I watched Megaforce after having it on my letterboxd watchlist for a decade and it did not disappoint. Like it was objectively bad and a toy commercial but it was stupid enough to be fun to riff on it with friends
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Finally watched The Wailing. Fuck that was rough. I mean, in a good way, yāknow, as horror goes.
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Speaking of Jet Li, we recently finished watching all of the Once Upon a Time in China movies after getting the Criterion collection set a few months back. (Amazing move by criterion to put this out btw)
The first two are basically perfect, I honestly feel like I donāt even have anything to say about them because theyāre just so good and essential. If you havenāt seen them, just do it! You wonāt regret it.
Everything else is kind of a mixed bag, but in a way that makes them more interesting to write about. The national allegory/anti colonial stuff in the first two starts to wear kind of thin by the third one. They move everyone to Beijing and try to incorporate actual historical figures and it just starts to feel like arbitrary raising of the stakes but reusing the same plot. I think there is an argument to be made that the fish-out-of-water subplots about Wong Feihung and all his other Cantonese friends being out of place in Beijing makes an interesting parallel to the way the first 2 movies get a lot of mileage out of him not understanding or caring about Western technology and modernity in general. But these movies are just so light and, like, barely coherent as narratives that none of the allegorical stuff really feels that profoundāin some ways thatās a good thing. Like itās hard to file this in the same category of boring nationalist parables when Li Hongzhang seems most concerned with staging a dragon dance competition (?).
Jet Li isnāt in 4 and 5, heās replaced by Vincent Zhao. Heās honestly not bad, but I feel like everyone else involved was sort of ashamed to have lost their star (donāt know what the story is with that) so he really sort of fades into the background in favor of more slapstick and other nonsense with the supporting cast. This is also when Tsui Harkās apparent fixation with lion dances really takes hold, as the plots of both 3 and 4 revolve around lion dance competitions. 4 also takes place in Beijing, but they donāt seem as interested in revisiting any of the regional differences that made the setting memorable in 3, so it just feels kind of like a retread. On the other hand, the lion dance fixation pays off here because the climactic action sequences feature a bunch of totally amazing likeā¦ lion dance kaiju? Itās hard to explain, but itās incredible and worth watching for that alone.
I honestly really liked 5. Even though 4 ends with the implication that they are going to continue the story (itās actually kind of a downer of an ending!) they basically give all of that up and the whole movie feels like a weird little side story where Wong Feihung and the gang stop in a seaside village on their way home from Beijing, and end up taking up the task of ridding the town of pirates. It feels like Tsui Hark is starting to indulge more in the more comic book style stuff he does in other movies, there is a very stylish one eyed lady pirate (who doesnāt show up until like halfway through the movie, but then becomes the central antagonist for about 20 minutes or so before the film just loses interest in her and moves on to something else, as is typical in these movies) and a lot of amazing art direction in the pirate cave.
There is also a sequence lifted directly from King Huās āThe Valiant Ones,ā which is also about pirates. In both movies, it happens when the protagonists are navigating a tiny boat to get to the pirate lair in a cave. Iām not entirely convinced Tsui Hark didnāt just literally reuse the footage. Itās just a bunch of shots of the open ocean and waves breaking against the rocks that lead into a cave.* In typical King Hu fashion, in Valiant Ones it is very atmospheric and feels like it lasts forever, including even foley work to suggest the wood in the boat creaking against the oar, accompanied by an eerie harp soundtrack that makes you feel like youāre really being transported into another world. Also in typical King Hu fashion, it continues to follow the main characters as they walk in silence across the rocky beach for another minut eor so.
In OUATIC5 it lasts about 10 seconds, but it still captures that energy for a weird moment of peace in an otherwise totally gonzo movie. But I feel like it really helps you understand how, despite having totally opposite sensibilities in a lot of ways, King Hu is a really huge influence on Tsui Hark.
Anyway, I originally started this post because I wanted to talk about 6, which feels like a movie in a totally different series despite having most of the same cast and production team. Sammo Hung directed it, but like a lot of movies Tsui Hark produced but didnāt direct, it still has a lot of his signature elements. The best thing about it is Jet Li is back, and the whole thing has more of the tone of a reboot or postdated sequel than another entry in the serial. Which is pretty remarkable considering it came out only a couple of years after part 5. But in between I guess there was a big budget tv show adaptation that also had most of the original cast plus Vincent Zhao, so by the time they got to part 6 it must have felt like a pretty big deal to have Jet Li back. So instead of just like continuing the same gags over and over again, when they come up there seems to be something vaguely self-referential and irreverent about it. Like Wong gives the exact same big inspirational speech twice, and everyone is bored to death by it even the first time he does it. Itās pretty funny.
But yea part 6 is a Western, shot on location in Texas. It came out a couple of years before Shanghai Noon and hits a lot of the same notes, albeit with a bit less polish and less to offer an Anglophone audience. The guy they got to play the heroic white cowboy is honestly not bad, but heās obviously no Owen Wilson. Still, he is not as much of a charisma vacuum as the random expat stunt guys they usually get to act in these movies.
There is a Native American subplot that I can only assume was made with good intentions butā¦ it really does not work and has aged very poorly. I assumed in advance the movie would be racist, and I was right, but I think because I was bracing for the worst it was not too distracting. There are definitely a lot of white actors in dark makeup, and lots of incoherent mixing and matching of costumes and headdresses and face paint and stuff. The best you can say about it is it sort of clumsily re-creates the same type of racist bullshit you see in American westerns without necessarily compounding it or multiplying it too much. I think they are trying to make some kind of point about brotherhood across cultural and linguistic boundaries, and the main plot of the movie very directly addresses anti-Chinese racism so there are some kind of light parallels there, but the script does a disservice to all of this by basically abandoning the subplot where Wong Feihung gets amnesia and forms a bond with the tribe who finds him, then bringing it back at the end for absolutely no reason other than a very dumb gag about how Wong pretends not to remember the other woman he flirted with so he doesnāt get in trouble with his fiancee.
Speaking of that, the one thing that is pretty consistently bad throughout all of these movies is the stilted romance between Wong and his aunt played by Rosamund Kwan. She is great in all of them, and you really feel her absence in the one she isnāt in (part 4), but they go from him just being sort of oblivious to anything romantic to beingā¦ kind of irresistable to every woman he meets in a really incoherent way. Then Kwanās character gets jealous and pouty because heās flirting with someone else, but they never have a conversation about anything and the whole thing never gets resolved, they just sort of end up together again at the end of the movie. This happens multiple times.
And yes, the fact that his romantic interest is his aunt (of the same age, at least) is a fact that does not go unaddressed in the movies, but is usually brought up just to remind us that apparently light incest only bothers Wong Feihungās dad. Anyway, another part of the 6th movie that feels self referential, is after the two of them have another argument/misunderstanding that could have been very easily been resolved if they just likeā¦ actually explained how they felt, Wong has a little monologue after she leaves where he talks about how itās hard for him to express his actual feelings for her. That has always been implied, I think, but these movies donāt do subtext that well so it is nice for the screenwriters to kind of attempt to bring some of that to the foreground.
Anyway, I basically recommend all of them. The first 2 are unimpeachable classics, the remaining 4 are all watchable but uneven. The strengths still make up for the weaknesses, and they are all weird in unique & interesting ways which is pretty rare for a 6 film series.
*The whole movie of the Valiant Ones is on youtube here. No eng subtitles unfortunately, and shitty quality. This may have been one of the ones to get a restored blu ray recently, if so I recommend it. Itās probably a lesser work of his but it has its charms. I honestly donāt think its worth watching with poor image quality though, because half the pleasure of King Hu movies is just how cool the visuals are.
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Scanners was pretty fun. The first half was stronger, had more mystery and uncertainty that made the mood consistently discomforting. The soundtrack owns.
Christine was just complete poo, torturous to watch. Wondering why any of the characters would do any of that shit. Why would you try to run from a car by getting in the middle of the street, yāknow, where the car can go. A lot of the victims were just like, deciding to stand right in front of it. Also I never want to watch a movie about high schoolers again.
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This is one of my favorite horror movies, period. The tonal shifts are so extreme and are so convincing. One second itās slapstick, the next itās agonizing family conflict, the next itās genuinely disturbing horror stuff.
My favorite thing about this movie is that it inflicts its core themes on the audience. Itās a movie about the pain of not knowing and the stress of unsettling ambiguity and itās plotted to inflict that same stress on the viewer very directly by constantly shifting horror genre, executing rug-pull emotional shifts, etc. Itās great stuff. Reminds me also of Cure, which is a horror movie about hypnotism which uses hypnotic techniques on the audience to a certain extent. Both of these are great.
I saw it in theaters during its limited release in Los Angeles years ago and my friend and I were fully half of the audienceāthe only other group was a couple on a date, which was fucking hilarious. Itās still one of my best moviegoing memories because it was the last time I got to be completely surprised by the plot, haha.
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Watched this movie the other day and yeah, it rules
The Batman good. Too many endings but RPatz is good as weirdo Bruce Wayne.
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Itās honestly incredible how well it puts you right into that guyās shoes. Thereās no reason to have any doubts that (spoilers for The Wailing, just go watch it if you havenāt already, folks!) the Japanese guy isnāt at least partially at fault, given the photos and belongings of the victims, bringing a guy back to life as a zombie, and, yāknow, surviving falling off a hill headfirst into a van and then getting thrown off a cliff. But you factor in the shamanās pleas, the violent reaction he has to the woman, and her having personal affects belonging to Hyojin and the others, coupled with the desperation the father feelsā¦itās a lot! Canāt say I wouldnāt have run to my certain death in the same situation.
Gonna have to fire up my copy of Cure, now that you mention it. I loved Kairo, so Iām sure Iāll enjoy (well, yāknow) this one, too.
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Thanks Various Artists for namedropping The Wailing as this week I accidentally found myself having very random conversations about the Asian Horror boom around the turn of the millennium and am now in the mindset to either revisit The Audition or experience something new(ish)
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Na Hong-Jin is my favorite Korean director. The Wailing is the best but The Yellow Sea, and The Chaser are also phenomenal.
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I watched My Dinner with Andre at the same time as I watched snippets of a hockey game, which in light of the thrust of the movie I guess is kinda funny. Itās a hell of a thing to produce an entire movie which is literally just two guys talking. Although I guess kind of treating it like a podcast suggests the movie was just ahead of its time.
I started off finding Wallace and Andre both completely intolerable; I had a hard time not just bailing out of the movie. I feel like maybe because Iāve had conversations over dinner a lot like this, where I feel like Iām just being subjected to Somebodyās Story About Finding Enlightenment.
But I wanted to see when that scene everyone shares on Facebook pops up (it turns out: in the back half) so I stuck with it. It did start to feel like more of a real conversation as things went along so maybe that made it easier to sit through.
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Finally watched Train to Busan. It was alright!
Iām both surprised, and I guess not at all, that theyāre remaking it for the US. Both because Iām a stickler for ājust watch the original versions, read some subtitles, damn,ā but also, uh, the US not exactly having commuter trains as main mode of transportation (which is why I guess theyāre making it a subway thing in New York, which, OK).
Damn I wish trains were more of a thing here (Texas). Hell throw a zombie or two on 'em, whatever. Just get me off the highway.
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The Train to Busan America remake better be titled āZombies on the Acelaā and the whole movie better be NY/DC lobbyists being eaten by zombies
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The Kanye doc was pretty beautiful and moving, imo.
I watched Scream (2022).
I donāt find the Scream sequels very good though I do like the original.
This probably has the best cast since the original.
It had good jokes, but no tension.
saw Repo Man, I liked it a lot
when it needed to move forward either with character or plot development it did so in a cheeky way directly towards the fourth wall, not obnoxiously (to me) but just enough to say āwe know how this looks so weāre not going to play it upā
thinking specifically about the aqueduct car chase scene which ended abruptly because the fleeing car made a 180 and the repo men slid out and just gave up, because the actual car chase wasnt the point, the point was otto going āI didnāt realize how exciting this would be! car chases and stuff! i like my job now!ā just so that we can get the protagonistās motivation out of the way and under the rug. pretty much every character has their emotions justified at the audience this way and itās always low effort and I guess thatās the kind of humor that gets me. ottoās girlfriend going āisnāt torturing him badā even though her handās still on the knob ready to electrocute him
I like that the movieās themes are only kind of hinted at or thrown in, and when it actually matters enough to be stated itās told directly to the audience, like ottoās reponse to his friendās dying monologue, or how they make a point of showing all the anti-product placement but still make deliberate choices with showing real brand names and logos in the shot because who gives a fuck, you already get the joke and they make you know that they arenāt gonna actually try to go 100% on it.
itās not just the written/spoken jokes that get meāand many of them didāmuch of nonverbal communication from the actors, and the camera direction and props all just felt deliberately funny. Iām not gonna write a youtuber film critic essay and list every shot that made me laugh or go āi see what u did thereā but it was a movie that deserved to be 93 minutes and Iām glad it kept me entertained for the whole time
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just watched They Live so I can put more john carpenter schlock on my checklist
rowdy roddy piper said the funny shooting man words and got kneed in the balls ten times
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Finally watched Sorry to Bother You and it was as good as everyone told me it was. So refreshing to watch a movie about a union drive that feels like it was actually made by someone who genuinely believes in worker organization. So glad to see a movie about this stuff that isnāt, like, some historical documentary or some shit.
I thought the third act twist was amazing and it actually worked for me. Iāve heard a lot of people talk about how the ending of this movie is too weird, but it isnāt. Turning workers into grotesque nude Horse People is appropriately absurd and extreme for that point in the story, and it also brings up a lot of stuff about worker solidarity and dehumanization and shit, so it didnāt feel that random to me. Like, yeah, itās funny-random, but itās thematically relevant.
This was an intense watch also because some of the racist stuff that happens to the main character is stuff I saw happen to my boss in corporate spaces in Silicon Valley when I worked there from 2011-2016 or so. Sometimes people would walk over and say the wildest shit directly to his face in front of whole groups of people. This movie is extremely real!!!
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Iām a huge fan of the way the movie uses surreal and fantastic bits to stress intensity of feeling ā the metaphor takes over, because theyāre pretty sure the audience gets it, and then all the energy goes into pumping up the feeling. The way the world gets progressively more ridiculous but buys into it ā the tricked out bicycles people ride as they get too broke for cars.
The way weāre limited into the main characterās perspective and the coke can violence is the only catalyst that can shake him up and out of it, that weāve lost track of time and where everything is along with him as he was swept up in success.
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Thatās it weāre gonna fight