Monster Zero x SciFi Japan - Archive Only

Mandy

Man, this movie is brutal. I mean, beautiful, yes, but brutal. The first half is more moody and atmospheric, but once you reach that halfway point...

Most of the movie's praise has been on Nic Cage's performance, the visuals, the amazing prog rock score - but I want to give special notice to the fact that the film's villain, the evil cult leader, is a failed rock star. Doesn't it seem that so many of these egomaniacal crazies in the real world first sought the validation of celebrity?

May the Devil Take You - Same writer/director behind 'The Night Comes for Us' and 'Headshot' but more of an Indonesian 'Evil Dead'. If you've seen the crazy short Timo Tjahjanto wrote for V/H/S/2 (Safe Haven directed by Gareth Evans), you might have an idea of how wild this can get. Unfortunately the special effects are a mixed bag, alternating between highly polished, to lifeless props being wrestled by actors in close-up. (It makes you appreciate more what Sam Raimi was able to accomplish, but at the same time Sam Raimi wasn't working in HiDef.) Probably the weakest of the films I have seen from this talented writer/director (still someone I'll be keeping an eye on) - I did dig the set-up and i'm probably being a bit overly harsh on the effects work. If the phrase "Indonesian Evil Dead" sound interesting to you, then you'll probably find something to enjoy here

A Christmas Carol 84 version - 8/10.

Eraserhead

In a bleak industrial environment a man gets his girlfriend pregnant and, once the grotesque child thing is born, hastily marries his sweetheart and settles down to a life of quiet domesticity, but the creature's constant crying, as well as the man's interest in the beautiful woman across the hall as well as the thing inside the radiator complicate matters.

You know, a lot of ink has been spilled discussing this film's surreal and nightmarish qualities, and those are nothing to scoff at. The film is surreal. The film is nightmarish. It's also very funny. As a matter of fact, I find a lot of what David Lynch does to be very, very funny. Then again, humor and unease are such close bedfellows.

Night of the Living Dead

Finally got down to enjoying Criterion's release of Night of the Living Dead these last two days. I can't recommend this release enough, not only has the film been beautifully restored, bringing to light numerous details that were obscured in lower-quality versions, but it also contains a cornucopia of bonus features that really elucidate the film in interesting ways. If you don't already have this one you probably want to put it on your Christmas list.

As for the film itself, it really struck me how even if you didn't care about film history, the fact that this film did all these tropes first, that there's no way you couldn't be wowed by the last 20 minutes of this. I mean, it's kind of a cliche that sometimes the pieces of art that broke the mold and establish new genres, new ways of doing things, sometimes don't hold up all those years later because other works of art took the ball and ran with it and delivered more polished works. Of course, even George Romero delivered far more polished zombie movies after this one, but even if some horror fan had somehow avoided seeing this movie but had seen every other zombie movie and video and TV show and video game since I think they may be bored (maybe 'unimpressed' is the right word?) with most of the runtime of this movie... but there's no way that even the most cynical newbie could not be wowed by the finale of Night of the Living Dead. The beautiful way everything goes wrong, everything comes together in the worst possible way - is just astounding. It was astounding in 1968 and it's astounding now in 2018.

Wreck It Ralph Breaks the Internet - the kid liked it so thats the important part. The disney princesses were the best part of the movie. Overall it felt like a rushed sequel (which is hard to imagine with a big budget CG film). For me I accepted that it wouldn't be a tribute to video games, but more of a pop culture approach going in, but the story telling was pretty lack luster. Rather than following a story through the eyes of Ralph, Felix, King Candy, Vanelope and Calhoun this movie is just a linear progression focused completely on Ralph and Vannelope, so despite it being a much larger world, it feels a lot smaller. It's bizarre that this is a major Disney release because it does feel a lot like Emoji movie (or even RPO because of all the big name "cameos") so it's easy to see this movie feeling incredibly dated in a very short time.

Technically, every movie is dated after a short time. Or do we suddenly live in a word where Spaceships are run by a very primitive version of DOS and androids dream of electric sheep?

Escaflowne: The Movie

This movie has... problems, especially if you love the series it's based on, but it's interesting for it's enormous ambition. Director Kazuki Akane adapts his own series, and some of the ideas to drastically condense 26 episode show into a 90-minute movie are quite clever (like making Escaflowne itself the mcguffin) but he also can't resist making it into something of a mirror universe version of the show where many of the characters and situations are inverted or skewed from the way they were. For instance, what if Allen was more of a roguish Captain Harlock type instead of a chivalrous knight? What if the mechs were more like weapons of mass destruction instead of commonly used war machines? Some of these ideas are pretty cool, a couple of them may actually be improvements to the story to some degree... But this is a 90-minute movie and it would need to be at least 2 hours, or preferably like two movies to accommodate such an ambition. As is, the film becomes its best about halfway through when it streamlines into a more straightforward thing and it settles into its own groove.

Great animation and music. Cant complain there.

Batman Forever 1995 This film is not good, I fully admit that, but unlike Batman & Robin which I have zero fun in watching, I still have fun watching BF. This was my kids first viewing of the film as well. In fact, surprisingly they noticed, and hysterically laughed at something I never noticed before . The Scene where Nygma (Jim Carrey) is hosting his own party due to the success of his *box*. Of course I always knew he was trying to insult Bruce Wayne (Val Kilmer), but little things like putting on, and removing his glasses each time Kilmer did, escaped me for some reason. Subtle things like this, and Jim Carrey's "unsactioned buffoonery" made this a fun rewatch after probably nearly a decade since the last time I saw it.

I also saw Ralph Breaks The Internet, and thought it was fun.

Will try to see Aquaman & Bumblebee soon (hearing great things about both).
Might see the Into The Spiderverse thing as well.

So far the plan is to try to see The Mule with my parents on Christmas Day.
Hopefully it's still playing someplace with food.

I will say the Spiderverse trailer played very well with my family. I expected to be the only one interested but both the Mrs and the kid want to see it now, which honestly surprised me on both accounts

^ After the biggest movie of the year ended with Peter Parker withering into dust right before everyone's eyes, a movie featuring multiple incarnations of Spider-Man alive and breathing might be just the global catharsis that everybody needs.


Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018) - I liked this a lot. It's a worthy follow-up to the first film, more ambitious, not quite as good but delivering more action and a fast pace while raising the stakes for the characters. I still haven't seen most of the Harry Potter movies but my girlfriend has been a fan since the books and she caught a lot of easter eggs here, saying "Nice" at various moments that seemed innocuous to me, so this Fantastic Beasts series works whether you're steeped in Potter lore or not.

Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle - Overall, this was just okay. It's a darker, more faithful take on the source material than most film adaptations, but it also felt less dramatic and emotional than Disney's 2016 version, outside of a few good action scenes. The acting is generally passable. I don't think I grew used to the CGI animals so much as I tried to overlook them: almost all of them look weird, except the elephants, who don't talk anyway. Shere Khan's face looks like somebody's failed taxidermy project, and Benedict Cumberbatch sounds like he's imitating Jeremy Irons' Scar. Meanwhile, Kaa's head looks like they cribbed the design from a Kobra Khan action figure. I did appreciate Andy Serkis' version of Baloo, though, a crusty old POS covered in scars who would never be caught singing "The Bare Necessities." It was nice to see Kipling's vision of the character more faithfully represented on screen.

If you prefer Kipling's work over Disney's, I'd say give this film a watch, but temper your expectations. I'm not sure how much you'll enjoy it otherwise. For me, it's a 6 out of 10.

Rikki Tikki Tavi is absent from that version. It's pretty much a pastiche of the Mowgli stories.

Into the Spider-Verse - Quite good, but has a few flaws. 9/10

A Christmas Carol (Patrick Stewart version) - A fantastic adaptation that features some scenes not found in other adaptations, but it does forget two other scenes that most others have adapted. Also, for something that tried to be as accurate to the book as possible, they kind of cheapened out on the costume for the Ghost of Xmas Future. STill, a 9/10.

The Red Shoes

One of the most beautiful films ever made, with the 17-minute long ballet fantasy sequence often singled out for praise (with good reason). You know, the culture has changed since I saw this movie last. Ideas about sexual harassment and toxic masculinity are more discussed and I find it's changed the way I look at The Red Shoes. I'm less likely to think that this is a movie about dying for your art, and more apt to think it's a movie about male egos and the need to possess this woman.

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

You know... it's amazing what they let them do when they were filming in this brand new shopping mall.

Into The Spiderverse was really good.
Will be seeing The Mule on Xmas Day.

Will see Aquaman (maybe in XD) on next Friday or possibly on New Years Eve/Day.
Will most likely try to see Bumblebee around the same time frame.