Onibaba, Tom Yum Goong, Postal, & Girl Boss Guerilla

Onibaba is a pretty good Japanese ghost story, with a pretty freaky bit of makeup near the end. I was also surprised by just how much nudity was in the film. As it's a Japanese film, no full-frontal, but the two female characters spend a good portion of the film with one or both breasts exposed. Surprising for a film made in 1964. Beyond that, though, it's a moral tale of a mother and daughter whose husband doesn't return from a war and so they start killing lost samurai and selling their armor to survive. Then a man comes into their lives, and they start to fight over him. It all ends tragically, with the help of a demon mask that's pretty freaky.

Tom Yum Goong is a Tony Jaa movie. To know what that means picture this: a young Jackie Chan with less charisma but with more elbows to the head and knees to the stomach. He does all of his own stunts, and the film is all the more impressive for that. Especially the four-minute or so long tracking shot of him going up the stairs at a secret restaurant in Sydney that cooks up endangered species is one of the most impressive fight scenes filmed. It's just one take of him throwing people through walls, off balconies, down stairs, and dodging flying vases. Of course, the plot is basically: tranny stole Tony's elephants and killed his dad and so Tony has to fight through hundreds of people to get them back. Yes, I did say tranny. I'd object, except for the fact that basically every white person is evil, as in most Asian films. I'd object about that, except that we are kinda evil. The ending fight scene where Tony discovers the fate of his elephants and then breaks the bones of about fifty dudes in black just went on too long, as did the Tony loves his elephants section near the beginning. I did see the original international cut rather than the bastardized version (as the Protector) unleashed upon these shores by the Weinsteins, and I dislike them for that, but they did put it out on DVD, so I got to see it at least. Not as good as Ong Bak, but it has much less unnecessary repeating of awesome stunts (in that it had none). Here's my comments on Ong-Bak when I saw it in April of 2004 from the last blog: "Ong-Bak. I don't know what else to say except that if they just played every stunt once, then the movie would have been at least five minutes shorter. I get it that the stunts are amazing, but still, just play them once. Is the movie amazing otherwise? Hell yes. The movie's plot was eh, but the stunts. One "holy s---" moment after another. I'm amazed that the star didn't die. Just an incredible movie. I am just utterly amazed by those fight scenes. We're talking about the stunts and fights from two mid-level Jackie Chan films. In one film. Probably better stunts than any Jackie Chan film, although those are occasionally more death-defying, this one just had more. This movie needs to be seen to be believed. Wow! There was a little CGI, but strangely most that I noticed was just a smoke. And the three-wheeled vehicle chase? I think it was just an excuse to throw them off of highway bridges. Still, so much neat stuff." Yes, I censored myself with dashes back then. Rather than avoiding it unless I'm pissed or the film forces it. And Tom Yum Goong includes a nod to Jackie Chan with a cameo from a Chan double when Tony Jaa first arrives in Australia.

Postal is stupid. It just goes down a list of groups to offend and proceeds to offend them in the most immature way possible. Things I never wanted to see in a film but now have: THIS ENTIRE FUCKING FILM. Uwe Boll is a cinematic cancer and deserves to have his fate in this film in real life. Yes, he wrote himself into the film as the owner of theme park Little Germany (that took over Little Holland, ooh clever), and spouts stupid commentary about how important this film is and then tells bad Holocaust jokes. And then gets shot in the crotch. That's the level of this film. It has Dave Foley fully nude and then taking a very smelly dump while smoking a joint. Argh... I want to catalogue just how terrible this film is, but the more time I spend thinking about it the more I want to punch Uwe Boll in the balls. Repeatedly.

Girl Boss Guerilla is the first film in a Pinky Violence collection I received. Pinky films are basically Japanese sexploitation films, and this one was actually directed by the guy who directed School of the Holy Beast. As in that film, there's pissing jokes (one after four yakuza get the clap from one of the girl gang who has sex with a priest who has the clap, and the other when one of the gang gets pissed on trying to grab a filled condom after a nun had sex with a monk to blackmail him), gratuitous nudity, bondage, girl fighting, terrible slapstick, and just enough actual goodness to make the bad parts almost watchable. Occasional scenes are filled with tension and awesomeness (the finale on the road, and occasional shots like the introduction of Nami). But the violence against women is almost constant and the humor is crappy. Ultimately, the bad outweighs the good. The film follows two other films in the series, but I don't think it mattered much. I'm also not sure what the Guerilla really means in the context of the film.

Gone in 60 Seconds, The Lives of Others, Prince of the City, & The Lost Boys: The Tribe

Gone in 60 Seconds is not the Angelina Jolie-Nicholas Cage film. This is the original, the one referenced in Deathproof. The acting is amateurish at best, as most of the cast had little to no experience, it's all about the ridiculousness of the plot: stealing 48 cars in two days. It's stupid, it's kinda crap, and it's far too long. But it does have a 40 minute car chase scene at the end. Of an hour and forty minute long film. Basically, you can skip the first hour and still know everything that has happened beforehand by reading this sentence: Insurance worker has to steal 48 cars in two days and steals 47 with little hassle but the last one is a problem and so he has to escape from the vast majority of the Carson City police department. The car chase was clearly a labor of love, as the writer/director/star/every car in the film owner/producer also stunt drove many of the cars in the film, and it's occasionally impressive, but ultimately, it's just an excuse for the car chase. If you like them, then the movie is worth watching, if not, avoid like the plague on bad dialogue and performances the film is.

The Lives of Others beat out Pan's Labyrinth for the Best Foreign Film Oscar. I kinda preferred Pan's Labyrinth. This is a great film, touching, with a realistic ending that makes sense within the film. But I also had a problem with a couple of the slightly-anti-woman aspects of it, and the fact that it felt like it could have been set in any particular totalitarian state near the end of its run. Those are just minor problems in an excellent with an otherwise extremely strong pair of performances by the policeman and the playwright. It just felt kinda dreary and like it'd been done before, while Pan's Labyrinth was full of inventive scenes and didn't immediately feel like anything I'd seen before (even as it brought to mind Alice in Wonderland and Labyrinth).

Deliver Us from Evil is another depressing film, this one about a Catholic priest who goes through a few parishes in California in the 70s and 80s sexually abusing girls and how the Church covered it up by sending him to another parish rather than, you know, actually doing anything about the fact that this priest was raping kids. This is a main reason why I don't trust organized religion: it puts humans into positions where they "talk to God" and therefore have people trust them far more than if they were just a normal person. Plus, the whole "Priests have to remain celibate" just leads to them repressing a normal sex drive and becoming sick and twisted. Sure, some, maybe even most, priests are not pedophiles, but some of them are complicit in the coverups, including the current Pope. It's disgusting what religions are able to get away with in the name of "God". The world would be better off without organized religion. Watching these families still struggle with the abuse thirty years later was heartbreaking.

Prince of the City is a long film dependent upon a performance from Treat Williams. As such, he's actually the weakest thing in this otherwise sprawling epic of cleaning up police corruption in New York City. Especially towards the end of the film, it starts to drag and it's mainly due to Treat being not nearly as good then as earlier. I won't complain about the strong supporting turns by Jerry Orbach and Bob Balaban among many others, but at least some of the blame for Williams's dragging performance is at the feat of Sidney Lumet. The film is too long at almost 3 hours long, and all the supporting characters are hustled in and out fairly quickly, many making their mark, but also requiring a huge amount of knowledge of which characters are which and their relationships, some of which gets confused. It may not have a powerhouse performance from Al Pacino like Serpico, but this feels much more realistic. It's a shame that it gets away from Lumet towards the end.

The Lost Boys: The Tribe is terrible. And cheesy. And Corey Feldman and Corey Haim aren't enough. Eesh. Oh, and if you are watching it for Two Corey action, don't bother, he's only in a scene at the very end, and in some alternate endings included on the DVD. He's not a starring role Netflix suggests. The main characters barely register, and the stunt casting of Angus Sutherland to replace Kiefer was offensive. Angus is terrible. It's just not worth the attempted nostalgia trip. Watch The Lost Boys again, or Near Dark (a better 80s vampire film, even if it doesn't scream 80s as much).

Live Free or Die Hard, The Red Shoes, Dumplings, The Good German, The Middleman (again), & Scott Pilgrim

Live Free or Die Hard is the fourth (and I hope last) Die Hard film. The first one is one of the best action films of all time, and I like the second one. The third one, however, was utter crap. The first two were at least somewhat based in a slightly heightened reality, and the third one just tossed that out of the window. And this one was even worse. Maybe it has to do with living in DC and having been to Baltimore quite a few times, but every building I recognized (besides the obvious ones like Capitol building and other monuments) was in Baltimore during the big chase scene in DC. And that's also ignoring the final chase scene that's supposed to be set just north of Baltimore on 695, and the highways are clearly Southern California, with palm trees and overlapping highway overpasses that basically are a California thing and are nothing like highways in Maryland. Also, the movie is also ridiculous when it comes to plot. And wastes Maggie Q, who is only there to look attractive. I also had a serious problem with "Can I get another dead Asian hooker bitch over here right away?" which I know was just trying to get on Timothy Olyphant's bad side. But that racial stereotype grated on me. Actually, just about everyone in the film besides Bruce Willis and Justin Long were wasted. Those two clearly have no more talent than what was shown in the film. Basically, the film was terrible and stupid.

The Red Shoes is not the Powell-Pressburger film, it's a recent K-Horror film, clearly still based on the Hans Christian Andersen story, but with a Korean twist. I objected to the shoes clearly being pink. And to the complete ripoff of Fight Club. Kinda creepy, but the stereotypical Asian horror touches (ghosts with long hair and walking strangely) just aren't nearly as interesting the hundredth time.

Dumplings is the extended version of the Fruit Chan part of Three... Extremes. The plot is slightly different, missing the freakiest scene from the short, but adding more character parts and being slightly more interesting. Still quite good looking and freaky, and I should try to see some Fruit Chan films to see if it's a one-off, but the ones I've read are good aren't really available on Netflix. I don't understand why it makes me want dumplings. But I want dumplings.

The Good German is Soderbergh being ridiculous. He basically just said: Casablanca and The Third Man are awesome films, and what made them amazing was the studio system that made the films. Not the talent or the writing. So he apes those two films constantly, never coming close to that quality.

Venus has a good performance from Peter O'Toole and Jodie Whittaker, but ultimately feels like a small character piece rather than saying anything important about anything.

The Middleman: The Collected Series Indispensability is the complete Middleman comic. The first TPB is basically the first episode of the show, the second TPB is the third episode, and bits and pieces of the third TPB were used throughout the rest of the show, from Manservant Neville to the Honey Ryder bikini joke. I actually don't like the ending of the comic at all, and prefer the tv show's version of the Middleman, although that may be due to that being my introduction to the universe. But I certainly recommend it to everyone. Also, I got the Scott Pilgrim odds and ends collection, with all the main comics being familiar to me due to most of them being online, but I cannot recommend Scott Pilgrim enough (and I apparently haven't raved about it yet on the blog?).

Hands on a Hard Body & The Middleman

Hands on a Hard Body is a documentary about a contest in Texas (although it seems like it's not just a contest in Longview, but in other areas around the country, but that wasn't entirely made clear) where 24 people stand with at least one hand on a Nissan pickup for as long as possible until the last one standing wins the truck. As you'd expect, it's full of stereotypes, but since they're actually people, and the entire 97 minute running time is spent either during the actual contest or interviews with the contestants, you get behind the stereotypes. Unless they are just stereotypes, like the husband and wife who are missing wide swathes of teeth, but the husband is proud of his 20 ton air conditioner that can cool his living room to -12 degrees. Because who doesn't need that? I have to say that I had a tiny bit of schadenfreude with the overly religious woman who had a big prayer chain for her. Eventually, the person I hated the least won, so that made the movie better, but it's 97 minutes of a fascinating look at desperate people in Texas who want to spend three days standing next to a truck. It was directed by S.R. Bindler, who is apparently good friends with Matthew McConaughey, who is thanked in the credits along with Benicio Del Toro (and, ummm, Arnold Vosloo, who was in The Mummy). Unfortunately, due to it not being available on DVD or VHS, it's basically only available online, and it was posted to Google Video last week. I watched it on Sunday, and it's apparently been taken down since then. So, I'm not sure how best to watch this awesome film.

Also, this week was (I hope not) the last episode of The Middleman. If you have not watched this show, I hate you a little. If you like comic books and/or snarky pop-culture referencing attractive 20-somethings, I may hate you a little bit more. And if this is the last episode ever, I might even revise that hatred upwards. I should be getting "The Collected Series Indispensability" tomorrow.