I think Double Dragon was the second video game movie I ever saw after the SMB movie (and just before Street Fighter), and despite my really disliking how the main characters didn’t wear their video game outfits throughout most of the movie, it wound up being my favorite of the original trinity of video game movies that came out in the early 90s. It’s also too bad that live-action video game adaptations would only get worse from here for the most part.
(Also, Julia Nickson looks super cool and tough in this movie but way too young looking to be playing the adoptive mother of Scott Wolf and Mark DaCostco, that confused me a lot as a kid because she looked like their big sister but acted like their stern, no-nonsense mom. I guess the white streaks in her hair are supposed to mean she’s “old”, but Hanna Barbera cartoons taught me otherwise).
Came around to being absolutely in love with Hiroshima Mon Amour last night after visiting it for the second time. What a film!! I really love Resnais, should see more besides Marienbad. Would love to read Robbe-Grillet’s novels sometime too. This intro is just immensely visually, aurally, and kinetically poetic.
Also, if I ever hear another person credit the way Magnetic Rose looks to Satoshi Kon again, I will flip my shit. He only wrote the (very good) script, he had nothing to do with the animation or direction of the movie.
for being a famously low-budget movie shot by someone who otherwise did industrial films, i was really surprised by how atmospheric and spooky this was. i didn’t expect it to be honestly kinda scary! and just generally really competently (and often very well) shot. the real life environments were all used really well and made the film feel way more naturalistic than a lot of stuff of its ilk. the acting isn’t that great, sure, but because the movie has a great premise for the budget it has, it works. it’s really an art film hiding behind an exploitation film. i know this movie was supposedly lost for years until the late 80’s… but i really think the bits with the spooky ghost man, esp with him submerged in water feel like they must have been directly referenced by Kubrick with the woman in the bathtub in The Shining. it’s not inconceivable to think he saw a random screening of it at some point. i know for a fact Kubrick said in interviews he’d often watch a lot of random b-movies and stuff for bits of inspiration. it seems like Lynch might have been inspired too but that might just be coincidental overlap. for a movie that ended up being so influential later on it’s sad that Herk Harvey guy didn’t get a chance to do more films like this.
this film inspired me a lot when i first saw it in college, but i hadn’t revisited it for probably 10 years. and i’m not saying anything anyone hasn’t said before about this film… but i do think it is objectively one of the best films ever made. i get the same “fuck yeah” tour de force feeling from it that i do of Citizen Kane. i mean it is obviously weirder and more experimental, but it feels similarly complete confident in what it is. both films come from people who are obviously very accomplished theater directors and know extremely well how to work with actors.
in addition to the incredibly ambitiously weird and famous intro, the honestly amazing performances and dynamics between the two leads, the weird breakdown, the obvious lesbianism, the stuff about successful artists and vampirism and positions of privilege is what really jumped out at me this time around. the idea that like successful/famous actors are there sucking the life out of regular people is a theme i really like but i don’t see get explored that much in general. there are things that make it feel very of its time (with the shots of the self-immolating Vietnamese monks) but it moreso just feels like… completely out of time. like it takes place in a void.
also i didn’t know what to make of the incredibly obvious lesbian themes the first several times i saw the film. they’re there, but the movie kind of confuses and grounds everything up and it’s also easy to criticize it (and other Bergman) as being very male gaze-y. it’s also from the 60’s and there was no way we’d get a real lesbian relationship in a Bergman film of the time even if that was intended. and there’s the whole “tragic lesbian” trope that soiled lesbian stories in media for so long. so i think there was some lingering sourness/feeling of being baited that stuck with me there.
but i feel like i have some more clarity with it now. the lesbian stuff was obviously intended as a central part of the film. even with Bergman’s kind of self-indulgent nihilism and prudishness about sex, it’s just hard to ignore the resonance and power of a lot of the themes in the movie.
so yeah - cannot overstate how great of a movie it is. i dunno if it’s in my top 10 (maybe?) but i think it’s like almost objectively one of the most well-made movies of all time.
to be honest, i don’t really have much to say about this one. it’s a relatively conventional gangster movie but obscured with layers of completely off-the-wall hyper-stylized editing and presentation… not to mention some wonderful 60’s technicolor sets. it was really fun movie overall and even though the core plot is simple (tho obscured by layers of stuff) i have a feeling i will only like it more with further viewings.
graveyard of honor was about what I expected but then I came away slightly more positive towards it at the end suddenly, eating your wife’s cremation box bones makes a positive impression on me. most sensible thing the guy did the whole movie
Fear Street 2: 1978 didn’t bother me as much as 1994, probably because I wasn’t alive in 1978, though, I don’t think anybody ever actually said “shagadelic” in the 70s, and hearing that referenced in 2021 is just as jarring as hearing it referenced in 1997. Also, it spoils itself at the beginning. I know slashers are super predictable, so who cares if the movie spoils itself, but this is a movie that’s mostly going to appeal to a certain age group that would react to that stuff, so you’ve just deprived your audience of gasps and “oh my gawwwsh”.
There is also very little reason for this to be rated R. Like, several of the kills are done off-camera, but then we get several (CG) penetration shots, but they look awful, so they probably should’ve also been off-screen so this could drop to PG1. There’s a point where they try to make up for all of the off-screen kills by having these two girls take an axe and knife to their chests and torsos for roughly a straight minute. Normally, that would kind of bother me, I’m actually a bit squeamish about “penetration” shots and slicing, etc, but this didn’t look all that great. They also skirt around nudity a lot in this, which implies to me that they know this is for teens, so again, why is this rated R? Why do we have chunks of the movie where we see the killer walk off camera with only the implication that he killed anybody and then other chunks where we see somebody take an axe to the face or chest?
I didn’t hate it, but it’s kind of all over the place.
1 I assume that since this is a Netflix release, the rating doesn't really matter the same way it would if it were a theatrical release.
Watching Citizen Kane for the first time. It’s great, but during one of the shots where Susan is singing on the opera stage and majorly sucking, you can see her molars in this DVD scan I got. It’s interesting, when Charles Kane first met her, years before her opera days in the plot, she is complaining about an aching tooth. I swear I saw fillings on her teeth while she sang.
This movie is extravagant enough I think it’s possible those are cosmetic…
since the graveyard of honor guy is based on a real person I’m wondering if he’s the origin point for every maniac yakuza character in these stories the way alvin karpis seems to be the original real life source for every hyper competent heist crew leader character
Picked up the complete Miami Vice series on Blu Ray on a whim the other week. Tonight I watched the pilot of Miami Vice and oh man that ruled hard. Excited to delve into the rest of the series beyond the initial pilot/TV movie.
(I moved this thread to Cinephile Shodown so it’s easier to find, because I have had difficulty locating the thread sometimes when I assume it’s in the Cinephile Shodown subforum).
That’s funny. I remember it being elegiac. The bit with the nun during a map especially. The first blockbuster with a schizoid disconnect as well, before Refn; everyone is thick and emotional, except Kabal.
