Bullets 'n' Babes

Out Of Justice (This Is Law) - ★½
Skinny Tiger, Fatty Dragon - ★★½

Keung wrote:Skinny Tiger, Fatty Dragon - ★★½

You only found this average? I laughed my ass off watching it. Karl Maka is such a goofball. Sammo Hung and him made a great team too IMO.

Maka is damn funny, but the scenes in Singapore went on for a bit too long. Bored me to death. The end fight made up for it, though.

Personally I never find a decent end fight makes up for a lacklustre movie.

Death Trance (Japan, 2005) – 4/5
What a jewel. Tak Sakaguchi is the hottest underground action hero. One can really see that this movie has been directed by an action choreographer. Like most modern z-class Jap action flicks Death Trance suffers from excessive CGI use but fortunately every time there is a “normal” action scene the movie is pure gold. The different martial arts showcased in the movie were done more cleverly than in many multimillion productions. This movie is also a nice social test. If you don’t get this movie, you’re probably a boring fuck. It’s rare to see films that are as fun as this one. It is mindboggling that Yûji Shimomura hasn’t done much work in the movie business after this masterpiece.

Godzilla (1954): 4.25/5

A dark film with a powerful anti nuclear message that is still relevant today, disguised as a monster movie (the effects are very cheesy) but given what had just passed in Japan at the time (the film was released only 9 years after the dropping of 2 atomic bombs), it must have been very chilling for contemporary audiences. The real enemy is not a big dinosaur, but fear - and even today it's relevant because of the recent nuclear plant accident and earthquake in 2011. A very good and well acted film.

I think the majority of the effects in the first Godzilla are excellent - probably helps they are shrouded in darkness!

I've decided to upgrade to the Criterion BD, on the DVD the picture looked pretty dark and it was sometimes hard to see what was going on.

grim_tales wrote:I've decided to upgrade to the Criterion BD, on the DVD the picture looked pretty dark and it was sometimes hard to see what was going on.

The Criterion BD is dark too mate, I presumed it was intentional to obscure shortcomings in the effects. I liked the effects apart from Godzilla's face, they could have done better than that

The movie is almost 60 years old, what do you expect people?

Xenon wrote:The movie is almost 60 years old, what do you expect people?

Facial design that doesn't look funny? What has the year of the film got to do with that?

The face on the glove puppet looks different to the suit's face. They could never seem to get them to match! The only effect overall that struck me as rubbish was the fire engines - any sense of scale is lost by the models having people riding on the sides that are not there in the live action footage!

Lust, Caution (2007) - 3/5

Overly long (could have done without the first section because we then go 4 years previous to it, and return to it again) and not quite what it could have been.

Ang Lee is one of the most overrated Director of recent times!!

I Saw the Devil (2010): 4/5

Really dark and disturbing in places and hard to watch, so not sure I want to see this again in a hurry. Well played revenge thriller however, about a detective hunting down the sadistic killer of his beautiful wife, looking at how far one person can go and the lines inevitably blur between justice/revenge and good/evil as the detective starts to become like the monster he is persuing to try to catch him. Very good film though.

i've only liked one Korean movie ..Shiri...the others ( not many admittedly) have been banal at best

saltysam wrote:i've only liked one Korean movie ..Shiri...the others ( not many admittedly) have been banal at best

And Shiri wasn't?

Check out "Friend", Sam. Brilliant!

Shiri's great, it's one of my fave action films. Which ones have you seen Sam?

I've not seen many, the ones I can remember are: Shiri, My Sassy Girl, Il Mare, Failan, Musa: The Warrior (both cuts, I prefer the shorter one), Bichunmoo, Oldboy, Whispering Corridors. Which are all from 1998 to 2001.

All except for Whispering Corridors are very good. There are a handful more but not many. I've got the Korean both cuts Sympathy for Lady Vengeance DVD, Tale of Two Sisters DVD, Taegukgi: Brotherhood but haven't got around to watching it. Taegukgi is the newest of that lot from 2004, which gives an idea of the last Korean film I bought.

Since solely buying blu-rays I pretty much only buy UK blu-rays nowadays. They're "generally" the same as ones abroad (unlike the old days of DVDs) and USA/Asian blu-rays often cost much more (my main driving force). Which discounts many new Hong Kong and Korean movies. I used to buy loads of those cheap Hong Kong DVDs of Chinese/Korean films but Hong Kong blu-rays are still oddly expensive.

Which are the "must see" recent Korean films on UK blu-ray? Thanks.

I've not seen that many Korean movies but the best one I saw was the last as it happens (The Man from Nowhere). I picked up the Premier Asia DVD of Typhoon so that's next on my to view list.

I didn't know Premier Asia had released that. It must've been one of their last.

DVD has a 2007 Copyright.

I saw The Man from Nowhere too, very good film

March Comes in Like a Lion (Japan, 1991) - 2.5/5
- http://sketchesofcinema.wordpress.com/2 ... ke-a-lion/

Outlaw Cop (Japan, 1976) – 2.5/5
A hard boiled ex-cop on a mission of vengeance, with Yoshio Harada in the title role. A typical late 70’s action film, very much in the same cannon as Yusaku Matsuda’s genre output some years later, but with higher production values. The man chase takes the Sapporo-badass to Tokyo, Osaka, Kyushu, and half dozen other locations around Japan. While pessimistic to the bone and featuring solid performance by Harada, the film is quite forgettable and lacks truly memorable scenes. On a “positive” note, women are treated with the ever so charming (lack of) respect that was common in the late 70’s Japanese action cinema.

Ghost in the Shell (Japan, 1995) – 4.5/5
Mamoru Oshii sci-fi classic is the Blade Runner of anime. Stylish, atmospheric as hell, and loaded with somewhat clumsy philosophy and nudity that leans towards fan service, it’s pure 90’s anime/cyber punk nostalgia.

grim_tales wrote:I saw The Man from Nowhere too, very good film

I really enjoyed it, too. Great film.