devil in a blue dress was another good denzel washington mystery i think
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a few days ago I was made aware of the fact that in the late 1980s Kyle MacLachlan starred as a young, peculiar FBI special-agent hunting what is revealed to be a otherworldly, parasitic entity that inhabits peopleās bodies by crawling its spacebug-lizard body into their mouths, distorting their personalities towards its own hedonistic ends, these hosts periodically look into mirrors in re-affirmation of their parasitic pilot, a different good natured alien transfers its essence by emanating a golden glow from his head, in a production scored by a multi-credited italian-ameā¦
pretty good i liked it, my favorite part was all the sports cars, and when the bad guy all of a sudden springs out from behind a corner with a rocket-launcher and as his dramatic one-liner goes āā¦heyā in a weird voice
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jason the dog from freddy 3 does such a good job in that movie! chekovs flamethrower! hooker ivanova! its like, storywise such a downer for the goodguys but everything is so action packed it ended up being really fun to watch anyway
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Watched Pearl last night. Wasnāt sure how theyād make a more messed up movie than X, but they did it! Mia Goth is something else.
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watched the final movie of benny chan, raging storm starring donnie yen and nicholas tse
i like nicholas tseā¦ not really one of those canonical actors from the era of hong kong film industry people seem to focus most on but heās a fun Presence in general and i still closely associate him with his role in time & tide which is a movie i kind of love
he is sexy in this!
a lot of mid cop / crime action-thriller things like this or triple 9 with uhh casey affleck have what are obviously unreconstructed blue lives matter-ass politics but even so they manage to find time to really revel in the perspective of the criminal and treat criminals as essentially deuteragonists, so while as much as this is another entry in the 20+ year-old cycle of films centered around the unlikeable copsona of donnie yen itās also a movie where the first big setpiece is a loud as hell āblue lives dont matterā
but yeah i would say this has 3 really decent action setpieces which is probably too few for a 2-hour movie which has relatively so many completely televisual scenes set in interrogation rooms and police internal ethics boards
letās seeā¦ i still think my fav donnie yen fight scene is the one at the end of flash point, and heās clearly a lot older now, almost 60, but he still makes for an impressive on-screen fighter, and it feels a bit like a pitch for a 3rd phase of his career as an action director and choreographer ā¦ probably worth noting that all the blood is like pretty bad cgi, also. i know i always go on about that but idt the insurance policies in hong kong are such anymore that they can get away with things like shrapnelling tony leung chiu-wai so you really canāt expect to see a lot of in-camera effects ppl associate with the hong kong film industry these days, not even blank-firing guns (the sparks look in-camera tho they are probably zirconium spark balls from pneumatic launchers i think)
i still have a lot of affection for this sort of dtv-ish action movie and probably always will lmaoā¦ a lot of times something really mid like this feels more in tune with my sensibilities re: action movies than most stuff
speaking of, im going to be watching the recent scott adkins movie one shot next
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scottā¦ try to remember the basics of cqc
i probably preferred this to a lot of the long take stuff iāve seen, not just because i used to be a bit of a scott adkins auteurist-contrarian i thought it was actually kind of neat. here are a few videogame logic reasons why i actually think this one works:
first of all, the camera always follows the perspective of a character, and sticks closely to that character mostly over the shoulder, only attaching to another when those characters come within a few feet of each other. this creates neat sequences where the camera detaches from scott adkins, loop around a building following the perspective of the mercenaries heās fighting against, then reattaches to scott adkins as he shoots them in the head as they round a corner. since the camera never wanders off on its own but instead always follows a characterās pov it feels like a movie mostly about the blocking of the actors. oh, also! the camera always stays at eye level.
second of all is that it represents scott adkins sneaking around in a ludic way, basically if a mercenary is out of focus then that means he canāt see scott adkins! it gave me the idea for a puzzle game based around racking camera focus
third of all is that most of the characters are referred to by name so infrequently i didnāt know what they were for the most part until the end credits
i thought this was a hilarious dramatis personae. most of the dialogue is mumbled or recorded / mixed such that most of it is inaudible and it does have a few expository scenes but it has this almost hypnotic / asmr-like quality to it, the sound effects (not surprising that thereās nearly nothing in-camera) of suppressed gunfire and squelching cut throats and the like. it has the vibe of like a sick as fuck mgsv cutscene tbh iām sorry you knew i was going to say it. this is probably tied with universal soldier regeneration for extremely kojimacore dtv action movies.
itās not impossible to imagine a better + weirder version of this where the characters have even less personality than the little they already have, if itās not too much to say i thought of the alan clarke film elephant while watching (it would have been more effective lacking the even the minimal score it has)
scott adkins is a better presence than he is an actor and i think this is a movie that basically ignores acting (most of the line readings are pretty funny actually) but i feel like that makes moments where the camera follows a character breathing his last as he dies of getting shot in the lung more effectively eerie / unsettling when they could come across as tryhard otherwise
another way in which this movie would seem self-evidently shitty but which feels like a virtue is that it looks extremely neutral and bland, without any of the ill-advised color temperature antics a lot of dtv action movies like to pull. flat lighting in uncanny government building interiors
and i wish maybe this didnāt follow so closely the idea of a screenplay having such defined 3 acts maybe because itās actually pretty tedious by the end of the 2nd act
and as much as this is a movie about navy seals shooting mercenaries this is a movie about mercenaries shooting marines and navy seals, taking their perspective nearly as frequently, treating them nearly as deuteragonists
kind of a weird little movie (i think it may even be like a christian movie production) but effective at what itās going for imo. a lot of my interest in action movies is how theyāre built thru editing and i think a lot of more recent movies decide to like, show the cause and effect of a gun and a bullet with digital blood + muzzle flashes rather than depicting cause and effect thru editing. if that makes sense.
i think people call various action movies videogame-like but that tends to ignore that videogames donāt have editing in the sense a movie does usuallyā¦ killer7 remains one of few videogames where you can just press buttons to semi-instantly cause a cut. i mean if anything i would like to see a lot lot more of videogames based around actual formal aspects of movies like racking focus and editing (this is part of the appeal of hidetaka miyazakiās games to me; controlling a character who cancels out of animations near-instantly resembles cinematic editing imo)
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watched Tenebrae and it had a painting in it that my parents had a print of and whose name i forget. going to assume they watched Tenebrae at some point and wanted to rip off the set design but luckily ran out of money before they could get to the spike sculpture.
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i have completed my rewatch of the first 4 indiana jones movies, i honestly donāt know if i will bother seeing the new one right away though i may just wait till itās on disney+. weāll see i guess? i actually intended to do this for mission impossible until i realized they had all left netflix recently. i wanted to do this so badly i even considered buying the dvd set, but it turns out no place in this city that has an online store is stocking it. oh well!
anyway, indiana jones. what else is there to say. i still kind of like these movies even though every one of them just starts to feel more racist every time i watch it. really bad vibes across the entire quadrilogy in this respect. i am not going to claim temple of doom is not the most racist one, but one thing that occurred to me this time around is that it is the film in the series that gives the most screen time and lines of dialogue to actual people from the places that indiana jones goes on his wacky adventures in.
i donāt really think i have anything smart to say about raiders that hasnāt been said before. itās pretty good. i honestly slept through most of it this time around because iāve seen it so many times, itās just sort of background noise at this point.
back to temple, the dinner scene, which is home to the most openly racist stuff in the series (perhaps tied with using the british colonial army as the deus ex machina in the end), is also actually pretty well written from a dialogue standpoint, where the prime minister basically talks about how indiana jones is a grave robber, imperial stooge, and fugitive from justice to his face. problem is i guess at this point you are supposed to know that heās a bad guy and thus not take anything he says seriously. but i feel like the film actually gives him a way out, in that technically both he and the maharaja kid are under mola ramās spell, so i think they are plausibly like not exactly aware of everything that is going on there?
and it would be so fucking easy to just cut all the dumb gross-out food jokes out of the scene, they are literally all cutaways to willie and have absolutely no impact on any of the dialogue in the sequence. itās like they did test screenings and people complained the movie wasnāt racist enough so they had to go back and do reshoots and that was the main place they thought they could insert some real bullshit. you could cut it out and the only difference it would make would be coming up with a new excuse for jones to go sexually harass willie (in the movie he is like, bringing her some fruit because she couldnāt eat any of the gross indian food)
anyway, i do still like a lot of temple of doom, racism notwithstanding. i appreciate that it is not just a repeat on the same formula as Raiders (which every other indiana jones movie has been) but actually puts the character in some different situations, has a pretty different plot arc, and give some interesting (to me) back story/development of who exactly this indiana jones character is. like in the first movie heās basically a stock serial adventure film hero who happens to be an archaeologist/treasure hunter, in temple (and after) heās a this multi-lingual, internationally renown super bastard. i think they really have fun revealing little by little all the shit this guy knows about and has done in his life. also mola ram is unquestionably the best villain in the series, i donāt think this is controversial. the performance is just electric (despite obviously being a problematic character), you can tell the actor is really giving it his all.
my main thought about last crusade is i still donāt like it that much, maybe my least favorite movie in the series, but it is still a good movie that i enjoy watching every time i do. having watched the fablemans, i will say this is obviously the movie that spielberg put the most of himself into. this is apparent not just from the visuals in the opening sequence (circus train + old timey boyscouts crawling through the desert, which both feature prominently in the fablemans as well) but also in the way the whole movie is about a father and a son who have everything in common and yet nothing to talk about. idk if either movie is really that profound re: this relationship, but i think they work well together.
crystal skull undeservedly gets so much shit, i know people are going to hate on me even for giving it the time of day. do whatever you want i guess.
honestly iāve always liked it, and this time around i think i liked it even more. i think the ways they fill in what indiana jones has been up to in the intervening decades are really clever/fun (he was a super spy in the war and also was taken to dissect roswell aliens, but they didnāt let him see that muchā¦ itās funny), and ford plays the guy as i believe a dude who was a badass in the 30ās would act in the 50ās. kind of a grumpy asshole, and probably a bit of a nationalist curmudgeon. the part where he tells the commies āI like Ikeā is so funny to me. i also like that they know that in a movie set in america in the 50ās you canāt just be like ācommiesā¦ i hate those guysā in the same way you can just make jones a nazi-punching hero at any other point in time, so they write in a little sequence about him getting blacklisted to acknowledge that.
the other thing i really like about it is cate blanchettās character, aside from her accent (which is bad). i like her because the movie spends enough time with her for you to understand why she wants the thing everyone in the movie wants. the other movies have some great moments for the villains, but i feel like they are only ever there to show you even more clearly how jones is the hero. i just like that sheās doing her own thing for her own very particular reasons, not just trying to cash in or just satisfying the whims of the fuhrer or whatever. there are even scenes where she and jones almost seem to be working together because theyāre both so interested in solving the puzzle, and i like that for this movie.
all of the other stuff people complain about with this one is bullshit, sorry. i promise iāve heard every complaint you have about the movie and i honestly donāt care. the fridge scene fucking rules, the ants are great, the monkeys do suck but its so weird that i find it funny. people who donāt think indiana jones should meet saucer men are not serious people. the selective magnetism of the skull itself is dumb but seriously who fucking cares. itās a cool effect.
itās cool and funny, and the cgi that was so abhorrent to people looks so fucking good in comparison to the shit that is coming out these days. shia labouf has never been less irritating. in fact, he is actually praiseworthy, but only for this: he is also really good at running in this particular way that harrison ford (or his stunt guy?) was able to do in his prime, kind of like this very exaggerated buster keaton way that is perfect for when youāre like running away from a minor threat only to accidentally turn a corner and run into a huge mob of guys. itās such dumb physical comedy but they are both really good at selling it.
but anyway the absolutely unforgivable bullshit in crystal skull that i donāt think iāve ever heard anyone complain about is how not once, but TWICE in the movie on two unrelated occasions the characters are like ambushed by absurd racist caricatures of indigenous tribesmen who literally just like crawl out of the walls and start attacking them for no reason. no scene in the movie EVER explains who they are, why they are there, or why they are just like maniacally cackling and attacking them, and the scenes contribute absolutely nothing to the plot otherwise. that and just like the racism inherent in the āancient aliensā premise. for the former, the random fight scenes could just be excised completely. the latter is hard to fix honestly because its the whole plot revolves around it. but, what i would do is, instead of the random tribesmen literally bursting out of the walls to hoot and holler at jones and co until they are warded off with the power of the skull is this: actually follow through on the cool gesture of this being an indiana jones movie about him RETURNING an artifact instead of stealing one, and have him meet this uncontacted tribe that owsley and him are able to communicate with in ancient mayan or something. they explain to him that the aliens didnāt actually BUILD all their amazing technology for them, their ancestors did it themselves, and the aliens came to make contact with them because of their accomplishments. but they quickly realised that their human brains did not have the capacity for the wisdom they wanted to impart to them, so instead the aliens idk went into stasis or whatever to await the moment humans evolved enough to do so. the smart people in the group take them at their word, return the skull and go on their way, but blanchettās character, because of Hubris, thinks that because she is āpsychicā she must be the one ready to deal with them, and then the movie basically ends the same way it normally does. there. i did it! i fixed your racist fuckin movie george lucas please give me a billion dollars
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Lol I saw you posted this and immediately went to post about how the ants fucking RULE. Itās the best part of the movie! Also yes NOBODY TALKS ABOUT THE RACIST TRIBESMEN GUYS WHO LIVE IN THE WALLS WHO ARE JUST SEALED IN THERE UNTIL SOMEONE WALKS BY AND THEY CAN SHOOT BLOW DARTS AT THEM. That shit has bothered me since I saw it when it came out with my dad!!!
The worst part of crystal skull is that everyone involved seemed kind of embarrassed to be making it for some reason. Spielberg and lucas canāt figure out who to blame more in the behind the scenes shit and start pointing fingers, like spielberg says it wasnāt his idea to make it and he didnāt want to until he was talked into it. Great vote of confidence steve
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I saw Crystal Skull for the first time last year and I liked it.
Also, just watched Witness (1985) tonight. Had this one in the watchlist for a while, never watched it, deleted it after figuring it would reduce to a boring fish out of water kinda deal. I was reconvinced by hearing my personal hero and imaginary best friend Wes call it a āperfect movieā. Ok Wes, if you say so, who am I to object. Turns out at its core it is mostly a movie about how Harrison Ford can cause a deeply devout, recently-widowed woman to betray her religious and societal covenants simply by sweatily performing carpentry and sloppily drinking a glass of lemonade in one gulp. I bet he only took the job after they agreed to let him add all his woodworking bits. Some cool photography and a fun unexpected moody synth score.
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I watched Indy 5 on the weekend, and ā¦ it sure is a movie that exists. I have nothing much of worth to say about it other than I have already forgotten most of it. Itās not bad by any stretch, just painfully unremarkable
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Yeah I had never seen witness until pretty recently! Itās kind of charming. The grain silo scene is really something. Itās weird to see baby Viggo Mortensen
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agreed on all counts
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The witness is defs in the top 3 movies you watch in high school in australia
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watched righting wrongs, the yuen biao / cynthia rothrock film. definitely a sicko movie, yuen biao plays a prosecutor who basically just decides to start serial killing defendants he doesnt
like or whose vibes are off, and thereās a lot of grisly killing especially for this sort of movie (and just a touch of sexual harassment humor) and the vibe in general is a little grim!
excellent sartorial decisions all around but we have to highlight the wardrobe of cynthia rothrock in particular
i hope the recent boutique label home video releases this has had include the original cantonese mono track bc like a lot of films from this era itās a banger, loud thumping punch and kick sound effects and a very fun score, it was in the .mkv i downloaded at least
hard to say what my favorite stunt was bc this is rife with sick movesā¦ i think i would have to go with cynthia rothrock leaping into the air and kicking a door closed in yuen biaoās face bc itās so funny every time
one of the things i really enjoy about these contemporarily-set martial arts movie is they find a lot of ways to treat urban structures like shopping malls or parking garages as stunt playgroundsā¦ police story is probably the most famous example but i think this is something a lot of genre revival films dont do or cant do, also one of the reasons why i think this era of filmmaking still stands up as the premium example of this kind of filmmaking period. anyways i guess it depends on ur tolerance for movies that are like 100 minutes long yet still have a couple boring scenes and taste for 80s-ness in general but i enjoyed it more that the previous 2 films i posted about itt
and it ends with the credits playing over a demo reel of some of the sickest shots in the movie!! as if just to make sure you left the theater thinking like god damn
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The common ground I most often find is Gattaca, a certified year 10 classic
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Movie is so damn good. I was genuinely shocked at how āeveryone loses, nobody wins!ā the ending is.
I really need to crack open that In The Line of Duty box set and watch Yes Madam.
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the long good friday was fun, iām glad i didnāt know about that crazed giallo ass soundtrack going in so that it came as a nice surprise, and it led to possibly my favourite experience yet of watching a movie and then looking up the imdb trivia page
yes indeed
also near the end the bob hoskins character is boasting that heās going to be working with the germans and it made me imagine a sequel where he accidentally ends up in a war with the baader meinhof gang, maybe make it a long good trilogy and have one with the red brigades as well. also enjoyed the recurring bit where the cockney gangsters kept boasting the uk was part of the european commons market now. enjoy it while it lasts!!
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did you know that my buddy Wes executive produced a documentary about this guy? hmm.
and that Michael Almereyda, the guy who actually wrote/directed said documentary, also made a feature length movie in 1992 recorded entirely on the Fischer Price PXL2000. wowee.
This Wes guy sounds pretty interesting, never would have guessed based on his posts on SB
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