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Let's have a New Years Revolution!

I'm really at a loss with this movie. Mostly because it's one of those that I really struggle to criticize. It's paced great, the story makes sense, and it manages to be really absorbing all throughout.

Here's what few things I'd consider gripes:
+ Kissing (obviously).
+ The movie opens with a high-pitched shrill that's really annoying.
+ Some characters are introduced only very briefly, but you're expected to remember them and their names.
+ Two or three scenes/shots are set up with predictable conclusions, but idle anyway.
+ A couple actors like Juliette Lewis and Michael Wincott turn in weak performances (Lewis seems stupid bored and Wincott is like if Top Dollar from The Crow smoked a cigarette factory).

That's... about it. Mostly nitpicky stuff. I can't think of much more I can complain about.

The basic premise is it's just on the eve of the new millennium and save a couple predictions of future you hear in the background, there's really only two major deviations from history:

1.) Social order is so screwed that police and military are combing the streets every night.

2.) There's a new previously military black market technology called "wire-tripping" that allows you to record your first person experiences (all senses intact) and share them on tapes. People who regularly use the technology are called "wireheads" and it's portrayed as questionably addictive as well as dangerous because applying it improperly can result in permanent brain damage.

These being the only deviations, I'm disappointed to say that it isn't really a cyberpunk movie, however it certainly manages to capture the underground aesthetic that pervades movies like The Matrix.

I won't go into the story, suffice it to say it's a murder mystery, it's complex but reasonable to follow (it does a great job telegraphing information visually), while juggling themes of anarchy, social upheaval, addiction, and "the end of the world".

Honestly, my biggest praise for the movie has got to land squarely on it's two lead characters, Lenny and Mace, played by Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett respectively.


These characters are great. Lenny's an ex-cop with little of the cop left in him and Mace seems to have picked up the formal mannerisms he's left behind.

Lenny's a talker, always trying to hit up someone new with a wiretrip and struggles to reconcile the relationship that he once had with character, Faith, who seems reluctantly over him despite us never really learning what transpired in their history.

Mace is a mother, nanny turned limo driver, who abhors wiretripping, but maintains a close, albeit strenuous relationship with Lenny. She seems like she might have romantic feelings for Lenny, but it's likely one-sided given his pursuit of Faith.

Mace is easily my favorite character in the movie. Not only does she have several moments of buttkicking badassery, but she stands out also as an emotional character. She contrasts with Lenny in her attitude, her professionalism, and her values. She REALLY IS a three-dimensional character, and I'm amazed that we finally get this from a dark-skinned woman in lead role.

Not only that, but she complements the other half of the only biracial romance between lead characters in a good movie I've ever SEEN.

She puts Rose from Titanic to shame easily, and the best parallel I can make to her is Deunan from Appleseed.

...or maybe Briareos...

Final Verdict:

[Pretty Good]


REWATCH UPDATE 08/10/22:
Strange Days is one of a few movies that I REALLY wanted to love when I first saw it. I like the setting of an alternate history Millennium New Years Eve, I still really like Lenny and Mace, both their relationship and their individual characters. There's a refreshing bit of nudity in the mix I DON'T KNOW, for whatever reason I saw this once and I had that feeling that I would have to see it again after the effect had worn off.

But that was back in 2016. And we're in a post-2020 world where that national hysteria over a racialized police encounter gone wrong actually happened. So I'm approaching this with some actual exposure to the consequences of the "end of the world" riot scenario hypothesized would happen in this movie.

Firstly, it's very hard to imagine that this would would be made today without current politics taking it from a position of pre-2000s egalitarian idealism and turning it into something frankly putrid and disgusting.

There are casual comments about it being a "police state" in Strange Days, as evidenced by SWAT and the National Guard shown in random tussles on the streets in the background, often alone, or surrounded by bystanders. It's just complete chaos as though the foretold riots are already in progress. Yet, for how "oppressive" we're supposed to believe the police are, the police virtually never interfere with our protagonists beyond screening their IDs at security checkpoints... which they always pass without issue.

And the protagonists are not exactly law-abiding citizens... so it seems to me that the issue isn't actually with the police or military out in force, but the people causing them problems. Jericho One apparently can't "drive a Jeep while black", yet Mace can drive a limo without any problems at all.

And in fact the one scene at the end in which Mace is attacked by police, she is explicitly resisting arrest after beating up one, macing another, holding them both at gunpoint, and detaining them illegally!

Obviously she's in the right because these two are the cops responsible for the street execution that sets up the main conflict of the movie, but cut me a ****ing break, she's like "yeah I'll comply, but only after you let me tell you the story of my people" AMID a gigantic street celebration where you can barely hear shit.

There are how many witnesses that saw these two cops firing into a crowd and killing bystanders?? Also, aren't they trying to kill her to stop her from exposing them as murderers? And you're going to murder multiple more people in front of countless witnesses to keep it secret? ****ing idiots.


I appreciate that they make a point of showing that not all police are bad guys, and the main characters ultimately decide that discretely releasing the evidence of the execution to authorities is safer that RELEASING IT TO THE MEDIA.

WE SAW HOW THAT ****ING WENT DIDN'T WE!?

I'm annoyed by the line by Mace that Jericho One is "one of the most important" people of our time when our only exposure to him suggests that he's a racebaiting gangbanging piece of shit human being who goes on television to drum up revolutionary sentiments. Making songs about how he (his people) have been oppressed for 400 years and all that.

He's really just a worthless ****ing racist and I'm glad he got shot in the head.

But of course, I'm supposed to feel differently about him because he got shot by a different racist with a badge.

It's totally plausible that this could start a race riot, there are FAR DUMBER reasons why race riots could occur. The cop could have just sat on him for about 9 minutes while some brainless twat records it on her phone and posts it to Facebook. Was George Floyd the most important man of our time? Certain oxygen thieves seem to think so.

Anyway, watching this again I felt much less engaged than I wanted to be. The wire-tripping scenes go on too long, there are music scenes that go on too long... like Lenny's literally just standing watching his Faith sing a song on stage and we keep cutting back to his blank expression. What does this add? Nothing. It's a waste of my time. If you were trying to establish that he's still hung up on her, you must not have read the rest of the script.

It's difficult to think of how I would improve his movie. I may have simply told another story entirely, where the dynamic between Mace and Lenny isn't juggled between a murder mystery and a police corruption arc.

Still like the characters, still like the setting, even still like the whole retrofuturistic concept of recording tapes of your experiences and selling them like drugs... but the rest of it (and that's most of it) I could do without.


Final Verdict:

[Good]

Mmmm... this was a slog.

How much excuse do you need for Donnie Yen to beat somebody up?

Donnie Yen's a cop with a track record of kicking too much ass. So they suspend him. Then a few minutes later they reinstate him. A few minutes after that I'm checking my watch.

It takes 55 MINUTES for the action to kick in and when it does it's like, "WTF, where'd this kung fu movie come from? I was in the middle of watching this boring-ass cop drama!"

It really is boring. It's a barely serviceable triad plot at best (Hong Kong Action Movie Rule #1: Must Have Triads) and serviceable is not enough, especially when it includes a chicken carcass with a bomb shoved up it's ass.

57 minutes in and one of the bad guys slams a little girls skull into the pavement and Donnie Yen goes beast on the guy.

Give it a few more minutes and you're at the final fight scene which is cool, but not literally-do-something-else-for-an-hour cool.

Dunno what else to say. One of the major characters is shot in the back and chest several times and yet it seems like he might still be alive at the end.

Did he die? Oh... credits... nevermind.

I'd just give this movie a [Meh...], but a chicken bomb? No. No.

Final Verdict:

[Just... Bad]

It's a Jackie Chan movie, and being a Jackie Chan movie it's all about the fight scenes.

There are two significant fight scenes, the beginning and end, both are very memorable, and both include huge stunts that resulted in serious injuries to it's actors (so you know it's brutal). The first scene begins right away and it's an excellent start to the movie while the second scene ("the mall fight") is noteworthy for it's ridiculous amount of shattered breakaway glass.

The actions good. Exceptional, but not amazing.

Unfortunately, there's plenty of not-action in this action movie and it flits between appreciable and terrible. As much as Jackie Chan considers this to be his best action movie, I get the feeling he's giving undue credit to a movie mostly because it's a significant milestone in his career.

Humor is largely sophomoric in all the classic ways: piss jokes, poop jokes, and pie jokes. It's the classic triple threat.

The story itself isn't... terrible... but it suffers from some questionable acting and a combination of leaps in logic and awful characters.

After Jackie Chan playing Jackie Chan humiliates himself in court and gets the bad guys off scot-free and a bunch of promotional material begins to circulate featuring him, they inexplicably get upset. What's the matter? Why do they care? What's it to them if he shows up in a newspaper ad, that seriously warrants, "AW HELL NAW, WE GONNA FRAME HIS ASS!" I don't get it.


The characterization of Jackie Chan and his girlfriend is bizarre too. This girlfriend, upon seeing the woman he's supposed to be bodyguarding, instantly comes down with a case of Crippling Monogamy Syndrome and instead of Jackie trying to make up or anything he just gets all butthurt and starts lying. In fact, he's a compulsive liar. He lies to everyone. He even lies in court after he's sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, so help him, god.

And god, so help him, because it immediately removes me from the movie when I'm halfway through the thing and I only just realize that all three major protagonists are ********.

It's not because they're women, Jackie, it's because you're an oblivious thick ****.

The movie redeems itself somewhat at the end when, following the big fight, the bad guys are finally cornered and the weasily lawyer comes in to talk **** and Jackie Chan just


Final Verdict:

[Meh...]

Given my familiarity with the source material, I'm going to review this in two parts as I believe all adaptions should be reviewed. Firstly as an adaption, and secondly, but most importantly, as a standalone movie.

AS AN ADAPTION:
I'd say Ace Attorney is [Pretty Good]. At least it's about as good as almost any given live-action adaption could conceivably be.

All of the characters are instantly recognizable, the plot is ripped directly from the original game, abridging the first, second, and fourth cases to present a singular super-case and it all flows pretty much just like the game with the only significant deviation being the crazy far-future technology that appears in the courtroom to logically substitute the presentation of evidence that was simply abstracted out into a user interface in the game.

A couple characters are obviously missing as a result, but all the key ones are here and they all play the part with my only gripe being Miles Edgeworth, who was honestly really disappointing. Edgeworth in the games is initially presented as an uppity smarmy sarcastic buttmongler who acts as Phoenix's foil and rival, but after a while you begin to see chinks in the armor and he becomes quite likable as a reluctant ally in difficult cases.

Here though, Miles is just beyond emotionless and there's nothing pretentious about him besides his hideous outfit. No drawl, no smirk, no shrug, no dice. That sucks, dude, Edgeworth was my favorite character.

Final Verdict:

[Meh...]

Dogtooth is definitely NOT as bad as I expected it to be. Granted, it's not a GOOD movie, but it's not totally ****awful which I attribute to single element:

It's kinda interesting.

The idea is that we're basically watching The Village, except zoned in on a suburban home where the kids, which are plainly young adults, aren't allowed beyond the fence surrounding their yard. You can suspect the degree to which their parents impose this limitation on them, but the vast majority of the movie is simply drip-feeding you the various ways that they're lied to and repressed and basically just making a show of how socially backwards they are.

+ Cats are man-eating predators.
+ An imaginary exiled "brother" is assumed to exist on the other side of the fence.
+ Frank Sinatra songs are played and translated as being from their unseen grandfather.
+ Zombies are referred to as "little yellow flowers" and vaginas are referred to as "keyboards".
+ The sisters get into the habit of trading personal items for cunnilingus (as well as licking other places).
+ The boy is expected to have regular unenthusiastic sex with some woman named Christine (who's the only character I can name by the way) who's never really established to be part of the family or not.

The trailer refers to the movie as a "satire" and yet I cannot even begin to imagine what this movie might be satirizing beyond overprotective parents which even then it doesn't manage to do anything meaningful with it.


Other than the horrific animal abuse and sex scenes so emotionless and sterile they make me feel worse than watching fetish porn, this movie is just one joyless ride from beginning to end that even Rocky references can't save.

The main issue here is twofold: It doesn't do anything and it doesn't go anywhere.

The whole movie is made up almost entirely of nonsequiturs in that stereotypically "art film" kinda way. It's just a mess of scenes that, save a couple exceptions, could be scrambled and placed into any other part of the movie because all they do is smash cut to an entirely different time and place, hold an egregiously long take, in dead silence, on the kids doing something awkward long enough for the director to lean into frame and go, "Wink, wink, huh, huh, ya get it? Yeah! They're weird, right?" before cutting to Something Completely Different which accomplishes the same thing.

It's not like we ever really find out why their parents treat their kids this way or even what they expect to accomplish by pretending the planes in the sky are just toys which can appear in their lawn or that their mother will just periodically give birth to a dog. It's unexplained, therefor it doesn't serve any known purpose, therefor the entire plot of the movie feels contrived. At least The Village took the time to rationalize it's nonsensical fear-mongering.

The other issue is just how the movie ends. As soon as the movie sets up the "you become immune to all dangers when your right canine tooth falls out" (which is a brilliant lesson all parents should teach their children) you're just waiting for one of the kids to knock their teeth out. They're already rebellious! They're already knifing each other, burning their fingers for fun, and getting beaten by their parents with VHS tapes, so what's seriously gonna stop them from trying to bust their teeth out?

It sure takes a while, but when it finally does happen, at least I credit the movie for LOOKING like it hurts. Most of the violence looks real. Probably because it is real. Just like the sex looks real. But the effects aren't real. ANYWAY...

So, the older sister smashes her tooth out with a dumbbell and bleeding all over she climbs into her dad's car, probably expecting to climb out when he goes to work.

He goes to work, the camera holds on the trunk door, zooms in slowly, and we're waiting... and waiting... and waiting...

Credits.


You couldn't even give us the satisfaction of knowing one of the kids managed to escape, nup, just assume she busted her jaw so hard that she exsanguinated in their trunk. Great.

You know, I was thinking of giving this a movie a [Just... Bad], but now that I think about it, was there anything of worth in this movie at all?

Was there really anything here that rationalized killing a whole bunch of fish in a swimming pool and attacking a cat with hedge clippers? Did the incestuous sex scenes really add ANYTHING of merit to the proceedings? Was a single thing ever said to explain, justify, or make a point of anything in this movie?

No. It's just a vaguely interesting premise wasted on a sweaty gym sock. And the sweat on that gym sock symbolizes something pretentious like the hardships we all go through in life, emphasized by the crusty yellow stain where someone's ejaculated into it. Not artsy enough for ya? Let's overlay that gym sock with a voice over presenting a mathematical problem while we time lapse that gym sock's sweat molding over into something heinous and foul.

**** you, Simon. This movie's not "totally ****awful", but it is

Final Verdict:

[Irredeemably Awful]

It's about what you'd expect. Stunts. Slapstick. Lots of terrible CG.

Pretty whatever for the most part. There is a definite charm to how dramatic they try to play up the absurdities and there is something special about a soccer game where kicks are powerful enough to strip people naked and blow apart the goalpost. I feel there's too little of it, though.

It keeps a comedic approach all throughout, but most of it isn't very funny (and it's even pretty gross at times) and we don't even get our Shaolin Soccer team together until the halfway mark.

Easily the most baffling part of this whole movie is the SHOCKINGLY mature romantic subplot they run in the background. Legit, no kissing, no sex, no overnight romance, the girl is even intentionally made to look unattractive while still earning herself plenty of badass points. I wish the WHOLE movie was as self conscious about it's character archetypes (I'm looking at you, Fat Guy), but I guess now any time I criticize another movie for it's half-baked romantic subplots I can say, "WORSE THAN SHAOLIN SOCCER".

And that gives me a very fuzzy feeling inside.


Final Verdict:

[Meh...]

Whether the Police Story sequels were better or worse than the original seems to be a matter of debate, but as far as Police Story 2 is concerned I think it's better.

We completely do away with Jackie's compulsive lying and his girlfriend, Mei, is a lot less annoying in this one. In fact, the romantic subplot is really just idling in a Superhero Relationship at this point. He's too righteous to stand by when bad things are happening and it conflicts with his attempts to do good by her.

I think the plot works a lot better this time too with bouts of action occurring more frequently and the tension kept up at a pretty decent clip. There's twists, there's turns, and we smoothly transition between Jackie quitting the force, to rejoining the force, to going undercover, to interrogation, to watching him once again take on the role of the bad guy when the real bad guys strap a bomb to his chest.

Rather than two big fight scenes, we get three, "the diner" at 17 minutes, "the playground" at 46 minutes, and "the fireworks factory" at an 1 hour and 50 minutes, all of which put a greater emphasis on Chan's fighting ability. I would argue that these scenes are less memorable than those in the original Police Story, but referring to them by the locations they take place in just goes to reinforce how important the environment is in every fight. It really can't be understated the creativity and thought that went into each encounter.

Given that this movie is both written, directed, and starring Jackie Chan as himself (in the English dub at least), I offer this movie as a counterargument to the suggestion that action directors can't effectively star in their own movies. Fricken' PROVED.

I will say that while the movie is less boring and annoying as the original Police Story, it definitely still has it's drawbacks.


The matter of the Fisheye Lens squeezing people's faces at the edge of the screen is still present from the first movie and it's arguably more glaring now given a few specific shots.

A degree of sexism is still present in lines like, "Lucky, you're a woman." or "A man shouldn't have to explain." are still unnecessary even if the lines are coming from bad guys or good guys explicitly referred to by other characters as chauvinistic. It's especially glaring then the movie plainly hangs a lampshade on the matter when he's confronted by both a man and woman and he alternates between punching the first and slapping the second. They're both trying to cripple you, dude, **** your chivalry and punch the bitch like an true equal opportunity badass.

At least we get a scene where the women assigned to Jackie's team get to wheel out the kicks in an interrogation. That was cool. More of that, please.

Also fart joke. Which at the very least plays off better than the piss and **** from the first movie. Small steps. Small steps.


Final Verdict:

[Pretty Good]

This time, Jackie spends almost the entire movie undercover and while it's interesting to see him struggle to fib his way through scenes, it's really just one ongoing joke that doesn't seem to peak anywhere.

I have to hand to Super Cop, it managed to avoid the crude humor, but I think it also managed to avoid a lot of the other stuff that I liked about the previous movies.

The plotting feels a lot weaker here. With Jackie undercover, it really just feels like a ride from random location to random location as he's strung along by the bad guys dragging him between their businesses. There's not much structure and I'd barely say it has an arc. We also get a slew of new characters for Jackie to interact with, but none of them really play off of him as well as the cast from Police Story 2.


The brass crackin' down on him is a trope I'm relieved not to have to deal with again, but I miss the moments from both previous movies when Jackie's pushed to the edge and goes all Jack Bauer on 'em.

Once again, we've got even more action than the last movie, this time 5 major fight scenes if you include the shootout, "training hall" at 17 minutes, "dig site" at 23 minutes, "restaurant" at 40 minutes, "military base" at 58 minutes, and "train" at 1 hour 29 minutes.

Unfortunately, the change I mentioned between Police Story 1 and Police Story 2 is way more glaringly apparent here. We have more fight scenes (and the movie itself is about half an hour shorter), but all of them are very brief and are so unremarkable that if you haven't seen a Jackie Chan movie before, you'd be forgiven for not getting what all the fuss is about.

He never kicks anyone's face through a drawer, he never wrenches anyone's back on monkey bars, and even the opening fight intended to show him off does very little to highlight how unconventional he is.

This movie's very forgettable and even Jackie Chan hanging from a helicopter or fighting on a moving train isn't taken to it's logical extremes.

For one final wet towel on the whole affair we get one scene in which Jackie observes exotic animals in cages and comments to his superior officer, "So cruel. Why isn't Public Security doing anything about that?" mere minutes before sitting down and ordering "civet cat with steamed turtle organs".

Granted, that scene is interrupted by the restaurant fight, but what the ****? Was I supposed to laugh at that? Was that a joke? Am I supposed to find that funny? All it does is remind me, "YEAH, THERE ARE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS YOU SHOULD BE WORKING ON RIGHT NOW."

We got these poor animals being hunted and served up like nobody's business, but we're spending the entire movie chasing down bad guys who we only ever see kill OTHER BAD GUYS? That's friggen' stupid.

I think this is easily the worst Police Story so far. I didn't even bother watching the bloopers this time.


Final Verdict:

[Meh...]

Uuuuugggghhh this was rough.

I really like a lot of the ideas in Avalon, this is certainly a movie I could get into. Unfortunately I think a lot of the ideas fall apart or never make it full circle.

Where do I start? Well, how about it's one of those movies that holds static shots for a stupid amount of time and then by the 20-minute mark it's already recycling those SAME SHOTS in an extended flashback montage?


This is also the kind of movie that after establishing that the main character is arguably the best player in a video game and sees someone that might potentially compete with her, it kicks in the Ethereal Choir hardcore.

Someone beat my score in Pac-man!? DUN dun DUN!

The game in question is called "Avalon", the only significant similarity to Avalon in Assault Girls being the mercilessly dull color palette.

I was serious when I said it was a big fat **** up to go back and recolor over Ghost in the Shell with piss-yellow filters, and this is exactly that. It looks ugly and boring with only a FEW shots (which also recycle) actually make any real use of it.


I get that it's intended to create a contrast to the later revealed "Class Real" part of the game, but that in and of itself just felt like a massive slap in the face.

It's the real world, right? The twist is she's been in the game this whole time, which is why a full color palette is "real", right? Nope! Double twist! When Bishop gets shot to prove whether the world is real or not (which itself came right the **** out of nowhere) and he dissolves like he's in the game I couldn't help, but call "********!"

So what, then? The piss-yellow filter world with the piss-yellow filter game is reality? How is this- I don't even-

( O___O)

I'm reminded of that plotpoint in Matrix: Revolutions where they plainly ****ed up by leaving out the obvious plotpoint where Neo is still trapped in another Matrix.

Anyway, what the was the significance of shooting the girl at the end anyway? Why was she trying to shoot her to begin with? Why not try to communicate with her? Why does "follow the girl" translate into "shoot her in the head"?

At this point all she's doing is trying to find the "Unreturned", right? Or did we see them already? Was Bishop one? We're looking for the avatars of the catatonic patients right? So she's pursuing her friend, Murphy's avatar in an attempt to save him, right? At the risk of becoming catatonic herself?

WHY DIDN'T WE SEE THAT PART OF THE MOVIE!?

The whole ****in' plot sets this up with the Nine Sisters and the Morgana taking Odin to the island with the Oblivion Crown and all that crap and yet we climax on a twist that's not a twist?

The rest of the movie isn't even a satisfying buildup to this ending either.

The action is flaccid, the dialog is expositional, and our main character is ASTOUNDINGLY emotionless. She has no personality whatsoever, even less so than Motoko Kusanagi. She has ONE scene in which she cries and throws up, but it comes out of nowhere following a Total Party Kill.

Dude, IT'S A GAME. YOU DIE IN IT. Is it THAT shocking?


When Stunner dies we get the flattest most BORING deathbed scene I've seen since Dragonslayer and doing anything worse than Dragonslayer is an ACCOMPLISHMENT.

Back to the game thing, though, why is Avalon illegal? Not that I don't understand the risks, but why waste the time emphasizing that this game is illegal if it's legality never ever EVER ties into the movie at all? We never see any law enforcement of any kind, we never get the impression that any of the people involved in this game need to conceal their illegal activity in any way, and removing it would only eliminate a dissonance.

Frankly, the worst part of this movie is just the usual ****, but here the usual **** is taken to a ******** extreme. Dogs, Pigeons, gratuitous close-up of cutting meat, BUT THEN WE GET THE SCENE.

THAT ****ING SCENE.

THAT DRAWN-OUT RAPID-FIRE OF EXTREME CLOSE-UP SHOTS OF STUNNER STUFFING HIS FACE WITH EGGS AND WIENERS.

Stop.

STOP.

STOP.

STOP.

STOP!

STOP!!

STOP!!!

STOP THE ****IN' MOVIE!!!!!



Final Verdict:

[Just... Bad]