Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Thanks, I'll give it a shot.

While I didn't think it was amazing, I would recommend it.

In and Of Itself, 2020

This film is mainly a recording of Derek DelGaudio's stage show, in which he mixed conceptual/allegorical magic with storytelling. The main theme of the film is perception/self-perception and the nuances of identity.

Much like a good concert film, this movie has the effect of making you wish that you were there in person. It is pretty clear that the audience is strongly connecting with the material, and DelGaudio does a great job of pacing the show so that the light and heavy stuff is mixed well. The show uses simple but effective props and staging to transition from story to story. It is a relatively small stage, but DelGaudio is able to use depth and changes in height to make the most of the space.

While I think that the film does a really good job of showing the emotional response of the audience (especially to a certain set-piece that takes place later in the film), I don't feel as though I was ever totally "submerged" in what was happening. I definitely had a strong appreciation for DelGaudio's technical prowess in terms of the magic on display and his control of the audience and their reactions. Some of the musings on identity were interesting, especially the question of how much we allow the perception of others to color our own self-perception, but they also felt a bit . . . broad? This may be because this is a show that needs to click with all of the audience members, who might be in very different places in their lives. I appreciate the way that DelGaudio tried to strike a balance between telling his own story and giving the audience an opportunity to explore their own.

I'm certainly glad I watched it, but something was slightly missing for me in terms of it being an immersive experience.

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, 1978

A young man named San Te (Chia-Hui Liu) sees many of his classmates taken out by the Manchu government. Injured, but able to escape, San Te manages to make it to a Shaolin temple where he begs the monks to train him in kung fu. While he is at first rejected and scorned by the men in the temple, San Te earns their respect as he shows proficiency in the various training exercises.

This film felt like it was about 85% San Te training at the temple and I was all about it. The series of different chambers (ie levels) are full of exercises that could have easily skewed campy (like when two knives are strapped to his arms and he must carry heavy buckets of water lest he stab himself in the abdomen), but the sequences look so good and Liu's physicality is so on point that is ends up being incredibly engaging instead.

The plot itself is incredibly minimal. I can't honestly say that there is a lot of character development. But also . . . who cares? The flow of the film is so solid and the progression through the different chambers is so much fun that you just go with it. You get to the end and you're like, "Oh yeah! There was a bad guy!".

This was a fun, light kung fu film with a great central performance and a dynamic structure. My only complaint is that I could only get hold of an English dub, and while most of the voices were fine, the one female character was SO BAD. I can only imagine the voice coach was like "Can you gasp between each word? Great. Also, more shrill. More. More. Perfect."

Highly recommended.

i was gonna watch monster hunter cause milla jovovich is in it shes one of my favorite actress but i knew it wont be that good!! but loved her on resident evil as alice tho

Lau's work didn't really go for depth of character development so much as marry the martial arts to the characters' arcs and film's ideologies. 36th Chamber is probably the clearest example in that the bulk of the film is an extended training sequence where you see the hero grow across each exercise, but I think The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter (his best film) in particular shows how he used it to externalize and reflect on internal character conflicts. And Heroes of the East uses it to bridge cultural conflicts as rebuke to the anti-Japanese sentiment common in other Shaw Brothers films. More than any director of martial arts pictures (whose work I've seen), he really believed in kung fu as an actual philosophy.

Blue Crush 10/10 one of my favorite surfing movies back in the day

Documentary about three kids with some issues growing up in Milwaukee. You get the usual bad stats about the city, incarceration rates, segregation etc. usually from the very people hired to fix the problem who just deliver the same soundbites we've all heard a million times. Fortunately, that is over early in the film and we get to the kids story. Some of the film felt pretty staged. Of the three kids they follow only one seemed like really he wanted to turn things around and it's not surprising he's the only one who had any friends trying to look out for him. The film doesn't dig too deep into their lives we just kind of follow them around as they visit local community outreach programs.



This was a little after my fascination with boxing had waned so it was all pretty new to me. Having seen this seen it I'd love to see the entire Ward-Gatti 1 fight. The doc spends the majority of the time covering the 3 fights between the two then goes into the friendship the two developed with other which lasted until Gatti's unusual death. I thought this was very good. Did a great job explaining why the fights are considered classics but it's the story about their friendship that hits the hardest. [rating]4[//rating]

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
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Always nice to see love for The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue mark

I've got 8th Diagram Pole Fighter on my watchlist. I'll add Heroes of the East.

Check It, 2016

This documentary follows several members of a Washington DC gang called Check It--a gang made up of gay, lesbian, and trangender young people who have banded together. The film explores the origins of the gang and follows the attempts of a gang intervention specialist, Mo, as he tries to show the gang members a way out of their lifestyle.

This documentary was incredibly involving, and provided a very nuanced take on the elements that have led to these young people being in the situation they are in.

The part that will probably not surprise anyone is that these children have had absolutely horrible upbringings--in and out of foster care, absentee parents or parents with serious drug problems. And this is only made worse by the lack of acceptance of their sexuality/gender presentation. Many of the young people sell their bodies on streets (just two miles from the White House) as a source of income, starting as young as 12 or 13 years old. One teen talks about working the streets but tells the interviewer, "By the time I'm in 11th or 12th grade, I think I will have my life together and I can stop." Heartbreaking.

The gang originally formed because of the high rate of violence in DC against LGBTQ+ people. Working as a gang--and they frequently compare themselves to a herd of animals--the teens can walk through the city with a sense of safety. They are ruthless and they are quick to fight, but the fear they instill in others keeps them safe, to a degree.

Mo, the gang interventionist, is determined to give the teens a path out of their lifestyle. He points out that it is a slippery slope between being bullied and becoming a bully, between being the prey and becoming the predator. Because they have had to fight so often and so hard, they are quick to anger and prone to explosive violence. Mo sees that they have strength in fashion and manages to get several of them enrolled in a fashion camp taking place over the summer.

One of the most interesting stories is that of a young man named Skittles, who Mo directs to a boxing gym. Skittles is very effeminate, but also in incredible physical shape and very strong and fast. His coach, Duke, notes that he could be very successful--at one point shrewdly observing that none of the other fighters want to get in the ring with Skittles because they don't want to be knocked out by someone who is openly gay.

It is hard to watch the teens navigate their conflicting feelings as they go through the fashion camp or work in the boxing gym. Their lives have been so on the edge, and their experiences so negative, that they tend to resent authority figures and, as the saying goes, they do not "play well with others." One young man, Day Day, explicitly talks about how fast and overwhelming his anger is. As the boxing coach notes, real change doesn't happen in a day--it happens over time, maybe even years. And these children are running out of time.

The most centered, down-to-earth of the teens is Tray, who may be transgender and talks about his female self as an escape. Tray knows that the life he is leading is not sustainable. During filming (though not on camera, obviously), Tray is raped by one of his prostitution clients. In a maddening sequence, Tray tries to report this sexual assault. He calls one number, and is told to call somewhere else. The second number directs him back to the first. He is given another number, which rings through as disconnected. When he finally speaks to a person who seems able to take a report, he is asked for the first and last name of his rapist. Unable to provide a last name, he is told bluntly that he cannot file a report. It is clear that these children have been failed by systems over and over, and this is a prime, infuriating example.

I think that the film walked a very delicate, careful line in terms of its portrayal of these young people. On the one hand, it is careful not to idolize or celebrate the violence that they perpetrate. On the other hand, it makes it very clear the obstacles that they are facing and the difficulty of finding a way out. They have anger issues. They are crude. They distrust authority. They all need intervention and therapy, both of which are absent or in short supply. They make poor choices and are disrespectful to people who are trying to help them (like the long suffering director of the fashion camp). There were elements of this film that overlapped with The Interrupters, a documentary about gang interventionists in Chicago.

I would highly recommend this film. It is a deeply empathetic look at a fascinating group of people and a compelling call to action for real change to be made in how at-risk youth are treated.

Far from Men (2014)

I just finished watching Let Him Go, and this is how you make a movie. A simple story turned into a wonderful movie, because the characters were adequately fleshed out, which made me care about the good ones and hate the bad ones.


The movie unfolds in a nice, slow pace putting in the small subplots at the right time and in the right manner. Despite being somewhat predictable at times, I was still left on the edge of my seat at certain points.


It even makes social commentary in the right manner.


This was stark opposite to the other Western (News of the World) which I watched recently. At core, both had simple plots, but the execution of the two films is so different.

Tonight's voyage into Film Noir, my latest "thing" - Whirlpool, Directed by Otto Preminger - A woman, wife of a well off psychoanalyst, is caught shoplifting and is saved from charges by a hypnotist. Later, however, she falls into a trance. Murder happens. Can a woman be turned into a murderer by a hypnotist, or is she the victim of a difficult childhood, or, is she a kleptomaniac? We will see. Among the stars are Jose Ferrer and Gene Tierney. It's fairly cheesy, plot wise, but looks good (very noir) and has star quality. Nobody can talk as fast as Jose Ferrer.

City of Industry -

Like a roadtrip on a scenic highway with stop-and-go traffic, City of Industry is a mix of good and not so good. One of the many pulpy neo-noirs produced in the late '90s in the wake of Pulp Fiction, it stars Harvey Keitel in the grizzled and world-weary mode that he does so well as career criminal Roy Egan. He's on the trail of teammate Skip, who...let's just say does something after a big heist that makes you wonder if there is honor among thieves. Roy scouring the less reputable parts of L.A. for Skip is compelling thanks to Keitel's charisma and his knack for playing such roles. Director John Irvin also films this sequence with style and in a way that makes the seediness palpable. I also very much enjoyed the heist scene, which has decent tension and uncertainty in spite of making Skip an obvious liability and, well, the fact that Stephen Dorff plays him. The movie's brightest spot, however, is Famke Janssen, who makes the most of her role as Rachel, the wife of Roy's teammate Jorge, and in doing so gives the movie much-needed heart and someone to root for. Again, the heist is exciting, as is an explosive showdown at a motel, but too many of the movie's other attempts at thrilling are ordinary and limp. Nearly all of Roy's efforts to glean Skip's location from his associates, for instance, feature tension-free beatdowns or gun pointing. Also, there should be a screenwriting exercise for one scene where Skip attempts to one-up Roy that lets students dissect everything that's wrong with it. City of Industry, like so many other neo-noirs that came out around the same time, seems like an attempt to replicate what makes Tarantino's work special. It doesn't come close, but despite its flaws, it has enough going for it to make it worth watching.

I don't think I've seen an out and out bad movie from Lau yet (Martial Arts of Shaolin is the closest, but it's got good enough action to not be a write-off), but those are definitely the priorities. Maybe Legendary Weapons of China as well, which I think is a great demonstration of everything he did well, even if I'd disagree with those who call it his best.

Are We There Yet? (2005)

I decided to go out of my comfort zone and watch a romantic family comedy. The biggest issue with this genre is that you always know how the film is going to end, and they always grow worse toward the end. There are some funny jokes in the first half (sort of ruined by the PG rating, though), but the mandatory turn of events doesn't work because the kids are way too malicious to gather any sympathy points. I didn't really hate it though, so I guess it's something considering the type of film it is.

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The Guns of Navarone - Entertaining WWII film about a small group of Allied commandos sent to blow up a large artillery installation secreted in a cave overlooking the Aegean Sea. They're on a deadline because thousands of troops are trapped on a neighboring island and are only days away from being overrun and slaughtered by Nazi forces. Since the twin guns make any sort of naval evacuation a suicide mission the squad must figure out the best way to sneak in and plant explosives. Gregory Peck stars as Capt. Keith Mallory who takes over the operation when Maj. Roy Franklin (Anthony Quayle) is injured. David Niven also stars as Cpl. John Anthony Miller, the squad's demolitions expert. Anthony Quinn is the wildcard of sorts as Greek espionage operative Col. Andrea Stavros. Stanley Baker, James Darren, Irene Pappas and Gia Scala round out the cast.

There a lot of the usual derring do as the squad laboriously makes their way to their intended target, all while being hounded by Nazi troops who seem to guess their every move. This is a cracking good adventure of the old school variety although my favorite of these is still Where Eagles Dare. 90/100