Movie Tab II

A 4/5, nice! I'm glad you liked it.

I thought the soundtrack did a good job creating the atmosphere, it fit the scenes well. Yeah, the dialogue could be completely removed and it still would make for a fantastic experience. I mean, its strong points were in the visuals.

Requiem for a Dream (Darren Aronofsky, 2000) - +
The Little Shop of Horrors (Roger Corman, 1960) - +

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"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here. This is the war room."

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) -



This is quite similar to Theatre of Blood, but sadly quite inferior to it in almost every aspect. It's not as funny, the murders, while still imaginable, don't feel so brutal and Dr. Phibes does not feel as manic as Lionheart. Still, this is a very good movie with great cinematography and a must-see for every Price fan.

風の中の子供 [Children in the Wind] (1937) -



Shimizu is a great director and I constantly think I'm underrating his movies (at least I can't say this with Ornamental Hairpin I rated ). I feel really bad for not rating it 4 stars as it is a wonderful depiction of children's world and their understanding and correspondence to the world of the adults. I saw some Ozu films with children, but Shimizu may be even more of an expert at this. This is a very simple movie with a simple story. Something you'd expect from Ozu. It doesn't quite have this Ozu touch that makes his movies truly one of its kind, but it's still a beautiful little movie.

To jest jajko [This Is an Egg] (1966) -



A very touching documentary short about some blind children touching eggs. Since non-blind people can see an egg, they can easily state that this object is indeed an egg. However, if one's blind, he or she has to rely on other senses to recognize this egg. People who have all senses available don't really use all of them, because in this case they would only use their sight to see whether or not an object is an egg. Blind people have to touch it, feel its surface and hardness and sometimes even taste it to make sure it is an egg. This short starts with these children inspecting both raw and boiled eggs and at the end comes a scene when they touch hatching eggs. Very moving.

White Zombie (1932) -



Lugosi is great here, but he just reenacts his Dracula role. In different environment and with different story, but still with the same hypnotizing gaze and hand moves. Apart from that it's just your usual horror movie of the time.

Dark Star (1974) -



Wow, that was a letdown. I didn't find it funny. It was pretty boring. At least the obsolete cheap special effects were great.

靈幻先生 [Mr. Vampire III] (1987) -



Better than the second one! As good as first! Quite funny with great action scenes that almost never stop! Lam Ching-Ying saves the day once again. The very moment he appeared on the screen... these giant eyebrows made me laugh!

血玫瑰 [Her Vengeance] (1988) -



An attractive lady gets raped by a gang of abominable criminals and then sets out for vengence! Sounds like your typical rape & revenge flick and it indeed belongs to this genre, but you can't forget this was directed by the infamous Lam Nai-choi, director of Story of Ricky and The Seventh Curse. The movie starts very seriously and the rape scene is pretty rough, but then it gets more and more entertaining and crazy with some nice killings and absolutely crazy crossbow (and more!) ending! Lam Ching-Ying plays a guy in a wheelchair here, but lack of legs doesn't stop him from being a badass and a pro kung fu master. He doesn't look that impressive without these artificial eyebrows, though!

I also watched a mediocre low-budget Polish movie, some Hertzfeldt shorts that are okay and some other shorts.

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I read this title and expected something ridiculous then i read your post and i imagine it is as touching as you said it is. Well, i didn't think i'd say i really want to see This is An Egg when i woke up today at least.

The Collector (1965) -



I meant to take a break from perverts of cinema and therefore chose this quaint little movie by Wyler. I couldn't have done worse (or better, that depends)! A wonderful psychological thriller, this is! With surprising, hard-hitting ending, sexy Samantha Eggar and frightfully calm Terence Stamp.

子供の四季 [Four Seasons of Children] (1939) -



This 140 minutes long movie is divided into two 70 minutes parts that both are divided into two parts that makes for a total of four parts, each for corresponding season. Once again does Shimizu a great job at portraying children, but sadly the world of adults is totally uninteresting with all these embezzlements, feuds and scams. What's most beautiful is that a child doesn't care if his friend is a son of a bad man who hurts his family. He just wants to play with that other child who is equally ignorant. Children don't understand many things from adult's world, but this lack of understanding is actually their strength. The movie is very nice, but Shimizu is pushing it a little bit with such a long screening time.

俠盜高飛 [Full Contact] (1992) -



I never saw any Heroic Bloodshed movie that has not been directed by John Woo. Big mistake! It may not have such strong friendship bonds as Woo movies have, but it's got Chow Yun-fat and Anthony Wong fighting Simon Yam and his group of crazies including a nymphomaniac chick. There are some takes where camera follows a bullet, something video game makers would rip off years later.

浮気妻　恥辱責め [The Bedroom] (1992) -



Like other late Sato films this one doesn't have that many sex scenes (although sexuality and fetishism are some of the primary themes here) and is pretty hard to follow plot-wise. This also has Issei Sagawa as one of the actors, which made me want to finally watch a documentary film about him (I've heard about him years ago, but never watched any documentaries about him, guy was some serious sicko).

青少年のための映画入門 [Young Person's Guide to Cinema] (1974) -



Well, I remember being shot at (with different kinds of, ekhm, "catridges"), but I believe this is the first time I have been pissed on at cinema. This f*cked up provocative short film is supposed to be seen on three screens (I only have two screens, so I had to use split screen on my computer and use my TV for the third screen). Each screen shows a different, tinted footage. The first pink one is some old school photographs, the second green one a naked lady next to some weird machinery (is this an illusionist act or something?). Finally, the third one, tinted in blue, shows a naked man urinating on camera lens. This may be the best movie ever made, but I just can't see it yet. Both this and Emperor Tomato Ketchup feature footage of uncensored genitalia. How did they get this past censure, I don't know.

蝶服記 [Butterfly Dress Pledge] (1974) -



Rainbow colours, ventriloquist dolls, S&M fetishes, surrealism, weird shadows and... butterflies. Terayama, you sick f*ck!

Full Contact is an honest-to-God masterpiece.

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I can't deny this!

Show Business (Jules White, 1932)

+
The Pack (Robert Clouse, 1977)

The Last Kiss (Gabriele Muccino, 2001)

+
The Adventures of Mark Twain (Irving Rapper, 1944)

-

Episodic, tall-tale biography of satirist Mark Twain (Fredric March), highlighting recreations of his many stories.
Problem Girls (E.A. Dupont, 1953)

Pluto and the Gopher (George Nichols, 1950)

Return from the Sea (Lesley Selander, 1954)

Red Lily (Fred Niblo, 1924)

-

Ramon Novarro & Enid Bennet are young lovers separated by bad luck, cruelty and crime.
The Steel Lady (E.A. Dupont, 1953)

Abe Lincoln in Illinois (John Cromwell, 1940)

+
Return to Treasure Island (E.A. Dupont, 1954)

The 47 Ronin (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1941)

Four-hour epic about 47 samurai who are shamed when their master is ordered to commit seppuku, but when they seek to restore their clan name and are unsatisfied, they seek revenge.
Return to Paradise (Mark Robson, 1953)

+
Hitler’s Children (Edward Dmytryk, 1943)

Abraham Lincoln (D.W. Griffith, 1930)

De Palma (Noah Baumbach & Jake Paltrow, 2016)

-

Now in his mid-70s, director Brian De Palma goes in-depth about all his movies, including his student-made, independents, studio, hits, bombs and the ones he didn't make but was involved with.
Yellow Canary (Herbert Wilcox, 1943)

+
Sicario (Denis Villeneuve, 2015)

Have Rocket -- Will Travel (David Lowell Rich, 1959)

Stray Cat Rock: Machine Animal (Yasuharu Hasebe, 1970)

As well as the usual Meiko Kaji, music, fashion, colors, motorcycles and gangs, this one adds LSD.

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

Ah, The Red Lily, I love that movie. It's a simple enough even if tragic story that was capable of expanding on every emotion possible. That ending, though. Damn that ending straight to hell.

Interview with a Cannibal (2011) -



An interesting insight into the life and mind of Issei Sagawa, a man who killed, raped and ate the body of a girl in France, but then thanks to his rich father and law loopholes was first pronounced insane, then extradited to Japan and some time later released from mental hospital as a sane person. He's been more or less a celebrity in Japan ever since, living from books he wrote, interviews and films he played in etc.

ハイキック・ガール！ [High Kick Girl!] (2009) -



Not as good as them j-splatters and Zombie Assus, but still very enjoyable! Rina Takeda was hotter in Dead Sushi, though.

Little Big Man (1970) -



My heart soars like a hawk when I watch a movie as good as this! I mean, I didn't find it funny and thought about giving it a 3.5, but after that scene, in which Hoffmann does three squaws in a row, I had no other choice, but to give it a 4.0 and add Hoffmann to my list of greatest movie f*ckers.

Jules et Jim [Jules and Jim] (1962) -



Sad and tragic story that feels very light - just your typical Truffaut. This was NOTHING I thought it would be. Great love triangle with femme fatale can't end good!

キュア [Cure] (1997) -



This is like Japanese Se7en, only better! The atmosphere is so dense you can cut it with knife! Even though, this is not a horror and there are no supernatural forces at play here, I constantly thought otherwise and caught myself in the trap of the criminal. It's incredible how much does Kurosawa achieve with simple means like sound design, dark ambient music, or just pulsating sound for most of the time and spare scenography. This movie f*cks with your psyche!

Ma-eum-ui gohyang A Hometown in Heart (Yoon Yong-kyu, 1949) -
Sicario (Denis Villeneuve, 2015) -
The Crowd (King Vidor, 1928) -
John Wick (Chad Stahelski/David Leitch, 2014) -

龍虎風雲 [City on Fire] (1987) -



Not as good as Full Contact, but still superb! Tarantino ripped off the last 20 minutes of this for Reservoir Dogs.

回路 [Pulse] (2001) -



One of the best horrors I've seen lately! I wouldn't be surprised if it's the best j-horror as well. Ghosts here are only an excuse and the movie changes its genre at least once!

放‧逐 [Exiled] (2006) - - REWATCH



Johnnie To's masterpiece! Anthony Wong and some other guns-for-hire from the director's Mission team up once again. This is one of the most stylish movies ever made and it feels like Melville and Leone had a bastard son called Woo, who then raped Anthony Wong. It's very moving, too. And occasionally funny. I mean, every Hongkong film with a toddler is a masterpiece (see: Hard Boiled).

Splendor in the Grass (1961) -



Not a 4.5! Not this time, Kazan! But pretty darn close, anyway. Natalie Wood is not only a pretty face, but also gives a great performance here. Multi-layered melodrama about teenagers' problems. I thought this genre died in the 50's, but figures it didn't.

Il Decameron [The Decameron] (1971) -



Very kinky! And no sick stuff like in Salo (apart from the protagonist taking an unvolunteered bath in privy at the beginning of the movie)! It has some naughty nuns, cuckolds and pseudo-conjurers. It also mocks the Church in many ways. I might increase its rating to 4.0 after I've seen the other two parts of the Trilogy of Life.

城市特警 [The Big Heat] (1988) -



One of first Johnnie To films! Very brutal! Not enough Joey Wong, though! Perhaps a 4.0 film.

倩女幽魂3 [A Chinese Ghost Story III] (1991) -



What the hell? After two masterpieces of the trilogy I expected a worse film, but this one is a masterpiece as well! Sadly, there's no Leslie Cheung anymore, but he was replaced with Tony Leung Chiu Wai! Joey Wong is as alluring as ever as an ill-fated lady ghost! This time seducing a monk! The only thing I missed was the title song of the first two parts! This one has one, too, but although good, it's not the same! All in all, A Chinese Ghost Story is one of my favourite trilogies ever and along with Green Snake one of my favourite fantasy movies ever!

The Unknown (1927)

Alonzo, a a knifethrower and carnival gunman, sets his eyes on Nanon, the daughter of the circus owner. An early silent horror film by Tod Browning, happens to be my favorite film of this time. Criminal vs the ringmaster. Hail the change of seasons and the bewitching time, mystical fesitvals, spirits, woodland craft, and great fire celebrations.

Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928) 7.5 / 10
He Who Gets Slapped (1924) 7.0 / 10





The Unknown (1927) + 8.5 / 10

Pieta (Kim Ki-duk, 2012) -
The Ogre (Volker Schlöndorff, 1996) -

I racconti di Canterbury [The Canterbury Tales] (1972) -



At the beginning of the movie, Pasolini himself says that to jest may be just a way to say something important (or something along these lines) and so he continues what he started in The Decameron. Just as frolic, this time set in medieval England, the movie tells a couple of kinky stories and then ends with a devil shi*ting frairs!

東方三俠 [The Heroic Trio] (1993) -



Three HK chicks (Maggie Cheung, Michelle Yeoh, Anita Mui) versus The Master of the Flying Guillotine Anthony Wong and some old-ass eunuch who in the end of the movie turns into a skeleton and tries to rape Yeoh. Yes, it is a great film.

Il boss [The Boss] (1973) -



Henry Silva as a cold, calculating killer versus the whole Sicilian mafia. And that concludes Fernando Di Leo's Poliziotteschi trilogy for me! All movies are quite different from each other, but all are great!

Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964) -



If Kurosawa wants to compete with such a great film, he has a tough nut to crack, but he's already proved to me he is more than a worthy director. This has some amazing acting from Richard Attenborough and especially Kim Stanley, whose I didn't know prior to watching this movie. I really thought this is going to be a horror film all the way through, something like The Haunting, but it wasn't like that at all. It was a psychological drama with some thriller elements to it.

Pickup on South Street (1953) -



An interesting take on Communist paranoia era and a great film-noir at that! Thankfully, the characters don't seem too interested in politics. Richard Widmark gives an outstanding performance only second to that in Night and the City and Thelma Ritter is even better. I'm wondering how come she didn't get an Oscar for this role.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Burr Steers, 2016)

Scared Stiff (George Marshall, 1953)

On the Shores of Nova Scotia (James A. FitzPatrick, 1947)

The Accused (Jonathan Kaplan, 1988)

A less-than-perfect young woman (Jodie Foster) is about to be gang-raped n a crowded bar, and besides the rapists, the deputy D.A. (Kelly McGillis) goes after the men who cheered them on.
Eight Iron Men (Edward Dmytryk, 1952)

The Pirates of Penzance (Wilford Leach, 1983)

The Good Humor Man (Lloyd Bacon, 1950)

Swiss Army Man (Daniel Scheinert & Dan Kwan, 2016)

When suicidal castaway Paul Dano finds a corpse (Daniel Radcliffe) who appears to still be alive and even exhibits some super powers (mostly related to his farts), he uses him to get back home.
Sniper (Luis Llosa, 1993)

Voices (Ki-hwan Oh, 2007)

+
Crazy Eights (James Koya Jones, 2006)

The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years (Ron Howard, 2016)

Beatlemania in full force at the ABC Cinema in Manchester, England on November 20, 1963.
Clipped Wings (Edward Bernds, 1953)

Another Woman (Woody Allen, 1988)

+
Equinox (Jack Woods, Mark Thomas McGee & Dennis Muren, 1970)

+
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnaubel, 2007)

The physical therapist (Olatz López Garmendia) of paralyzed fashion magazine Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amairic) drives him crazy by reminding him that he’ll never touch a woman again. After his massive stroke, the only thing he can do physically is blink his left eye, but his mind is strong and full of memories.
Saturday Afternoon (Harry Edwards, 1926)

-
Night Train to Terror (5 Directors, 1985)

The Midnight Meat Train (Ryûhei Kitamura, 2008)

Horror Express (Eugenio Martín, 1972)

-

On the Trans-Siberian-Express, British Dr. Peter Cushing and anthropologist Christopher Lee learn that a frozen humanoid on board is possessed by a murderous, soul-sucking creature with an astonishing origin and history.

All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone, 1930)

Even after all these years, this film still connects with the viewer in primal ways which modern films can't quite seem to touch. All Quiet on the Western Front continues to be a watershed, both as a novel and a film, to teach our youth the true horrors of war and to get then past the "glamour", "excitement" and "honor" of dying for one's country, right or wrong. The novel is obviously a classic for a reason, and this film version remains a classic, despite some overlength and primitiveness. It's actually the "primitiveness" which adds to the power of the film because this is a true war (read: anti-war) film. It paints both sides of the picture and shows the utter falsehood of the pro-side of war.

The film contains a litany of memorable scenes: the opening contains some of Milestone's best direction; we see the young German recruits marching through the city while the camera comes inside a "high school" where the teacher is preaching to his all-male students the absolute glory of fighting and dying for their country. Needless to say, the students all enlist and go off to fight without a second thought. Later on, there are numerous battle scenes which are both spectacular and scary. The unifying theme of the scenes are the horrors and inhumanity of war.

Some more incredible scenes are the nighttime wire reconnaissance, the non-stop bombing suffered by the Germans before the French attack, the eerieness when all goes quiet and the way the youth from the classroom are all so easily killed or mutilated. Later on, the greatest scenes involve the one with the French soldier in the blown-out no-man's land and, quite obviously, one of the most memorable endings ever filmed. Don't be put off by the fact that the film is approching 80 years old. If it wasn't broken, don't try to fix it!

Avatar (That Guy, Last Year [2009])



Avatar is a very good movie. Of course, it could have been even better than a very good movie if "That Guy" had spent as much time on his back story and his one-and-a-half-dimensional villains as he did on creating a beautiful new world, an impressive gimmick involving the avatars themselves and some incredible new technology to make movies seem fully-enjoyable, especially in 3-D. Avatar's claim to fame may well become the fact that it's got so many beautiful and thrilling flying scenes. I can already see a major amusement park opening up a thrill ride involving 3-D flying using the same technology and maybe even many of the same scenes.



Since our MoFos are just so damned smart and well-versed in movie lore, it's obvious that Avatar borrows from Aliens, The Emerald Forest, Dances With Wolves, Iron Man and a half-a-dozen lesser films, but what makes the flick a blast is not what we've seen before but what we've never seen before. I could get into a couple of flicks which may have inspired the avatar set-up and scenes, but this film takes it so much further down the line that it's not really worth it. I have to give That Guy credit for this plot point unless you want to rub my nose into something blatantly obvious. Also, Pandora is the most fully-established alien planet ever depicted in the history of film. Yep, it's even more spectacular and eye-popping than Dune or any of the Star Wars planets. This is because although That Guy went out of his way to wow you, he also took his time to build his story slowly and not try to swamp you with overkill right off the bat. (Every That Guy flick is similar in this respect: slow buildup to whatever the Wow moments are.)

The bad guys may be on autopilot, but at least Stephen Lang got to be almost as athletic as Sam Worthington, and he was actually more interesting than Jeff Bridges in Iron Man. At least, we always knew what was going on with Lang so he was never a Two-Face. As far as Worthington goes, I thought he was excellent, and That Guy really did a good job of using the fact that he was a paraplegic who was more athletic than anyone else while using his avatar. Worthington and Zoe Saldana are a match made in heaven and probably deserve special nominations for best acting by someone controlling a CGI ("Motion Capture") character. As I mentioned earlier though, the sensation of flying has never quite been captured so spectacularly as it is in this flick, so it's a given this will win Best Special F/X.



Now, based on what I've been saying, you may wonder why I didn't give this a higher rating? I believe that 160 minutes is just too long. 125 minutes seems more realistic to me, with the middle to just past the middle section being the one which could have used some chopping. Also, the finale has lots of action, but once again goes on too long, so I think my basic opinion is that I'd keep the first 90 minutes and then cut about half of the last hour out, at least as well as I could without taking away too many key moments. But even so, look at that: . I guess what I'm trying to say is that if I had final cut, I'd probably give it or maybe a . After all, who am I to say since my name isn't "That Guy", I couldn't easily screw up this surefire winner by tweaking it too much?



And just to give Holden some credit, this is what I said in the theatre when I saw this scene: "The Force is strong with this one..."

The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (Preston Sturges, 1944)



Completely-insane Sturges concoction, made at the height of WWII, which manages to bamboozle the Production Code in more ways than practically any other film since the Code's enforcement 10 years earlier. It's basically the story of the romance of Midwestern smalltown friends, Trudy Kockenlocker (Betty Hutton) and Norval Jones (Eddie Bracken), who's 4-F and unable to serve in the military because when he gets nervous, he sees "spots". Although they seem to love each other, Norval finds himself getting the short end of the stick from the vivacious Trudy, who wants to attend a servicemen's dance before the "boys" ship out for war duty, so she asks Norval to pretend to take her on a date to see a movie triple-feature to keep her ultra-suspicious town constable dad (the hilarious William Demarest) from thinking she's out with the sex-crazed soldiers. Norval isn't happy, but he does it out of love and isn't around when Trudy really does get into major trouble.



Once again, I won't go into specifics of where the plot goes, but I can tell you about some of the ways that Sturges made a film which was completely against almost all the basic rules of the Production Code. Although the film satirizes many things, including family relationships, the police department, the military, lawyers, and small-town gossip, it's in its treatment of sex, marriage and pregnancy where it really blasts off into the stratosphere and gets away with everything it attempts. The fact that a main character in the film could get pregnant and not be completely sure that she was married, is truly mind-boggling. Sturges is able to get away with things by adding scenes which have a possible alternative explanation to everything. The woman wasn't drunk before she got pregnant, she was "dizzy" from hitting her head against a ceiling decoration. She was married before she got pregnant (oh really?), but she can't remember her husband's name (something like Ratzkywatzky) and has no idea where he is or how they could have gotten such a quick marriage.

Deep down, this is a pro-family and pro-American film, but it doesn't find the need to beat about the bush when it comes to dealing with real life and pointing out the flaws which are inherent everywhere. Its prime consideration is to provide as many screwball laughs as possible while trying to push the envelope of what the system allowed. In its own way, this film truly opened the door to more mature subject matter in film after the end of WWII. A few bonus points I enjoy about the film are that it brought back the hilarious, fast-talking characters of McGinty and the Boss from Sturges' directorial debut The Great McGinty, the fact that Trudy's 14-year-old sister (Diana Lynn) seems to know more about life than anybody else in the film, and that the actual miracle in the title can be interpreted in more than one way. Yes, only Preston Sturges could come up with a way to have a possibly unwed, virgin mother do what she does in this movie at Christmas, and still have the censors completely in the dark.

Hey! what do you know, Me and Mark rated The Miracle of Morgan's Creek the same

My review of The Miracle of Morgan's Creek