Best Samurai movie ever.

Try this next.

Just watched chapter 2 of "IT" couldnt be worse, whats wrong with everyone?

2 hours 45 mins bothering noises and dark visuals.

aliihsanasl wrote:Just watched chapter 2 of "IT" couldnt be worse, whats wrong with everyone?

2 hours 45 mins bothering noises and dark visuals.

Who wants a nearly three hour horror film? There's a reason they're usually 90 minutes.

Personally, I had an Edgar Wright evening and watched The World's End and Baby Driver. They were both good not great. I really enjoyed Baby Driver but it seemed like the longer it went on, the more serious it became.

I also watched Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which is the first time I've been to the cinema since the Jedi film. That was a pretty good one, although getting almost into self-parody on the foot fetish front.

Ok, so my Jim Carey reaction to Denis Villeneuve being attached to Sicario was a brain fart. I was thinking of Claire Denis... so go figure. (Looking forward to High Life which I just picked up today.) Pretty sure I’ve never seen a Villeneuve movie before, though I‘ve had Incendies queued up for months, and Polytechnique bookmarked for a while.

As for Sicario, I’m convinced now that Emily Blunt's character is a major weakness, as is the jingoistic bullcrap in the early scenes (epitomized by the douchebag pictured earlier – his character should’ve been replaced by one of the Deltas, the one who briefs the others). Without those, much of what sucks in the movie disappears. A lot of the redundant exposition goes away. It seems it’s there for the benefit of Blunt’s character, who comes across severely mentally challenged throughout. Her “junior” partner always knows more than she does - is able to finish Brolin’s quoting of protocol, which Brolin only quotes bc apparently it’s news to her. Her painfully slow realization of ‘wtf she’s doing there’ is even less persuasive given that several scenes earlier, she was majorly clued in, in a real way. But she still asks the stupid questions again and again, and still responds with shock when it’s spelled out to her.

You scrape away that gangrenous layer, and you’re left with Benicio’s character, who pulses with history and wounds, and demons with wounds; Brolin, who is as leathery and black-lunged as the role requires; some solid camera work, and Jóhannsson’s effective soundtrack.

Too bad. I hate to think that what drags the movie down is exactly what general American audiences require to be able to follow a story... And Blunt's character's needless stupidity & ineffectiveness is jarring enough that I wonder if it's just sexism baked into the script.

PS. I want (and don't want) to know what Benicio's character did to the first jefe.

hoopy frood wrote:

Try some better, older material.

Apart from the obvious, Kurosawa, I would recommend Keisuke Kinoshita, Kenji Mizoguchi, Kihachi Okamoto, Kon Ichikawa, Masahiro Shinoda, Masaki Kobayashi.

Thanks! I'll try and check some out.

arugula2 wrote:Or if you prefer period+swords from the last 20 years, Lucid, I gleefully recommend The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi (2003).

Splendid. All righty.

arugula2 wrote:I had a hunch from your film poster that there might be intersection of a certain theme here, and... now that I've read the imdb summary of Promise... there is. Sort of a secondary theme.

Oh, the romantic theme? Yeah, there was that, I guess. Actually, upon reflection, it was quite a sweet story... bitter sweet, more so.

arugula2 wrote:Anyway, if you haven't, please see this. The gods of cinema demand it.



It's a loving tribute to the Zatoichi films of the 60's and 70's (which are also fun), with a healthy amount of goofiness, and a surprise ending - or two. (Don't spoil it for yourself!).

Noted. Thank you!

LucidFlight wrote:

arugula2 wrote:I had a hunch from your film poster that there might be intersection of a certain theme here, and... now that I've read the imdb summary of Promise... there is. Sort of a secondary theme.

Oh, the romantic theme? Yeah, there was that, I guess. Actually, upon reflection, it was quite a sweet story... bitter sweet, more so.

The romantic relationship, yes - but the commonality with Zatoichi isn't the 'romantic' angle, but other plot-specific elements of it. I don't know why the poster made me think to look at a synopsis, so it's just an interesting coincidence. Also, the guy looks strikingly like the character I'm thinking of in Zatoichi, Hattori Genosuke:



...or maybe it's just the mini van dyke and general hairstyle.

Added: it's hard to find images of him for this purpose... otherwise I hesitate to post anything from the movie. Do please avoid all clips and screenshots, etc. ^_^

Added: Gah! Too late!

Try this samurai movie if you want something that's a bit mad.

Blade of the Immortal

Animavore wrote:Best Samurai movie ever.

I am a giggling fanboi of that movie, and I think it might be perfect, even the bad cgi blood - but for me the best ever is:

Seven Samurai (1954).

Best action movie of any kind, of all time, imo.

One of the best animes out there.

Yar.

Er... I'm an eejit. I've definitely seen a Villeneuve movie before - 2, in fact: Arrival, which was impactful (Amy Adams is awesome), and Blade Runner 2049, which I also liked but not as much. Sicario is definitely lower on the totem pole (is that how totem poles work?) because of how uneven it is (Emily Blunt is no Amy Adams, I guess - edit: no, it’s the writer’s fault, I’m sure of it) but I appreciate the parts of it that do work. About 60% of it works, I suppose.

Added: can anyone discreetly tell me what Benicio's character did to the first torture victim? Or hazard a guess? Or is it specifically nonspecific?

In the hell did YouTube just give me!

https://youtu.be/wF-7x5op4iw

The shaky-cam was a nice touch.

New Chucky movie "Child's Play" is awesome even the best Chucky movie imo.

Did they use CGI for the first time for Chucky? Using puppets or models most of the time give better results but this time CGI was amazing imo. Actings, story, Chucky's movement I really love that movie and also both hilarious and scary.

edit ffs same producer of "IT" oh come on, I cant believe that

Saw Ad Astra last night. It was a choice between that and the new Rambo movie. I wish I saw Rambo.

I was expecting something along the lines of Interstellar or maybe even Contact. Instead I got 2 hours of Brad Pitt inner monologues interspersed with some of the most absurd depictions of space travel/exploration in a serious sci-fi movie this century. And most of it doesn't even serve the plot in any meaningful way so it's really hard to excuse.

The film does look great and has some really amazing shots. It's just too bad that they couldn't have made an interesting movie to go along with it.

Shanghai Fortress available on Netflix.
A decent last-stand-of-the-world science fiction/action flick with some nice visuals.
7/10

On the topic of samurai movies/anime:
I can definitely recommend the live-action film Ran (1985)
and
the anime Rurouni Kenshin (1996-98), Samurai Champloo (2004-05) and Intrigue in the Bakumats, better known by it's Japanese name Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto (2007) this last one has a nice soundtrack.
Sample from the OST:



Also an anime film about samurai, recommendation: Sword of the Stranger (2007)

aliihsanasl wrote:New Chucky movie "Child's Play" is awesome even the best Chucky movie imo.

I've got 20 mins of it to go and can't wait for it to finish. Chucky meets Skynet...er, no.

purplerat wrote:Instead I got 2 hours of Brad Pitt inner monologues interspersed with some of the most absurd depictions of space travel/exploration in a serious sci-fi movie this century.

Well I just got over 2 and a half hours of Brad Pitt and nonsense in the form of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Also wish we'd seen Rambo.