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I have actually never seen the original . Either that or I have and completely forgot I did. Might take time to watch it soon. This movie I have no desire to see. Wish they would stop remaking the old animated movies into live actions.
The original Mulan is a good time. I wouldn't say that it's great, but it has at least one catchy fun song and some decent comedy. I also have zero interest in the live action remakes (the nicest thing anyone ever seems to have to say about them is "not as bad as you'd expect" which . . .)




Just watched Mulan 2020 with the family.

The age appropriate/appreciation window is small here, but if you can put yourself into that mind frame I think this is a wonderful film.

On one hand the violence is a bit extreme for a Disney flick (ok it really isn't, but hey we should say it is). On the other hand the film is constrained to today's confining values on what a kid/young adult movie should be.

War, sexism, religion, ageism, etc... is difficult in most aspects, to try and make it fit into a film that kids can/should watch is difficult. I think the envelope was pushed with this film, but I also think it was pushed in a good way.

Really enjoyed watching this with the family.

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Comin' At Ya!, 1981

What a fascinating mix of trash and treasure.

Two brothers who trade in kidnapped women storm a church, shoot the groom to be and take away his bride, Abilene. (By the way, if you've seen Kill Bill, the whole look of this scene will be VERY familiar!) The man, HH, survives the attack and sets out to save his love.

This movie was filmed in 3D. But not just 3D. It's like, insistent 3D. It's as if the filmmakers were afraid to let more than 3 minutes go by without reminding you of the whole 3D thing. The uses of the 3D range from the mundane (a man shucking corn into a barrell), to the awesome (a man dodges a flaming arrow which then comes straight at the camera), to the utterly bizarre (a naked baby's butt is lowered directly into the camera). I will not lie, I am a total sucker for slow motion sequences (especially in a grainy film), and I really enjoyed a lot of these parts.

The plot itself is pretty thin and basic. I felt that a bit too much of the time was spent on the kidnapped bride being menaced/abused by the kidnappers. There are a few memorable sequences. Some are pretty cheesy, like the women being attacked by what are clearly rubber bats on strings. But other moments are oddly effecting, like when the women are chased along a beach like a herd of panicked animals. There's not a lot of character development. Heck, there's not a lot of dialogue. From a story point of view there are few surprises.

I did, however, end up liking the overall style of the film quite a bit. It does have that grainy look, and at times it switches between color and black and white. In one sequences, a single character is in black and white as he walks through a world of color. The people making the movie definitely tried to do a LOT with the look of the movie and the use of different effects. It doesn't always work, but quite a bit of it did land for me.

It's definitely an enjoyable oddity.




King of Staten Island (2020)


I understand the reviews I've read so far now, where nobody seems to really love or hate this. It's pretty average all around, whether you view it as a comedy or drama. I never laughed really hard and the story is a bit winding and stretched too long. It's great to see Bill Burr on screen because I find him much more humorous than Pete Davidson, who I really don't see having much star power as an actor.



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.

She Cried No AKA Freshman Fall (Bethany Rooney, 1996)
6/10
Lords of the Deep (Mary Ann Fisher, 1989)
4/10
Sleepwalking Land (Teresa Prata, 2007)
+ 6/10
Star 80 (Bob Fosse, 1983)
7/10

Dorothy Stratten (Mariel Hemingway) becomes increasingly scared of her wacko husband Paul Stanley (Eric Roberts).
Freaks: You're One of Us (Felix Binder, 2020)
6/10
Love, Guaranteed (Mark Steven Johnson, 2020)
.5.5/10
Lucky Grandma (Sasie Sealy, 2019)
6/10
Western (Bill Ross IV & Turner Ross, 2015)
6.5/10

Two friendly border towns along the Rio Grande have a growing malaise in this impressionistic documentary.
Stage Mother (Thom Fitzgerald, 2020)
6/10
Diplomacy (Volker Schlöndorff, 2014)
+ 6.5/10
The Silent Natural (David Risotto, 2019)
6/10
I'm Thinking of Ending Things (Charlie Kaufman, 2020)
+ 6/10

My rating could be just as messed up as the movie. I liked the earlier Lynxh stuff better than the later Lynch stuff, but it is an experience. Knowing Oklahoma! helps.
The 24th (Kevin Willmott, 2020)
6/10
Fatima (Marco Pontecorvo, 2020)
6/10
Critical Thinking (John Leguizamo, 2020)
+ 6/10
Mulan (Niki Caro, 2020)
6.5/10

A bit dry to start but overall exciting and easily watchable.
The Shadow of Violence AKA Calm with Horses (Nick Rowland, 2019)
6/10
Baxter, Vera Baxter (Marguerite Duras, 1977)
5/10
Cuba Feliz (Karim Dridi, 2000)
6/10
In Our Time (4 Taiwanese Directors, 1982)
6/10

Anthology of short films highlighting up-and-coming filmmakers and their love of nostalgia and pop culture.
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'I'm Thinking of ending things' (2020)

Vintage Kauffman. Performances are brilliant, especially Jessie Buckley (her impression of a famous movie star at one point is entertaining). Themes of self doubt, regret and family. There are a couple of scenes that jarred a bit, but overall it's an extremely well made film. I'm satisfied. (PS. There's a Post Credits scene)

7.8/10
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'Kuroneko' (1968)

Excellent ghost story wrapped in feudal Japanese Samouri. Perhaps not as Good as Shindo's 'Onibaba' but not far off - stunning photography again.

7.7/10



Custody (2017)

French film about the aftermath of a violent marriage where the husband is inexplicably given access to both his kids at weekend by the authorities. It's a fairly tense affair all the way through waiting for the underlying anger to erupt. All the performances are impeccable especially the young lad that plays Julien.




Tôkyô nagaremono [Tokyo Drifter] (Seijun Suzuki, 1966)

Colourful and fun in places but also too disjointed/episodic

La Dolce Vita (Federico Fellini, 1960)
+
Certainly has its moments but I just find it difficult to form any real connection with



The original Mulan is a good time. I wouldn't say that it's great, but it has at least one catchy fun song and some decent comedy. I also have zero interest in the live action remakes (the nicest thing anyone ever seems to have to say about them is "not as bad as you'd expect" which . . .)

Just watched it last night. It was ok, probably would have enjoyed it a lot more if I watched it in 1998. It's definitely a notch or two below the early 90s Disney animated movies. The whole time I was watching it I was picking apart what would get ripped to shreds in today's landscape which shows how lame things have gotten. I don't feel like they were making some grand stance on gender back then, just a simple you can be what you want. But now they would have too lol. Simpler times I miss.

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I came here to do two things, drink some beer and kick some ass, looks like we are almost outta beer - Dazed and Confused

101 Favorite Movies (2019)





Good Time, 2017

A ne'er-do-well named Connie (Robert Pattinson) and his developmentally delayed brother, Nick (Benny Safdie) commit a daring bank robbery. During a botched escape attempt Nick is captured by the police. Over the course of a wild night, Connie goes to more and more extreme lengths to rescue his brother from jail.

I thought that this film was excellent.

To begin with, the performances are fantastic. The film is a mix of professional actors and first-timers, but everything flows perfectly. Rather than clunky line deliveries, the non-professionals add a vibe of realism. Holding the center is Pattinson as the scheming Connie. Connie's love for his brother feels genuine, but there's also a narcissism and brutality to Connie's love which means that he is willing to do some pretty horrible things to rescue Nick. Connie seems genuinely to not realize how messed up he is. In one sequence he berates another character for being a loser--then proceeds to list several attributes that we have seen from Connie himself. Connie's lack of self-awareness is also his superpower. He has the kind of charisma that comes from unwavering confidence, and it allows him to smoothly manipulate and draw others into his plans.

The supporting cast is also strong. Jennifer Jason Leigh is absolutely hilarious as Connie's much older girlfriend--a woman easily in her 40s or 50s who still lives with her mother and has some anger management problems. A sequence in which Connie tries to trick her into putting Nick's $10,000 bail on her credit card is amazing and one of the best in the whole film. I only wish that she had been in more of the movie. Benny Safdie (one half of the pair who also wrote and directed the movie) is solid as Nick. Much of what I wrote in my review of Joker kind of applies here: Nick is competent enough that he doesn't seem like he should be institutionalized, but at the same time he is suggestible enough and unpredictable enough that being loose in the world doesn't seem like the best thing either.

The movie looks great--there is a persistent use of hard and soft neon lights and tones (starting with a garish pink dye pack that explodes over the brothers during the bank robbery) that add a degree of surrealism and contrast with the grit of the surrounding environment.

The whole journey of the film and the character arc for Connie is fantastic. Connie's motives might be good (to rescue his brother from something Connie got him into). But backing up a step we see the way that Connie is basically a force of destruction. Everything he touches goes wrong--everyone who comes across his path ends up hurt. Yet Connie just keeps plunging forward, out of a sense of entitlement and out of a self-centered denial. I cannot say enough about Pattinson's performance and the brilliant way that the character is written. The movie never tries to romanticize Connie or even get us to root for him. It's more a question of seeing just how far he will take things, and how wrong they can go.

I'm genuinely kind of shocked that this film didn't get any Oscar nominations.




Just watched it last night. It was ok, probably would have enjoyed it a lot more if I watched it in 1998. It's definitely a notch or two below the early 90s Disney animated movies. The whole time I was watching it I was picking apart what would get ripped to shreds in today's landscape which shows how lame things have gotten. I don't feel like they were making some grand stance on gender back then, just a simple you can be what you want. But now they would have too lol. Simpler times I miss.

I don't think they called it "taking a stance", but Mulan was the first truly heroic female character (maybe aside from one of the mice in The Rescuers). As Ebert noted in his review of it at the time:

The message here is standard feminist empowerment: Defy the matchmaker, dress as a boy, and choose your own career. But "Mulan'' has it both ways, since inevitably Mulan's heart goes pitty-pat over Shang, the handsome young captain she's assigned to serve under. The movie breaks with the tradition in which the male hero rescues the heroine, but is still totally sold on the Western idea of romantic love.
But that break--having the woman be the heroic one--was significant. I can remember a male classmate at the time scoffing that it wasn't "realistic" that she'd be able to climb the pole at the training camp. It's hard to overstate just what a dearth of female action heroes (animated or live action) there were if you were a kid. Disney had quite a few plucky/opinionated female protagonists around that same time (like in Beauty and the Beast or Tarzan or The Hunchback of Notre Dame), but their main contribution to the plot was always to support a male character in achieving his goal. A woman triumphing through both physical ability and intelligence/strategy (instead of just because she is good or kind) was a new thing, even if they did still feel the need to shoehorn a romance in there.



Some quickies:

Message Man, 2018

I saw that some people here had a positive response to this one. I thought it was okay, but it didn't really grip me. I also didn't find the action all that interesting or memorable.



Heaven's Burning, 1997

A man (Russell Crowe) driving for some criminals saves a woman they were going to kill and the two go on the run, pursued by the criminals, her psycho husband, and the police.

Decent, off-kilter premise. But the violence is a little too much and the film often feels like it's trying to be edgy (with scenes of torture and multiple instances of animal cruelty). The characters are all pretty one note, and the central romance isn't very convincing.





Heaven's Burning, 1997

(... multiple instances of animal cruelty).
Yikes, definitely a movie to avoid.
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Yikes, definitely a movie to avoid.
Yeah, it was not something I'd anticipated.

There's a "joke" sequence where the two detectives hit a dog that a woman is walking and keep driving. There's a sequence where a man on a motorcycle kills a kangaroo. And I feel like something also happened earlier in the film (I watched the first half over a week ago), maybe with someone killing a goldfish?

Anyway, it all felt incredibly tasteless to me.