Amph What was the last movie you saw?

I just watched Kid Blue on YouTube, a 1973 western with Dennis Hopper.Fight scenes then use to be so hectic with so much crashing and smashing in bars and rooms.
Now I'm checking out Ninja III: The Domination, 1984, on YouTube to see what else Lucinda Dickey from the Breakin' movies did.

 

Apparently, the original cut of the film was three-and-a-half hours. And I'm actually down for an extra hour of this movie, which says a lot about how much I loved the movie itself. Here's hoping we get a release of that cut at some point.


Night Nurse (1931) – William A. Wellman



Yeah, says me. In a big way, sister.

Night Nurse is one of the more bizarre films I’ve ever seen. Barbara Stanwyck plays a young woman plunged into a world of charming bootleggers, cold-hearted child murderers, dipsomaniac socialites and, last but not least, abusive chauffeurs when she takes a job as a night nurse at a hospital. It’s a wacky, wacky movie; it just kind of meanders around for a good half its running time and then finally takes off when Stanwyck takes a job caring for two sick children that are, as she will find out, being slowly starved to death in order to get their trust fund. Joan Blondell is on hand as Stanwyck’s sidekick and she’s a pleasure as always. And a word for Ralf Harolde who appears in only two scenes, but nearly steals the entire show; he plays an obviously cocaine addicted doctor, forever twitching, blinking spastically and rubbing his nose. It’s nigh onto hilarious. But the real treasure here is Clark Gable in a star-making and terrifying performance as Nick, the chauffeur, but also apparently quite a bit more since we see him strolling around in a robe and casually watching the lady of the house undress. He’s grim and vicious; his first scene is a real wowser that climaxes with a beautifully choreographed shot of him punching Stanwyck right in the face. Ben Lyon isn’t very good as the love interest for Stanwyck, a decent guy that also happens to be a bootlegger, unfortunately. But it’s just so strange. Some people may find the meandering story of interest, but the film ultimately achieves a level of camp that makes many of its scenes laughable instead of compelling, which is hard to square with the moments that do work, like the confrontations between the resolute Stanwyck and the vicious Gable. Some people revere it as a gonzo example of pre-Code filmmaking at its wildest; I consider it a film that’s just too silly and stupid to really enjoy. There are flashes of good stuff here, but mainly it’s just a silly, unsuccessful movie. 2 stars.

tl;dr – Clark Gable is great in a supporting role as a vicious criminal, but this bizarre, campy and highly ridiculous movie about a night nurse’s bizarre experiences has very little to recommend it. 2 stars.

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Godzilla Raids Again aka Gigantis the Fire Monster (1955)

Gobbledygoop on so many levels. Godzilla has the roar of Anguiris and it's extremely distracting, and the constant narration of the main characters is overkill. Fortunately there's a string of amazing Godzilla sequels that follow this.

 

EVEREST.

Pretty good, followed Jon Krakauer's account pretty good. I got the chance to see him speak at the Seattle public Library.

Makes me scared to climb a major mountain.

 

The Revenant. Amazing. It captures the beauty and the absolute harshness of the frontier. It's a shame that, like Heart of the Sea this year, it Hollywoods up a story that's already so remarkable as to need no embellishment (and loses some of its most interesting aspects in the process), but it doesn't detract too much from the finished product on its own merits. It's incredibly beautiful, and the cast is great. DiCaprio doesn't have much of a character to play as Glass -- there's not a lot of depth behind the desperation to survive -- but he does an excellent job in a largely wordless role. Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson, and Will Poulter are all excellent in the key supporting roles. Hardy is captivating as an abrasive, frightened, manipulative man who is likewise driven by self-preservation but morally undermined by his ability to talk himself into pretty much anything. As the well-meaning but rather overwhelmened leader of the beleaguered expedition, Gleeson adds yet another excellent performance to a great year for him. And Poulter is very good as the frightened kid carried along by events.

There are some stunning sequences in here, especially the opening battle; the whole film is incredibly well-shot. I was captivated the whole two-and-a-half hours. I think Ex Machina finally has some competition for best film of 2015 in my book.

 

NIII:TD is a work of genius, I don't care what anyone says. Best movie in the Sho Kosugi "Ninja" series is Revenge Of The Ninja, though. Sadly, it doesn't feature Lucinda Dickey.

 

The Shawshank Redemption (9.5), followed by...

The Matrix Revolutions - It had been quite a while since I watched this one, but I was recently reminded of its atrocious critical reception. So, out of curiosity, I gave it another spin. Not as horrendous as I originally thought.

 

The Lone Ranger - 5/10 (I was bored after 5 minutes so I turned on something else, which was surprising as I like Johnny Depp - he was by far the best out of what I saw)
Jaws - 8/10 (Really good movie, got a little dry in spots)
Jaws 2 - 6/10 (I got bored after the first half hour. What I saw wasn't terrible though, just not as good as the first)
Jaws: Revenge - 6/10 (I only caught the back end of this one though)

 

The Warrior's Way (2010) Still don't like it, in spite of a rather current (and wasted) performance from Ti Lung. Basically, Chinese assassin flees China with an enemy clan's baby in tow and runs off to the American Wild West. Assassin's mentor and his steam punky ninja track them to the U.S. and blood starts spurting. That Ti Lung and Geoffrey Rush were wasted in this messy, fake looking and empty wu xia is a just a shame. Thank goodness I had no idea who Ti Lung was when I first saw this mess a couple of years ago.

A Profile in Anger (1984) Leung Kar Yan's mild-mannered architect goes on the vigilante trail when everyone he loves is taken away from him by a corrupt business man who LKY somehow outs. This is super messy, LMAO so bad-it's-great grindhouse Hong Kong schlock and for every one moment you wince there are five more where you laugh almost as maniacally as Philip Ko's unhinged bald assassin. The continuity gaffs with hair is an added bonus.

Gangland Odyssey (1990) Triad / Yakuza drama that doesn't always work, but the action is suitably OTT because Chan Wai Man fighting in a modern film dictates OTT action. Andy Lau is pretty good as the young Triad in CWM's old crew, but upon second viewing this doesn't hold up as well as it once did, especially when I just watched...

A Killer's Blues (1990) Ti Lung's triad killer wants to go straight and naturally won't be to. This is drama more than anything else, although the opening flashback kind of calls back to Ti's very energetic beginnings at Shaw Brothers. He's very believable here and who knew the man had that many tattoos? A good role for him.

City War (1987) Right after the success of A Better Tomorrow, Ti Lung and Chow Yun-Fat reteam in this Sun Chung cops versus crazy bad guy action-comedy-drama-fllm that doesn't quite know what it wants to be until late in the game. Ti is the only actor here who takes his role seriously (Chow and Norman Chu chew way too much scenery in their attempts to be charming and menacing. Chow doesn't even have to try to be charming, yet I'm not sure what he was trying to do in this film when things get romantic between him and Norman Chu's girl.) Ti gets put through the ringer dramatically, it doesn't help that his character is a hot head (Kerosene Ken), but he carries this film in epic fashion. I really liked his character here and felt so bad for this older cop who has authority figure issues.

The Bare Footed Kid (1993) Yep, another rewatch. Liked it better the second time, it's very understated with a really nice, quiet romance between Maggie Cheung and Ti Lung. Their story and subplots could have easily carried this film without the title character. A nice break from the heroic bloodshed stuff which I will probably won't watch any more of once I get those proper copies of A Better Tomorrow and it's sequel (silly me I bought the remake of the first film which explains why I couldn't find Chow Yun-Fat or Ti Lung.)

Brave Archer 3 (1981) The best film in Chang Cheh's take on Louis Cha's Condor Heroes story, it's Lo Meng and Sun Chien stealing the show, although Ti Lung is pretty darn great as an Emperor gone Monk. I still lose my marbles over the beautifully complicated final fight, which has the acrobatics Chang Cheh favored against folks who practiced traditional kung fu, it still feels fresh to me and makes the sappy drama with the few folks who over and under act bearable (thank goodness Ti saves those scenes from being absolute snoozers.)

Three Kingdoms Resurrection of the Dragon (2008) Before I knew who any of the people behind this film were, I watched this to see another cinematic take on Guan Yu. And then I realized it was Ti Lung and lost my collective fan woman marbles. May I be that nimble and deadly in my early 60s as he was when they shot this film. His pole work is still extraordinary and seeing this now makes me weep that Shaw Brothers never had him portray Guan Yu back in the day. I haven't read 3 Kingdoms because big casts and political intrigue often kills my interest, but this film is centered around the fifth general Andy Lau's Zilong. Andy isn't bad but it probably would have been wiser to concentrate on a single era in the characters life rather than 30 years in 90 minutes. Still, I'm not here for Zilong I'm here for Guan Yu and damn it, he's awesome.

 

Kung Fu Panda 3

 

Batman Begins-There are times when this is my favorite Batman film. A

 

Everest. The best way to describe this movie is visceral. I remember watching the documentary one the 1996 Everest Disaster that was released directly after the disaster, and being absolutely mesmerized by it. I couldn't help but to watch, even if I didn't want to. While the movie isn't as emotionally driven as the documentary (they are of no relation, however), it is still an incredible film to watch with incredible imagery. I wouldn't put it down as hard as some other critics did, but I wouldn't say it's in the same class as, say, The Revenant, either.

 

Ted 2 - 2nd viewing since theaters. Starts off strong minus the stupid unneeded dance number. The serious scenes are way too serious and have little to no humor. The movie picks up slightly in the final act, but not enough to save it with the Comic Con scenes or the hospital scene. It's worth a rental if you can get it from Redbox and have nothing better to watch.

Overall, if you're a fan of Ted, you'll like Ted 2, but it's no improvement from the original, just a two hour long Family Guy episode with some laughs, a few chuckles, and a lot of dead silence.
The highlight of this movie is the Law and Order scene as it gets stuck in your head.

 

Terminator Genisys (2015) - The first two Terminator films are classics, with the latter serving as a perfect capper. What has followed has delivered a series of diminishing returns, muddying the mythology with increasingly implausible (and uninteresting) scenarios, because, Time Travel! Genisys gets pretty murky where all of that is concerned, but despite a host of issues I still think--simply as a generic popcorn action flick--it kinda works, if unevenly so. The first act has some fun moments, retracing familiar steps from a slightly altered point of view, but after that it gets a little ham-handed, succeeding mostly in fits and starts. The cast is okay, and their job is certainly unenviable given the status of the original film. They wisely avoid mimicry and serve the story at hand well enough. Arnie manages to be both familiar and new with his fatherly "Pops" incarnation of the classic character, and not surprisingly most of the better moments belong to him (though his character is undeniably the third wheel here).

We didn't need this sequel, and judging from popular opinion we didn't exactly want it either. But it's here, and for what it's worth I believe that, while it doesn't exactly get the saga back on track, it is an improvement over the last few outings. - 6/10

 

Sicaro: Thought it was pretty great. More Del Toro's movie than you may have thought.

 

Ford vs. Oldman is a showdown for the ages.



The Other Son (2012) – Lorraine Levy

The Other Son is a quite thought-provoking French movie. The movie takes place in Israel and details the emotional fall-out when two families discover that their sons were switched at birth. The hook? One family is Palestinian, the other Jewish. The film isn’t as dark as it could be, though it obviously addresses the issues of prejudice and hatred, but in the end, it comes down to a more hopeful stance. The film is buoyed by a genuinely brilliant cast. Emmanuelle Devos and Areen Omari are particularly phenomenal as the two mothers and Jules Sitruk is particularly effective as the Jewish boy discovering that he’s really a Palestinian. His questions aren’t just of culture or race, but of faith. He’s probably the best performance in the film. The film is very careful not to take sides in the actual conflict; it feels like Levy wants this movie to be seen by people on both sides of the issue. Some might see this is moral cowardice, but it’s a canny move since the filmmakers want to help people on both sides accept the basic humanity of the people on the other. The film is consistently quite good. There’s a wonderful scene of the two fathers trying to chat without bringing up the elephant in the room; they fail, of course. A later scene of Sitruk eating dinner with his birth family is incredibly moving. The film isn’t perfect. There’s one character in particular who has an extremely significant character change for no other reason than that the movie needs to start wrapping up. That character was very well written up to that point, but when he suddenly changes everything about his outlook in one single scene, it’s more than a little jarring and feels particularly cheesy by virtue of being about the only really emotionally false moment in the film. Anyway, I really liked the film; smart, emotionally driven writing, beautiful direction and a cast of excellent performances. 3 ½ stars.

tl;dr – film about babies switched at birth examines the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on a micro level and discovers the humanity of all parties; richly emotional and never preachy. 3 ½ stars.

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Knock, Knock

Haven't seen much Eli Roth but this was an okay but not great fairly trashy C-movie siege flick. Basically, worth it for the punchline at the end when someone accidentally "Likes" a Facebook post.

 

The Score

The first noteworthy compliment to pay to Frank Oz's heist film is that the audience hardly needs to wait to see De Niro and Brando face-to-face. In fact, their first shared performance occurs shortly after the opening credits. Being one of Brando's final performances, if not actual final, it seems fitting that his final on screen contribution to both film and his legacy is shared with the man who once played a younger version of a character that Brando himself made iconic. Frankly, it's not Brando's most memorable performance because in some places it does feel uneven, but the man was within the final three years of his life where his health was reported as failing him at the time. But, if there is anything in Brando's screen presence to be a disappointment it is in the script itself because his character is not given any closure of farewell. Of course, Oz wasn't to know that this would be Brando's final performance. But, just as a standalone film, Brando's performance may have felt more rounded had the script finished his arc because the scene between De Niro and Brando in the spa room left some unanswered questions. Nevertheless, The Score is an appropriately nuanced heist film with memorable performances.

The true chemistry in the film is between De Niro and Norton where they both tread the lines of comrades, mentor to student, and all out rivals. Edward Norton, as with all of his performances, throws himself into the character even to the point where his character plays an actual character. Therefore, the true star of The Score is Edward Norton because his character is the most memorable. That isn't to discredit De Niro's performance because, although solid, it feels familiar given the genre that De Niro is working within for Oz's film. The directorial aspects of the film are also effective with good pacing, a jazz based soundtrack, along with fun and enjoyable setups. Overall, The Score has memorable performances from the three leads, worth watching.

4 out of 5

 

Did you see Paranoia? It once again featured Harrison Ford vs Gary Oldman. In case you haven't...

Spoiler

Harrison Ford's character isn't as nice or heroic as you might think.

 

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) – J.J. Abrams



There are stories about what happened.

It’s true. All of it. The Dark Side. The Jedi. They’re real.

So, where to even start? It’s . . . a good movie. It’s basically well-written, incredibly well-performed across the board, directed well enough. It hasn’t come anywhere near displacing the original Star Wars or The Empire Strikes Back as some lunatics were sufficiently off their heads to actually verbalize. The new characters are handled quite well. John Boyega is charming, likable and his moral journey is believable. Oscar Isaac has a fairly thin character, but he plays him well, so it’s easy to like him fine. Adam Driver is very good in his villainous turn, though I confess that I didn’t care for his temper tantrums which always range false. Domhnall Gleeson, an actor very few people are talking about with this movie, is really excellent as General Hux, a straight-arrow who believes in the rule of law & order, but that has enough of the spiritual to be downright exalted when firing the worldcrusher or whatever that thing was. Daisy Ridley is easily one of the best things about the film; she lands every moment perfectly, from her excited exuberance after her first dogfight to her real pain and sorrow at the climax of the movie to her beautifully expressive wordless scene at the end of the movie. The other “best thing in the movie” is easily Harrison Ford’s winning performance as Han Solo. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Ford this committed to a role; he actually cares and it shows. There’s never a doubt in your mind that this is the Han Solo of the original films, just thirty years on. Even more impressive than Ridley and Ford separately is Ridley-Ford as a unit. The two of them have really wonderful chemistry, the best of any of the performers in the film, and it makes their character dynamic come to life in a way that script doesn’t exactly.

Problems? Sure. That the film really does explicitly echo the original is a big talking point and it’s not a huge problem. The final battle, however, becomes tedious, with all the Starfighters trying to hit that one weak point in order to destroy the planetgun or whatever. That doesn’t feel like an echo or an homage; it feels like the same thing we’ve seen a hundred times before. Likewise the “cantina scene” with the bizarre and poorly animated (the only special effect that doesn’t particularly look real) Maz Kanata (or whatever) is simply not very good. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t know what to do with Carrie Fisher and, in what is definitely an attempt to hide the fact that *gasp* women age just like men do, she’s not just de-emphasized in the plot, she’s literally thrown onto the sidelines as soon as she appears. And the film attempts to handwave (ironically) a lot of lazy plotting. Why on earth is there even a map to Luke Skywalker’s hiding place? Why does such a thing even exist? How did it end up split into two pieces with the bad guys having one and the good guys having the other? A particularly annoying example comes when Rey discovers Luke’s lightsaber . . . in a storage closet . . . in the basement . . . of some random bar . . . When queried about how the most famous weapon in the galaxy ended up in a goddamn mop bucket, Maz dramatically intones, “That is a story for another time,” which is screenplay for “take time to come up with reasons? HA!”

But I could go on picking apart this movie for hours, both in good ways and in bad; it’s the nature of being a Star Wars fan. At the end of the day, it’s a film that’s successful almost entirely, with only a few clunky moments and in a universe where Jar Jar Binks exists, I’ll ******* take it. And when the film works, it really, really works. The early confrontation between Dameron and Ren; a Stormtrooper with a melee weapon; Kylo Ren praying for strength to resist the awful temptation of . . . the Light Side, instead of the Dark; General Hux’s insane expression when the laser is fired; the moment the lightsaber flies to Rey in the forest; the confrontation between Han and Ben; and, yes, that final scene in which Mark Hamill looks and feels as right as Luke as Ford did as Han. Is it a masterpiece for all time? Doubtful. Is it an exciting breath of fresh air into a dead film franchise? Absolutely. Is it perfect? No way. Is it a must see? Yes, I’d say so. 4 stars.

tl;dr – film has flaws aplenty, but it’s still an incredibly enjoyable, brilliantly acted, character- based breath of fresh air; still not as problematic as RotJ and that’s a must see; so is this one. 4 stars.

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Lol. Pretty sure it was an attempt to hide the fact that Carrie Fisher is not a good actress.

 

The review I've been waiting for! Good stuff, Rogue.

 

I don't agree that the film didn't know what to do with Carrie Fisher. They gave her some prominence and importance - she's mentioned in the crawl and the first scene of dialogue, which is practically the Poochie rule 2. The exposition scene between her and Han was a good enough set up for why she was now the general.

I really didn't like how she hugged Rey while Chewie nonchalantly strolled past. There's some serious untold issue there, or a deleted scene perhaps, but it seemed really odd.. But overall, her role was important but not hogging the limelight, same as the rest of the old timers, just as it should be.