What did you watch this week trooper? (08/29-09/04)

Hey,

Willys Wonderland 7/10
Villains 7/10
Brightburn 8/10
The forbidden kingdom6/10

I watched:
Sweet Girl (2021) 5/10
Black Widow (1987) 6/10
Wishmaster (1997) 6/10
Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938) 7/10
Here Today (2021) 8/10
Divorce Italian Style (1961) 8/10
Werewolves Within (2021) 7/10
Karen (2021) 8/10
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021) 8/10
Till Death (2021) 6/10
Cinderella (2021) 7/10
Afterlife of the Party (2021) 6/10

Two TV Series:

Clickbait (2021) - This kept me interested. One of those series where the civilians are better at solving a murder than the cops. 6.5/10

The North Water (2021) - They shot this near the Arctic Circle. Great atmosphere and Colin Farrell was great. The problem was that it is only 5 episodes. Could have used a few more. 7/10

Movies:

Demon Seed (1977) - Might be the worse Sci-fil ever. The plot is ridiculous. Nothing makes sense. 2/10

Elvis & Nixon (2016) - Spacey nails Richard Nixon. Michael Shannon looked and sounded nothing like Elvis. This is funny especially all the F bombs from Nixon. 6/10

Le silence de la mer (1949) - Loved this movie. A movie that takes a shot at the French who collaborated with the Nazi. Great drama. 7.5/10

Greetings

Willy's Wonderland 6/10

I didn't watch anything this week as I've been off on a hiking trip, but I missed a couple of weeks ago so you get those. :)

High Spirits (1988) 6/10 I remember watching this as a kid and liking it, but it's not really an 80s movie that anyone talks about. Watching it again I see why. It was such a mixed bag, with some great performances and some not so great. I've never understood that appeal of Daryl Hannah and she was pretty bad in this. It just seems like a missed opportunity. Peter O'Toole bumped my rating up a half star as he was very enjoyable to watch.

Just My Type (2020) 5/10 I was disappointed with this one. Hallmark has had some decent movies recently but this was just so-so. The only thing that really saved it for me was that the actors didn't suck and they had a bit of chemistry.

Timeless Love (2019) 7/10 Really decent made for tv romance. Both Skasten, and Daughtry are no stranger to these types of movies and they suit the genre well. They had good chemistry. The plot, while predictable, had a bit of originality to it. The concept of knowing someone in a dream is fascinating to me, so this did click with me. I did like it.

Gamera, the Giant Monster (Noriaki Yuasi, 1965)
Gamera vs Barugon (Shigeo Tanaka, 1966)
Gamera vs Gyaos (Noriaki Yuasi, 1967)

The first film is fairly successful and efficient Godzilla rip-off. The first two sequels are increasing dumb fun. These are the films before Gamera became an unabashed kids' franchise. 4/5, 3/5, 3/5 respectively.


One Missed Call (Takashi Miike, 2003)

Pretty tedious and generic J-horror. The tagline on the poster appears to have been 'Ring, Ring, Ring', which also serves as a reminder that you could be watching a much better film on a similar theme. 2/5

Time Traveller: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (Masaaki Taniguchi, 2010)

I liked the bit where the girl leapt through time; and I liked the fact that time travel came in a serum... But it's pretty stodgy and looked a lot like a TV movie. 2/5

Erika Pretended (Akiyo Fujimura, 2016)

Subtle, low-key and incidental drama about a failed actor finding a new perspective on life after the death of her sister. A good central performance sells it. 3/5

The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail (Akira Kurosawa, 1952)

Low-budget Kurosawa, made before Kurosawa was really KUROSAWA. But he's mostly Kurosawa. He's almost there. 3/5

Orgies of Edo (Teruo Ishii, 1969)

Anthology film. Three stories of sexual corruption. The third one was the best one. Looked quite pretty at times, but anthology films always have weak links. 3/5

Why Don't You Play in Hell (Sion Sono, 2013)

Fast-moving, overly-complicated plot, irreverent. Typical but for me not prime Sono. 3/5

Yojimbo (Akira Kurosawa, 1961)

One of the best films ever made. 5/5

R100 (Hitoshi Matsumoto, 2013)

Guy hires dominatrixes at a secret sex club to publicly humiliate him for a year, usually by kicking him in the face. He can't break the contract... and then it goes meta and strange and nowhere you could have expected and gets interesting. 4/5

The Complex (Hideo Nakata, 2013)

Nakata seems to be bored of horror. 2/5

Yo, yo, yo!

Willy's Wonderland - Cage was certainly game, but the movie around him didn't show much spark. For a premise loaded with wacky potential, there wasn't much done with it. 6.

Brightburn (2017) - Decently produced but not much done to invert comic book hero tropes other than 'what if Superman bad'?. 5.

The Forbidden Kingdom (2008) - I agree that the kid main character is either misplaced in the story or just flat-out miscast, but I still found the movie as a whole to be an enjoyable adventure despite Jet Li and Jackie Chan being underutilized. 6.

My week included:

Heels (2021 TV) - Four episodes into the first season, and this is show turning out pretty good. One of the stars, Stephen Amell, is clearly passionate about pro wrestling, and it shows in his dedication to his character in and out of the ring. There's some very clear and effective family drama in each episode so far, and that's the kind of meat-and-potatoes storytelling that works best in that business. 8.

Mr. Corman (2021 TV) - One of the most emotionally honest and resonant series I've seen in a long time. Words escape me. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a born storyteller. So far it's a 10.

FBoy Island (2021 TV) - Fun and Fascinating reality show. It's a melting pot of narcissism. 7.

Movies:

The Brothers Solomon (2007) - I was put off by it back when it first released, but watching it again I notice that a lot of its visual/acting choices are intentionally unpleasant. What I might have previously rated a 5 I now can say... uh... 7?

One Day Since Yesterday (2014) - A cool documentary about Peter Bogdanovich's famed film They All Laughed (1981). Fun if you're into the process. 8.

Paris When It Sizzles (1964) - Way ahead of its time in terms of self-awareness. It holds up better than Breakfast at Tiffany's. 8.

Grunt: The Wrestling Movie (1985) - The Spinal Tap of pro wrestling mockumentaries. 10.

Black Widow (2021) - Eh, whatever. 6.

And the popcorn classic pick of the week:

Cloud Dancer (1980) - Pretty decent summer drive-in movie. I loved the flight footage, and Colleen Camp is always a joy to see. It makes up for narrative laziness with visual splendor. 6.5.

MOVIES:
Love and Monsters (2020) - 7/10
The Stylist (2020) - 4/10
American Sausage Standoff (2019) - 6/10
The Guilty (2018) - 8/10
Without Name (2016) - 6/10
The Battery (2012) - 5/10

SHOWS:
Boardwalk Empire - I rewatched Seasons 1 & 2

And out of the one's you watched

Willy's Wonderland (2021) - 6/10
Brightburn (2019) - 7/10
The Forbidden Kingdom (2008) - 6/10

hey!

villains was great fun. i remember wishing it would have been a bit more brutal & bloody, but it was a very good time. 3.5/5

brightburn i kinda loved, & should give it another watch. 4/5

my week:

RAINY DOG (1997) 3.5 takashi miike. the somewhat languid pace and slightly fuzzy look of the film (bad stream on tubi, maybe) kept me somewhat outside this for the first hour or so. there were definitely things i liked in it, and a few really great sequences, but it wasn't until the last 30m or so that i actually felt myself getting drawn into this and not just punching the clock with it.

can't unreservedly praise it, but it's definitely a restrained film by this guy's standards.

HARMONIUM (2016) 4.5 this is freely available on tubitv. just finished watching it, and it's maybe got a contrivance or two too many, but all in all, this is an astonishingly great film with twists and turns worthy of a greek tragedy.

it's got a 100% on rt
metacritic rating of 84
it won the cannes jury prize.

not my place to tell anyone what to do...

but if you have a 2 hour hole in your life, you could do much, much worse things with your time.

SNOW DAY (2000) 2 emmanuelle chriqui marathon entry #8.

katherine isabelle sighting at 47m! & other fun people are present. iggy pop. pam grier. you might think that promises a bit of anarchic, sly fun, right?

well, you'd be wrong. it's not funny at all, and it's as punch the clock and predictable as you can imagine.

but.

emmanuelle chriqui

she was playing 17 or so in this, i guess. but she had to have been 23 or 24 when it was shot, so it's ok.

BEETLEJUICE (1988) 4 i know you can't freeze people in time, but it would have been nice if we could have kept tim burton in this gear for the rest of his career.

TRASH FIRE (2016) 3.5 this may be me trying to be too clever, but this is more restrained but also darker and nastier than excision, at least as i recall (it's been a few years).

absolutely loved it, anyway. unfurled and moved along in a way i found incredibly satisfying.

DO NOT DISTURB (2010) 3 short anthology - initial stories are pretty weak, but they improve as they go along.

LA GRANDE BOUFFE (1973) 0.5 like salo, but less insightful and more disgusting.

also, the subs on the stream i watched on tubi were annoyingly out of sync with the dialogue - about 5 seconds after the worlds were spoken, i'd get the lines.

but i would have hated this no matter what.

i don't want to watch people eat for 2 hours.

revolting. i hated every second i spent with this. i can't believe i managed to make it to the end.

one of the worst experiences of my life.

ELEKTRA LUXX (2010) 3 chriqui #9

sequel to the perfectly enjoyable 'women in trouble.

not as good as the first one. but it's still pretty fun in a way that's not a world apart from it. if you enjoyed that, you'll find things to enjoy here.

regarding that fairly steamy scene with chriqui towards the end: they really really should have given us a full out sex scene. why torment us like that???

still pretty hot though.

THE CHAIR (2016) 2 Overly dark and dour.

BLOOD BELOW THE SKIN (2015) 2 don't understand anything about life. i haven't lived. i certainly haven't lived the life of a woman.

so keep that in mind when i say i do not understand what anyone gets out of these self-serious life of a teenage girl films. i think they're annoying and i hate them.

i like the idea of a high school choir doing smiths songs. yet i hated it when the choir in this film did that. why? i don't know why. but it bothered me.

A VERY CURIOUS GIRL (1969) 3.5 there's a lot of talk about power these days, in that dreary, boring marxist sense, something i'd once hoped had sunk into irrelevancy.

but it's certainly true that there is power in the world, and that some people have more of it than others.

but you know who has lots and lots of power in the world? young, attractive women. if there's a group in the world that has power and privilege, it's them. and they often wield it in a very sharp, mercenary way.

this is ok. gets pretty repetitive, honestly. like...i had the point at the 50m mark, and it didn't really add any insight or change from that point.

100 GIRLS (2000) 3 #10 on the chriqui film festival.

she's not in this enough. and absurdly, the hero declines sex with her initially. lmao.

i'll admit i never really knew what ben wa balls were until i googled it tonight.

this is a sex comedy that doesn't have much sex, nudity and didn't make me laugh. parts of it made me cringe (that speech at the end...jesus), but it's got a bit of heart. maybe misguided heart, and goofily earnest heart, but it's still there.

there's a fairly decent chriqui sex scene around the hour mark. it's not everything you might have hoped (no nudity) but i'm still thankful for what i'm given.

SLITHER (2006) 4 this movie is a GD blast.
spiritual heir to evil dead.
best james gunn.

I watched the first half of Dirty Harry 1971. It wasn't my type of movie. I was hoping for a little more mystery. I tried the first half of Sudden Impact 1983, thinking the series might improve, but I'm just not a fan.