Amph What was the last movie you saw? (Ver. 2)

You may remember *lol* back last year when I went on a real 1890s jag by watching a ton of early Thomas Edison "movies" and posting an ungodly long series of increasingly unhinged "reviews." Well, guess what! I just stumbled on a handful of reviews I wrote* for that project and never got around to posting. Gaze into the abyss of the OCD movie reviewer once more, friends!



A Morning Alarm (1896) – James H. White

More horses, more lackadaisical trotting, more firemen. 0 stars.

tl;dr – 0 stars.

*I use the term loosely. "That's not writing, that's typing."

 

Holy cow...this predictive keyboard is freaking awful.

The Sword Stained with Royal Blood (1981)

This is one of those Venoms mob Shaws you watch for the lads to do their Chinese Opera business in -and the Five Element Array and Kuo Chui’s training sequences in the cave- are worth everything.

Kuo’s Noble young martial artist accidentally learns the Kung fu from the Golden Snake bandit’s manual. Meeting the annoying Candy Wren (posing as a young man again), he accidentally gets involved with the ongoing feud between the Golden Snake and her family the Wens.

The Wens are equally villainous, but this is all about the operatic martial arts.

Part of the end fight...the only thing that gets in the way is the wire work. With these guys, it’s not necessary.

 

I still love 'Bram Stoker's Dracula'. It's hammy and clunky at times but it still is the best adaptation of the novel. Yes, Reeves is awful and Ryder has problems too but there is so much going for the movie visually, technically, and from the other cast that I really feel it is kind of nitpicking to complain so much about Reeves. The movie should be studied as the last hooray for practical effects.

 

Except it’s not the last hooray...thankfully, practical FX are still being employed and picking up in momentum.

 

Yes! That scene is amazing. The actor playing Lucy does a good job too.
And agreed on the excellent makeup. Very talented crew working on that movie.

 

Please tell me Lam Ching Ying is in that...

 

Rewind This!

This is a low budget 2013 documentary about the rise and fall of VHS tapes and the VCR, incuding brief mention of the Beta format.

It's an interesting 90 minute film that focuses on the die hard video collectors. Of note is the emphasis on preserving films that have only ever been released on VHS, of which there are apparently many thousands.

I've not really seen any of the films they refer to in this doc, as they mainly show clips from obscure horror, action, and asian genre pictures. There was a brief shot of the packaging for "The Making of Star Wars" on VHS, hinting at the importance of that film to the growing home video market at the time.

This film is not rated, but I was rather surprised by the inclusion of some brief pornographic scenes when they were discussing that genre as it relates to the home video market in the 1980's.

And there is footage of one persons horror collection that has many dozens of sub genres that he created, replete with creepy props and horror memorabilia. I think he said he owns 5,000 horror films!

They interviewed one woman who organizes her VHS collection by the color of the box cover. Speaking of, they also discussed the importance that box art used to have in order to create rentals. The box art often being more important than the quality of the film.

Pan and scan and the inferior VHS transfers were discussed, as well as the simple nostalgia factor that supersedes these limitations for some collectors.

Overall, this was an interesting film that celebrates the collector of physical media and delves into that lifestyle, i.e. searching for that out of print film that is difficult to find, while also touching on the need for film preservation in light of the streaming era and the tendency for studios to limit the content that is available on that platform.

 

Underworld: Blood Wars (2016)

I forgot this even existed, if I ever knew in the first place, but Selene is back! And, HUGE SPOILERS, she gets blonde highlights! There's far off places, daring sword fights, a prince in disguise!, devoted but unrequited love, a forbidden romance between blood enemies (Romeo and Juliet! Again! It's like Underworld within Underworld!), vampires and werewolves relying very heavily on guns for some reason, a ridiculous amount of flashbacks to earlier movies in the franchise and continuity that was sometimes made up and sometimes forgotten even by a fan of the series such as myself, hilariously similar substitutes for dead franchise fixtures, vampire cunnilingus, and Charles Dance. This series cracks me up. It's not any good, but boy does it amuse me. Sometimes. Not recommended, unless you find this series ironically amusing as I do.

This particular entry has the worst action in the series (presumably, I don't really remember anything about Awakening), really just going through the motions and adding more guns, likely out of laziness and disinterest.

Thankfully, Kate Beckinsale is still not too old for the role. Could play forever. May be actual vampire.

 

Murder by Death Classic comedy murder mystery with a star studded cast, where a millionaire assembles 5 of the worlds greatest detectives at his mansion to solve a murder. All the detectives are based on classic characters but I bet for copyright reasons they changed their names to something different. It’s a total send up of murder mysteries and all the cliches of those. A lot of the humour really hits the mark, some of it is out of place now though, but even so it works. Alec Guinness is fantastic as the butler.

I’ve not seen this film, but anyone old enough to remember the 80s especially will testify what it was like to walk into a video store and be confronted by the Aladdin’s cave of shelves and cases and trying to pick a film. Happy days.

 

Collette (2018)
Watched a brief trailer off of the available movies on Amazon Prime so I figured I'd give this a shot. It's an interesting movie that takes place at the turn of the 20th Century in France where a young woman, played by Kiera Knightley, is her husband's ghostwriter for many years up she's convinced and encouraged by her peers to become more independent. I've always liked Kiera since her days running around with Brendon Fraiser in the Mummy movies; but she's really come on her own as a very good dramatic actress. Dominic West plays her husband, known by the literature circuit as "Willy". It's a true story and IMO well told and portrayed; but one thing that got to me throughout the entire movie was that all of the protagonists were supposed to be French, and yet to a "T" it seemed like everyone spoke with an English accent; they didn't even try to hide it.

 

Kiera Knightly wasn't in the Mummy movies
Either way, sounds interesting though! Might give it a watch.

 

My bad. Should've said the Pirates of the Caribbean movies!

 

Zootopia

 

Loony Tunes: Back in Action. I know I've seen it before but I'm a big Bugs & Daffy fan.

 

Watched Clueless over the weekend with my mom and brother, while I was laid up from having a medical procedure.

It's as charming as ever. A great adaptation of Emma that gets that Jane Austen feel in a wildly different setting. Can't believe Paul Rudd basically looks the same now more than 20 years later, the jerk

 

Something something, Ant-Man, Quantum Realm, something something?

 

Perils of the Sentimental Swordsman 1982

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This is my almost favorite Chu Yuan wuxia (He made many excellent wuxia with and without Ti Lung). This was the second to last movie he did with Ti, and the third in the Chu Liu Xiang series (not Little Li, the Sentimental Swordsman).

Anyway, Ti’s lavishly dressed, detective swordsman Chu Liu Xiang is sent by 8th Prince to Ghostly Valley. Said valley is a wretched hive of scum and villainy where the worst-of-the-worst live in self imposed exile. The leader, Old Hawk, intends to lead his nefarious brothers and sisters to freedom via Operation Thunder (a plot to murder the 8th Prince on his birthday).

Chu ultimately teams up with another undercover gallant to stop Operation Thunder from happening. Of course, adversaries from the two previous Chu Liu Xiang films want him dead for ruining their lives, to say nothing of other baddies trying to use him for their gain. Lots of fun moments of espionage, and Chu Yuan’s increasingly horror tinted scenes add even more to one character and the mood.

Colorful characters, costumes, sets, and Mario Bava style cinematography give Perils its otherworldly vibe. The acting is sometimes perfectly camp while the martial arts are great fun. Watching Ti Lung kick the crap out of his foes never gets old. With all of the Kung Fu and weapons Ti mastered, it is always a joy to see him fight. His characters always receive splendid choreography (which is another reason why I lament that Ti did not play Guan Yu in his hey day), and the foot and fan work Ti performs here are just breathtaking.

It’s fun to see a couple of second wave ‘Venoms’ a.k.a. Baby Venoms here in pivotal roles. This would be one of the last movies where weapons master Kwan Fung got to strut his stuff with a trident, while Teng Wei-Hao has some fun as National Teacher Long.

Spoiler

Lo Lieh pretty much steals his scenes, especially when he plays for laughs.

As the charming, smart, and deadly Chu Liu Xiang, Ti is great fun and while 1977’s Clans of Intrigue is excellent, Perils remains my favorite Chu Liu Xiang adventure. It has the best plot, can be funny, exciting and just entertaining escapist fare. It’s my favorite latter day Shaws perf by Ti Lung (as great as he would be in Sun Chung’s bleak The Master Strikes Back), he completely gets the sometimes bonkers storyline and just runs with it.

The more I revisit this film, the more I adore it. It’s the exact kind of movie I love escaping with. A flick whose intriguing plot, sometimes O.T.T. characters, and overall fun vibe just make it a blast to watch.

I am grateful it was the sole Chu Liu Xiang movie that received a digital HD upgrade, but I’d happily buy it on blu ray if it ever appears in that format.

This is my favorite kind of Shaws wuxia to watch: Character and story rich, easy to follow and lots of fun in every way.

 

Streit's Matzo and the American Dream
This was a PBS documentary that first aired in 2015 with some substantial follow-ups over the years. If you live in America, are Jewish, and above all celebrate the Passover holiday, odds are you've eaten or have come across Streit's Matzo. For 90 years the entire production of the family-owned company was in a relatively small building on the lower east side of Manhattan. With the equipment aging and competition from companies overseas being too much, in 2015 they decided to close the factory and move to a larger factory with modern equipment upstate. It's a really interesting story, and you feel bad for those people who could not rejoin the company on their new premises (though they were offered employment). A historian adds her own incite to the story, and one of the things I found interesting that she said was how it's possible things could've been different if the City offered some kind of incentive for the company to stay. No such offer for a family-owned company with a 90 year history in the heart of NYC, but if Amazon wants to build here you better believe we'll roll out the red carpet for them.

 

Good point. We need mom and pop businesses in the five boroughs and Long Island. It’s sad what a chain congested, got rocks place Manhattan and Brooklyn have become (and here comes Queens & the Bronx).

Three Days of the Condor (1975) So Robert Redford’s agent actually reads mysteries and thrillers for the C.I.A. combing through plots and such with his team.

While on a lunch run, the rest of his department are assassinated, leaving our handsome code name Condor up the creek without a paddle. Unable to trust friends and foes alike, he winds up accidentally kidnapping Faye Dunaway, while trying to stay alive.

This is my second favorite Redford 70s film (after Jeremiah Johnson), and watching Condor use his brains to get out of some potentially deadly spy games of cat-and-mouse is still quite engaging.

It’s always cool to see 70s New York, and today’s viewing I picked up on a fun wink to Dario Argento and gialli. The black glove wearing* Condor -eager to gain entry into a NY brownstone- rings the apartment buzzer for a tenant named Argento.

*Many giallo murderers wear black gloves and you often only see their hands until they are revealed. I like to think this was director Sidney Pollack’s idea. It was great fun catching that and completely unexpected.

Solid thriller. This is always a good movie to revisit, and I can see why the Russos borrowed some of the story structure for ...Winter Soldier.

 

RED 2 (2013)
Overall, it's a moderately amusing action comedy, well-suited to Bruce Willis' talents, and just like the first one, Helen Mirren steals every scene she's in and lifts the whole movie up a level.