Omni's Random Video Noise

Hot Dogs.

Is it just me or does Dirty Harry feel like the originator of the rogue badass cop trope? I mean this is the early early 70s, all of your grumbly one-liner-slingin' badge with a chip on his shoulder can trace his way back to this, and I think it's fairly easy to see why.

Clit Eastwood is amusingly overserious with his line-delivery, it almost seems like he was poorly dubbed over, but his permanent grimace assures that he really is "that cool". He's also needlessly racist in one scene which is never referred to again.

Our baddie, who goes unnamed?, is suitably creepy, but to be honest I think he rather shot himself in the foot, or stabbed himself in the leg if you will, by immediately engaging in high-profile crimes IMMEDIATELY after he's been vindicated of his crimes on public television. Way to go, just robbing and leaving an old man with a clear description of you and then hijacking a bus and telling the police exactly what kind of vehicle you're in and where you are, that's some remarkably unintelligent scheming coming from the guy who forced a cop to reveal any tag-alongs by racing him phone booth to phone booth.

Honestly, I think the most interesting part of the movie is simply the trope that just won't go away. How do you make a vigilante if not by telling people whose job it is to pursue justice that they can't pursue justice because bureaucracy? They were making movies like this in the 70s and they're still making them now, I THINK THIS IS INDICATIVE OF A PROBLEM.


How ****ED is your justice system when there exists no law to pardon people who've broken the law with good reason? The whole "you can't torture suspects" thing brings me back to a podcast I was listening to not long ago which highlighted this specific issue; there are specific circumstances under which torture would be a reasonable moral imperative, how come we don't get this?

I mean, say there's a terrorist, who's got, say, New York, doomed to be decimated and irradiated by a dirty bomb, set to a timer in an unknown location. The police have the terrorist in custody and he refuses to say where the device is. You have the option to let several million people die or sacrifice the personal comfort of THE ONE GUY WHO'S TRYING TO KILL THEM.

Scale it down and you got one guy withholding the whereabouts of a 14-year-old girl who's suffocating to death. Harry tortures him, obviously GETS the information, they find her corpse, and then they're all "Dammit, Harry, now he walks!"

What!? WHY!? They're acting like there's literally no way for Harry to know this guy is guilty of ANYTHING that has happened and yet they got the whereabouts of THE kidnapped girl! How the **** could he possibly know that otherwise!? What, is he a civilian who witnessed the crime, opted not to report it, and then INCRIMINATED himself when he was run down by a cop investigating his home over THE CRIME IN QUESTION!?

YES IT DOES! It's called EVIDENCE!

I think there was a bit too much female nudity in this.

Shishkebab, Meat Slab, it's strange to think that Kite is adapted from an anime, because it's anime qualities are practically non-existent and finishing this movie left me wishing there was a better version of it.

I haven't seen the original Kite, but this version was rather perplexing. It's premise of a dirty cop "helping" his dead partner's drug addicted amnesiac daughter to take down the human trafficking organization that killed her parents isn't a bad one and the twist at the end was a fair surprise, but... it felt really awkward.

I'm immediately at odds with our protagonist being a drug addict, frankly, I think you're effectively handicapping your character when your do that because it makes it way more difficult to relate to her, especially when said drug erases memories and effectively casts her as ignorant against a self-aware background. There are mysteries in this story and the only obstacle is the drugs she's taking. Pretty fricken' dumb. Not only that, but Uncle Samuel L. Jackson seems all too contradictive in his "I swore I'd take care of you" dialog as he casually thrusts a needle full of mind-erasing drug into her body. Nice.

Really, it's one thing to make your protagonist a drug addict, that quality about them has to serve their character in some way, such as it is in House M.D. or even Ink.

Here it's... literally the primary plot device the entire movie rotates around and even without it I think this movie suffers.

I had occasional fondness for the aesthetic beats, both musical and visual, but the entire movie feels... dirty. Not the Dirty Harry kind of dirty, but messy. The movies plagued with the same old same old audiovisual artifacts that are meant to create trippy flashback moments for amnesiac characters, but this seemed like self-indulgence. The movie's obviously not going to drip-feed us new information in this way, that's telegraphed very clearly and confirmed when our character gives up the drugs and immediately remembers a single key detail. All of that dizzying garbled fuss was just a complete waste, it never served any purpose other than to stylize an aspect of the movie that would only seriously come into play once.


On top of that the movie's heavily and selectively desaturated and near the end becomes a challenge to even SEE past how dark it gets.

All this and you still have conspicuous metaphorical dialog delivered in such a way that feels nothing short of melodramatic and this clashes with, yet again, the squibtacular violence which features our protagonist slamming a dildo into a bad guy's mouth so hard that the back of his skull explodes all over the wall behind him.

I dunno, it might be just me, but that doesn't seem very realistic.

And even then, did I read that scene right? Was that a dildo or something else? We've established that she's rockin' explosive bullets in a fancy gun she's got hidden in a mechanical compartment of her bag among other gadgets so was that really a dildo or was that a dildo designed to "blow it's load" so to speak? Was it a trick explosive dildo?

Isn't her entire arsenal smuggled police and military weapons? Are the police arming themselves with dildos now? Seriously, WTF was that?

Not if you have to fight the fish. And not if the fish is a whale. Also Fishing. Horses. Stickbugs. Rabbits. And let's count that shot of the naked kid pissing in the street, we didn't need that did we?

13 Assassins reminded me, unpleasantly, of Seven Samurai, a much better movie, and The Raid, a slightly better movie.

The first 15 minutes, which I reiterate is the standard window of time I give for movies to sell me on their premise, was terrible. It was a monumental drag through and I credit that to a combination of needlessly drumming up cartoonishly evil crimes to pin on the Big Bad as well as the trope I still have no title for: LOTSA NAME-DROPPING, but nothing hits the floor.

I've complained about this repeatedly in movies; it's that annoying form of exposition that's nothing but characters flat out describing the relevant and non-relevant names and organizations that are offscreen as if this is all super important setup to absorb, yet by the end of the movie, I can tell you EXACTLY what happened, but I'll be damned if I remember a single name of one of 13 samurai in the title of your FRICKEN' MOVIE!

It's ridiculous, it takes at least 49 minutes for any real action to show up and after the halfway point of the movie I feel like I'm watching a ****** version of Seven Samurai that plays like a slightly better version of Azumi.

I don't know any of these characters, and even taking up 2 hours the 13 Assassins absolutely pale in comparison to the Seven Samurai. The whole movie just looks dirty, there's some skin-deep introspection about how "being a samurai is about dying for your master" which, I digress, is a phenomenally stupid basis for conflict... BUT THEN, we are talking about a society that advocates harakiri which we're offered to watch twice in the movie.

Both times I'm positively baffled why it's in the movie, because it neither lends me a positive outlook on it's world or it's characters and the topic isn't addressed in any critical way. They open the movie with one (why?) and there's another partway through when a man out for revenge for his murdered family forbids passage on a bridge to The Big Bad. Instead of fighting, the Big Bad turns and leaves. So the guy kills himself.

WHAT was that about? Too bad the Big Bad didn't know that the mere acceptance of the rule against crossing bridges would provoke the enforcers of that rule to kill themselves. Imagine how many laws you could break if an "okay, officer" would trigger cops to shoot themselves?

Now obviously the reason here is that he can't bear to live in the world without his family, but COME ON, how was he managing BEFORE today? Why did he see his chance for revenge and pass on it? This scene is just a driveby, the writers giggling to themselves in their truck as they roll up to smash a mailbox only to hit it and dent the hood. AND THEY DON'T EVEN NOTICE.

The movie even ends with one of the only two survivors saying he's gonna become a bandit. Nice. A real straight A student we got there, a true hero. 'Course, these are also the guys who thought an appropriate ambush tactic was to LIGHT COWS ON FIRE.

Ever see a man's lips ripped off? That's one of the first lines in this movie and it's ****in' terrible. They set the stage for much of the racial humor that rolls in with Samuel L. Jackson's character, but fortunately it's all uphill from here (or downhill from here if you're a pessimist). It's a fair bit classier and Die Hard 3 actually has the cajones to take a stab at it for what it is.

THANK YOU. I'm sick and tired of that. Once again, Samuel L. Jackson aids clearing up common misconceptions about America's racial tensions.

ANYWAY, I don't want to talk about that anymore. How does this compare to Die Hard? It's up there. How does this compare to Die Harder? That happened?

Oh yeah, Dogs, Eggs, and Kissing.

Samuel L. Jackson is a welcome source of wit and his more Pulp Fiction-y boisterous personality which still manages to clash with Bruce Willis in amusing ways.

Jeremy Irons is... debateably on par with Alan Rickman as the villain, truly he's a rock solid baddie actor to take his place, least of which play his in-character brother.

The movie has a lot of interesting twists and turns and amidst a fairly excessive repetition of When Johnny Comes Marching Home and a reference to Hillary Clinton as the 43rd president, which is guaranteed to date the movie, I have one nagging complaint... the water jug riddle.

Practically all of the other riddles you could solve given the information, but McClane and Zeus solve the puzzle partway through messing with the water levels. We just cut to them one step away from solving it.

The puzzle and solution is this:

You're at a fountain with a 3 gallon (A) and a 5 gallon (B) jug. You must fill one of them with exactly 4 gallons of water. How do you do it?

Fill B. A is empty, B contains 5 gallons.

Fill A with B. A contains 3 gallons, B contains 2 gallons.

Empty A. A is empty, B contains 2 gallons.

Fill A with B. A contains 2 gallons, B is empty.

Fill B. A contains 2 gallons, B contains 5 gallons.

<Scene>
Fill A with B. A contains 3 gallons, B contains 4 gallons.
</Scene>

I'm not sure why that was important enough to complain about, but the movie agonized over it, I like to solve riddles alongside the protagonists aaand, I just like riddles.

That's a good one.

Kissing, Milk, a bunch of Frozen Dinners.

Bullitt is the story of Frank Bullitt, an officer assigned to protect a witness whose court testimony would sink a non-specific "Organization". The witness is shortly killed in an assassination attempt, and instead of confirming whether the shotgun blast to the shoulder was lethal, the killers instead leave and return to kill him in the hospital. It's from this point forward that Bullitt attempts to lure the baddies to him with the assumption that the witness still lives while a senator breathes down his neck about how he could either help or punish the police department depending on the results.

The story is interesting, but it's mercilessly padded out with overlong shots, needless tangents, and just general repetition of the same information. If Bullitt tells one guy something, he's gotta tell the same thing to someone else.

It takes 23 minutes before any conflict actually shows up in the movie and at the 1 hour, 24 minute mark out of nowhere we're suddenly having an intimate conversation about how Frank "lives in a world of violence" and "how it doesn't make him callous".

Where the hell is this in the rest of the movie? This is no narrative payoff, this is character development after nearly 90 minutes!

It ends on an airport scene that raises such questions as:

Was there really no screening for guns in the 60s?

Why weren't you checking passports to find the bad guy when you know his name?

You know jumping out the back of a Boeing 737 would break your legs or dislocate something, right? That's no soft landing.

Closing shot is Bullitt meaningfully gazing off into the distance... as if that means something.

I'll admit I liked the 60s-70s mood music and I did find the regular shot composition involving reflections to be visually interesting, but Bullitt was incredibly [Meh]. I'm really not sure why the short car chase gets so much promotion either, car chases are generally pretty boring given it's 99% intercutting shots of two cars driving real fast and 1% hilariously fake panic zoom to explosion.

Fish.

This week on Pam Grier: Black Woman Extraordinaire, Pam Grier plays a character with a euphemism for a name who's government agent/police officer husband/boyfriend/family member is killed by drug runners so she goes undercover as a prostitute to mildly sabotage the drug runners, but they catch her, [try to] drug her, [try to] molest her, but she escapes, comes back with a [shot]gun and kills some fools before ending the movie with an Erectile Misfortune.

This might seem awfully familiar because almost identical to the plot of Foxy Brown. And ironically, despite my narrative complaints with Foxy Brown, somehow that movie had a lot more drama, the characters, shallow though they were, were deeper and Foxy's relationship served a more sympathetic catalyst for revenge.

The movie opens up with some rock solid cheese, but it quickly disappears behind a legitimate attempt at drama. The cheese returns occasionally, but I fear the movie is a bit too self-serious most of the time even if it's somewhat amusing at how feebly it tries to rationalize getting Pam Grier's **** out. Sorry guys, there's no time to rape her, just tear her shirt a bit and run away.

There's some weird **** like when one of the baddies says he recognizes she must have a cop for a boyfriend by the way she broke a bottle over a bimbo's head. >_>

And then there's also that one catfight (because of course there's a catfight) in which a prostitute tries to grab Coffy's fro and cuts her hands on the razorblades she's hidden in it, then hard cut to a montage singin' "Coffy, babyyyyyyy, sweet as a chocolate baaaaar!" as she shoves a handgun up the ass of stuffed lion.

I think the song is a little confused, especially the line, "gentle as a song, you can't see right from wrong".

Christmas, Horses, Rice Crispies, Dogs, Cookies, Goats, Meat Slabs, Kissing, I can't even be bothered to organize these, this movie SUCKED and there is one DAMNING SCENE:


This is the sort of scene that reminds me of those kinds of people in the school cafeteria who sidle right up next to me offering me part of their burger or popcorn shrimp and go "MMMMMM YEEEAAAAAAHHHH GOOOOOOOOD MEAT!" completely unaware that I know where they live and that by morning they won't wake up for the bloody hole I'll have made in their throat and stuffed full of lettuce like some vigilante vegan bandit.

Seriously, the fact that it looks like they used both a real deer and then shot an EXTENDED sequence of some cracked out freaky puppet flailing the **** around in the windshield like some sort of nightmare before the protagonist snaps it neck, ALMOST CERTAINLY out of some extreme confusion over what it takes to remain tonally consistent and endear us to a protagonist...

There aren't enough middle fingers in the world.

And I would have stopped there, BUT it seems that "that wouldn't be an adequate review of the movie" even though my intention is obviously NOT to clearly review the entirety of each and every movie I see and the totally undue weight placed upon vague yet loaded terms like "review"...!!!

Pardon, but I think that's pretty ridiculous.
BUT NOT AS RIDICULOUS AS THE REST OF THIS MOVIE!!
Which I watched, so congratu****in'lations, enjoy even more bitching.

Samuel L. Jackson is about the only redeeming quality in this movie, the rest is stock standard if not worse and his charisma goes a LONG way to bandaging the various festering sores that infest this bloody mess.

First off, the entire plot revolves around amnesia, which is great, cause now we can trope the **** out of that, except no, we're cross-polinating here, cause as Main Girl gets her memories back we go full on Split Personality which always one of the most difficult to sell mental disorders, AND THEY DON'T SELL IT. Frumpy Mom goes full-on Stone Cold Bitch with barely a flicker in-between, even going so far as to tell her daughter that "life is pain" which is apparently so significant it gets a callback during the climax. Wow, I couldn't take it seriously before, I almost could the second time.

Another frustrating thing is that when her old personality flairs up and then returns to Frumpy Mom she totally forgets what just happened. You forgot what you remembered? That makes sense.

There isn't even any indication of when or why this stops happening, she just sort of gels into one person, which again is one part deerkiller and one part nihilist slut, so yeah, I LOVE THIS CHARACTER.

Logical blackholes just riddle this movie, how is it that a fragmentation grenade will explode outward with a wall of fire? Grenades don't work that way, my classmates would know.

When she gets captured and trapped in the walk-in freezer, what in the hell is this McGyver scheme she concocts?

Retainer + Doll Pee + Meat Hook = Explosion WHAT!?

The retainer seems completely unnecessary, I find it pretty hard to believe that you can create sparks by banging a metal hook on a metal floor in -60 degree temperatures, and... Doll Pee? As in urine from the a doll???

Let's BREAK THIS DOWN:

HOW DO YOU KNOW the doll has that feature!? That was never foreshadowed!

HOW DO YOU EVEN KNOW that it's not regular water!? Most pissing dolls are! AGAIN, my unfortunate classmates would know this!

AND HOW DO YOU EVEN KNOW that this non-water false urine substance is even remotely flammable!? Why would they sell dolls full of volatile liquids!?

That explosion works and it immediately creates an entirely new mystery wherein it blows Samuel L. Jackson backwards out of the window, while he's tied to a chair, SEVERAL METERS, into a tree, into the snow, and mere SECONDS later he's able to recover fast enough to grab the knife, which survived the explosion stuck to his chair, and lands a perfect throw into a nearby baddy's throat before telling Main Girl that he's gonna go out guns-a-blazing because he wants to be good for something, implying that he sucks at precisely the thing he just did.

Why are the villains even villains in this movie? I know they want to detonate a chemical bomb, naughty naughty, but there's literally NO GOOD REASON for this movie to exist. The villains plans get destroyed PURELY and UTTERLY because they antagonized a woman they had left for dead and had evidently forgotten about them and/or LEFT THEM COMPLETELY ALONE for 8 years.

8 YEARS! You're trying to kill someone who's been a total non-obstacle to you for 8 YEARS! And she's literally the ONLY THING that ****ed you over! You completely sabotaged your own plans!

Merely torturing her despite her demonstrable ignorance about your plans MADE HER REMEMBER and even if she didn't remember she's certain got a bone to pick with you NOW! SHE KNOWS YOUR ******* FACES AND NAMES NOW YOU THICK ****BUCKETS!!

Jeez, even the climax isn't safe, the police refuse to approach the truck to save her daughter even though they have no known way of knowing that the truck is a bomb LET ALONE how much time they have before it goes off, so Main Girl just shrugs off a gunshot wound to the chest before we callback to that "die screaming" quote which fails to be satisfyingly reincorporated and the movie ends reminding me that Geena Davis is a lot like Kristen Stewart, their lips just hang in a perpetual state of gum circulation.

****... this movie.

I'll grant it's not THAT bad, but it's bad.

Hamburgers, Chicken, something meaty I'm sure, also Powdered Wigs.

1986's Above The Law, not to be confused with 1988's Steven Segal movie of the same name and also known as Righting Wrongs, is easily one of the better martial arts movies I've seen and it's not simply because it's got exceptional fight scenes, they are good, but it actually has a pretty decent story too.

Yuen Biao, who I've increasingly come to appreciate in movies like Project A and Dragons Forever, stars alongside Cynthia Rothrock in a movie that's much more than just a buddy cop movie.

Biao is a vigilante prosecutor who's become disillusioned by the justice system he works for when he sees bureaucracy pardon bad guys and Rothrock is a police officer on his case, convinced that he's a wanted murderer, unknowing that it is in fact the police superintendent whose committing the killings.

The movie begins with a rather subpar opening which slightly less 80s than Yes, Madam, remarkable mainly for how overkill it is, the assassination target is loaded with bullets and bullets even after he's assuredly dead and when Biao manages to flip the baddies car, he's not done until he's ignited the ****ers on fire.

DANG, well it feeds into his character, so it may seem extreme at first, but it makes sense in retrospect.

The movie doesn't fall into the same trappings of Yes, Madam by being 70% gag dialog and sadly there is no Mr. Tin equivalent. If it did this would simply be THE BEST FRICKEN' MOVIE EVER.

I'm gonna repost that video because I couldn't help doing the Mr. Tin laugh all throughout this movie.