Universal Soldier: The Return - 1999

I guessed this was later on, but also cause I thought this was the fifth one in the series. This however, was the fourth one. I was so far off.

JCVD is becoming my staple in this blog recently. I've just been renting whatever the library has with him, and these giant multi-pack DVDs are perfect for me. I put this on, I might have been drunk, I really don't remember.

Bill Goldberg, Michael Jai White and of course JCVD star in this tired, tired entry of the series. And you know what? It's okay. In this one, JCVD is the good guy and he is basically Kyle Reese from Terminator, protecting various people from these sorta maybe cyborg-ish baddies coming. These baddies are mostly Goldberg, who shows his strength by especially doing a spear on a lab technician once. Then randomly Michael Jai White also shows up, as another baddie who JCVD has to combat. It's all whatever.

The music was pretty awful also. It's that real, real late 90's nu metal and it was downright laughable. Check out the tracklist:

1. Crush 'Em" – Megadeth
2."Remain Calm" – One Minute Silence
3."Awake" – Clay People
4."Crazy Train" – The Flys
5."Bled For Days" – Static-X
6."Fueled" – Anthrax
7."Majic, No. 3" – Jact
8."Hatred" – D Generation
9."Securitron (Police State 2000)" – Fear Factory
10."Eureka Pile" – Ministry
11."Chaos" – Tim Skold
12."Saddam A-Go-Go" – Gwar
13."Target: Devereux" – Don Davis
14."Supernova Goes Pop" – Powerman 5000

Great shit. I give this movie 2 90s stars.

Blown Away - 1994

Holy Shit. Shit is capitalized here on purpose. The 90's man, the fuckin 90s amiright? I sandwiched this film into my recent exploits of 1940s dramas and comedies. I also watched Gone With The Wind... I'd give it 2.5 stars.

I'm hungover and/or maybe still drunk from last night, I'm heading off to work, but I wanted to at least start on Blown Away review. Jeff Bridges and Tommy Lee Jones star in this ridiculous should-be-cult-classic.

It's adrenaline from minute one with Jeff Bridges as a bomb defuser who works in LA or NY or somewhere like that. He is the best in the biz, obviously, but he'll put his skills to the test when Tommy Lee Jones breaks out of prison in the first few minutes, constructing a toilet bomb and blowing away the wall of his cell. If that's an indication of how this movie is going to go, you're in for a real fucking treat. And you know what? It is. A fucking treat.

This movie was awesome. It was epic. First of all, the acting is so bad-it's-good as Tommy hams it up AND tries for an Irish accent. Then, Jeff Bridges is solid and brings huge gravitas to a pretty thinly written character. He leaks occasional accent work in, as his dad Lloyd Bridges plays a giant stereotype Irish weirdo. There's also about 6-8 massive explosions or explosion oriented scenes in the film, for the bloodhound in ya that wants to see actual explosion work from the 90s when it wasn't fuckin CGI.

Besides the awesome explosions, there's a Bushmills slammin TLJones and Bridges, there's Forest Whittaker as a tricky, intelligent other bomb expert, and then there's Jeff Bridges wife, also thrown into the plot. It keeps the movie moving super quick, and it's a fuckin thrillride to watch. They had special cameras and sometimes take them inside the mechanisms of the bombs, which is really fun and innovative. It makes it very clear that danger is around every corner, and even though there's not a single scene where Jones is making or preparing a bomb, they nonetheless appear all over the fuckin city.

This movie kicked ass. It reminded me of those fun 90s flicks I love like Independence Day, and it wore it's 90s-ness on it's sleeve. I give it 5 stars.

The Walking Dead - 1936

Alright so in season one of the walking dead, Rick wakes up and... oh. Hold on. This is the 1936 movie starring Boris Karloff.

The Walking Dead does not have those dudes in it fighting off zombies or "walkers" but instead has Boris Karloff as..AGAIN..a guy who is wrongly killed and then brought back to life later. Note, this is the exact same plot outline as the one I previously reviewed on this blog, The Man They Could Not Hang

Boris Karloff is sent to the electric chair early on for a crime he did not commit, and he is executed. Some scientist brings him back with a mechanical heart, and Karloff is not quite different but not quite the same. He goes to the people who were guilty of framing him one at a time and, I guess differently enough, they all die at that time but not by HIS hand. It's done in a series of ways, mostly with them backing away from him in horror, mostly to meet their fate by whatever was behind them, such as a train. One of them has a heart attack.

The film is again just over an hour so it can't hurt ya that bad. It was directed by Michael Curtiz, who later on won an Academy Award for Casablanca, and also directed the classic Robin Hood with Errol Flynn. Wow, come to think of it, damn, this guy was a Hollywood heavyweight with over 150 films under his direction.

This s okay, it's probably what you'd expect. About 2 stars ish.

Maximum Risk - 1996

From the same boxset as The Hard Corps comes Van Damme in Maximum Risk. I thought this was perhaps the other movie I watched with that Damme actor, the other one where he plays two roles...I'm not going to look it up. Because you see, the synopsis of this mentions his brother, so I thought it the same movie. Anyways, it is not.

Damme is playing some guy who learns he has a brother somewhere in Europe and his brother has been killed recently. Damme knows this, but his brothers friends in Europe don't I guess, anyways Damme goes over and starts turning heads when the local gangs and such see him and mistaking him for his bro. Also seeing him is Natasha Henstridge, and the Species lady is looking dynamite in this flick.

First of all, it's more stylized than the last flick, and directed by Ringo Lam, it has more of a in your face style to it. There is more action, both with guns and with fists. The beginning though, oddly enough, has a fuckton of dialogue and takes a million years to get anywhere.

I don't have much to say. It's less memorable than The Hard Corps even though I watched Risk after that one. Natasha Henstridge does get topless.

The Hard Corps - 2006

I rented a 5 movie Van Damme DVD from the library recently. There's a pandemic on, still, and it's great to just have huge multi movie packs to sit around and fill your time with. This DVD is brought to us by our ol' friends at Mill Creek, also.

Starring Van Damme and Vivica A. Fox, directed by frequent Damme collaborator Sheldon Lettich, this is a by-the-numbers modern actioner flick. Van Damme, I'm pretty sure, is said to be a Afghan veteran and then later said to be a Vietnam veteran. It don't matter, what he is is a hard man with a unknown past, who is recruited by a retired champion boxer when the boxer has an old enemy released from prison.

The film has a mostly black cast, it's the "urban" Van Damme film, with his interactions with the boxer, the boxers sister (Fox) and the man who is after the boxer. Yeah, if you can't tell, I don't fuckin remember character names.

Whatever. It's really stupid, the plot is dumb and predictable, but it also satisfies in some certain ways and it could 1000% be much WORSE, so I won't shit on it too hard. The soundtrack is laughable but at least it's shot competently and the acting all around is solid. Also, great fight scenes near the end. I give it 3 stars.

The Big Sleep - 1946

They marketed this as another Bogie/Bacall flick after the success of To Have and To Have Not. And this marks the first appearance of Humphrey Bogart in what is becoming a completely all over the place blog.

I decided that since I have no themes and no internet anymore I might as well just review whatever I'm watching. I buy whatever random VHS I find a lot of the time these days, and I picked up about 6 classic films on VHS for like $2 total. Most of these are pretty old black and white dramas or comedies or something, this was probably the only film noir.

Bogie plays Philip Marlowe, the well known detective. I have no knowledge about other Marlowe films at this point in history. I am familiar with Philip Marlowe as a character from the old radio serials I used to listen to though... man, I been wanting/needing to get back into those. Also, it might shock you, dear reader, but I've hardly seen any Humphrey Bogart films. Anyways, Marlowe is hired by an old man to track down someone who's extorting money from him, and Marlowe uncovers a twisted and complicated string of baddies and plots, while both the innocent and the guilty are being pursued by unknown killers.

It's for sure overly complicated, and there's a lot of talk about different characters. You'll hear names constantly in this film, people saying "Joe did this, Eddie Mars did that, Harry Jones, Tom Dick and Larry". A lot of times people are mentioned and you're thinking, "Now who are they talking about here?" Lauren Bacall has a sister and they also look and act very similarly so I was also getting them confused. It is for sure overly complicated in character, and in plot.

As the plot unwinds, it seems the detective knows what's happening and certain characters do, but I'd be hard pressed to say that I knew. I mean, I'm not an idiot and I tracked certain things, but others would just vanish into the wind. This guy killed that guy for that reason and was here at this time, doing that thing, speaking to her about him and seeing him to talk about her and then they drove over here and got a shave and then etc etc etc. In the meantime, people are slamming back booze constantly, it's almost always dusk or evening, and everybody smokes.

It has all the ingredients, and it's a classic, but yeah, not sure. It's not quite my thing. Four stars though.

Red Beard - 1965

Black and white... Kurosawa. We're in my home domain here.

Toshiro Mifune gives his last collaboration with Kurosawa in this over 3 hour drama that I just watched..for possibly the first time? I was really into the samurai shit. Having started with Seven Samurai I got into Hidden Fortress, Yojimbo, Sanjuro, Ran, etc... Eventually I saw Ikiru and High and Low, The Bad Sleep Well, and Rhapsody in August. I think I read the description for this and was like...eeeeehhhhhh...

Toshiro plays Red Beard in a tiny role, he is a veteran doctor at a free clinic, a shady and honor-less hospital somewhere. A training intern, played by Yozo Kayama, comes to meet with Red Beard, but instead gets roped into helping at the clinic. He is against it, he feels it is beneath him. But as he meets the patients and then wrapped into a situation with a 12 year old girl they get from a whore-house.

There's a couple cut aways into people's stories that are really cutting edge, there's also bizarre digs into cultural Japanese lifestyle. It's very visionary in those segments, and had perhaps some of the darkest visionary stuff Kurosawa ever did. It also has perhaps the only nudity in any of his films. The film somehow doesn't feel disjointed though. It just feels progressive and/or groundbreaking.   My feeling while watching this was constantly: fuck, this is great!

The plot is relatively bare, and while there are some side stories with the patients at the free clinic and their health, we mostly just watch small interactions, and the film is soaked in humanity. It's trademark Japanese and trademark Kurosawa in that way. Some might for sure say sparse and slow, but I would question both of those judgements. It's minimalism, and a character study. It's emotionality cannot be denied. It's a small role for Mifune but he exudes charisma and a character which is both detailed and simultaneously does just about nothing in the film. Several times his morals are brought into question, because while he might blackmail a politician, he is giving that money to help bury a recently fallen poverty stricken citizen at the clinic.

I'd say this is a great film, one which I should've guessed I'd love. I give it a 4.5

Thirst - 2009

Damn, I knew this was 2009 at first, then I talked myself out of it, turns out my first instinct was correct.  Ah, the date guessing game.  I know you love it.

Chan Wook Park, or Park Chan Wook is a fairly well known Korean filmmaker, his film Oldboy was remade at some point recently, and then he followed it up with the American produced Stoker, which I don't think did a lot here stateside.  Between those two was Thirst, starring Kang-Ho Song, of recent Academy Award winner film Parasite (fucking see it, it's awesome).

Thirst is a slow burn film, the kind that begins and you're not sure about the main character.  It is perhaps not a spoiler to say this is a vampire movie.  The cover, the synopsis, the trailer, it's all in there.  Since we know it's vampires, we expect to see it right away, but the movie takes a slow meditative approach to the reveal, and I do kinda wish I hadn't known that going in. 

However, once it's revealed, it's all the sudden even said, or at least subtitled, Vampire.  And without any backstory or explanation it now defines our main character.  He is Sang-Hyun, a priest and devoutly centered person.  He finds great suffering in his faith because of his desires, and he also has lust for the wife of some really spineless annoying weird. 

There's a lot of comedy in this movie, which was really nice, and it's very funny.  The weirdness and the sexuality depicted is groundbreaking too, and in fact it is the first Korean film to have male frontal nudity.  It had one of the best sex scenes, I've seen recently...Or ever.  Probably ever.  Aside from that, it's a slow burn drama about his interaction with this family he's thrown into, his vampirism, and his crisis in faith.

I got about an hour into this, being very into it and 100% along for the ride, and then it sorta fell apart for me.  It was very long, very dense, and a lot of it we see coming in different ways.  It of course has a lot of cool unique places it goes, but holy shit.  You gotta wait, and there's an equal or greater than amount of shit that is not cool or unique and instead just tedious. 

I think they want to make it long so that it's a character study, but 30 minutes could have easily been cut, and should've.  I lost interest, and several parts were too Korean for their own good.  I can say it, I come from a place of huge knowledge about Korean cinema. 

Thirst is good, and not to be dismissed.  I'll give it a 4.

Timecop - 1994

Mini review for Timecop.  I barely remember the sci fi flick with JCVD, and I've been marathoning the fuck out of JCVD films lately, as one does when they're slamming some whiskey and IPAs, and when one is livin' life to the max.

JCVD and Mia Sara are in this flick about a guy whose family was killed, he becomes a timecop when time travel is invented, trying to stop criminals from going back in time and committing crimes that lead to time shifts.

Mia Sara gets topless.  JCVD and other people fight.  Its what you expect, and I'm pretty sure I liked it, quite a bit really.  I also remember I had no idea what was going on several times. 

The Return - 2003

Unlike Millennium Actress, I for sure know that I was at the theater when we got The Return.  I remember it because, first of all I saw it there, but also because I remember the kick ass song in the end credits, which would play as I stood outside, waiting to clean the place.

The Return was the first feature film by Andrey Zvyagintsev, and it was also a big deal, I believe winning some awards at Cannes or wherever it played.  We had it for a couple weeks, and I think it was mildly popular from my memory.

The Return is a slow burn drama, the story of two young boys who are shown in the beginning of the film, Andrei and Ivan.  Ivan is younger, and he has a somewhat combative relationship with his older brother.  He chickens out of jumping off a huge tower into a lake below, and that spurns a fight between them.  When they run home, they discover their long absent father has suddenly returned from an unknown location.  He announces over dinner that he is back, and that he will take the boys out fishing the next day.

What unfolds is a strange reunion story between father and sons, and the dramatic issues therein.  We mainly follow the two boys, with their unease, with their questions, with their interpersonal relationship as they go into this unknown territory.  The father takes them out on what unfolds to be a sprawling, multi-day trip, going to an unknown destination.  We see them go car camping, fishing, dining a few times, prepare a boat, and eventually motor off to some random island somewhere in Russia.  It's a huge mystery what his destination is, but throughout the film we get the sense there's a dark motivation to his actions, and now the kids are being dragged into it...

Elegantly shot, immaculately acted, and strange in intent, this film is simply a masterpiece.  I thought so then, I think so now.  It's intense, unique, powerful, and filled with unique austere qualities.  The father figure is someone we struggle to understand a great deal along with the boys, and when tensions rise and when they eventually are forced to deal with this situation, we are really along for the ride.

It's one of those where I want to talk about the plot, beat by beat, and describe the intensity of the shot, or the meaning, or the underlying character motivations - all these little things feel deeply relevant.  There is not a wasted moment in this film, despite how slow it is, and yet it's extremely minimal in approach. 

Overall, the film works on every level.  It is highly enjoyable, and the ending leaves you with many unanswered questions which are sure to gnaw at you later.  This isn't one that you forget about a few moments later or even years later.  I last saw this 17 years ago.  Hows that for leaving an impact?

Millennium Actress - 2001

Weird, I thought this came to the theater when I was there.  Of course, that's the Japan release year, and we might have brought it in after that, 2002 or whenever. 

I had seen Perfect Blue, and it's hard to put myself back in the mindframe where Satoshi Kon had really only created that one thing.  Perfect Blue of course was a seminal and popular film, it was well known in the weird sorta offbeat crowds I hung out in.  These were the days when nerd culture and all that shit was still "uncool".

Millennium Actress is a stylistic approach to a simple story, the story being the love and life of a actress.  She is in her 70's now, and the film begins with two reporters going out to interview her.  One of the reporters has a surprise for her:  a key he found, that belongs to her, and which launches a series of stories about her life, her love, her career, and everything in between. 

Using a blend of editing techniques, inserting characters into the story, transitional dialogue and of course style, Satoshi Kon spins a elaborate but simple story.  Filled with heartfelt innocence and great animation, we follow main actress Chiyoko Fujiwara as she, in a moment of pure reaction, helps a man she sees on the run early into her flashback.  The man is a mystery and she feels strongly drawn to him, he gives her a key and vanishes pretty quickly out of her life.  The rest of the film is a story of her life, as she tries to track him down.

It's a really beautiful film, and there is action and drama and even sci fi elements.  Using the films this actress was involved with as a backdrop, the moments in her movies tell the story of her relationship with this man she's looking for, and it is really amazing.  A big thing I loved about it is that it's the simplicity in the story:  this idea that one thing, one event, one encounter, can shape a persons entire life, and can drive them forward in many different ways.

It's very different from Perfect Blue, and it would continue to show throughout Kon's career that he was not a one trick pony, he had a lot of diverse and interesting stories he wanted to show.  I was a bit disappointed when it first came out that it wasn't darker, but truthfully, that was just young dumb me.  This is iconic and much more in the vein of Grave of the Fireflies.  Which, by the way, is also a 5 star film.