Ninja 3: The Domination is on there…it’s problematic as hell, but it’s got some great moments.
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Your post reminded me that I’d been meaning to watch this for awhile and it really owns! Woo has never been my guy but JCVD has always been my favorite of the 80’s macho men due mainly to his sort of inherent sweetness that all the other guys besides Swayze lacked. I think Woo got maybe the best performance out of JCVD’s career. JCVD’s best asset as an actor was always his baby blue eyes and Woo definitely honed in on that in a way a lot of other directors failed to do.
Also the Henriksen / Vozloo bad guy combo is one of the best ever. They both 100% go for it (I think Henrikson is playing literal Satan?) and it really benefits the movie. I feel like that kind of supporting bad guy performance has disappeared.
Also that movie list rips and I know what I’m firing up tonight
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Knock Off is absolutely bananas, one of the movies filled with the most joy of Cinema I’ve ever seen
On the other hand, putting Die Hard 3 multiple places above 1 throws the whole list into question
No it doesn’t
knock off is one of my fav movies of all time probably i think it’s just as good as hard target… saw it on 35mm at music box last year i think it was a beautiful experience
but yeah i feel like tsui hark and john woo Understood jcvd better than basically all of the directors he was working with in that period and saw him more as a strange, funny, very athletic, charming, and beautiful man and made movies that show that off rather than being like about how badass he is.
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hong kong directors understand that jcvd’s eyes are beautiful and should be shown on screen in closeup as often as possible
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Fucked Up Empires in Space is a better title than Rebel Moon
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“Rebel Moon” sounds like Twilight for neoconfederates
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What is the clamor for snyder cuts if not a classic case of lost causeism
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ironically (?) the plot is about how empires are bad, unless they are run by a magic space princess, or i guess a king who’s only kinda conquer-y. i said “never trust a royalist” about every major character in this movie.
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Always thought it was weird in Star Wars that the “republic” was personified by an apparently literal princess… Lucas def trying to eat his cake and have it too on that one.
Actually I think that would be my diagnosis of the entire prequel fiasco, on a plot level: a terminal case of eating one’s cake and having it too
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Princesses can be senators too… They can be anything they want to be
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That’s worse
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i mean if the cake is fun pulp sci-fi fantasy with a literal space princess, and eating it means trying to make it into a political statement about trade embargoes, that does track with the prequels feeling like the most funereal birthday party
like when the kid in Matilda is forced to eat the gross chocolate cake except instead of cheering everyone is increasingly alarmed yelling "George you don’t have to eat the cake George. The Trunchbull isn’t REAL George the chokey isn’t REAL she CANT HURT YOU!! GEORGE"
I was led to believe that the “old republic” was more like the UN than an individual nation state, with a whole lot of the Senators being house of lords style hereditary positions.
Anyway, it’s something that probably does not deserve more analysis of. I’ve long held the belief that Star Wars is a fairy tale and turnig a fairy tale into a coherent universe is a mistake, and the Shrek franchise bears this out.
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watched a really good ukrainian movie from 2019 called atlantis about what happened after the war, in the dark cyberpunk future of uh 2024, where huge parts of the country are now uninhabitable from the fighting against russia
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i really loved how a few different movies and projects have been shot lately i thought there was sort of a similar vibe between may december, the curse, the kelly reichardt movie showing up. really like neutral color balances and kind of fuzzy digital. lots of sunlight too i think
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