What did you watch this week? (05/28-06/03)

Project A 2 (1987 DVD): I had nothing but praises for Jackie Chan directed Project A but this sequel unfortunately did not have the magic of the first one. There is many good actors but there is so many of them it get confusing. There's like 16 important characters, plus, the script is quite convoluted. The fight scenes were good but sparse. The Imdb rating of 7.2 and the reviews I read make me think I might have to give it a rewatch someday but to me it was only a fairly entertaining flick. 6/10

Kung Fu Master (2009 DVD): This is a low-budget Chinese movie about a young boy that goes on a trip to find his hero, Jackie Chan. The poster is very misleading as you see Jackie Chan and some Chinese warriors with sword when you actually see him for like 10 minutes and the movie is not about Chinese warriors at all. The thing is, in the end, I agree with the arguments of the reviews that gave it 4/10 and I also agree with the review that gave it a 8/10. Yes it's cheap, yes the young boy is a bit annoying but personally, I found it to be a good family movie with good actors. The actresses were good looking too, always a plus. It's short, simple and sweet And I mostly rate movies depending on how much I enjoyed watching them, no matter the quality. 6/10 for moi.

Dr. Strange (2016 Netflix): There's not a lot of actors that I can't stand but egg Benedict Cucumberbatch is one of the few. I hoped that the movie would be so good that I could look pass that but unfortunately it was boring and unoriginal. The special effects were cool but you have to endure lots of long scenes in-between the action. It's not an awful movie, (would be a 6.5 with any other actor) but it's just not for me. 5.5/10


Three Kings (bluray): although it was not as great as I remembered it to be it was still very good and it went by very fast. A bit uneven, can switch to comedic situation to gruesome scene in an instant. A bit strange...but good. 7.5/10

I went with more of a t.v. series from my late childhood, Shake It Up. It is a Disney Channel related show and it is pretty entertaining.

https://moviechat.org/tt1661326/Shake-It-Up

I watched Underworld:Blood Wars on Friday evening and Queen of the Damned last night.

I watched Stasis (2017). It was kind of like a cross between Terminator and Ghost in a Shell but without all the futuristic technology, visual effects and big budget fight sequences.
2/10

Manborg (2011) - of those low-budget pseudo retro movies like Kung Fury but less forced. Very imaginative, good editing, crude but cool special effects. Reminiscent of the Doom games. 7/10

The Void (2016) - I got excited when learned that the Manborg guys have a "real" movie, because "Those guys know their stuff", I thought. They got money to do a real movie and then there was... void. Such a badly written and uninspired borefest. The best moments are taken from classics such as Hellraiser, The Thing and Fulci's The Beyond. 4/10

Get Out (2017) - so well executed that it is a pleasure to watch it even when nothing happens. For me it works like a "social horror" - others can be really creepy. A bit of a drag at the too usual end. Maybe won't remember it long but... damn... the world is a creepy and weird place. And the guy from "15 Million Merits" is in it. 7/10

Profit (1996) (TV Series) - a memory from my childhood. Now, watching it as an adult in 2017, it looks retro and a bit cheesy but in kind of a cool way. Adrian Pasdar is awesome.

New Police Story (2004, China)
Jackie Chan plays a different character from the previous Police Story movies. This time he's fighting a gang of rich Westernized kids that hate cops and torture/kill them for fun. After his entire team is killed during an attempt to capture the gang, he becomes a self-hating drunk until a young man pretending to be a cop gets him back on his feet and hunting down the gang. I actually didn't like this one as much as the previous Police Story movies, but I guess it depends on your taste.

The Gold Rush (1925, US)
Very enjoyable Charlie Chaplin movie about a poor tramp who goes to Alaska hoping to find gold and strike it rich, and proceeds to have a series of hilarious misadventures with a fellow prospector, a notorious criminal, and a beautiful woman he meets in a dance hall. This is actually the first Charlie Chaplin movie i've seen, and it was a lot of fun.

Horatio Hornblower (late 1990s-early 2000s, UK)
This is actually a series of films that i've been watching over the last couple weeks, but it seems easier to group them together than to review each one individually. It depicts the adventures of a British sailor during the French revolutionary/Napoleonic wars of the 1790s/1800s, whose skill and daring bring him rapidly up through the ranks as he earns the respect of his comrades and enemies alike. It's based on a series of novels by C. S. Forester. It's low-budget but entertaining, particularly if you like adventure-type films as I do.

(to be continued, damn this size limit)

Anastasia (1997, US)
I actually watched this a week or two ago but forgot to review it then. An animated Disney-style movie about the supposed lost princess of the Romanovs and her journey to finding her way back to the remnants of her former life. In a fictionalized version of history, all was well in Russia until the villain Rasputin casts a spell to make the peasants rise up (apparently they had no grievances until then lol) and overthrow the tsardom, bringing ruin upon the poor innocent Romanovs who never did anything wrong. Anastasia escapes the palace but gets amnesia and doesn't remember who she is, until she meets a guy who's looking for the reward for discovering her and he brings her to her last living relatives in exile in France. Meanwhile Rasputin tries to hunt her down and finish her off in order to wipe out the last of the Romanovs.

Incredibly silly movie and I really disliked it. It was trying too hard to be Disney, and failed at it, and its romanticized portrayal of the Romanovs, who were apparently just innocently enjoying ballroom dances and doing nothing wrong until the evil revolution ruined their life and supposedly ruined Russia as a whole (which was apparently a happy wonderland until then), disgusted me. That a regime which brutally exploited workers and peasants to maintain the luxurious life of the aristocracy, oppressed and frequently massacred Jews, and sent workers to kill and die to fill the coffers of the rich and expand the tsar's bloody empire, is portrayed as the innocent victims of history is just revolting to me. It's rather like putting a sanitized portrayal of the Nazis in a children's cartoon and making them out to be victims. If I had seen this 20 years ago when I was a kid and knew nothing of history, I might have enjoyed it. But knowing what I know about the Romanovs, I found it pretty terrible and morally reprehensible.

I'm just going to comment on a couple of rewatches among several this past week .

One was Alien, Aliens and Alien 3 , one lazy and bored afternoon. It was a binge so I'm counting it as one continuous rewatch and found it surprisingly enjoyable viewing it this way, back to back . There's nothing I can really add other than, the first was the best , natch . The entire experience averages out to 7.7/10, which I think is fair.

The Great Escape -- I was a boy the first time I saw this during a great era of movies and actors ( e.g. James Garner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, all favorites back then ). However, viewing it again through older and wiser eyes , I found their performances lacking and disappointing at times . Especially Charles Bronson who came across as unrealistically melodramatic near the end. Matter of fact, I perceived much of the first half , during their confinement and what they were able to accomplish as far-fetched and the Nazis appeared much too humane. It seemed that when the escape finally commenced is when the real drama kicked in. I thoroughly enjoyed the iconic motorcycle chase scene with McQueen, probably as much as when I was a boy. 7.5/10