Red 2010 Robert Schwentke

By all rights, this movie shouuld have been awesome.  It's got Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, and Helen Mirren all playing retired CIA assassins who have to team up to find out who's trying to kill them.  It's called Red, because apparently RED is an acronym for "Retired Extremely Dangerous".  Clever.

Not really.  It starts off well enough, with Bruce Willis kicking ass and taking out a team of operatives sent to kill him.  So far, so good.  It reminds me of an '80's action movie, so I thought "It'll be like seeing Cobra or Commando when I was 12!"  But no, it was more like when I saw GoBots:Battle of the Rock Lords as a kid in the theater.

Now, I love Morgan Freeman, and I like Bruce Willis.  I'm all in for any movie where John Malkovich acts crazy.  I'll never forget first seeing Helen Mirren in The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, but damned if I didn't feel a little like Michael Gambon at the end of that movie.  Helen Mirren's pointing a gun at me, and I just have to choke it all down, even if I hate it. (Rent that movie -it'll all make sense)

So, I really kinda hate this movie.  I remember sort of how it works out, but why bore you with details?  Do you remember the details of The Chronicles of Riddick?  No, but you remember it sucks right?  Sometimes that's enough.

127 Hours 2010 Danny Boyle

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the polar opposite of Buried.  This film succeeds in every way that Buried fails.  It takes the same basic setup - man trapped alone, trying to find a way out of his increasingly precarious predicament - and does the one thing the makers of Buried couldn't do.  They make it entertaining.

I don't know if I'd ever really want to watch it again, but that doesn't mean it's bad.  It's a fantastically well made film of an intense true story, and for that reason alone, you should watch it.  There wasn't one moment in the entire movie where I was bored, which is strange, because James Franco gets his arm stuck pretty early on in the film.  He doesn't cut it off (it's not a spoiler, c'mon) until pretty late in the film, so there's a long midsection where he goes through the 5 to 7 stages of death ( I can never remember how many there are, besides, I don't go hiking) and has visions of Scooby Doo and whatnot.  He also makes little videos telling everyone how much he loves them, blah, blah, blah.  But it's awesome.

Remember how everyone loved Apollo 13?  "It's so intense!", a friend of mine said.  But why?  If you looked at any account of the Apollo 13 mission, you knew they made it back, so why would the film be tense in any way?  It's gonna work out.  I never liked that movie for that reason.  Ron Howard didn't get me involved in that movie.  Danny Boyle got me involved in this one.  The whole reason anyone goes to see it is to watch him cut off his arm.  That's it.  It's gnarly.  But it takes real skill to keep people involved in a movie where they already know the outcome.  So, kudos to you, Danny Boyle.  Your movie rules.

Project A 1983 Jackie Chan

I'm not a huge Jackie Chan fan.  He has a few (well, really one) great movies that I have seen.  That's Drunken Master 2, or The Legend of Drunken Master if you've only seen the edited American version.  Most of his movies are strictly standard time fillers, and quite a few of them (I'm looking at you, Rumble In the Bronx) are bonafide turds.  But, I'm always willing to take a chance on  Jackie, so I fired up the American DVD of Project A.

You knnow how I can prove this movie is amazing?  It's dubbed, and it still rules.  Dubbing ruins everything.  Something has to be truly fantastic to withstand dubbing.  Like The Legend of Drunken Master, you don't even mind the dubbing after a few minutes.  I'd like to see the original Chinese version of this when I get a chance, but until then I'm perfectly happy with this dvd.

In this movie, Jackie plays a sailor in the Hong Kong Navy named Dragon.  The Navy hates the cops, and the cops hate the Navy, but due to some backroom dealings by the Chief of Police, the Navy gets disbanded and they're all ordered to become cops.  Jackie/Dragon isn't too thrilled with this, since he wants to bust the offshore pirates who are smuggling guns.  Jackie/Dragon says "fuck the police", quits and becomes a one man Navy army willing to do whatever it takes to stop illegal gun smuggling.

It's about this time that chubby Sammo Hung comes into the movie, playing Jackie's criminal buddy.  It's also about this time in the movie where you realize where they ripped off all the ideas for the Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker fights in the Rush Hour movies.  But at least here, Jackie is younger and more athletic, so the fights are pretty rad.

This is also the movie where "Jackie Chan" falls from a clock tower and tears through a series of awnings before landing smack dab on his neck.  After which, Jackie Chan falls from the same clock tower, but from a different angle and body position, thereby landing more squarely on the ground, and not snapping his neck.  Apparently, Jackie was severely hurt and the production had to shut down for a few months while he recuperated, but it looks to me like the original stuntman (HERESY!!!!) bit the big one, and wen to the great Golden Harvest in the sky, while Jackie rethought this stunt, and came out with minimal damage.

Whatever.  This movie rules.  As an added bonus,. Danny Trejo does the voice of the bad guy in the dubbed version, which makes the dubbed version legitimately badass.  The only non-bonus in this dvd is that there aren't any outtakes of injuries over the credits like there usually is.  So maybe my stuntman death conspiracy theory is correct....either way, you should totally track down a copy of Project A ASAP.  And get The Legend of Drunken Master while you're at it.  And if you ever figure out what Project A actually refers to, let me know.  I still have no idea.

The Tale of Zatoichi Continues 1962 Kazuo Mori

If you couldn't tell from the title, this is the 2nd Zatoichi movie.  Why aren't I reviewing the 1st Zatoichi movie, you ask?  Because I've already seen it.  I just saw this one.  If you don't know what a Zatoichi movie is, here you go - Zatoichi is the main character in one of the longest running Japanese movie series of all time.  There's somewhere around 18-20 movies and a few seasons of a TV show.  The star of the Zatoichi movies and TV show is Shintaro Katsu.  He's dead now, but he was arguably one of the biggest movie stars in Japan in the '60's and '70's.  In fact, he was originally cast as the lead in Kurosawa's Kagemusha, but he was such a bastard that Kurosawa fired him and replaced him with Tatsuya Nakadai.

But enough about Japanese cinema history.  What you need to know when you watch any Zatoichi movie is that Zatoichi is a badass.  A blind masseur who is also an expert with a samurai sword, he's someone you don't want to mess with.  He's nice enough, but if you challenge him, you're gonna be dead quick.  Most of his sword fights last about 2 strokes, then you're dead.

This one's called Tale of Zatoichi Continues, so at least you know it comes after The Tale of Zatoichi.  Later on, when it got really popular no effort was made to number or easily order the series.  There were even famous guest stars and matchups, like Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo, with Toshiro Mifune and Zatoichi Meets the One Armed Swordsman, with Jimmy Wang Yu.

...but I digress.  In this movie, Zatoichi goes back to the town where he kicked ass and took names in the first movie and checks up on everyone.  He stops by the grave of his enemy, pays his respects, and starts to go on his way.

Not so fast!

It seems that everyone who was left from the first movie (the bad guys, anyway) is itching for revenge.  They also have a psychotic one-armed swordsman of their own that they need to get rid of.  It's not Jimmy Wang Yu, though.  He wouldn't get his arm chopped off for another 5 years.  It's Tomisaburo Wakayama.  What?  Who?  Give Tomisaburo Wakayama a toddler and he's the Lone Wolf & Cub, or Shogun Assassin!  He's also Shintaro Katsu's real life brother, so score one for nepotism!

The villians from the first movie proceed to send the villian from this movie after Zatoichi.  They seem to be familiar to each other....hmmm.  Anyway, these two real life brothers manage to turn feudal Japan into one big basement rec room where they can fight to see which one their parents really did like best.  It's all very entertaining, but if the thought of an almost 50 year old samurai movie doesn't float your boat like it does mine, you should definitely check out Blind Fury with Rutger Hauer. It's basically an American Zatoichi nmovie. Hauer is a blind Vietnam vet who becomes an expert swordsman, goes back to America, and doesn't like what he can't see.  He has no choice but to open his last can of whupass, but he does it in English, and in color, so it's not so foreign!  But he's Danish, so it still kinda is!  Watch either one, they're both great.

The Parallax View 1974 Alan J Pakula

I've never understood why people loved Warren Beatty.  He's completely bland.  I did like Bonnie and Clyde quite a bit, but that's the only movie of his that I like.  This movie is on Netflix Instant, and it's a classic 70's paranoia thriller that I'd heard compared favorably to Three Days of the Condor, so I thought,why not?  I don't much like Robert Redford either, but Condor was entertaining at least.  I hoped this would be the same.

Sadly, no.  This is the 70's paranoia thriller for people who didn't quite understand the other 70's paranoia thriller.  It starts promisingly enough with an assassination at the Space Needle in Seattle, but then Warren Beatty shows up and it devolves into shots of him looking confused (or concerned, I can't tell the difference), while various political figures and people he's acquainted with get killed.  There's even a hillbilly sheriff and a good, old fashioned, smash-em-up car chase in case your attention starts to wane.

It's not a horrible movie, really.  It's just completely average - something to have on while you are doing mundane tasks around the house.  Just remember when you see the car chase - Smokey and the Bandit is on Instant Watch as well.

Buried 2010 Rodrigo Cortes

Look at that poster.  Lots of people seem to love this movie.  Just look at all of them.  They're falling all over themselves to praise this movie.  But I bet this movie didn't play at your theater. 

That's strange, isn't it?  Why would this movie, which by the looks of the poster is fantastic, not show up in wide release, especially if it's brilliant?

Because it sucks, that's why.

Ryan Reynolds wakes up trapped in a coffin.  All he has with him is a mystery cell phone(?) which works(??) as long as he moves around the coffin to find the spot where the signal is best(??!??!!).  And it just gets dumber from there.

I spent the whole movie wondering who had ever told the screenwriter this was a good script.  It's sort of a good idea - for a TV movie of the week in 1975, where it would have been 70 minutes long and not trying to make some grand, topical statement(Bad idea).  Plus, TV movies in 1975 would have been able to get a better actor than Ryan Reynolds.  If your whole movie is a one man show by Ryan Reynolds, it's time to quit.  Save yourself the pain, and stay away from this horrible film.

Hammett 1982 Wim Wenders

I caught this one on Netflix Instant a week or so ago, and I've gotta say...it's amazing.  It is.  I've heard about this movie for years, but it's never been on DVD and the videotapes were going for ridiculous prices on E-Bay, so I thought it was one of those movies I'd never get a chance to see.  Just another reason to love Netflix streaming.

Anyway, Frederic Forrest from Apocalypse Now plays the writer Dashiell Hammett.  The whole movie is like a big Marvel Comics "What If" isssue.  What if Dashiell Hammett, who wrote such novels as The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man, as well as loads of short stories, was involved in a big mystery himself?  And what if the movie that was made was directed by one of the heroes of the New German Cinema of the 70's, making his first English language movie?  It would rule, that's what!

Hammett's in San Francisco, and he gets asked a favor by an old friend to help him look for a missing Chinese girl.  From there it plays out as if it should have been called Fassbinder's San Francisco Confidential.  Part of the fun in this movie is spotting all the character actors like Peter Boyle, Jack Nance, and David Patrick Kelly (doing Jude Law's assassin from Road to Perdition twenty years early).

If this movie ever comes out on DVD, buy it.  If it ever comes back onto Netflix Instant, watch it instantly.  I can't recommend this movie highly enough.  And why didn't Frederic Forrest become the biggest star in the world?  He's amazing in this.

Detective Dee & the Mystery of the Phantom Flame 2010 Tsui Hark

Gotta catch up - these next few will be quick.  In this movie, Andy Lau is Detective Dee and he likes to solve crimes.  This movie is sort of like if Scooby Doo had to investigate the haunted amusement park in ancient China.  Plus, there's kung fu.  And badass albino government officials.  Oh, spontaneous combustion is in there too.  It's all gotta be solved before the coronation of the first ever woman emperor of China, otherwise Detective Dee's gotta go back to jail.  Can Andy Lau use his kung fu brainpower to solve the case on time?

This movie is awesome.  If you liked the Chinese Ghost Story movies that Tsui Hark produced back in the 80's, you'll love this.  If you know what the Chinese Ghost Story movies even are, then you get bonus points.  Even if you've never heard of those films, do yourself a favor and watch this movie right away.