oh yeah i forgot he was The Encino Man
he was pretty all right as that
!
I love these credits where ken takakura just stands there like lee marvin in the night club in point blank and it cuts between him, the crowd just standing there unmoving looking on, and the guy he assassinated squirming around on the floor while red lights wash over everything then the credits end the guy stops moving and ken calmly walks out.
the brutal tales of chivalry movies are each set in different locations and time periods with different characters, but theyâre all about ken takakura being a stoic dignified honorable yakuza, forced into conflict with an opposing shitheel yakuza faction, and ryĂ´ ikebe as an even cooler stoic yakuza guy in the background who by the end of the movie as a result of whatever his side story was, finds himself impressed with kenâs character and left with nothing to lose himself. so when itâs time for ken takakura to head off into the final confrontation, ryĂ´ is standing there waiting for him and talks him into letting him come along, and they stroll off together while a theme song sung by ken takakura about the plight of being a honorable gangster dutifully drawn into violence without complaint plays. in the first movie ryĂ´ was a guest of kenâs yakuza family. in the third, they were enemies, they had each assassinated the other families boss in the precredits scene of the film, of course they end up fighting together and while dying ryĂ´ says âin our next lives letâs come back as alliesâ just great shit
ryĂ´âs introduction in the first movie:
4 Likes
Tenet is âWhat Could A Banana Cost: The Movieâ
Thereâs a scene where Michael Caine is like ânice Brooks Brothers suit asshole this is a fancy restaurant.â It only makes sense if you metagame out that Nolan is so fancy/British that Brooks Brothers is like Jos A Bank to him. Thereâs a fucken catamaran set piece. Just rich weirdo shit the whole time!
I thought the script was bad even by Nolan standards and yep this one is him writing and directing
7 Likes
I take it back Iâm a Tenet shipper now, illegal levels of Kaworu energy from Pattinsonâs character
2 Likes
my favourite opening shot in cinema
1 Like
King, Queen, Knave (1972) - i guess this is only remembered now for being booed out of some film festival as i guess those guys donât like comedy BOING sound effects in their nabokov adaptations. the plot involves a dopey young naif going to live with his aunt and uncle, sleeping with the first and plotting the murder of the second, but here the young guy is played so broadly as to essentially be Mr Bean and somehow nobody reacts as he crashes and gurns his way around a european art film. something about this weird tone is very likeable and i enjoyed it. thereâs a subplot about inventing a line of robots with realistic rubber skin (the t-600 series??) which pays off in a way which i imagine is very funny and sad in the book but here is kind of fumbled due to a intrusive psych rock song crammed over the reveal. but as unlikely adaptation choices go that is itself a very funny one so i have to respect it too on some level.
Alice (1988) - the Jan Svankmajer version, tbh i was kind of expecting to be let down - a âdarkâ version of this story with taxidermied white rabbit and stop motion animal skulls, etc, felt like it could easily just be kind of drab and on the nose in practice - but in practice everything about the world was so horribly material, crammed with stuff mixed up with other stuff and forever collapsing or mutating or consuming other things that everyone else navigating through it felt of a part of the same process, alice herself included. and it worked as a vision of the nightmare bricabrac of the 19th century as well. my favourite little guy was probably this horrible frog.
9 Likes
I like how the menacing energy of this version emanates from Alice herself because we first see her sat next to an adult reading a book full of symbols she probably canât understand and the adult slaps her hand away when she tries to get a peek. Then we cut to the bedroom where sheâs sulking and tossing stones into a teacup so instead of Carrollâs having her drift off to sleep by the stream, we find her back in her room in a dark mood echoing that intro, a frustrated child kept in their place and denied knowledge and I like to imagine her acting out (in more than one way) with the raw materials of her nursery (and with some of those low angle shots probably moving throughout the house/courtyard) destroying everything in her path while creating this story (dream or not) so Ĺ vankmajer makes it about âplayâ and âmake believeâ as acts of unarticulated angst and attempts to control oneâs environment and deal with the psychic frictions of being a childâŚimo. Itâs one of my favourite films!
6 Likes
I tried to watch Halloween â18, but like, right off the bat it falls flat on its face. Why are you showing me Michael Myersâ old man face immediately? Why is this movie acting like the mask, which he burgled randomly from a hardware store, means anything to him or has any kind of significance to him? None of the other movies happened, so the mask doesnât mean anything to him, itâs not even the first mask he murdered in. Everyone treats Laurie Strode like her mental state from being almost murdered when she was a teenager and what it did to her emotionally and mentally is just something she can âget overâ. I couldnât get much further into it because it feels exactly like the lame mid to late 90s Halloween sequels.
The Childâs Play reboot is also terrible and feels like it was written by a 70 year old man based on his conflated memory of having seen Childâs Play and Small Soldiers at some point in the last 25 years. Also, why the fuck would you change the plot from âBrad Dourif uses his vague recollection of voodoo black magic to cheat death and have his conscious self transferred into a doll temporarily and is going after the kid so he can take his bodyâ to âdisgruntled factory worker turns on the violence mode that shouldnât exist in a random doll and then ships it and the doll is obsessed with being some kidâs only best buddyâ? If you want to shove jealous AI into an existing property, do it to The Crush or Fear or something.
Jan Svankmajer is the only person who can do a âdark and twistedâ alice because its not actually a dark and twisted alice, itâs just the story as it is on the page, transposed to the screen in Svankmajerâs particular baroque stop motion style.
2 Likes
raoul peckâs exterminate all the brutes is fucking incredible
watched The Artist, which is a silent movie made in 2011 about a silent movie star who gets real sad because he doesnât want to do talkies. the twist is that heâs french which is why he doesnât want to do talkies, which is only a twist if you didnât read the credits at the beginning.
I think it sucked shit.
had none of the charm of an original-era silent movie, paid no attention to filming techniques of the era whatsoever, and all of the characters were shit (except the dog). it had the emotional depth of a can of green beans
cannot believe this wonâŚ4 oscars?? and jean dujardin won best actor for âbeing a prick in front of a cameraâ essentially.
the call of cthulhu movie did it better
3 Likes
didnât realize i hated this movie until i started writing. watching it was a mostly inoffensive experience but retrospect has made me loathe it, what a waste of a premise and presumably a hundred grillion dollars
2 Likes
Watch Hugo next.
1 Like
Hugo rips
i thought hugo was deeply boring but i am very picky about films
Itâs just so good. King Hu is the best.
2 Likes
I recommend watching The Fate of Lee Khan as well if you want something basically the same but with kung fu waitresses
2 Likes