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Spoilers What Movie Are You Watching?

Forgot to mention this one yesterday...

The Man of Iron (1972) now this is more of the type of Chen Kuan Tai roles I enjoyed before he started playing intense, insane characters in Shaw Brothers wuxias and swordplays films in the late 70s / early 80s. Not unlike his perf in The Boxer from Shantung (1972), Chen Kuan Tai is Qiu Lian Huan a wanna-be gang boss in 1940s Shanghai. The man exudes the perfect masculine swagger so you 1000% get this upstarts' desire to be number one in Shanghai. And he does it all for love (cue the awwwww.) Actually, for such thin plotline, the execution was quite well done and everyone seems very vested in their roles. CKT gets to show the world why he was a champion martial artist and acts a bit more here than he would in some Shaw roles going forward. I actually prefer this to The Boxer From Shantung, as I feel the movie works better as a whole. And how could I not like that the English credits declared Chen Kuan Tai as the Iron Man.
 
we've watched Independence day 2 ..wow what a letdown. Not only is Will really missing the whole plot is just dumb and I didn't care for any of the actors
 
kazmac said:
I have seen plenty of machines turning against their creator (and the reinterpretation of the whole Frankenstein thing) and though this was particularly mean spirited on both sides (naturally, I understand why the creation went in the direction it did); just not entertaining or very thought provoking to me.

Acting was pretty good, but ultimately the film left me and coworker rather cold and unimpressed as we walked out of the theatre. Different strokes and that.

and...

The Flying Guillotine (1975). I'd seen this many many years ago and wasn't a fan, and while I like Chen Kuan Tai, the obviously z-movie love of constantly using the title weapon took away from its horrible purpose. With a movie like this (and some other lackluster roles in 1975), I can see why CKT got fed up with Shaw Brothers and fought to get out of his contract (he eventually came back as a better actor and was rewarded with vastly superior roles.)

I admit I don't like the title weapon and was surprised this spawned two sequels (and one awful unofficial one made through independent channels.) That said, I feel that the Shaw Brothers sequels (Flying Guillotine 2 and The Vengeful Beauty) have much better stories and acting (some great characters in the rebellious Shih Szu and Chen Ping respectively.)
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Yes, different strokes. I was impressed and stunned by the ending of EM. :)
 
Hunger Games: Mockingjay Pts 1&2- One of those movie series that turned out as good as the book maybe even better, excellent and outstanding supporting cast. It's rare that an actor or actress as talented as Jennifer Lawrence comes along. Sad how another talented actor in this movie was so tormented.

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Huntn said:
Yes, different strokes. I was impressed and stunned by the ending of EM. :)
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I wasn't, I sort of figured that was what would happen given all the creation has seen and felt. But, I am glad you and so many others enjoyed it.:)

Dead End(1969) - Yay! Finally saw Ti Lung's first leading role for Shaw Brothers and besides being utterly gorgeous, as Zhang Chun he was also quite funny in his very bold way of picking up girls: he purposely tells them about his previous conquests and how he intends to land his current fixation: a young, rich girl named Wen Rou. And his ploys worked!

Unfortunately, his boldness in dating and having sex doesn't quite apply to jobs. On the final day of his three month probation at an office job, he celebrates by bringing his date to the swankily designed insurance office and proceeds to make love to her right on his desk. After an opening scene like this, I thought okay this is going to be fun. And it was fun until we get to the Romero and Juliette antics where Wen's older brother tells Chun point blank he doesn't want this working class boy anywhere near his sister.

Zhang Chun explodes, eventually people die (this is a Chang Cheh Shaw Brothers film so that happens in every damn movie he made, ahem) and life is not so happily ever after. It was kind of interesting seeing this back to back with a later Chang Cheh troubled youth film (The Generation Gap in which David Chiang plays a counterculture rebel who goes way off the deep end after his affair with an underage girl goes south.)

Despite it being a bit over long I enjoyed Dead End for the opening scene, the terrific set design (I want that fountain from the insurance office) and coming away rather impressed at how good Ti Lung was right out of the gate (he'd get much, much better as an actor - and is still winning awards these days.) Also, fun the fourth wall jokes about New Wave Cinema. Not sure, if Chang Cheh was making fun of that style or if he knew he was purposely aping it but neat. There were also verbal references to James Dean and the shortsighted quip directly ties to Chun later in the movie. Pretty neat.
 
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It took me two nights to slog through this. I loved seeing this when I was a lad. It was really hard to watch now. The imagery is still interesting, but boy, is the pacing slow. The story seems formulaic, and there isn't much by way of characters. And, then I remember why I liked it: Elinore's costume. Yeah, I'm still 12 years old in my mind.

The change between levels of cartooning and adjusted film additions was pretty jarring, which added to the feel of the movie.
 
millerj123 said:
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It took me two nights to slog through this. I loved seeing this when I was a lad. It was really hard to watch now. The imagery is still interesting, but boy, is the pacing slow. The story seems formulaic, and there isn't much by way of characters. And, then I remember why I liked it: Elinore's costume. Yeah, I'm still 12 years old in my mind.

The change between levels of cartooning and adjusted film additions was pretty jarring, which added to the feel of the movie.
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I loved the rotoscope of the film characters but once I realized how much an allegory this was for Nazis, my enjoyment tanked seriously. For all my fondness of 70s schlocky movies including exploitation, I find I just don't like much of the edgy / adult 70s Animation now. I do still enjoy the original Heavy Metal movie from 1981 though.
 
kazmac said:
I loved the rotoscope of the film characters but once I realized how much an allegory this was for Nazis, my enjoyment tanked seriously. For all my fondness of 70s schlocky movies including exploitation, I find I just don't like much of the edgy / adult 70s Animation now. I do still enjoy the original Heavy Metal movie from 1981 though.
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I was thinking about Heavy Metal, but although I think I liked it, too, I don't want another disappointment. I know my youthful limitations.
 
Five Elements Ninjas (some day my poster will come...) - ahem. I love the heck out of this movie. It's ridiculously gory, has some silly moments and the fight scenes -especially the insane end fight between our heroes and the nefarious King of the Ninjas are great. China vs. Japan in Edo / Qing era. All kinds of sneaky ninja tactics used on the five elements (and other tricks). It's the beginning of Chang Cheh's utterly go for broke movies and it's the best of those. I don't know how many times I've seen this now, but I was thrilled to discover a new-to-me moment in that final fight of superb kicking brilliance from Chan Wai Man's baddie.
 
London Has Fallen (2016)- otherwise known as how London was completely over run by jihadists, I mean literally overrun, and nobody knew until... Kaboom! Not only that but London Police all evaporate, with enemy stingers on every roof top, and jihadist motorcycle gangs roaming the city. I bet this irritated the U.K. Security forces a little. ;) Decent action if you can swallow the premise. I'm so glad I did not pay to stream this simple minded action story. Is Mike Banning a super hero? :p
 
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I loved watching The September Issue about all the behind-scenes prep for when Vogue's biggest issue each year ramps onto their work-in-progress calendars. It was just a fabulous look at all the details and insanities that lie blehind that fat, glossy thing that lands in your mailbox with everytihng in it planned to the nines, whether a casual one-pager about some seasonal accessories, or an ornate photo shoot of high fashion spread across multiple pages, with stunning models and clothing photographed in some exotic foreign venue. It was shot before Grace Coddington had retired so it was wonderful to have her views and Anna Wintour's take on things juxtaposed... "It's Anna's magazine," the staffers would all remind themselves after some crushing disappointment was handed out by the legendary Wintour as if just dismissing the dessert cart with a casual wave of hand: "No... what else do you have?"

So now I want to watch this new docu The First Monday in May; it's about Anna Wintour and Andrew Bolton as they were getting ready for the Metropolitan Musieum's 2015 costume exhibition "China: Through the Looking Glass" and the huge mother of all parties for and by notables that would launch the thing and mark the beginning of the exhibitoin's public schedule. I saw some blurb about it yesterday and now mean to get the movie this weekend.
 
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I'm O.D.ing on Shaw Brothers because it's Shawtember ...(Like I need an excuse.) For me, it is no different than any other month.

So...

Criminals The Assault: The Queen of Temple Street (1977) Sun Chung's second very realistic and ugly short film in the Criminals anthology series follows the wife of a low-life gambler who sells her in order to get money to fund his habit. The crap she goes through is pretty awful (including the most animalistic rape Sun ever filmed). Yet despite that, as per usual with Sun Chung, this doesn't continue to objectify or glorify the wife's traumas after that trauma and doesn't feel as sleazy as the short which proceeds it. I don't know how to explain this, except that even in his most obvious sexploitation / exploitation crime films Sun does use some restraint and often shoots sex scenes in a very stylized and hyper real way (most are unintentionally funny) but here, it feels pretty real. Not something I'd watch frequently, but I appreciate the opportunity to see as much of Sun's SB output as possible.

The Lady Exterminator (1977) Excellent follow up to The Sexy Killer (1976), in which Chen Ping's now freed inmate infiltrates a drug ring, while her childhood friend and protective cop buddy played by Yueh Hua provides back up. An excellent final shootout and a solid story. Unfortunately, this never got a proper release so the umpteenth generation vhs with french and arabic subtitles was a bit hard to follow. Still, seeing it in this format made me respect the film even more and added the right amount of grunginess. Sun Chung's crime films are quickly becoming almost as watchable as his awesome martial wuxia thrillers.

Pursuit of Vengeance (1977) An amusing, not quite successful sequel to The Magic Blade (1976). But I enjoyed it anyway, still strange that is is pushed as a continuation of Fu Hung Hsieh (Fu Hua Xia)'s story when two other characters seem to be more dominant than his. Fighting isn't as good, but Lo Lieh does get to shine with his staff and, um, final shot. And Derek Yee surprises me here as he did with his debut performance in The Lady Exterminator (but he couldn't pass for a 40 year old despite rocking the awesome scholar beard...sorry Shaw make up people.)

Shaolin Mantis (1978) One of the best SB's ever made and my favorite training sequence of them all. Young Ming scholar Wei Fung is tasked with infiltrating a family of anti-Ming rebels and obtaining the list of traitors for the Emperor. The Emperor's sadistic degree (as he is a Manchu) if Wei does not return in 3 months, his father is stripped of his official post, 6 months, his family are jailed and a year, his family are executed. Wei gets in but not without worry and paranoia from the family elder. When they discover they were right about his espionage he has to fight the entire family to escape... barely making it out alive Wei stumbles upon a nest of praying mantis and through them develops this style of kung fu (which is so darn great.) One of David Chiang's great martial performances even if the very end of the movie still makes me mad. I understand it, but what a zinger.

Return of the One Armed Swordsman (1969) - Second go around with this and it's unbelievably violent for 1969 Hong Kong standards but then Chang Cheh loved that. Pretty good if simple film in which Jimmy Wang Yu becomes the title character again as a clan vs. clan vs. clan plot unfolds. Stood out to me because it was the very first screen appearance for Ti Lung who is utterly adorable and naive as a young righteous swordsman gets whacked by a nasty lady's throwing knives. Awwww....
 
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Batman vs Superman - Seriously, what a disappointment of a movie. To say that for film that is nearly 3 hours, only 45 minutes were interesting. The film lacks any story consistency and some scenes, makes no sense. There is part that Bruce Wayne has a dream and I didn't get it was a dream half way into the scene. What as been said that this is a 3 movies smash into one. I think it has enough material to do those 3 movies very easy. The movie I think suffers a lot of what a lot of gamers tabletop or any of the online, PBP or PBEM called of metagaming: is an "out of character" action where a player's character makes use of knowledge that the player is aware of but that the character is not meant to be aware of. This happens in its own movie. I really hope that DC take note of what Marvel is doing and don't rush things. Or it in couple of years will going to have a remake of the remake of the remake of any of Superman and Batman movie. Seriously it is making those characters images start looking very tired. The fights are the only parts that are done brilliantly, but not to save this movie. On a side note I liked Ben Afflect as Batman and Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman.

Blazing Saddles - This is classic of a movie, that despite its age and still makes me laugh no matter how many times i watch it. Gene Wilder is a comedy genius in this movie. But it also shows how a master of comedy Mel Brooks still is. One of my all time favorites including The Producers, Young Frankestein (Try to see what is the role of Gene Hackman in this movie, i only noticed this on youtube video, didn't notice it was him before), Robin Hood: Man in Tights and History of the World, Part 1. They simply don't make comedies like this.
 
last nite i saw 'Sahara' on netflix. i liked it, it was pretty good. kind of like Indiana jones meets National tresury
 
Star Trek: Renegades (2015)
Set a decade after the U.S.S Voyager's return to Earth, a rag-tag crew of renegades and outcasts must covertly work with Admiral Chekov and Tuvok to stop forces threatening the Federation from outside, and within.
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Clans of Intrigue and Legend of the Bat (both 1977) Things were going so swimmingly with the Ti Lung / Chu Yuan / Gu Long viewing that I knew I'd eventually hit a snag. Kind of regretting picking up more Chu Yuan movies now.

I've watched both of these before, but never together as they are the first two films featuring this particular thief Ti Lung plays. I will probably never watch them together again. Clans... was fun until the forced erotic tilt of the villains (which was never shown) just made everything collapse into a sad little mess and Legends of the Bat was just convoluted and boring. i don't think this is the actors faults (Beyond Ti, Yueh Hua, Ling Yun and Wong Chung were involved and they all usually deliver). It's the scripts and direction that really sink particularly with Legend of the Bat. Do I care about criminal auctions on a remote island where people pay insane amounts to have whatever they want (including enemies' heads), nope. That said, the third and final film featuring this thief character (strangely called Perils of the Sentimental Swordsman and it's not the Sentimental character) is the only one I can watch all the way through and fully enjoy.

I've definitely hit my saturation point with Chu Yuan and am not sure if I'll even bother watching the two films I just purchased yesterday (thankfully they were cheap.)

Ah well...
 
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