almost everything they have released.

Like I said, it's all mainly their "big" name stuff. Li, Chan and Woo, mainly. Original audio, yeah, but dubtitles. They took the lazy route by subtitling the ENGLISH dub for the original audio. It doesn't match up for shit. Subtitles appear when characters aren't even talking. Some of the Fortune Star 20th Century Fox releases are the same way. Fong Sai Yuk is nearly unwatchable, and Fist of Legend gets especially bad at parts. I didn't even bother with their The Killer or Hardboiled releases and just kept my Fox Lorber after all the nasty stuff I heard.

Most of the Shaw Bros. stuff is aces, though. I can't complain about the nice transfers and what seems like the correct subtitles. I don't speak a lick of Mandarin or Cantonese, but the subtitling seems correct; or at least I haven't seen any "wandering" text when characters are just staring at each other. I'd definitely recommend any of their Shaw stuff to fans. And yeah, I'm fortunate and grateful for that, as a lot of the great R3 Celestial releases are long OOP and fetch fat prices. You can opt for some of the Taiwanese R3 stuff as well, but again, the price is much higher to import (when you find it.)

But it's the fuckin' Weinsteins. They are loaded! There is no reason not to release the INSANE amount of titles they are just hoarding away.

7 Man Army (Chang Cheh)
Angry Guest (Chang Cheh)
Behind the Yellow Line (Taylor Wong)
Boxer from Shantung (Chang Cheh)
Boxer Rebellion (Chang Cheh)
Buddha's Palm (Taylor Wong)
Clan of the White Lotus (Lo Lieh)
Crazy Shaolin Disciples aka Enter the 36th Chamber of Shaolin (Yau Kar-Hung)
Dirty Ho (Lau Kar-leung)
Full Alert (Ringo Lam)
Hero (Corey Yuen)
Justice, My Foot! (Johnnie To)
Look Out, Officer! (Lau Sze Yu)
Love in a Fallen City (Ann Hui)
Man of Iron (Chang Cheh)
Monkey Kung Fu (Lo Mar)
Out of the Dark (Jeffrey Lau)
Painted Faces (Alex Law)
Shaolin Temple (Chang Cheh)
Skinny Tiger, Fatty Dragon (Lau Kar Wing)
Starry Is the Night (Ann Hui)
The Anonymous Heroes (Chang Cheh)
The Chinese Boxer (Jimmy Wang Yu)
The Dragon From Russia (Clarence Fok Yiu-leung)
The Flying Dagger (Chang Cheh)
The Invincible Fist (Chang Cheh)
The Kung-Fu Instructor (Sun Chung)
The Mad Monk (Johnnie To)
The New One-Armed Swordsman (Chang Cheh)
The Savage Five (Chang Cheh)
The Shaolin Avengers (Chang Cheh)
The Victim (Sammo Hung)
Vengeance (Chang Cheh)

And that's just some of it! And from the looks of it, we probably won't be getting anything else. They haven't updated their website in two years, yet most of their stuff is still in print. Hmmmmmm.

HK Legends were indeed the best, at least for Golden Harvest stuff. I wish I owned more of their releases. Sadly, most of that stuff is hard to find--at least living in the U.S.--on eBay or Amazon, and again, it fetches some decent prices.

Funimation had a handful of cool releases, which are sadly all OOP as well at this point. Definitely worth tracking down the amazing Hong Kong Godfather. Well Go USA has released some cool stuff as well, and it all looks pretty nice. Be alert, though, for most of them scream ENGLISH DUB on the back, yet thankfully contain the original language track as well. Media-Blasters (Tokyo Shock) has been a bit hokey throughout the past few years with their releases, be it Tokyo Shock, Shriek Show or Anime Works. They supposedly layed off a bunch of workers awhile back, which seems to have hit their stock pretty hard. Lots of stuff just disappears, or has extremely limited releases. Most of it claims to be in print, but good luck finding some of it! Image has some fine releases under their belt as well, but again, I haven't seen much as of late.

So really, Dragon Dynasty doesn't really take the cake for me, especially with the variety the other aforementioned companies have released, and of consistent quality. It's nice to see Super Inframan, Killer Snakes, Human Lanterns, The Battle Wizard, Seeding of a Ghost and other bizarre HK films get released--something Dragon Dynasty wouldn't even touch.

So... who's releasing good HK films at this point? Nobody, really! Be it R0, R1, or R3, most of the stuff is going OOP and getting hard to find. Fortune Star is releasing some Region Free Blurays, but they're all re-releases, and a chunk of their good Legendary Collection is impossible to find. I want Devil Fetus and Robotrix, dammit! You really can't have it all when collecting HK films... and there is still so much out there!

[Skykid]

Went to the theatre to finally see Django Unchained.

What can I say, Tarantino again making the only movies that matter. What a helluva lot of fun this was: a catharsis of violence that kicked the wind out of me. True cinematic joy.

[Mortificator]

Skyfall.

You know, I was hugely skeptical about Casio Royale, but that ended up being one of the only Bond movies I unabashedly like. Never felt like watching Quantum of Solace, but figured I'd give Skyfall a try. And I think it's terrible. Why are these filmmakers aping things from the kind of movies they were so proud to get away from several years ago?

[charlie chong]

speaking of shaw bros i just watched boxer's omen aka mo..
crazy eastern black magic business with load of weird shit such as animatronic bats,skeletal crocodile heads,a dude who pukes up a massive eel and loads of weird slimy pukey shit and maggots..cool film