If you know how this movie was made everything should tell you this is nothing but cheap exploitation made for the dumb audience to get a quick fix of some sword swinging action. Robert Houston got the idea to re-cut two movies from the Lone Wolf and Cub series into one short action filled romp. Namely these two Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance (1972) and Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx (1972) with a tiny bit from the third one as well. All that dubbed into English and with a new swinging soundtrack. So it doesn't sound good on paper, but even in fear of getting some mortal enemies from the fans of the Lone Wolf and Cub series, this is better than the first two parts together. First of all this movie gets the setting up of the story done in a fast and effective way, unlike the original series where it tends to drag on for way too long. Second this movie adds a whole new dimension to the story with the narration by the Cub, which of course is done to explain some of the missing parts, but it actually works wonders for the depth of the characters. And the dubbing, it's one of the best I've seen in any movie dubbed from one language to another. Apparently they used deaf people to read the lips and try to guess what they were saying and then basing the dialog into words that fit the story and the mouth movements. Quite ingenious if you ask me and it works brilliantly. Now most of you who know me and my hate towards remakes and cheap copies are probably wondering how the hell can I like a movie like this which takes a piece of classic cinema art and "destroys" it. Well I see it as a remix, just like in music, most of the time they are not exactly great, but sometimes they can be even better than the original and this is one of those.
Anyway this movie tells the story of Shogun's decapitator, Lone Wolf, who with his son, Cub, seeks revenge on the Shogun who murdered his wife. The Shogun uses all his power to send out ninjas, warriors and assassins to stop the Lone Wolf, but a great samurai warrior with a vengeance on his mind is not stopped so easily. The story is very simple, but there's surprisingly much depth to the characters, mostly because there was so much material to go with I guess it was relatively easy to build strong characters out of those. There's no shortage of action and the body count goes absolutely crazy towards the end. But still there's drama and tragedy behind the showers of blood and decapitated heads. The movie is simply beautifully shot, some of the frames are works of art worth placing on your wall. Too bad the Brittish DVD I watched was from a print that had seen it's better days. There are also a few scenes that are just pure brilliance on the psychological side as well, for example the warming up scene after escaping the burning boat. And call me crazy, but I like the rather simple soundtrack too. Actually the only thing I don't like about this movie is that it credits only Robert Houston as a director while ignoring Kenji Misumi who directed the original movies. Sure Houston cut this version, but still some credit to Misumi who made the amazing source material would be welcome. Anyway I really like this movie and even though I've seen it many times by now it still works wonders. That's a sign of a true classic. 91%
First a bit of a disclaimer, I'm not a big fan of martial arts movies, I mean I surely don't hate them but the fighting is not enough for me to make a good movie. So when reviewing a genre defining classic like this I'm sure to anger some fans of the genre because of my ignorance. My expectations were of course high because I had read and been told this was one of the best in the genre, so the premise for the movie was maybe a bit unfair. Anyway, after seeing it I surely didn't hate it, but it didn't really blow my mind either. So this is a story of San Te (Chia Hui Liu) who gets mixed up in a fight between the patriots and the Manchu, two rivalring groups in the Canton area. His friends and family ends up dead so he swears revenge and seeks the help of a Shaolin temple and their knowledge of martial arts. He seems to be a natural talent and ends up going through the different chambers in a record time to become a master. Surprisingly I quite liked the story, it's very basic and simple, but what can you expect from a movie like this so it worked rather brilliantly. Also the movie looked great with some very nicely framed shots and the restored print on the DVD did it perfect justice. The music was not that great, but didn't bother me either, though the sound effects did get a bit annoying after a while, them being extremely repetitive. The acting was also surprisingly good and surely the cast were extremely good at what they did fight wise. Some of the stuff they do is just mezmerising. But the biggest flaw of this movie is funnily enough the training, it goes on way too long. Sure that's the part where all the skills come to show, but really it could have been cut in half with the same effect for me. I mean I'm not a fan of training montages for sure, but it just got a bit tedious with it's duration. Anyway, I wasn't bored and was quite happy to see this one as I had heard about it quite often. I guess for fans of martial arts this is pretty much a perfect movie, for me it was "just" a good movie. 72%
I needed to watch some barbarian and sword & sorcery movies for a project I'm working on, so I bought 11 more or less classics from the genre. That being the 80's Conan copies and of course the Conan movies themselves. Here's my thoughts on the first six of them in no particular order. As a warning for the fans of this genre, I must say I'm not a big fan of them so don't hold it against me if I fail to see the greatness of some of these movies.
Brigitte Nielsen is Red Sonja, a master sword swinger who seeks revenge on the evil queen who killed her family. The queen has also stolen a magical orb with destructive powers and Red Sonja tries to retrieve it. Joining her in this adventure is Arnold Schwarzenegger as Kalidor, a warrior on a quest to destroy the orb. They are also joined by an annoying kid prince and his servant, serving as the comic sidekicks I guess. This movie follows very predictable paths, bit of sword swinging and adventure with of course a bit of romance in there as well. The acting is quite bad most of the time, but then again the cast is there for their looks not because of their acting talents. I guess the real reason this movie was made was that Brigitte Nielsen looked hot in that tight warrior outfit. Highlights of this movie was Ennio Morricone's music, but unfortunately not much else. At parts the movie gets so bad it becomes funny, but then it just becomes bad again, so can't really recommend it as a campy fun movie either. Anyway it had it's moments and kept me somewhat entertained despite it's flaws. 40%
From a barbarian movie by Joe D'Amato you'd expect quite a bit of sexploitation. Much to my surprise there was basically none, if you don't count the nice outfit of Mila. Well anyway, this is a bad movie and unfortunately it's not the kind which turns into great comedy for being so bad, so I won't waste much time for it. Apparently this is a sequel for Ator the Fighting Eagle (1982), though absolutely nothing is this one made me want to see what the first, or the third for that matter, are about. Ator (Miles O'Keeffe) is this some sort of a great warrior who is living at the far edge of the world which seems to be about a day away from everywhere. One day Mila (Lisa Foster) brings bad news about his mentor who is captured by a bad guy named Zor (David Brandon). So off they go with their mute Asian sidekick, funnily named Thong (Kiro Wehara), to rescue the mentor. Bad effects, horrible acting and a nonsense plot follows. A few scenes cracked me up in laughter, like the snake fight and the hang gliding scene with those hand grenades for example, but mostly the only excitement this movie offered was watching the incredibly short skirt of Mila. So it's not really anything more than just a bad movie. I'm just wondering why did someone make this in the first place? Why did someone finance this horrible excuse of a movie? Why did someone release it as a DVD? And most of all why did I buy it? Well luckily it was cheap, but I'd still rather have my 3.95 back and most importantly my one and a half hours back. 10%
Umberto Lenzi is more known from his violent crime movies and cannibal films, but like most Italian exploitation directors, he too wanted to cash in with the success of Conan the Barbarian (1982) and this is what he made. It's basically not a barbarian movie as it's a story about cave men who discover iron, but the themes are quite barbarian. Vood (George Eastman) kills his tribe leader and the hero of the movie, Ela (Sam Pasco), drives him out of the tribe. But Vood discovers an iron blade and comes back to claim the leadership of the tribe by force. Then Ela is cast out while Vood decides to take rule over all of the neighboring tribes. Ela then joins forces with a peace loving tribe of hippies and they of course have a bloody battle. That's the story in a nut shell, but there's plenty more than that. There's lions, men in monkey costumes, disease ridden people who look like zombies and of course the horribly bad acting. The fights are clumsy as usual but this time, this one being an Umberto Lenzi movie, there's some gore effects to spice things up a bit. The music was quite horrible and annoyingly repetitive. For most parts this was just a bad movie, but there were quite a few absolutely brilliant moments that were so horribly bad they were great comedy. So I must say I was surprisingly entertained and in the end this was quite an ok campy trash movie. 48%
This is the first feature length movie of Albert Pyun, the self proclaimed master of cheap b-class action movies. True to his filmography and the genre in question this movie is not good either. The story in this one goes something like this, an evil guy called Cromwell (Richard Lynch) resurrects an evil sorcerer just to kill him moments later. Then Cromwell goes on to kill the king and become the king himself. The son and the daughter of the king escape and years later try to take over the kingdom from Cromwell. There's some twists I guess I shouldn't mention in order to not spoil it, even though I wouldn't really recommend watching this movie in the first place. It clearly shows that Pyun is trying to go for the feel of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) with the hero, the music, the dialog and the action, but of course missing the mark by a mile. Though I must say the hero, played by Lee Horsley, was by far the best thus far out of these movies, well at least he tries to bring some comedy into it if nothing else. There are some scenes which were absolutely brilliant in how idiotic they were. For example a scene where an evil jailer gets his head slowly pushed into a grinding wheel which is powered by his own legs. Still makes me laugh to think about it, I mean if your head is about to get grinded out maybe it would be wise to stop pedalling the damn thing. Anyway that's just one example, there are more of those, but unfortunately they are few and far between. So in the end this is not really worth watching, unless you want to waste your time on garbage for a few hilarious scenes. 36%
Thus far this is the only movie I might consider leaving to my collection out of this bunch. Don't get me wrong, this is a bad movie, but it's so bad it's simply hilarious. The story is basically a copy of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961), this time set on planet Ura. Two groups are fighting over the control of a village's only water well, in comes a strange warrior called Kain (David Carradine) who has other plans for the village. You can guess the rest. Anyway, the fighting was bad, the tits were plenty, the acting horrible, the creatures were oddly cute, the effects hilarious, the dialog ridiculous and did I mention the tits already? The movie is horribly edited, it looked like someone did some cuts to the final print of the movie as even the music cuts from time to time and not only between scenes, but within a scene as well. Though that only helped the goofy feeling of the movie. I must say I wasn't bored and I did get some nice laughs, even though I kind of doubt I'll be watching this one again any time soon. Maybe I'll save this one for some hangover morning in the future. 65%
Can't find a linkable trailer for this one, so here's the opening credits, for what ever that's worth...
Deathstalker (Rick Hill) is a sword swinging warrior whose goals in life are to have sex with as many ladies as possible and to obtain the three powers of creation. He gets one power, a sword, from an old witch, the other two are held by an evil magician Munkar (Bernard Erhard) who just so happens to arrange a big tournament where the winner gets them. So Deathstalker heads to the tournament and is joined by Kaira (Lana Clarkson) a warrior woman in probably the most ridiculous and sexist outfits I've ever seen. That's about all there is to the story, some sword swinging and plenty of tits to follow. I must say the entertainment values were quite high in this movie, especially during the first half, but unfortunately the second half focuses too much on the story and the sword fights, which of course are not much to go with. Apart from the outfit of Kaira there were quite a few hilariously weird moments, for example a funny sex scene which might give homophobes some very bad nightmares. All in all this was an ok bad movie, had some good laughs and it kept me entertained throughout. Though in the end there are so many better good bad movies out there that this one will just vanish in the vast averageness. 50%
That's it for the first part, the second part with the Conan movies and a few other 80's exploitation flicks, will follow eventually when I get the time and mood to watch them. Might end up watching the Conan remake as well, but don't hold your breath for it.
This movie borrows quite heavily from Death Wish (1974) and others of it's kind, though this time Charles Bronson is replaced by the young Linda Blair. Se plays Brenda who with her friends ends up pissing off a group of drug dealing gang members. The gang then rapes Brenda's sister and kill her best friend as a revenge. Brenda decides to take the law into her own hands and deal out some justice with a crossbow. This movie is simply fun, it's clearly made with a tongue in cheek attitude with plenty of violence and nudity, not forgetting the great one liners in true 80's action movie style. Add to that a brilliant 80's soundtrack and a plot which is just hilarious in stupidity and you have an entertaining movie. Surprisingly enough there are quite a few good performances in this one, John Vernon as the principal was great as was Robert Dryer as Jake, the leader of the gang. And I must say I also enjoyed Linda Blair giving these great one liners before dealing some violent justice, even though her performance otherwise wasn't that great. Rest of the cast were from ok to rather bad. But they fit their silly roles anyway so it didn't matter that much. This is one of those great movies to get over a hangover morning or some night with friends drinking to get one. 80%
I know the comic but I have never really read it apart from a few strips long time ago, so can't judge how faithful this movie is to it. As a stand alone movie it's not bad at all. It has a fun, weird and light hearted mood to it and it looks great. So Modesty Blaise, played by Monica Vitti, is this ex cat burglar turned into a secret agent who gets hired by the British secret service to track down some diamonds and the villain Gabriel (Dirk Bogarde) who is trying to steal them. Modesty gets help from his agent buddy Willie Garvin (Terence Stamp) as she goes on this weird adventure. Can't really say much about the plot as I kind of lost interest in it as it didn't make much sense, so I just enjoyed the fun mood of the film. Can't judge whether Monica Vitti's character fit that of the comics or not, but I must say she didn't seem like much of an agent, unless you judge the skills of a secret agent by how fast she can get another dress on and switch her hair style. Terence Stamp and Dirk Bogarde kind of steal the show as their characters are so much wilder than the surprisingly one sided Modesty. There's plenty of comedy in this movie, intentional and unintentional, funnily enough the unintentional comedy turns out to be the better kind. Like those explaining dialogue scenes which probably were intended as those explanation texts of the comics. It's just hilarious how the government people seem to always know exactly what's happening, kind of defeats the purpose of hiring an agent in the first place. But anyway it's all fun and fits the weird mood of the film. And that mood is this movie's strongest point. 71%
The first thing I thought when I heard about this remake was why the hell would someone remake Red Dawn (1984)? It's a cold war era propaganda wrapped with a ridiculously idiotic story. As the cold war is over you are left with the ridiculously idiotic story and unfortunately this movie doesn't even try to bring anything new to the table. Actually it just simplifies it and switches the Soviets to North Koreans, that leaves not much to go with. So the story is that one day this small town somewhere in the USA gets invaded by North Korean troops and some local teenagers start to fight back. Calling themselves the Wolverines after their local football team they start a guerilla war against an army and of course kick ass. This movie is just beyond stupid, it's like the creators of this are thinking that no one in the audience has any brain activity. Maybe their target audience are the vegetative state patients at a coma ward. At points I was actually cheering for the North Koreans for putting some of those annoying kids out of their misery. It's badly acted, most of the characters are extremely annoying, it's horribly shot with a shaky camera, it's edited by a 12 year old with ADHD, it's directed by a stunt man and like I said the story is just ridiculous. Though at points it gets so bad it becomes funny, so I did find myself laughing a few times. But in the end it's a horrible movie with a few unintentionally funny moments. 11%
A movie written by Joel and Ethan Coen, directed by Sam Raimi and starring Bruce Campbell and Brion James amongst others must be good, right? Well not exactly, but one crazy goofball comedy it surely is. Vic (Reed Birney) is a convict on his way to the electric chair, as the officers are dragging him to meet his maker he is screaming for innocence. Then we are told as a flashback a devious tale of deception and murder, in the form of an action packed slapstick comedy. Sam Raimi himself wants to disown this movie and reading about the troubles he went through while making it, I can't blame him. Having his lead actor, editor and composer replaced by the studio is not exactly a great way to make a movie. Anyway this movie is not as bad as it at start seems. The cartoon-like over acting is a bit tedious and as it's boosted with wacky sound effects it goes so much over the top I didn't know wether to laugh or cry. But as the story goes over the top as well, it turns into a quite an entertaining goofball comedy. The acting is rather bad, though mostly deliberately so. The soundtrack is quite annoying at times and the silly sound effects didn't help it at all. But the movie looks quite good and manages to set a great mood for the crazy things happening on the screen. That's the reason why this movie squeezes above the average of it's kind. 66%
The problem with these big Hollywood spectacles is that they are rather one dimentional, they thoroughly entertain and thrill you when you first see them, maybe even leave you with something to think about. But usually the more times you watch them again the worse they get as there's nothing more for them to give and thus you end up paying too much attention to the small details, which usually tend to not work as well. I've seen this movie now about 5 or 6 times and even though none of those times has topped the first time I saw it at the theater, I still find this one working surprisingly well. The reason I watched this one again was because I updated my old DVD to a Blu-Ray which had the extended cut on it and I hadn't seen that before. I must say these Universal 100th Anniversary Collector's Edition Digibooks are absolutely brilliant. You can find good deals on them with less than 10 euros and with that you get the movie beautifully remastered on high definition and a ton of extra material in a nice book cover. Like I said the movie worked surprisingly well even though I've seen it often enough. Though of course the small things caught my eye a bit too much, like the problems with the background action in the war scene where people are just standing around there in middle of the battle and quite a few other small issues. But really I didn't mind them that much as the movie is still a great action packed drama with brilliant performances by the cast. Nowadays I don't see Russell Crowe's performance as great as I used to, it's still not bad by any means, but it's hugely overshadowed by Joaquin Phoenix, Connie Nielsen, Oliver Reed and Richard Harris. So pretty much every supporting actor does more or less a better job than Crowe. Another thing which has changed during the years are the visual effects, back in the days they looked amazing, but now not that much, especially on Blu-Ray some of the CGI shots stand out quite clearly. But luckily there aren't that many of them and otherwise this movie looks and sounds amazing in HD. And about the sounds Hans Zimmer's score is a classic already so that of course works great. Anyway, most of the extended cut material was actually not that great. I mean it was very interesting to see the scenes and at parts they brought a bit more depth to the supporting characters, but to be honest those scenes were rather nonessential and well worth leaving out. So in the end they only dragged the movie a bit too much. This rating is for the extended cut, the theatrical cut, and acording to Ridley Scott that's the director's cut as well, would be a few points higher. 81%
This has been one of my
favorites for about as long as I've watched movies. It's brobably the
best war adventure ever made and a movie I find myself comparing
others of it's kind against. And as I'm a fan of Alistair MacLean's
novels and as the screenplay of this was written by him, there's not
much to not love about this. Now there of course are problems with
this one, it's not exactly historically accurate and it does have
some believability issues as it's quite a bit over the top in terms
of heroistic action. So if those are things you can't get over, I'd
suggest looking into other war movies, but if those are something you
can live with then this is one hell of an action packed adventure.
The story is intriguing to say the least, it has a fair share of
twists and manages to pull out surprises even to the last minutes.
Now sure it's a bit far fetched and some of the twists are borderline
ridiculous, but yet it's an exciting thrill ride. Richard Burton and
Clint Eastwood are tough, so tough infact that they could take down
the whole Nazi army by themselves and funnily enough that has never
bothered me, I belive they actually could be so tough. That boosted
with great music and brilliant cinematography makes this an
unbelievably magnificent movie.
When movies like The Warriors (1979), Mad Max (1979)
and Escape from New York (1981)
hit gold at the box office, Italy was soon to answer the call for
“post apocalyptic” movies. Enzo G. Castellari was the one who
brought us this series here for what ever that's worth.
Well this movie is bad,
but it's so bad it's actually not bad as it's so funny. The plot is
pretty much nonsense, the idea is that in the near future, which was
1990, the Bronx has been turned into a free zone for the criminals
where the gangs can roam free and the police rather stay out of
there. One day a woman (Stefania Girolami) escapes from some
corporate conspiracy into Bronx and ends up stirring things into an
all out war between the different gangs. The main gang of this movie
is The Riders, who are supposed to be this motorcycle gang and the
ruling authority down there, but most of them look like your average
office workers dressed in denim and leather. Apparently some of them
were played by the real Hell's Angels and indeed some of the lesser
characters look quite believable, but anyone with a few lines
dialogue is most certainly not. Their leader is Trash (Mark Gregory).
He's supposed to be this fearless leader, but he looks more like a
gay kid who forgot the butt plug from last night still in his ass
which makes him prance around like a fairy. And it didn't really help
that he's also crying like a little girl. The other “gangs” are
just as hilarious. There's the “gentlemen” gang, dressed in fancy
clothing and who seem to be surprisingly wealthy for a slum like
this. There's the roller skating hockey gang, which just leaves you
wondering how do they get around this ruined city with their small
skates. There's a tap dancing gang wearing flashy costumes and makeup
who of course fight with only dance maneuvers. Then there's some pale
faced zombie gang with with nothing but wooden planks as weapons. Not
to forget the all leather wearing police forces in motorcycle helmets
wielding flamethrowers while riding on horses. So yes, it's crazy.
It's cheaply made which shows in many places, but then again that
only adds to the camp values of it all. The acting is from crap to
horrible and the fighting isn't much better. Luckily there were some
nice gore effects to keep the entertainment values up. Even though I
wasn't bored watching this as a campy fun ride, I must say it still
wasn't a good movie. So as a proper post apocalyptic action movie
it's just garbage and as a fun campy trash flick it's just ok.
As the first part seemed
to do a decent business on the box office, Castellari didn't waste
time with the sequel and actually made two of them a year after the
original. Even though the other one wasn't a direct sequel, it's
still in the same category. Anyway, this time it's complete
extermination as the corporate folk decide to clean up the Bronx, by
killing everyone of course. Trash is unfortunately back, though this
time he doesn't seem as feminine as in the first one, but it's not
exactly a great improvement. His parents get killed so he decides to
take revenge by kidnapping the president of the corporation tearing
down the Bronx, in hopes of holding him hostage for the freedom of
the Bronx. He's joined by a pre-school explosives expert and his dad.
The story is ridiculous to say the least, but again that's not the
main thing, it's the campy exploitative fun of it all. I must say the
action was well in hand in this one, the body count must be close to
200 in this movie. So that combined with the horrible acting and the
ridiculous plot ensure that the entertainment values are high with
this one. The music was horribly 80's disco-like electronic beats
which was rather annoying most of the time. Even though this was
worse than the original I still enjoyed this more. Go figure...
This is actually the only
part which is post apocalyptic as in the previous two the
“apocalypse” was merely a decay in the Bronx, but this one it's
an actual nuclear winter aftermath. And to be honest it doesn't have
much to do with the other two, except the general idea of ripping off
these post apocalyptic box office hits. But as it's in The BronxWarriors Trilogy and
done by Castellari, that's why it's here as well. The story in this
one is like from any spaghetti western, the setting are just
futuristic instead of the old west. A group of bandits, called
Templars, are terrorizing the people who are trying to build another
civilization after the nuclear apocalypse. Scorpion (Giancarlo Prete)
is a lone wanderer with a righteous mind who gets mixed up in the
mess and well you basically can guess the rest. But it's the little
things that made me have a constant “what the fuck?” expression
on my face. The costumes are ridiculous with their over the top
shoulder toppings and especially the transparent armors were more
than weird. The Templars, who are all men for obvious reasons, blame
literature for the apocalypse and seemingly just want to kill
everyone still alive. They also seem to be an openly gay society as
raping a woman is not their ball park, but raping a man is a group
event, good for them I guess. The props are just silly, the cars look
like modified golf carts and the laser rifles are standard M-16's
shooting fireballs. So it's clear the budget was small, luckily most
of it went to the explosions and gore effects so the entertainment
values are good. I must say I was quite disappointed in the soundtrack by Claudio Simonetti, usually his name is a guarantee for something good, but this time it was a miss. This movie has tons of unintentionally funny moments
which made me laugh out loud. Especially the not so subtle hint at
the end where the butt raped hero seemingly rejects a woman who
fancies him but instead takes the hand of a young boy left me quite
troubled. I really hope I misunderstood the meaning. I'd say this is
the best out of the three, at least it's the funniest, though that
doesn't mean it's a great movie no matter how you see it.
66%
Like always with
these ripoffs, there's plenty of other unofficial sequels as well,
like Endgame - Bronx lotta finale (1983), Bronx Executioner (1989) and
others as well, but I'll leave those to another time, after all
there's only so much I can take of bad movies at once.
As these were not here yet and since I just watched most of them once again, I'll write my thoughts about them here briefly. Sorry about the short reviews on some of them, but really if a movie is perfect there's not much else to add to it. I'll only include the movies directed by Tarantino, even though many of his scripts directed by others are considered as his movies. Maybe one day I'll revisit those as well. You can find my review of Django Unchained here.
This wasn't the first Tarantino movie I ever saw, actually I didn't even know about it's existence before I saw the one below. But after that I stormed every video rental shop in the city until I found this. I remember once I finally saw it I was actually disappointed, I mean I still thought it was a good movie, but as I was expecting another Pulp Fiction, I was let down a bit. That of course has changed since then and nowadays I think this is a brilliant masterpiece. Not only is this the best "heist" movie ever made but it's also one of the best crime movies ever made. Can't really say anything about it that hasn't been said a million times, so I'll just say it's a brilliant movie and I'd rank it as Tarantino's third best film. 98%
I still remember when I first saw this at the theaters, something I guess I'll remember for the rest of my life. I saw it at this crappy small basement theater because I was 17 at the time and the movie had an age limit of 18, but they were cool enough in that theater to not care so much. So me and my date who was a year younger got in without any problems, even though they generally were quite strict about those age limits even back then. Now that I think of it and starting to feel all nostalgic I shouldn't call the theater crappy, I actually wish there still was theaters like that today. They had character and their own feel to them, unlike these multiplexes today. Anyway the reason why I remember it so clearly is because I was totally blown away by the movie. It was something I had never seen before and didn't even think that there could be movies like this. This was one of those movies that changed me in a way. For better or worse that I don't know, but ever since I saw it I've sought out more of these 70's exploitation movies. Seeing this movie today I found some scenes not working as well as back then, like that foot massage discussion seemed to be surprisingly dragging and uninteresting. Then again I still think the second half of this movie is probably the best comedy ever made, so it balances it out more than well. Pretty much a perfect movie, Tarantino's best and one of my all time favourites. 100%
For this one I'll give a proper review as this seems to be the one most people haven't seen from Tarantino's filmography. Then again this is only one fourth of a Tarantino movie, but still I think it belongs to this list as there's a clear segment and story of the movie which he wrote and directed. The problem with these kinds of movies is the difference between the makers, which usually makes the movie rather uneven. And that certainly was the problem with this one as well. There was an attempt to glue the stories together with Ted the Bellhop (Tim Roth), but unfortunately that was one of the weakest parts of this movie. Tim Roth has never done a worse performance, so much over acting and his character is all over the place all the time. Might be partly the fault of the four different directors, but still it's a weak effort. Anyway this movie has a very bad start as the first story by Allison Anders is just plain crap and even though it's only 15 minutes or so it's still way too long to give any hope for the rest of the movie. The second story by Alexandre Rockwell worked a bit better, though as the bar was set so low by the first one it wasn't much of an effort. Again bad acting and a useless story, though not as painful to watch as the first one. The third story by Robert Rodriguez is where the movie finally gets going and there's some actually funny moments. Antonio Banderas was also very strong, pulling out the best performance of the whole movie. This third story was the strongest one in the movie, apart from the ending of the fourth. Then the fourth story by Quentin Tarantino, it's actually quite a weak story as the basic idea of it is copied from Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode. Then again that's not the real problem as the idea is what sets up the absolutely drop dead hilarious ending of the movie, it's just the 20 or so minutes leading to it. The dialogue, even though it's nicely flowing as you'd expect from Tarantino, is just plain boring most of the time. Luckily the ending saves a lot, but still it felt like Tarantino didn't really put that much of an effort for this. All in all the movie is not good, with one great episode, one good episode, one bad episode and one just shit, it's way too uneven and mostly badly acted. It's actually a shame as replacing the first two episodes with better stories and better storytellers and someone focusing on directing Tim Roth this would have been a great movie. 45%
Before this movie came out I had become a fan of the 70's exploitation flicks and Pam Grier was one of my favourite actresses, with Coffy (1973) as one of my all-time favourite movies. So expectations were high as always and this one surely delivered. This movie is a bit of an oddity in Tarantino's filmography as it's his only adapted screenplay and it's told in quite a linear format. But that actually only adds to the beauty of this movie. I haven't read the book by Elmore Leonard so can't say for sure how good the adaptation is, but as a stand alone movie this is absolutely perfect. This one probably has the best mood of all of his movies and the best soundtrack to boost it. Tarantino's second best movie. 99%
I'll put these two together as that's the way they were meant to be, one four hour action extravaganza. I was really blown away by these when I first saw them, but I must say these are the ones I have most seldom revisited out of Tarantino's works. That doesn't mean they wouldn't be amazing, it's just that four hours is a long running time for a movie no matter how great it is. So my only gripe with these is the length, even though watching them again I really can't think of a single scene worth leaving out. It's very hard to place brilliant movies in any order but I'd say this is Tarantino's fifth best film. 95%
Tarantino's take on a slasher, though this time the usual knife is replaced with a car. The cast is great as always, even though it's a Kurt Russell show. The biggest problem of this movie is that Tarantino kind of forgets that slashers need to have people dying on them, not just chatting along. Sure when the killing starts it's brilliant, but really there's too much talking and not enough action for a grindhouse movie. Tarantino's worst, but still a good movie none the less. 75%
The absolutely brilliant cast carries this hilarious movie with maybe Brad Pitt's best performance ever to boost it. The thing that troubles me with this one is the continuity errors, there's way too many of them and even multiple times in one scene. I don't usually complain about things like that and I've seen plenty in Tarantino's other movies as well, but for some reason I keep spotting way too many of them in this one. But that's small details as this is Tarantino's fourth best movie. 97%
Sorry about the short reviews, but really long praising posts are rather boring to read and well I kind of expect most people have already seen these movies.
I like Tim Roth as even at
his worst he's still quite a good actor, that was the main reason I
picked up this DVD as well. Adam (Jack O'Connell) is a 19-year old
kid who wrecks his stepfather's (Peter Mullan) car so the stepfather
decides to offer him a job as a driver. Already here anyone with even
a bit of brain function should realize that this is not a smart
movie. So Adam needs to drive Roy (Tim Roth) across the country to
kill a man. A girl (Talulah Riley) sees them killing the man so
things end up quite messy. There was actually quite a many things I
liked in this movie. There's this nice feel to the movie as there's
some quite dark comedy in there as well and the style is fitting to
the genre. Also the acting is very strong, mostly thanks to Tim Roth
and Peter Mullan who are both brilliant. Unfortunately the story is
so idiotic that this is not even close to a good movie. I mean I can
watch people do silly things if the movie doesn't take itself
seriously, but as this one tries to be serious it just doesn't work.
I got the feeling that the makers of this thought everyone watching
it would be stupid enough to not see how idiotic the plot is. So
there's a lot of talent wasted in this crappy story and that makes
this movie sink below the vast averageness.
When doing a fictional
movie based on true events about the 9/11-aftermath you usually have
to take sides. This movie tries to avoid it, but as it focuses on an
American CIA agent it's kind of forced to take a side on the matter.
However it's not a bad thing at all, covering all the sides to a
complicated matter like this would make quite a dull movie to be
honest. But enough of politics and on with the movie. It starts about
2 years after the 9/11, though the events of 9/11 are reminded at the
beginning in a simple but surprisingly effective manner. The movie
follows a CIA agent called Maya, played brilliantly by Jessica
Chastain, on her seemingly impossible efforts to track down Osama Bin
Laden. The movie picks out notable moments during the years most of
you have probably read about in the newspapers and provides a sort of
inside look on how things supposedly looked from the CIA's
perspective. Not really any need to go into the plot any more than
that as it's kind of self-explanatory what's going to happen, unless
you spent 2011 in a closet without any form of communications. The
style of the movie is a bit documentary like, sometimes combining
news footage and surveillance tapes into the film. This does increase
the feel of realism nicely and especially at the end when they go and
get the guy those night vision shots almost puts you in there with
the soldiers. This movie will surely divide opinions, mostly because
of political viewpoints, so it's definitely kind of a provocation.
But I'll look past that and I rate it as a quite a strong drama which
it is with great performances from nearly all of the cast. There are
some problems with it though, pretty much the whole first half of the
movie is a bit dragging and kind of seeking a tone for the rest of
the movie. Sure the first half also brings out some of the big
questions in the movie, like where to draw the line in interrogations
and what are people prepared to do when they believe in something
strongly enough. But all of those we could have gotten in a lot
shorter time as well, though once the movie finally gets going and
the second half kicks in, it's quite brilliant. And just to point the
obvious out, no it doesn't matter that you already know what's going
to happen, so it's well worth watching.
I
have a big gaping hole in my general knowledge as I haven't seen any
of the Abbott and Costello movies, so it was time to patch that up. I
started with the double feature of Abbott and Costello: MeetFrankenstein/Meet the Mummyas it had the Frankenstein which seemed to be recommended by most as
one of their best and the Mummy from the next decade to give some
diversity.
This movie should rather
be called Abbott and Costello Meet the Universal Monsters as they
don't actually meet Frankenstein, but they do meet his monster with
Dracula, Wolf Man and a surprise guest at the end. Right from the
start I must say I was amazed that Bela Lugosi was playing Dracula
and Lon Chaney the Wolf Man, just like they did in the originals. Too
bad Boris Karloff isn't playing the Frankenstein's monster, but still
two out of three is quite impressive to be honest, though I guess it
wasn't that big of a task to get them in the movie as all of the
franchises were owned by Universal as was the Abbott and Costello
movies. Anyway Chick (Abbott) and Wilbur (Costello) are working at a
postal office and one day they get two crates for delivery to the
Museum of Horror. Turns out those crates contain the not so dead
bodies of Dracula and Frankenstein's monster. Dracula plans on
resurrecting the monster and plant Wilbur's brain on it for more
control. Lawrence Talbot, the Wolf Man, joins the party in hopes of
stopping Dracula and his devious plan, but as it seems every night
there's full moon things don't work out as planned. Abbott seems to
be the brains of the duo while Costello is the goofier one always
getting into trouble, but they both get their equal share of laughs.
I really liked the chemistry between them at times it was like
watching an old married couple going at each other. Another character
that stood out was Dracula as Lugosi gives out quite a great
performance in this one. What made this movie stand out from the
other horror comedies of it's kind was that it didn't directly make
fun of the monsters, they could have just as well been in a horror
movie, it's the duo around them creating the comedy. That works
surprisingly well. The comedy is a mix of crazy goofball action,
slapstick and witty remarks. And especially those witty remarks
really cracked me up. Even though time hasn't been kind to this one,
I must say this was one of the better horror comedies out there and
probably the best of it's time. I was truly entertained and got some
very good laughs.
Abbott and Costello are in
Egypt and get mixed up with a murder of an archaeologist and a plot
to raise the mummy of Klaris. Even though this movie had it's moments
and actually couple of hilariously funny scenes, it's extremely
repetitive from the Frankenstein one. The scene at the
archaeologist's office was almost like an exact copy of the one at
the Museum of Horror from the previous one with the same jokes just a
different surrounding. Sure it still managed to squeeze a few laughs
from me, but I started to worry that these characters don't have that
many jokes in them as there were very familiar scenes later in the
movie as well. However there were some quite original ones in there
as well, so it's not a total miss. The start was not that easy as it
seemed so similar to the previous one, but towards the end this movie
kind of found its place. So in the end it was merely an ok comedy.
Even though I didn't like this one that much I must say I'll
definitely will be watching more of the Abbott and Costello movies in
the future as they truly are a funny pair of characters.
Kevin James is an oddity.
Most of his movies are crap and everything says that I should hate
him as much as I hate Adam Sandler, but I don't. There's just that
glimpse of a real human being behind his characters which makes it
near impossible for me to hate him. On this one he plays Scott Voss a
biology teacher who has lost all interest into teaching. One day the
principal announces that the school's music program needs to be shut
down as there's no money to run it. As Scott has become friends with
Marty (Henry Winkler), the music teacher, he won't allow that to
happen and while pondering on how to raise the needed money, he
decides to become a mixed martial arts fighter. Of course there's a
romance in there as well with the school nurse, played by Salma
Hayek. The movie is so predictable that I was constantly wondering
where have I seen this all before. But the predictability and the
formulaic nature of the movie didn't bother that much as it has a
nice warm hearted feel to it all. And the comedy wasn't just the
usual cheap laughs, there were some genuinely funny moments in there
as well. The cast was quite great, especially Henry Winkler was
brilliant, but Bas Rutten as the Dutch immigrant ex-MMA fighter
steals the show. Absolutely hilarious character and a great
performance by him. This movie is predictable and blandly agreeable
feel good entertainment, one of those movies that isn't worth seeking
out, but it won't do you any harm if you happen to stumble across it.
My first reaction to
hearing that they are making a reboot of the Spider-Man series was
why? After seeing this movie I'm still wondering why? It's not a bad
movie, that I can say right from the start. I just can't understand
why would they make another origin story of it as it's already been
made 10 years earlier in Spider-Man (2002), which was good enough already? The only reason I can think of is
money. The sequels to the previous series didn't bring in as much
money as the first one, so I guess they thought the origin story is
where the money is and judging from the box-office scores they were
right. Just out of principle I should bash this movie down to the
ground as nothing more than a calculated money maker, but then again
it's actually not a bad movie. Comparing to the previous origin
story, this movie doesn't do many things better but it also doesn't
do many things worse, so it's basically the same movie just
different. Ye I know I'm starting to sound like a schizophrenic, it's
good but it's not, it's the same but it's not. But really, if you
take the previous origin story out of the history of the movies, this
would be a very good movie. Didn't really like the new Peter Parker,
Andrew Garfield, I mean he wasn't bad, but he surely wasn't great
either. The lizard wasn't exactly great either as the main villain at
least at the start, he does grow on you and I especially liked ending
of it all which was a positive surprise. Also the part of Peter
Parker growing with these powers, learning to use them and especially
the dilemma of whether to become a villain or a hero was a bit
rushed. Other than that I can't find anything to complain about this
one. But as I just can't shake the feeling of dirty businessmen
stealing my money, I can't rate it ignoring the previous one. Won't
give it a zero even though something tells me I should, so it'll end
up somewhere in the middle of the scale.
Well I decided to make this blog so I can write something about the movies I watch. I'm not going to update all the movies I've seen here as it would take me ages to do that, but the list will grow as we go along. I'm not going to write huge novels about every movie, just what I felt about it, sometimes it can be summed up in few words and sometimes you need more of them. Anyways I hope someone finds this helpful and all feedback is appreciated.
