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June 15th, 2009
09:07 pm - .. yeah.
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Hellboy and Liz the pyrokinetic are shacked up and they routinely have fights that wreck millions of dollars of equipment and endanger many cats.
An elf dude wants to destroy the human race with a magical robot army. Abe Sapien is in love with the elf dude's sister.
Oh, and Liz is pregnant.
This movie is fucking stupid. However, the fight scenes are top-notch.
The Happening
Mass suicide erupts along the US's east coast. Marky Whalberg and his wife have restrained bad relations. The plants want us dead.
If the explanation was supernatural it would have been a lot easier to buy. As it is there are scenes meant to be tense that are just fucking ridiculous: people running away from the WIND, say, or a guy talking seriously to a houseplant.
It doesn't help that the movie is also boring.
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June 8th, 2009
05:39 am - Ip Man
Ip Man is a Wing Chun master. Even though he lives in a town filled with kung fu teachers, Ip Man refuses to teach, instead spending most of his time with his family.
Then the war comes. After he pawns everything, Ip Man has to go to work. This is where his brother-in-law goes off to fight Japanese soldiers and doesn't come back. To find out what happened, Ip Man volunteers the next time the call goes out. And, witnessing a murder, Ip Man whips some serious ass.
This is a hell of a good movie, with amazing fights.
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May 11th, 2009
06:50 am - ACTION!!
Athadu
After a job goes wrong, a young man who's been killing people since he was a kid takes the place of a man shot by accident. He finds family and love--but of course it's not going to be that easy.
In this Indian action movie, the dance scenes are apparently fantasy sequences--and they are very silly. The fight scenes are severely wicked. I loved this movie, and I think I want a copy.
Ong Bak 2
A boy sees his family slaughtered and escapes, only to be captured and thrown into a pit with a crocodile. He kills the thing and is adopted by pirates. The pirates teach him martial arts. Then he becomes second in command of the pirates and goes off to avenge his family.
This film looks great, and the fight scenes are terrific. However, it doesn't make much sense, and it ends rather abruptly.
Rambo III
Rambo leaves Thailand (where he is kicking ass for Buddhism) to rescue his old friend Trautman. Trautman has been kidnapped by Russians while he was bringing missiles to Afghanistan.
This movie is bizarre, with much of the killing and the death and explodey. Dumb as fuck, too.
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April 18th, 2009
06:15 am - Body Snatcher from Hell
While investigating a bomb threat, the co-pilot of an airplane finds a rifle. The owner of the rifle hijacks the plane. But while the plane's course is changing, a passing UFO fries the equipment, and the plane crashes.
The survivors of the crash start fighting almost immediately. The hijacker escapes with a hostage and winds up walking into the UFO--a glowing orange flying saucer. Once inside, the hijacker's forehead cracks open and a blob crawls into his head.
This is a severely weird movie.
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April 13th, 2009
06:08 am - A strange combo
Flash Point
An undercover cop is unmasked as a gang makes a run for it. The cop winds up in the hospital and one of the ringleaders ends up in jail. Then the shit really hits the fan.
This is a terrific action movie with some really brutal martial arts going on.
Veerana
In this Bollywood vampire movie, a scary dude with a beard gets off on sacrificing men to his vampire. But a heroic man stops the vampire and she's captured and killed. This really pisses beard guy off, so he kills the heroic guy and implants the vampire's soul into the guy's niece.
This movie is fucking terrible. The leading ladies are cute, but there is no other reason to watch.
Corpse Mania
Some nosy old ladies find a molested dead woman in an empty house. This resembles something the chief investigator heard about elsewhere, where a man kept having sex with his wife after she was dead. Now there's someone going around killing prostitutes and screwing the dead bodies. Is it the same guy?
This is actually a pretty good movie. I was expecting something stupid, but was pleasantly surprised.
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April 4th, 2009
06:39 am - Killer Condom
This is a German movie about a Sicilian detective in New York City. So it's already weird. The detective's name is Luigi Macaroni. This is just unfortunate. Anyway, our hero is a disillusioned gay cop who has one of his nuts bitten off by a condom monster.
Everybody refuses to believe that's what happened, and the attacks multiply.
This movie is batshit insane, and I love it.
(How much is 32 centimeters in inches?)
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March 28th, 2009
07:02 am - The Legend of Hell House
Goddamn, that was a stupid ending. Was it that bad in the book? I don't remember, it's been a while.
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March 21st, 2009
06:25 am - Mr. Brooks
Kevin Costner is a serial killer who's trying to quit. And when he finally gives in after two years, somebody sees him. Dane Cook is a weaselly little shit who wants Costner to mentor him in serial killing. Demi Moore is a cop on Costner's tail who is also dealing with her own shit.
This is a pretty good movie.
But I still hate Dane Cook.
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March 16th, 2009
06:53 am - movies!
Slingshot Hip Hop
This is a documentary about rap in the Palestinian outposts in Israel. It talks about how music gives these people a way to be positive and hopeful even while they're being shot at and bombed on a daily basis.
The music is good, and it was nice to see a documentary about Palestinians that didn't focus on the terrorists.
Sholay
This Indian action movie starts out fairly lighthearted. Two brave and foolhardy criminals have wacky escapades that often involve fighting.
But then a police captain hires them to protect his village and bring him the bandit who terrorizes it. The man's name is Gabbar, and he is a piece of shit.
The movie gets darker and more violent as it goes along.
You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll want to see that motherfucker die.
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March 12th, 2009
08:46 pm - Double feature!
Slumdog Millionaire
A young man from the slums of India is winning at the Indian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." He's one question away from the big money when the show ends.. and the cops start interrogating him to find out how he cheated.
He didn't cheat. It's just that his fucked-up life led him to know the answers to those exact questions.
This is one fucked-up feel good movie. I loved it.
Watchmen
This movie had the same problem as Sin City. Beautiful, good actors in the roles.. but you get the feeling at times that the actors have no goddamn idea what they are actually saying. This is especially evident during Dr. Manhattan's big Epiphany Speech on Mars.
Some performances weren't bad.. especially the guy who played the Comedian. Also, the fight scenes were great and so was the gore. All in all, though, I felt this thing missed the mark.
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March 8th, 2009
08:16 pm - Drive Thru
A guy in a clown mask with a speaker in the mouth is killing teenagers. He kills them because of something their parents did, and he does it in the guise of the mascot of "Hellaburger," "Horny the Clown."
The worst parts are when they try to throw the supernatural in there.
Not the worst slasher movie I've ever seen, but entirely forgettable.
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March 2nd, 2009
06:12 pm
Is anybody else hoping the fourth Underworld movie follows the formula and is in space?
I don't know about you, but I would watch the shit out of that mother.
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February 9th, 2009
05:50 am - Chocolate
Zen is the offspring of a doomed relationship. She's autistic and she has great reflexes. She learns martial arts by watching them.
When Zen's mom gets sick, their young friend tries to help out by collecting money from people. When the polite approach doesn't work, Zen goes after them.
This movie is awesome. Towards the end, it is also kind of scary. Thai stuntmen are bugfuck insane. They are also very good, because no-one died doing this crazy shit.
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February 6th, 2009
06:47 pm - Prince of Darkness
A priest dies, leaving Donald Pleasance the key to a room featuring a large tube of swirly green stuff. Something makes Pleasance call in a professor friend, and soon there are grad students all over, which is just what the green swirly stuff wants.
Yes, it's a stupid premise, but that isn't really the problem. The problem is that most of the movie is incredibly goddamn dull, with only the occasional student being stabbed with a bicycle by Alice Cooper to liven things up.
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December 27th, 2008
04:19 pm - Deep Blue Sea
Genetically altered sharks chase scientists and folks through a rapidly flooding underwater lab.
The gore is off the hook in this one, but I still liked Deep Rising a bit better.
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December 26th, 2008
06:49 am - Deep Rising
Some mercenaries hire Treat Williams's boat to get them to a cruise ship. But instead of what they expected, they find a nearly empty ship. All that's left is a handful of people.. and the monsters.
So it's dumb as shit, but it has two of my favorite things: monsters & explosions.
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December 20th, 2008
10:03 pm - kung-fu fighting
Yeah, so I saw these a week ago. I have to stop putting this stuff off, it never gets done.
Crippled Avengers (Return of the Five Deadly Venoms)
Rebels come and chop off a man's wife's legs and his kid's arms. The wife dies and he gets his kid iron hands and becomes obsessed with crippling people who piss him off.
Then the guy cripples the wrong dudes.
This is probably my very favorite old-school king fu movie. It is so violent as to be totally fucked up, and the fight scenes are intensely creative and fun to watch.
Fatal Contact
A young man lets a girl he likes talk him into underground fighting.
This movie is really good, but depressing as hell. The fight scenes start out pretty lighthearted and steadily get more disturbing. They're all really great, though. Man, I really don't have the vocabulary to talk about fight movies.
Jacky Wu (the star) is pretty fucking amazing.
Master Killer (Shaolin Master Killer, 36th Chamber of Shaolin)
A young man escapes the devastation of his village and joins a shaolin temple. There, he learns to fight. But our hero wants to train people who aren't monks to fight, so that they can rise up against injustice.
I think this movie seemed slower than it needed to because I saw it right after the others. If you watch it on its own, this is a great movie. It just seems kind of dull when contrasted with more modern action films.
The Shaolin Temple
In spite of the fact that Jet Li's name was on the case, I didn't have high hopes for this movie--maybe because the cover art is so bad.
But this was one of the reasons why I can't pass up any kung fu picture until I try to watch it--because it turned out to be a terrific movie.
One of the best things was that even though you can tell its a cheap DVD, its still got subtitles. Granted, sometimes you have to puzzle out what they mean, but it still beats dubbing.
Also, apparently its a musical--people burst into song at odd times.
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06:10 am - Godzilla Vs. Hedorah
A monster shows up in Japanese waters, wrecking tankers and eating the contents. Then it comes ashore and fights Godzilla.
This movie is so weird! I haven't seen many of the ones where Godzilla lurches onscreen to music suggesting he just wiped out a brewery, but I'm assuming Hedorah is unique. For one thing, it never gets boring! For another, there's the disco dancing! And spontaneous rave which ends with kids throwing flaming sticks at an ambulatory pile of toxic waste! Plus the little cartoons of Hedorah enjoying himself were just adorable.
Why weren't the songs subtitled? That struck me as kinda odd.
Tune in later, when I try to remember to write up the king fu movies I saw a week ago.
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November 24th, 2008
06:05 am - I Witness
Jeff Daniels is in Mexico trying to help unionize a factory. A priest friend calls him in when 27 dead people, including some children, are found in a collapsed tunnel.
A decent movie with a good cast. Directed by the Road House guy.
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November 9th, 2008
09:38 pm - Comic books and other scary stuff
The Ruins
Two couples on vacation in Mexico meet a guy who's going to some obscure archaeological dig to look for his brother. They all decide it would be fun to go--and holy shit are they ever wrong.
This movie is fucking terrifying. It is so good I woke up twice last night thinking about it.
Comic Book Confidential
This documentary has a lot of good information, but it is put together in a really shitty, annoying sort of way. Lynda Barry reads a great bit out of a book I now need, and apparently Art Spiegelman has a HUGE HEAD.
War of the Worlds
Except for the boring lecture at the beginning, this old movie is pretty damned good. Unstoppable aliens invade the earth, and mankind is sent running before them.
Phantasm III
I don't know exactly how to describe this movie, but it has some great gore.
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