Recently watched movies!

[lhb412]

Watched the martial arts (mainly Hong Kong/Chinese) film documentary Films of Fury, which was kinda disappointingly casual and jokey but filled in some blanks nicely for me, a new fan. Watched The Warriors again, and it's quickly become one of my favorite films. It sadly disappeared from Netflix a few months ago but it's on Amazon Prime. Sadly, the current Blu-Ray is a Lucas-esque special edition. Saw Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 last night, and the strength of the characters made up for a lot of wooshy, weightless CGI that threatens to unmoor the action.

[MekaGojira3k]

watched Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and honestly I enjoyed it a lot. It's a different kind of film than the first, the second film being more concerned with the characters and their arcs continuing rather than simply getting them all together. I think, other than the Cosmic stuff, I am starting to lose any and all interest in the MCU. Honestly it's a problem I'm having with superhero stuff in general. I guess I'm just starting to hit my limit.

[lhb412]

^Yeah, the days of trying to see every one of these things is over (I think I'm in for the next Thor though).

I guess Howard the Duck cameos are gonna be a trademark for the Guardians movies, eh?

[lhb412]

Since Svengoolie's showing Gargoyles this weekend I thought I'd get my '70s horror TV movie game on with Trilogy of Terror. It's three short horror stories all starring Karen Black and no one cares about the first two because it's all about the killer Zuni fetish doll in segment three. The little monster is a delightful, yapping, stabbing machine, and it not only prefigures Gremlins and other miniature horrors from the '80s, but the manic POV shots for the doll borderline on the manic POV shots Raimi would do in Evil Dead! Written by Richard Matheson (The Twilight Zone, Duel, Incredible Shrinking Man) and directed by Dan Curtis (Dark Shadows).

[jellydonut25]

[Dr Kain]

[Dr Kain]

Scarface - A Chuck Norris/10.

[lhb412]

Gargoyles

One of those nifty intro voiceovers tells us that gargoyles are the offspring of Satan and every few hundred years they reappear to challenge humanity (there's a nifty stock shot from Haxan in there). An anthropologist who writes popular books on superstitions and his photog daughter end up running afoul of a group of newly hatched Gargoyles in the American southwest. At first it seems the Gargoyles only want to be left alone, which makes 'em seem a bit sympathetic, then, no, turns out they want to take over the world. Thankfully a bunch of recognizable TV actors are there to fight them and/or get killed.

It's a decent campy creature feature. Still, none of the other horror TV movies I've seen touch The Night Stalker in terms of quality.

[Tom R VanSlambrouck]

Had a werewolf triple feature this weekend and watch the following movies

Back to Nihasa- I didn't really care for it it seemed to drag on and the werewolf didn't look to great. The plot revolves around two couples that are all friends, one set is really busy the other likes to party. They finally make time to go camping together and while camping the two guys go for a walk with a hand gun and end up shooting a wolf. This causes a cult leader that is performing a cermony near where their camping to curse the guys and turn them into werewolves well one at least. I stopped paying attention half way through the movie just because it was so boring near the end.

Bubba the Redneck Werewolf- This is one of those movies its so bad its good. Its kinda of like teen wolf except has more adult language. Basically a loser guy lost his girlfriend so he makes a deal with the devil in order to get the traits to win her back. The devil being the devil turns the guy into a werewolf. Other people in the town begin to make deals too but there's don't go so well so they get upset and hold up at a bar until Bubba fixes things. I got a few chuckles out of it.

Big Bad Wolf- I hadn't watched this in awhile and Amazon Instant Video had it so I decided to give it a rewatch. Still a decent werewolf entry.

[lhb412]

Saw The Fifth Element in the theater.

Watched Prescription: Murder, the TV movie that was the pilot for Columbo. On it's own, it was a rather standard Columbo episode that lacked some of the classic elements you come to expect. The story behind the story is interesting: this plot was made first as an episode of an anthology series in 1960s, then was made into a stage play, and was eventually made back into this TV movie, which was the first time Peter Falk played the part. It would still be three years before the series proper began.

Watched Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41, the second installment in the series (but the first one available for free streaming on Amazon Prime). It's wild. The prisoner called Scorpion (played by Lady Snowblood herself, Meiko Kaji) has been kept in a cave-like cell underneath the prison for one year while making a spoon into a shiv. When she attempts to stab out the warden's other eye (she apparently 'effed up one of 'em in the last movie) the warden has the guards rape her in front of the other prisoners to kill her mystique. It works to an extent, and while being transported by armored car some other prisoners begin beating Scorpion, which inadvertently leads to a chance to kill the guards and escape. The majority of the movie is Scorpion and the group of other women roaming the countryside trying to avoid the police, lecherous men, and internal tensions within the group and it's filmed in a totally non-straightforward psychedelic way with theatrical style interludes. Kaji is amazing: she rarely speaks, probably has about five lines, but she's so beautiful and has the most intense look to her that's just mesmerizing - and in the finale she wears the dopest outfit I've ever seen while getting revenge.

[jellydonut25]

[Dr Kain]

All I care about right now is that the movie looks like it is going to be fun. After the garbage that was Dark World, I was quite worried about Ragnarok. That trailer has sold me on it.

[klen7]

i'm excited by the director (and i believe his last two films were in JellyD's tops for their respective years)

[lhb412]

Finally saw Colossal. So glad I got to see it in the theater.

[lhb412]

Fist of Fury (aka The Chinese Connection)

In early 20th century Shanghai (ignore all the '70s haircuts!) Chen Zen (Bruce Lee!) returns to his martial arts school to find his master dead, he suspects murder, and the culprit is the Japanese dojo across town (and, really, Imperial Japan overall). If you think the leads to Bruce engaging the Japanese martial artists in multiple showdowns, you'd be right.

[jellydonut25]

I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore - Ignore the bad title and watch this Netflix movie. It's directed by Macon Blair who starred in Blue Ruin and played the backstage manager guy in Green Room, and there's hints of those movies here in a way, but with more heart, and MUCH more humor and it's ultimately a more fun ride than those movies (bpth of which I enjoy, but they're just heavy movies to sit through). It's about a woman who gets burgled and so decides to finally do something about how crappy people are and along the way she meets Elijah Wood and his character is delightfully bent. Shades of the movie "Super" in a way as well. I liked it a lot.

[Dr Kain]

Alien Covenant - 6/10

[jellydonut25]

The Devils - For starters, if blasphemy and widespread corruption in the Church make you uncomfortable, stay FAR away...unless it makes you uncomfortable in the way it makes ME uncomfortable, which means you also find it fascinating in a way.

The Devils centers on a corrupt priest who's also (initially) well loved in his town, a town that (initially) has the protection from the King himself during the fighting between Catholics and Protestants and is protected from the mayhem. He's actually a good man, just a bad priest. He personally helps people and protects the town when it comes under attack, but he has sex, with multiple women, and (because he's a priest and shouldn't be having sex) disowns them if they get pregnant.

MEANWHILE, there's a nun who thinks he's super hot (actually, everyone thinks he's super hot), and when she learns of a secret marriage between the priest and another woman, she loses her mind (not literally at first) and starts tearing his reputation to shreds, which brings in Inquisitors, which leads to them (in a somewhat roundabout way) instigating a SH**LOAD of debauchery - we're talking orgies in Church, masturbating with crucifixes, "raping" a statue of Jesus, and insanity that I personally can only equate to that batsh** insane part of The Island of Dr. Moreau when Val Kilmer is banging all the animal people. The inquisitors aren't all fun and debauchery though...they want people to tell them who has incited this kind of blasphemy, and of course they want the "right" answer, which leads to them torturing the ever-loving crap out of people until they get everyone to hate this priest.

Then they go after him.

Why? Well, in part to be allowed to attack this town, and get it out from the King's protection, but there's a deeper situation here that relates to man's inability to allow itself to live in peace. We're hypocritical creatures who also can't abide hypocrisy in others and it makes us tear each other apart. Granted, if the priest weren't a womanizer, the town wouldn't wind up attacked and the utterly joyless debauchery wouldn't have all happened, but if people would have overlooked shortcomings in his personal life to see the good he was doing, they wouldn't have wrought such destruction upon themselves and leave people furiously masturbating with charred bones just to attempt to feel SOMETHING instead of being dead inside.

I can definitely see how a lot of people would bristle against this movie because of its implications about the Church and priests and nuns and well, RELIGION, but I personally took it as more of an indictment of humanity and our innate hypocrisy, with religion just sort of being the setting for it all. I mean, if it had been about a governor or Lord or whatever, whose affairs lead to the same sort of ruin, with like "moral police" or whatever attacking people for defiling the flag of a nation or something, it wouldn't have changed the story too much.

If you can get past the age of the film, the somewhat confusing nature of the narrative, and the blatant disregard for the sanctity of the Church, you should see this, because they don't make movies this ballsy anymore.

[lhb412]

^ Oh, wow - isn't that the movie film buffs were making a stink about a while back because it has been historically unavailable in a kind of unofficial ban and then it quietly pops up on Shudder recently, right?

[jellydonut25]

[lhb412]

^I'll have to check it out sometime.

The Big Boss

The first Bruce Lee movie, and by a lot of the standards it's not a good movie. A lot of it is rather amateurish, but then Bruce swaggers in like James Dean if James Dean could break all your ribs in half a second and you just can't not watch him. The fighting is only really good when they just give Lee room to really fight, the rest is stylized but in an inartful way.

[lhb412]

Way of the Dragon

Bruce Lee's character comes to Rome (where everyone speaks English - all those white people languages sound the same!) to help a friend of a friend who's Chinese restaurant is under attack by the mob. After beating up a bunch of goons the bad guys get smart and hire their own martial artist: a hairy man-mountain from America played by Chuck Norris! I think this edges out Fist of Fury as the best of Bruce's Chinese films, but Enter the Dragon (despite a bit too much John Saxon) is the best of the bunch.

Saw Monster Zero on Svengoolie. Sven did a nice little summary of the shie dance and where it came from

The Giant Behemoth

One of those movies I've somehow avoided all these years. It's no Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, but it's a decent off-brand version that's rather atmospherically shot and with some neat Willis O'Brien/Pete Peterson stop motion.

[jellydonut25]

The Guyver - For all its flaws, this is still a fun, stylish movie with cool art direction, fun fights, and quirky performances from some cool character actors. It's not "good" but it is a lot of fun.

The Guvyer 2: Dark Hero - Everything bad about the first one, none of the redeeming qualities.

[O.Supreme]

^I haven't watched either of these in a while...but I always thought Guyver Dark Hero was vastly superior. Whereas there was a lot of with the first film, Dark Hero seemed to fix a lot of the problems and tonally gave fans of the Guyver franchise what we should have had in the first film....Guyver was literally my first experience with more mature anime way back in 1990. when I rented the first film from BBV in 92/93...as I said, it was a bit of a let down. But I remember seeing the bootleg VHS at SDCC in 1995, and watching scenes of it on a small TV monitor in the dealer room thinking...holy crap! A new Guyver film...and its actually good! I have to have this.

[lhb412]

Well, saw Kong: Skull Island for the third time in the theater. Still loved it: great throwback to Harryhausen and O'Brien 'monster island' type movies with the hero Kong we've all be waiting for! Reilly steals the movie, but has he not been there Shea Whigham would've stolen it.

Game of Death

A ghoulish exploitation film that uses all of ten minutes of Bruce Lee footage from his unfinished film and encases it in a film where other actors play Lee with their faces often partially obscured - hell, lot of times they're not obscured at all: you get the sense that this movie was made for an audience of white people for whom all Asian faces look the same. The real kicker is that this film has some real actors and decent production values and theme music by John Barry?! That just makes the whole thing worse.

... thankfully, this Blu-Ray comes with the original 39 minutes of footage Lee filmed for his actual version of Game of Death and that stuff is awesome. I think that, had it been finished, it would have been the ultimate Bruce Lee movie.