Recently Seen, Part 18 (July 2018)

plsletitrain

Member: Rank 5
Re: Audition

Apparently Netflix does not have this available any more (what? did they lose all the discs?). And there are NO copies available on Amazon. I'll try my luck on eBay. If all goes well I should get a copy in about a week. I am SO looking forward to this. (Where's a puking smiley when I need it?)
This made me feel guilty. Here's divemaster who curses Audition as his most hated film yet watches it legally and I watch my favorite movies on!!!!!!!!!!:emoji_baby_chick::emoji_bird::emoji_crocodile::emoji_camel:

:((((

Anyway, meantime I'll take my time in writing my HIGHLY eloquent review of Audition. :emoji_dark_sunglasses:
 

divemaster13

Member: Rank 4
The good news is that I found a copy of Audition at my local used book and media store, so I should be able to watch it within a few days.

The BAD news is that I found a copy of Audition at my local used book and media store, so I should be able to watch it within a few days. LOL

I know I joke around regarding this film, but I really am looking forward to rewatching it in order to join in the discussion. It's actually not my MOST hated film. I've watched it twice, and will be doing so again this week. My distaste for Audition is quite a bit different from my diastase of many other 0 to 1 star films. I'll explain more in our dedicated thread, once I'm up to speed.
 

JepGambardella

Member: Rank 1
Some more Asian movies I saw at Montreal's Fantasia Film Festival:

The Travelling Cat Chronicles – Japanese dramedy encroaching on tear-jerking territory about a young man who has to find a new home for his beloved cat. I enjoyed it, and I suppose that if you are not scared away by that brief description, so will you.

https://letterboxd.com/film/the-travelling-cat-chronicles/

The Outlaws – High-octane Korean movie about a brutal new Chinese gang muscling into the territory of two “native” gangs that control Seoul’s Chinatown, with the police caught in the middle. Nothing that fans of Korean movies haven’t seen before, but well worth your time if that’s your thing. Ma Dong-Seok is great in it as the cop in charge of cleaning up the mess.

https://letterboxd.com/film/the-outlaws-2017/

The Witch, Part I – The Subversion - A young girl escapes a lab where kids are being experimented on and finds refuge in a farm. Ten years later, she is a regular high-school girl, until the day her former captors get wind of where she’s been all this time. Different factions want her either back or dead, but of course she won’t come quietly.

Directed by Park Hoon-Jung (“New World”, “The Tiger”, writer of “I Saw the Devil”), this is supposed to be the first part in a series of yet-undetermined length. I am sure this will be the next big thing coming out of Korea. Expect to hear a lot about it soon!

https://letterboxd.com/film/the-witch-part-1-the-subversion/

I am a Hero – Gory Japanese zombie movie from 2015 which for some reason is only being shown this year at Fantasia. Not bad as far as zombie movies go, but “Train to Busan” it ain’t.

https://letterboxd.com/film/i-am-a-hero/
 

Daniel Larusso

Member: Rank 3

August in the Water (1995) - 2nd viewing
As mind-blowing as it was when I saw it a few years ago.
Story goes around God, the universe, power of the mind and scientific subjects. There's also a very strong emphasis on world's ecology. This film was made by aliens. Very, very trippy stuff with dreamy soundtrack. I felt high watching this.
9/10

Isle of Dogs (2018)
For fans of japanese cinema and dogs!
8/10

Game Night (2017)
Pleasant mainstream comedy surprise. A lot of fun to watch.
7/10

Ringu (1998) - 2nd viewing
Still holds up as a must-watch in the j-horror genre.
7/10
 

divemaster13

Member: Rank 4
The Promise (2005).

Good, god. Did one of y'all put me up to this? I'm not sure how I ended up with this in my Netflix queue. It had to have been based on something I read somewhere, or perhaps due to one of Netflix's recommendations based on other viewing.

This movie is beyond terrible. The director also made the well-received Farewell My Concubine, and the movie stars known actors/actresses from Japan, Korea, and China (Cecelia Cheung and Nicholas Tse, for example). There is nothing to recommend here. NOTHING. Almost every shot appears to be GCI. Not just typical stuff but even mundane things. And the CGI is just so bad. One of the first scenes of the move has a guy running on all fours (!) outpacing a stampeding herd of buffalo. It looks much worse and more fake than you can possibly imagine. Sometimes it looks like random faces were spliced onto random bodies and set to random backgrounds. Even for people just walking around.

There's also this "Goddess Manchen" who is all billowy and I guess supposed to be beautiful. But she's weird and creepy. It turns out the actress who plays the goddess (or who allowed her features to be CGI mapped for the goddess) is the director's wife. My god.

And the story was all over the place. Made no sense. Perhaps any given scene made sense by itself, but trying to tie it to a future scene was a fool's errand. This guy was sent to save this other guy, but he killed him instead. Why? Who the hell knows?

I turned it off 45 minutes in. I just could not take it any more. And I'm so compulsive I hardly EVER bail halfway through a movie. But here I did.

I tried. I really did.

0.5 star
 

plsletitrain

Member: Rank 5
The Witch, Part I – The Subversion - A young girl escapes a lab where kids are being experimented on and finds refuge in a farm. Ten years later, she is a regular high-school girl, until the day her former captors get wind of where she’s been all this time. Different factions want her either back or dead, but of course she won’t come quietly.

Directed by Park Hoon-Jung (“New World”, “The Tiger”, writer of “I Saw the Devil”), this is supposed to be the first part in a series of yet-undetermined length. I am sure this will be the next big thing coming out of Korea. Expect to hear a lot about it soon!
Thanks for the heads-up! I will be waiting...................................


The Promise (2005).

Good, god. Did one of y'all put me up to this? I'm not sure how I ended up with this in my Netflix queue. It had to have been based on something I read somewhere, or perhaps due to one of Netflix's recommendations based on other viewing.

This movie is beyond terrible. The director also made the well-received Farewell My Concubine, and the movie stars known actors/actresses from Japan, Korea, and China (Cecelia Cheung and Nicholas Tse, for example). There is nothing to recommend here. NOTHING. Almost every shot appears to be GCI. Not just typical stuff but even mundane things. And the CGI is just so bad. One of the first scenes of the move has a guy running on all fours (!) outpacing a stampeding herd of buffalo. It looks much worse and more fake than you can possibly imagine. Sometimes it looks like random faces were spliced onto random bodies and set to random backgrounds. Even for people just walking around.

There's also this "Goddess Manchen" who is all billowy and I guess supposed to be beautiful. But she's weird and creepy. It turns out the actress who plays the goddess (or who allowed her features to be CGI mapped for the goddess) is the director's wife. My god.

And the story was all over the place. Made no sense. Perhaps any given scene made sense by itself, but trying to tie it to a future scene was a fool's errand. This guy was sent to save this other guy, but he killed him instead. Why? Who the hell knows?

I turned it off 45 minutes in. I just could not take it any more. And I'm so compulsive I hardly EVER bail halfway through a movie. But here I did.

I tried. I really did.

0.5 star
I PROMISE I've seen this when I was still starting my Asia movie watching (because its a star-studded cast) and 80% of my memory tells me I've seen this because the title and the cast all ring a bell but I can't find it on IMDb so I'm not sure if I've rated this or I don't know how I've felt (whether I was happy or disappointed) when I watched this.
 

ebossert

Member: Rank 3
I've always disliked Chen Kaige as a director, even his more acclaimed films, and The Promise is one of his worst.
 

sitenoise

Member: Rank 5
The Witch, Part I – The Subversion - ...
Directed by Park Hoon-Jung (“New World”, “The Tiger”, writer of “I Saw the Devil”), this is supposed to be the first part in a series of yet-undetermined length. I am sure this will be the next big thing coming out of Korea. Expect to hear a lot about it soon!
Yeah, okay. You piqued my curiosity and I threw caution to the wind and watched the trailer. I'm in for this. I like Park_Hee-Soon as a bad dude.

I am a Hero – Gory Japanese zombie movie from 2015 which for some reason is only being shown this year at Fantasia. Not bad as far as zombie movies go, but “Train to Busan” it ain’t.
I liked this one quite a bit more than Train, which isn't saying much, as I didn't like Train.
 

JepGambardella

Member: Rank 1
A few more movies from Fantasia 2018

Two Shinsuke Sato manga adaptations:

Bleach

https://letterboxd.com/film/bleach/

A high school student who can see ghosts becomes an unwitting participant in a battle between various types of supernatural entities. Maybe someone who likes the source material would enjoy it more than I did; to me the movie was dragged down by an overly elaborate and complicated mythology. Still entertaining though. A 6/10 from me


Inuyashiki

https://letterboxd.com/film/inuyashiki/

An older man who gets zero respect either from his family at home or from his employer becomes a powerful cyborg. As he learns to use his abilities to try to help people, a high school student who also underwent the same transformation goes on a killing rampage, and the police are helpless in stopping him. Decent Japanese take on the superhero genre. 7/10


V.I.P.

https://letterboxd.com/film/vip-2017/

Second Park Hoon-Jung movie of the festival, after "The Witch Part I". Violent thriller about a high-value North Korean defector who happens to enjoy raping and killing young women. Different factions (the police, a North Korean spy, Korean intelligence, the CIA) want to arrest him, kill him or protect him. 8/10
 

ebossert

Member: Rank 3
Hey JepGambardella, did you take a look at the director of Inuyashiki's filmography? Shinsuke Kato should be a more well-known name. He directed "I Am a Hero", the "Library Wars" films, the films you just reviewed (including "Bleach"), and "All Around Appraiser Q."
 

plsletitrain

Member: Rank 5
A few more movies from Fantasia 2018


V.I.P.

https://letterboxd.com/film/vip-2017/

Second Park Hoon-Jung movie of the festival, after "The Witch Part I". Violent thriller about a high-value North Korean defector who happens to enjoy raping and killing young women. Different factions (the police, a North Korean spy, Korean intelligence, the CIA) want to arrest him, kill him or protect him. 8/10
:emoji_dizzy_face: So many films to watch out for.
 

JepGambardella

Member: Rank 1
Hey JepGambardella, did you take a look at the director of Inuyashiki's filmography? Shinsuke Kato should be a more well-known name. He directed "I Am a Hero", the "Library Wars" films, the films you just reviewed (including "Bleach"), and "All Around Appraiser Q."
Yes, I knew about his other films. The director was present at the screenings and as the host introduced him, he mentioned "Gantz" and "Library Wars", which have also been shown at the festival in previous years.


Two more films yesterday: an awesome Scottish High School Christmas zombie musical (I will leave it at that!) and Believer, the Korean remake of Drug War (Hong Kong 2012). I don't think I've watched the original, so I can't compare. This Korean one, meh. Korean-quality production values and slick direction of course, but I don't know, it failed to keep my attention at some point, maybe because I found it a bit too confusing.

https://letterboxd.com/film/anna-and-the-apocalypse/

https://letterboxd.com/film/believer-2018-1/
 

plsletitrain

Member: Rank 5
Animal Kingdom (Australia, 2010)- I thought I’d rinse my mind off from Odishon by watching a light family animal movie but I was misled by the title (this is what I get for not reading first before I checked in).

This is a heavy crime/suspense movie about a dysfunctional family raised by a mother whose mostly to be blamed for his sons’ plight. Mom wears heavy make-up, kisses her adult sons on the lips, and talks to them in a sharp tinsy voice yet never bothered to correct them for their misdeeds. Young Joshua “J” Cody is left an orphan after her mother’s death (who’s estranged to her family for obvious reasons) so he was left to the custody of his grandma and his uncles. He enters into their dark world, forced to commit crime/s himself, become a fugitive, eventually becoming his family’s own nemesis. It was a fun watch figuring out how he survives this world he got himself into, seeing how his own life and those he love have been compromised by the circumstances.

As I’ve said the theme here is heavy with heavy violence too. Not too graphic but quite violent. Definitely not suited for kids, despite what the title might suggest.

Recommended.
 

plsletitrain

Member: Rank 5
^The director employed that technique (I don't know what's that called) where heavy scenes, such as someone's being murdered, is blacked out to have no sound but just slow classical music and the scene is shown in slow-mo mode. There's plenty of it here (I think all heavy scenes were done this way).
 

sitenoise

Member: Rank 5
Animal Kingdom (Australia, 2010)
[...]
Recommended.
I watched this years ago and have a 7.863/10 rating recorded but no blurb. I seem to recall it being an artsy type thriller, maybe I'm just remembering some of those slo-mo scenes or something out of the ordinary.
 

sitenoise

Member: Rank 5
Operation Red Sea (Hong hai xing dong) [2018] • China, Morocco
Director: Dante Lam
5

Correct genre is Fantasy. It's several movies in one, a total showoff. The Flying Squirrel suits ended the film for me. I love snipers and special forces and I got some of that--drowned out by stupid style gun-fighting where good guys shoot perfectly and bad guys can't hit anything. The character drama is pretty good, mad props to the female. And kudos to some well executed subtleties amidst all the overblown nonsense. But this isn't a film. It's a demonstration.

I saw a Mark Wahlberg movie (or two) that was better than this. Twenty years ago.
 

sitenoise

Member: Rank 5
[Update to Operation Red Sea]

I have to add: there are a LOT of special effects in the film that are stomach-churning-make-you-look-away deliciously gross. Dead bodies, half dead bodies, a live leg amputation, arms getting blown off, a guy's face getting half blown off, and etc. It's all really good, done well. But that's not what shows the "horror of war". They are special effects.

I've never seen a Chinese movie like this before (I don't think). It's weird. It's a rah! rah! film. Nationalistic, patriotic. I'm not one who will mock it for that, as a non-Chinese. It's their Saving Private Ryan, in that way. No harm, no foul. And it's their Hurt Locker, and their Black Hawk Down, and their Lone Survivor, but I digress ... It doesn't provide a feeling of vicarious national empathy, though, like Aftershock or City of Life and Death. It's more James Bond Spielberg Along with the gods. I've seen plenty of Chinese rah rah, but not backed by this load of special effects in a contemporary realistic scenario.

All the main actors do a swell job, some super swell, except when tasked with speaking English. That's tough. I connected with most of them until they got tasked with the next outrageous mission after outrageous mission. These people saved the world nine times in two hours! Well, not the world, just some hostages here and there, but come on. The mission creep is an excuse so they can change weapons or vehicles for a new round of special effects.

Special effects are like nudity and sex. They can be gratuitous.

I'll tell you what's cool, though. One smaller thing and one bigger thing.

The smaller thing: when the female special op is fighting some big dude, mano-a-mano, he picks her up from the floor, she puts her legs around his stomach, he goes for a behind the head choke hold, so she somehow crawls under his arm around to his back like he's a piece of playground equipment. It's the kind of move you'll only see in a Chinese movie.

The bigger thing: A bomb goes off in a bus out in the desert where one of the guys is Hurt Lockering, a few other good guys are close by, and the bus is full of expendable people we get to see blown up and dead. When the bomb goes off the good guys start to run away, just enough so that they don't get blown to pieces, natch, but they do get BLOWN by the bomb. Think Tom Cruise. I'm honestly not sure how this happens but the BLOWN people end up completely buried underground, under sand. The good guys who weren't blown have to find them and unearth them before they suffocate. I've never seen that one before.

And I love snipers. They are always the coolest dudes. I like my gun violence to be economical. One shot should do it unless you are a pussy. RPGs are therefore cool, too. Pistols and automatic weapons are for pussies.

There are too many pistols and automatic weapons in the movie.
 

sitenoise

Member: Rank 5
[Update 2 Operation Red Sea]

Can't get away from this stupid movie. Imma upgrade it to a 7. And I clicked the :emoji_purple_heart: icon over at letterboxd. I think I also assumed it would go without saying that if you like action movies this is one of the best you'll see this year. I don't really like action movies, so you can see a problem.

The real problem, though, is it made me want to watch a Tom Cruise Stunt Movie. I chose Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol because it's the only MI I haven't seen and I wanted to gear up for Mission: Impossible - Fallout.

I liked it. Operation Red Sea is better, I guess, but the scene of Tom Cruise scaling the tallest building in the world is better than anything in Operation Red Sea.

I'm pretty sure that even though there was limited pistol usage, most, if not all of it was one shot, one kill.
 

plsletitrain

Member: Rank 5
^Wasn't captivated by the looks of the movie and that review isn't helping at all. biggrin.gif

I wonder when I'll get back to China viewing.
 
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