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.