Movie notes
Actually watched some stuff over the last few weeks! Thoughts below....
Tom Yum Goong (2005, Thailand) - Even watching this for the third time I had a big goofy grin on my face. Sure, the bits where Petchtai Wongkamlao delivers his lines in English as an "Australian cop" sink like lead. Sure, it's even worse when the native Australian manages to deliver dialogue even flatter 5 seconds later. Sure, the plot dares you to follow it as a mainland Chinese gangster heiress employs a Vietnamese-American strongman and a Scorpio-esque Australian lieutenant in charge of a mix of Australian and Thai and Khmer thugs, who have all stolen our hero's elephants for no readily apparent reason. It's still the best action movie of this and last year, easy, and the passion these guys for doing what they do is obvious. Our hero taking on the Extreme Sports Enforcers is as contrived and wonderful as anything Jackie ever did. Summary: Awesome.
Intimate Confessions of A Chinese Courtesan (1972, Hong Kong) - This is the best explotation movie I've ever seen. Beauty, betrayal, wu xia, boobs, and blood. Fantastic, and really well done.
Le Samourai (1967, France) - I think Melville is my favorite French director. It's interesting seeing a movie after seeing all kinds of movies it has influenced. Alain Delon's hitman has become a archetype, and it's no wonder. Really great stuff. If you want to see where all the Lonely Hitman characters come from, check it out. Put it this way: the only criticism I have is how people react to gunshots.
Glass Tears (2001, Hong Kong) - Looooow budget arthouse drama from Hong Kong that ended up being the great Lo Lieh's last movie before he died in 2002 (http://www.hkcinemagic.com/en/people.asp?id=110 check out his filmography, holy shit!). Like many arthouse dramas, it either clicks very well or doesn't. I really liked the parts with Lo and Zeny Kwok, but the parts with Carrie Ng and Tats Lau as a tense study of modern loveless marriages...not so much. It's the kind of thing where you're either right there with the director, or you're not. Note: Lo Lieh *completely* believable as loner retired badass mainland cop. Overall: good, some slow bits, but a nice change of pace from the style-and-pop-sensation-over-substance mode of most modern HK movies.
Kill! (1968, Japan) - Subtle satire by Kihachi Okamoto of the jidai-geki genre he was so much a part of. I think is Tatsuya Nakadai's best role that I've seen apart from Hara-Kiri, as he's not playing the usual bug-eyed totally intense emotionless killer he played in a lot of movies. Some very funny bits, but mostly played for dark comic effect. Sort of the playful flip side to Sword of Doom...imagine that our "hero" had kept things in perspective rather than become a psychopath. Overall: totally see this. Note: anyone who doesn't, somehow, think birds evolved from dinosaurs needs only see the Theropod Chicken featured in this movie.
Sympathy For Lady Vengeance; a.k.a. The Kind Ms. Geum-Ja (2005, South Korea) - The last installment of Park Chan-Wook's revenge trilogy, which also featured "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance" and "Oldboy". At once it's a kinder, (mostly) less gory look at revenge through Ms. Geum-Ja, but I think it ends up the darkest one out of the three. Really well done, and absolutely not the kind of thing you should watch unprepared-for. I read some criticism of Lee Yung-Ae as our anti-heroine, but I don't think it's warranted...she carries her part and it's easily the best role of hers I've seen her play. Overall: Great. Really, really dark. You been warned.
Save The Green Planet (2003, South Korea) - Internet hype lets me down again! It's not that this movie is bad, it just pisses me off. Lots. The tone is totally schizophrenic, on one hand our nutty hero is played for laughs as no-one believes he really believes he alone knows of the alien invasion of our planet. On the other hand, he is an indescriminate torturer and murderer of innocent people. Ha, ha! What fun! The movie completely fails at making him a sympathetic character by the second third, and the totally "edgy" finale pissed me off even more. Overall: it's not badly made, quite the opposite, it just makes me hate it. The second disc of special features can go fuck right off.
City On Fire (1987, Hong Kong) - The guy at Film Threat or wherever that said Quentin Tarantino "ripped off" this movie is an idiot. Obviously, QT saw this and it inspired "Reservoir Dogs." But whereas Reservoir Dogs is the story of what happens after a hit goes wrong and men of questionable ethics are forced to deal with each other, City On Fire is the story of that hit and what leads up to it. Chow Yun-Fat plays the kind of super-intense cop-posing-as-Triad-type-character he became known for, and Danny "The Man Who Plays Cops" Lee plays against type as a real gangster, and both keep it interesting. Overall: seminal Hong Kong cop/Triad movie, excellent flipside to Reservoir Dogs.
Belleville Rendez-vous, aka The Triplets Of Belleville (2003, France) - If you were to have a fever-dream about an animated French alternate-New-York, it might look something like this. Fantastic and wonderfully dark. At first it kinda seems like it's trying hard to be Weird European Animation, but there are some excellent setups and payoffs and the world they create is fantastic. Plenty of really darkly funny bits, too. Overall: Excellent, check it out.
Tom Yum Goong (2005, Thailand) - Even watching this for the third time I had a big goofy grin on my face. Sure, the bits where Petchtai Wongkamlao delivers his lines in English as an "Australian cop" sink like lead. Sure, it's even worse when the native Australian manages to deliver dialogue even flatter 5 seconds later. Sure, the plot dares you to follow it as a mainland Chinese gangster heiress employs a Vietnamese-American strongman and a Scorpio-esque Australian lieutenant in charge of a mix of Australian and Thai and Khmer thugs, who have all stolen our hero's elephants for no readily apparent reason. It's still the best action movie of this and last year, easy, and the passion these guys for doing what they do is obvious. Our hero taking on the Extreme Sports Enforcers is as contrived and wonderful as anything Jackie ever did. Summary: Awesome.
Intimate Confessions of A Chinese Courtesan (1972, Hong Kong) - This is the best explotation movie I've ever seen. Beauty, betrayal, wu xia, boobs, and blood. Fantastic, and really well done.
Le Samourai (1967, France) - I think Melville is my favorite French director. It's interesting seeing a movie after seeing all kinds of movies it has influenced. Alain Delon's hitman has become a archetype, and it's no wonder. Really great stuff. If you want to see where all the Lonely Hitman characters come from, check it out. Put it this way: the only criticism I have is how people react to gunshots.
Glass Tears (2001, Hong Kong) - Looooow budget arthouse drama from Hong Kong that ended up being the great Lo Lieh's last movie before he died in 2002 (http://www.hkcinemagic.com/en/people.asp?id=110 check out his filmography, holy shit!). Like many arthouse dramas, it either clicks very well or doesn't. I really liked the parts with Lo and Zeny Kwok, but the parts with Carrie Ng and Tats Lau as a tense study of modern loveless marriages...not so much. It's the kind of thing where you're either right there with the director, or you're not. Note: Lo Lieh *completely* believable as loner retired badass mainland cop. Overall: good, some slow bits, but a nice change of pace from the style-and-pop-sensation-over-substance mode of most modern HK movies.
Kill! (1968, Japan) - Subtle satire by Kihachi Okamoto of the jidai-geki genre he was so much a part of. I think is Tatsuya Nakadai's best role that I've seen apart from Hara-Kiri, as he's not playing the usual bug-eyed totally intense emotionless killer he played in a lot of movies. Some very funny bits, but mostly played for dark comic effect. Sort of the playful flip side to Sword of Doom...imagine that our "hero" had kept things in perspective rather than become a psychopath. Overall: totally see this. Note: anyone who doesn't, somehow, think birds evolved from dinosaurs needs only see the Theropod Chicken featured in this movie.
Sympathy For Lady Vengeance; a.k.a. The Kind Ms. Geum-Ja (2005, South Korea) - The last installment of Park Chan-Wook's revenge trilogy, which also featured "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance" and "Oldboy". At once it's a kinder, (mostly) less gory look at revenge through Ms. Geum-Ja, but I think it ends up the darkest one out of the three. Really well done, and absolutely not the kind of thing you should watch unprepared-for. I read some criticism of Lee Yung-Ae as our anti-heroine, but I don't think it's warranted...she carries her part and it's easily the best role of hers I've seen her play. Overall: Great. Really, really dark. You been warned.
Save The Green Planet (2003, South Korea) - Internet hype lets me down again! It's not that this movie is bad, it just pisses me off. Lots. The tone is totally schizophrenic, on one hand our nutty hero is played for laughs as no-one believes he really believes he alone knows of the alien invasion of our planet. On the other hand, he is an indescriminate torturer and murderer of innocent people. Ha, ha! What fun! The movie completely fails at making him a sympathetic character by the second third, and the totally "edgy" finale pissed me off even more. Overall: it's not badly made, quite the opposite, it just makes me hate it. The second disc of special features can go fuck right off.
City On Fire (1987, Hong Kong) - The guy at Film Threat or wherever that said Quentin Tarantino "ripped off" this movie is an idiot. Obviously, QT saw this and it inspired "Reservoir Dogs." But whereas Reservoir Dogs is the story of what happens after a hit goes wrong and men of questionable ethics are forced to deal with each other, City On Fire is the story of that hit and what leads up to it. Chow Yun-Fat plays the kind of super-intense cop-posing-as-Triad-type-character he became known for, and Danny "The Man Who Plays Cops" Lee plays against type as a real gangster, and both keep it interesting. Overall: seminal Hong Kong cop/Triad movie, excellent flipside to Reservoir Dogs.
Belleville Rendez-vous, aka The Triplets Of Belleville (2003, France) - If you were to have a fever-dream about an animated French alternate-New-York, it might look something like this. Fantastic and wonderfully dark. At first it kinda seems like it's trying hard to be Weird European Animation, but there are some excellent setups and payoffs and the world they create is fantastic. Plenty of really darkly funny bits, too. Overall: Excellent, check it out.