Amph What was the last movie you saw?

Zoolander 2 (2016)

There's a difference between bizarre humor (which made the first one beloved I guess) and just plain ****ing bizarre. Some of it works, but it's pure lazy filmmaking and borderline creepy at times. I feel bad for the fans who waited 15 years for a movie that basically repeats the same jokes from the original to the point that they're grating and wrist slitting. I was just really uncomfortable the whole time.

I guess we'll be getting Dodgeball 2 in 2019 and More Wedding Crashers in 2020 because Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn desperately need hits.

Where to Invade Next (2016)

I'm a huge fan of Michael Moore, so this doesn't disappoint. However, he doesn't have as much of a bite in this as the other two that I've seen. Still, a lot of fun to watch.

 

The Chaplin Revue, a compilation of three silent shorts made by Charlie Chaplin. I found the shorts themselves to be very funny, but unfortunately the films have been "stretch-printed" in order to play at the speed of a sound film, which caused some frame rate problems that did effect my enjoyment a little bit.

 

Fist of Fury - Bruce Lee investigates the murder of his beloved sifu and also has to fight against the dastardly Japanese. Bruce's acting here reminds me of Lo Meng (whose over earnest and sometimes campy performances early in his career are very endearing), while that works for Lo, it's not quite a good fit for Lee. Still, he's fun to watch as he plows through his enemies and does right. A highlight for me was seeing a ridiculously young Yueh Wah as the Japanese provoker who causes Bruce's hero to smash the sign which says No Chinese.

It has been many, many years since I've seen any Bruce Lee film other than Enter The Dragon so this struck me as a tiny bit off. I am so used to Bruce in the super heroic modern films that this felt a little weird to me even though it seems to be set earlier in the 20th century. I am so used to watching Enter The Dragon and Bruce in that modern fighting role this felt like something of a disconnect. Still, it's great fun in that China vs. Japan canon. Interesting. I suppose this disconnect will fade with subsequent viewings.

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Five (Deadly) Venoms (1978) Chang Cheh's seminal period kung fu noir pits the students of a deadly martial arts house against each other, in the race to uncover the treasure their dead master wanted to donate to charity. It is with this movie (and the utterly go-for-bloody broke Five Elements Ninjas), that Chang Cheh finally realized his vision of the Chinese super hero. Employing both Peking Opera trained actors and skill martial artists, Chang's colorful, stupidly violent and just plain clever kung fu mystery lives up to its eternal hype. This is the movie that made me a Shaw Brothers addict, it is the film that also made realize that yeah some of these people can act just as well as a non-fighting performer. It's the movie I now hold all super hero films from any country to, probably because five out of the six gents in this film are doing their own stunts, fighting etc. and in seeing those skills combined with light trampoline and tiny bits of wire work, still takes my breath away.

Besides, how can you not dig the opening sequence show the training of The Centipede, The Snake, The Scorpion, The Lizard (Gecko) and the Toad in their animal masks and psychedelically lit training areas? The 6th Student Yang De (Chiang Sheng) is tasked by the dying master of the Venoms House to find the good senior students of the house and retrieve the treasure from the Venoms ill-gotten gains. The old sifu wants to donate this treasure to charity and therefore absolve the house of their dark past. The catch is Yang De was trained in portions of each of the aforementioned styles, so he has mastered none. But if Yang De pairs up with a good Venoms senior, he can help defeat the bad ones. So off Yang De goes to the town where all of his older peers have entrenched themselves. We quickly learn the allegiances of three members, but are left wondering about two of the older Venoms for most of the films' running time.

Lu Feng just stole my attention away from everyone else (tonight I found myself reviewing a moment in a scene where he casually disarms someone. I am still trying to catch exactly how he did it. The man is a master of weapons work and I never get tired of seeing his variations on operatic kung fu or him being evil. He's the first martial actor whose skills in acting really made me sit up and take notice and he remains one of my absolute favorites for his acting as well as his martial skills.) He's a delight here as is Lo Meng and Kuo Choi. I know I've spoiled the identities of who is who in previous reviews and it's easy to find that out on many a web site, but I'll refrain from doing so here.

All I know is, this movie is smart, fun, exciting and a bit gruesome and the good vs. evil theme is on point. It's a film I return to every couple of months and I always feel like I did when I first revisited it last year (for the first time in decades.) A really entertaining movie on all kinds of levels. You don't have to be a kung fu fan to enjoy it either.

 

The Fugitive

Love this movie, the characters especially make this movie for me. I particularly enjoyed how Gerard and his team will interact with each other like real people. Harrison Ford played the resourceful underdog doctor really well too.

 

10 Cloverfield Lane. Pleasantly surprised, I'll leave it at that

 

It's a nice low budget mystery thriller, but by attaching the name Cloverfield and evoking JJ Abrams soon after Star Wars, it got a whole lot more exposure than it would have gotten. Smart marketing.

 

Hunger Game Mockingjay pts 1 & 2 I watched the entire 4 film run this week. Quite a disappointing ending to be honest, not a lot happened over the course of the 2 films to warrant it being split in to 2 I feel. Lots of talking scenes, that seemed to pad it all out. The prospect of them dodging traps through the city didn't quite realise itself as a good idea for me. But it all seemed so rushed when ironically they had a lot of time over 2 films to set up the assault on the city and their subsequent infiltration. Before we know it they're in the war torn capital, and at the gates of the presidents residence in seemingly the blink of an eye.

The best thing about this finale was the ending where she chose to kill the incoming president who was no better than President Snow. Overall I thought Donald Sutherland as Snow was fantastic throughout, very menacing. Without ever reading the books, I'm assuming this was aimed at a teen audience. They were decent enough films without being earth shatteringly good and my over riding feeling is that they really milked it to get 4 films out it.

 

Little Caeser. Classic Gangster film, which is a little bit cliche now but is probably the film that invented a lot of the cliches.

 

The author of this article watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off with his 10 and 13 year old daughters.

However, about halfway through the film both my daughters commented that Ferris “was kind of a jerk and not a very good friend to Cameron.”

http://www.shrinktank.com/psychology-ferris-bueller-days-off/

 

Sicario (2015)

watched this on the plane ride home yesterday. really enjoyed it. great atmosphere and tension and pacing. solid performance from emily blunt, but Benicio del Toro really steals the show. highly recommended

 

Angry Birds

So the kids liked it.

It's not terrible, just watchable at best. The character driven part of the story really isn't that bad considering it's based on a time wasting app but the the film goes for a constant safety net of weak potty humor and weaker adult oriented jokes.

 

Deadpool

 

Lars and the Real Girl. This is one of those indie films that thinks all it really needs is a major dose of quirk, a general air of pleasantness, and some sort of damaged-person hook to give us something to feel better about by the end. The thing is that it actually executes its premise well enough that you don't mind. Ryan Gosling plays a withdrawn, depressed young man who is very nice and well-liked by his small Midwestern community, but retreats from meaningful human contact. He won't even visit his brother and sister-in-law, who live next door. He becomes significantly more open, however, when he buys a sex doll and promptly, unabashedly, engages in the delusion that she's his girlfriend. The film is absurdly sweet, with the whole town eventually buying into his delusion in the name of supporting Gosling as he works out his issues, but it keeps the whole thing grounded enough in the fact that Gosling really is mentally ill, and these are people who really do care about him, that it works surprisingly well. And shots of the unmoving doll in some incongruous setting are never not funny. I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would.

 

That's a great movie. Classic Harrison Ford.

 

The Fugitive is an ideal movie. It's completely unassuming, just a thriller about a man trying to prove his innocence and the lawman hunting him. There are some great action sequences, but it's never really grandiose. But it's just such a perfectly executed film. It's put together so well, with a good, solid script and great performances. Tommy Lee Jones is massively entertaining, and Ford always makes such a sympathetic hero. It's not a film you'd automatically think of as a great movie, but it's a perfect example of what it is. It's the ideal of the film that you will watch if it comes on, or that you can put on any afternoon and rewatch.

 

Havac and its also a prime example of a movie that definitely doesn't need to be sequeled.

 

That movie was okay. The problem was when they basically tried making Taken 3 into Liam Neeson's version of The Fugitive.

 

Bad Education - the Movie. Film version of the UK comedy TV series of the same name starring Jack Whitehall. If you like childish, sexist and crude humour then this is for you. Admittedly there are some laugh out loud moments, but overall its not great and is just like an extended episode from TV series. Whitehall is the history teacher who takes his class on a trip to Cornwall where they get up to anything thats not educational and get caught up in a terrorist Cornwall liberation plot.

 

Risky Business

 

Was it just me or was the scene chilling where del Toro leaves the apartment and looks back on Blunt as they both realize what he is going to do in Mexico?

Great movie but dreadful all the same.

 

Saw Spy a couple nights ago. I was just looking for a light-hearted comedy to put on in the background before I fell asleep and didn't really think much about it. But then I suddenly got engrossed. This was the funniest I'd ever seen Melissa McCarthy, who typically plays the same character in everything I've seen her in. The dialogue was awkward and perfect, Rose Byrne was an unexpected delight, and even Jason Statham was great. Really engaging comedy film.

Then last night I watched The Intern. I was immediately drawing comparisons between this and that awful movie with Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson about a similar concept, The Internship. But The Intern, unlike that other film, was a well-made film. The performances are all great, the narrative heartfelt and captivating. Just a really enjoyable movie.

 

Yeah, US Marshalls isn't a bad movie per say, but the problem is that there isn't really anywhere to go from a storytelling perspective after The Fugitive.

 

Sabotage (2014), a sort of action film version of Ten Little Indians. It's a fairly unpleasant and needlessly violent film (I was shocked how this got away with a 15 certificate), with very unlikable characters. Also, while I don't usually have a problem with swearing in a film, the amount of times the f-word was used is ridiculous.

 

definitely, but i also thought it was a (fittingly) predictable conclusion to the scene that preceded it in the apartment. del toro's character is dread personified, but captivating rather than repulsive

 

The Krynoid Man, Ah-nold has had a pretty rough comeback, but I actually liked Sabotage (the only entry in his post-political filmography I can say that about). Maybe it was a case of hopping over low expectations, I don't know. I'll concede that it's unpleasant (among other things), but I think that's the point here. There's no hero in the traditional sense. It's very much a David Ayer film, but not for everyone. I do think he was the perfect choice to helm Suicide Squad and I can't wait to see it.