Nagasawa Marina said that her dream is to appear on Star Wars movie. OK. I'm gonna support her. If it's true that new Star Wars Trilogy is based on KOTOR, I hope she'll play Bastila Shan, the main heroine. But the problem is that if she gains international attention as she's appearing on Star Wars, people would google her and found her photos in bikini or even nude. Is it good or bad for her? Note: I dunno if she has acting career.
Along with a cold, I caught I, Tonya and The Shape of Water over my holiday break from work. I thought both were very good movies.
IT (2017) i never seen the old one but this version looks good..after knew that clown wasn't a ghost i'm not scared anymore
Spoiler Zodiac (2007) -- don't want my wife to have to get up and clean the house after dropping our houseguests off at the airport ( )... so this'll be short and sweet: I was bored out of my friggin' mind by this movie... but since it was praised by many a source I respect, watched to the credits. Bad idea (IMO)... If you're already a fan of the Zodiac serial killings' timeline and characters, this movie'll be entertaining... but man did it waste some formidable acting talent. Pre-Iron-Man Robert Downey Jr as Paul Avery, giving us a taste of basically himself... something Marvel'd use to illustrate Tony Stark (another RDJr catharsis role) a year later. Jake Gyllenhaal as Robert Graysmith, author of the eponymous book about the killings which featured his role leading in this movie. I neither diss Jake's work nor laud it... liked Donnie Darko and Source Code, even though the latter's premise needles my plot-hole troll. But I felt his character in this movie was deeply irritating, even if intentional. Haven't seen Nightcrawler yet (hmm... Iron Man and Nightcrawler in the same movie lol), since its one of his most lauded roles, think seeing it would be polite before passing judgement on this one; I'll add that unknown into my numerical rating. Plod... irritate... plod... irritate. Chloë Sevigny's Melanie seemed another wasted opportunity. Brian Cox? Nope. Dermot Mulroney? Nada. Adam Goldberg? You get it. Near the end, the credits were a welcome sight, as the climax/denouement was as unfulfilling as riding a rollercoaster based on Florida's topography. Saving grace: Mark Ruffalo's Dave Toschi. At least he wasn't wasted in this half-baked, underdone Good Grief Wellington of a movie. 5/10
Star Wars Episode 8 1.5/5 Spoiler Sorry I tried...but really not a big fan of this route they are dragging with. >__> And people said that Jar Jar Binks was an annoying character but I find that the CG bird creature even 100 times more annoying looool After watching the movie with my friends, I literally didn't comment a word and went straight back home to watch some STU shows and laugh away all the disappointments from the movie.
Spoiler Infinity Chamber (2017) -- I must admit right off the bat... once I'd heard the premise of this movie, I was going to commit to watching it... The scifi thriller is my favorite movie genre. Add a puzzle and psychological elements, and I'm there. Obviously this isn't a genre known for reliable box-office home runs -- the granddaddy of them all, '2001: A Space Odyssey', and its equally-influential offspring 'Blade Runner', were both flops -- but both also found their audiences long after leaving the cinema, to become two of the most influential movies ever made. 'Infinity Chamber' has a premise which closely mirrors that of another indie film I've rated recently, 'OtherLife' -- an escape the room trope. I feel room-escape puzzles (a la the old Flash/Shockwave web games) tap into something deep and primal, yet also disorient in the way they don't rush you forward with threats, like a side-scroller or FPS game... you can literally sit motionless and do nothing in most of them -- and nothing happens. That adds to the sense of isolation and helplessness, even if you're allowed to do exactly what you want to do -- nothing. Now add puzzles with often eerie and unsettling implications and inability to decipher them... and I often have had to scramble for the walkthrough after hours with the hard ones, like surfacing for air. This movie has that sort of effect on you. Pundits at the L.A. Times and others call it 'lost potential' and 'way too long'... but I didn't feel anything like that as I watched Frank Lerner try to figure out why he's imprisoned. It felt very organic, if a bit hard to follow at times... but then it feels like you're going through the same disorientation as in Frank's dilemma. The ending wraps up the loose ends nicely, while leaving two fundamental questions unanswered. Like the best scifi movies, there are a lot of '-explained' articles written about what happens. What I was most intrigued about in the plot however, is the systematic, software-efficient gaslighting of a prisoner, and the blurring of lines separating the real-time experience of reality, from sanitized, 1000K-rendered memorized past experience... then what someone would do, if those memories were to become altered transparently, without your knowledge. How could someone figure out, how to trap you in your own mind? Brilliantly-done, if a bit long. 9/10
Spoiler Full Metal Jacket (1987) -- I've seen this movie enough times to quote minutes of its dialogue -- I am ex-military, after all, and this is a mythically-relevant film to those whom service to country has been fulfilled (at least in the Army and Marine Corps, ground pounders)... but those are only really certain parts, in a certain context. It's on NF, so decided to watch it end-to-end again, and see if the long time elapsed since last end-to-end viewing (probably 2003 or so) changed anything about its impact, or how it makes me feel. There's no way to predict how a film you know the beats to by heart, will change upon actual, paid-attention viewing, years later. It happened with several films I cherish as favorites -- Blade Runner (the latest DCs of which only made me appreciate the original film more, vs. the strange and frustratingly-embellished 2017 version); The Terminator & T2: Judgement Day; 2001: A Space Odyssey; Saving Private Ryan, Inception, and a handful more. You just notice different things, use the experience of the intervening years transparently to create new feelings about different aspects of the film you never noticed before. FMJ's heart and soul to me will always be its boot camp sequence -- when I went through myself at Fort Jackson, SC a million years ago, this is the one bit of 'the world' we were able to get treated to. Eight weeks of almost total isolation, breaking-down, and rebuilding by the numbers... watching a movie all of us knew about and could relate to, was like winning the lottery for us tired, sore, but motivated bastards. There was a great number of us -- me included -- who'd only shot maybe .22LR or had a buddy whose father was ex-mil, and gave us a try on an old .357 Python or vintage M1 carbine... contrasted against the boys from the sticks who'd had firearms training since childhood (mostly from the South -- some things never change). So us noobs definitely had our work cut out for us trying to live up the standard these HS track stars set for us in the eyes of the drill instructors. That's made abundantly clear with FMJ's brilliant R. Lee Ermey, who was an actual Corps drill instructor hired late for the film -- and saved it, IMO. Spoiler For you Millennials who've never served -- never taken apart a firearm, cleaned it and oiled it, then assembled it into a working weapon again; never had someone an inch from your face shouting at you top of their lungs, spittle hitting your face, to climb a rickety wooden tower made of telephone poles 60 ft straight up hand-over-hand, then slide down a single rope back down; march 20 miles over endless hills with a 60 lb rucksack in 100 degF-90% humidity weather; crawl through 8" of sawdust 100 yds with half-sticks of dynamite going off next to you and bullets whizzing 18" above your ass... until you actually did it, then thrived anyway despite it... this kind of movie may be anathema to your life. You have the right -- and may not've had a choice. But whatever you do -- please do not disparage those who've served, or try to downplay their experiences, knowledge, values, or related present physical/mental hardships, of service to flag and country. If you don't want to know what it's like firsthand or don't agree with the way we express our values, fine -- we served so you have the right to do such things. But don't assume we're beneath you, within reason of course. That said, there are no shortage of vets that'll respond to such provocation unreasonably, immediately, and in no uncertain terms. So please, show active-duty and vets some respect, whatever your politics may be. I will do the same for yours... within reason. Where I tend to see differences over time, are in the actual combat sequences. This time I heard the dialogue not as a 15-yr-younger adult, but as Now Me. And there are lines that totally went over my head (or just were assumed to be one thing and brushed aside) 15 years ago, and those that gored into my chest with meaning back then, but mean something different now. "So waitaminit stormy -- yeah okay you're a vet, yeah you like this movie... but how do I grasp what you're talking about, when I don't have anything close to the timeline you lived through? How do you convey an ex-military perspective to those whom military service is alien at best?" The best I can do is use general & non-military-specific terms, which I promise to do. However, since this movie predominantly has fans in the para- and ex-/active-military community... if I can't convey exactly how it's changed clearly enough, I do sincerely apologize. I've recently watched the Stanley Kubrick documentary 'S is for Stanley', by and of his personal assistant of 30+ years, Emilio D'Alessandro. Also seen both Kubrick and FMJ documentaries on DVD in their entirety. So details about the film and how it was made, aren't what hit me right out of the gate. It's how much the pejoratives used in the movie, really bother me now. Really. It's a measure of how much the American sociopolitical landscape's changed over 15 yrs (as well as my own). None of these things actually bothered me then... now, the bald-faced gauche of such words and phrases spoken out loud, are jarring and disruptive... like smelling cigarette smoke when you've recently had half a lung removed. I was also much more repulsed by the characterization of the Vietnamese (however accurate they may've once been). I do parse that against the fact that it was wartime (which in reality brings out the worst in people far more than the best, sadly), and Kubrick did want this to be a dark, gritty, non-happy-ending sort of movie. I suppose this is a sign my present self knows a fair bit more of bright, hopeful, affirmative touchpoints in life, to contrast and afford such feelings -- which is something to take to heart. I've also met many Vietnamese friends in my time, all of whom to a man/woman want to keep the present the present, and not pick at the scars of the past. Ironically... the generation that would've fought -- and escaped -- the draft in the Vietnam era... are now running the country. So in a way, some of the repugnant aspects of this movie to Now Me, are more relevant than ever... as apparently the party currently in power want to make such pejoratives, characterizations, and themes the standard again, reversing all the progress we've made. And in a single phrase, I answer Fuck That... and it warms my heart. I hope that's not too military a term. Lastly there are some details 15-yrs-ago-Me, wanting to skip to the good parts... didn't really see the gravity of until now. I see parallels between the gaslighting so popular with 45, and the crap political (in a superior/subordinate context) games that some of the dialogue so clearly makes. Since I'm so familiar with the infantile games of the alt-right these days (funny coming from an ex-mil gun enthusiast and former roadracer, I suppose... but also a minority, LGBT one ) that when I hear them in the movie, they stick up like bright purple thumbs. So, a rating. These new insights not only helped contextualize the film in the era it was made... but also helped me realize how much I've changed (didn't think I had... but you're always a poor judge of how much you change; others can sense delta much better). It also made the film a bit more profound, & made me realize how timeless this film is. 8/10
Jumanji: welcome to the jungle. I was one of those hardcore fans that were more than skeptical about this sequel but, against all odds, I enjoyed it. It isn't perfect, of course, but it's still far more 'fresh' than I expected. 8/10
Last month I watched a bunch of films on the plane going to California. The three that stood out to me.... Your Name (Kimi no Na Wa) With all the hype, I really wanted to see what this this was all about. IN a nutshell, two high school students, one a boy and the other a girl, seem to switch bodies on alternate days when they fall asleep. First of all, I loved the realism of the animation. I thought it was a beautifully animated film, and I love the twist in the story where you realize what's really going on. I found myself emotionally invested in the characters, and their ultimate fate. I like it so much that I re-watched it on the flight back to Tokyo. 9/10 Gintama I loved the idea of seeing Ogori Shun playing a goofy character based on an anime. This film actually has a lot of familiar faces, Suda Masaki, Yasuda Ken, Okada Masaki, Nasagawa Masami, Arai Hirofumi, Domoto Tsuyoshi, (from KinKi Kids) even Hayami Akari (Momoclo Blue) But what really got me excited was Hashimoto Kanna, who I am a huge fan of, and have even met an a couple of occasions. (I have met Hayami Akari as well when she was in Momoclo) For the most part, I enjoyed the film. I thought it was somewhat overlong for the type of film it was (140 minutes) and I thought the end dragged on a bit. I probably would have enjoyed it more if I was more familiar with the source material. On the other hand, I thought that this was a tour de force performance for Kanna. Her character was dopey, yet clever. She was sloppy, but cute. Most of all, she was soooo funny. The scene where she is making fun of her rival for having "dirty panties" was hysterical. They even pay homage to the whole "Once in 10,000 year idol" bit. If you are a fan of any of these actors, (and I am) it is worth the watch. Not the greatest film, but fun enough. 7/10 if the video does not show watch the video here if the video does not show watch the video here In This Corner of the World (Kono Sekai no Katasumi ni) I was wondering what Nounen Rena was up to since Amachan. I didn't even know she changed her professional name to "Non." This anime is a semi-historical drama that takes place in Hiroshima leading up to the dropping of the atomic bomb, and its aftermath. It's about a young girl named Suzu, and how she adapts to help her family survive during wartime Japan. It was slow at times (I dozed off at one point) but very interesting. And surprisingly it had a few graphic scenes. (The horrors of war and famine) Much different from Your Name, but I appreciate that in Japan animated films touch on serious subjects like this, and are not necessarily "Children's Movies." In any case, I enjoyed listening to Nounen Rena perform. 7/10 if the video does not show watch the video here
Star wars: the last Jedi It was about time! 9/10 Spoiler: spoiler I really enjoyed this one. There are still things I didn't like (a pilot alone destroying all the turrets of a dreadnought (really?), Leia surviving in space, Kylo Ren deceiving his master that easily, the number of rebels that first filled the trenches but in the end were so few that they fit in the Falcon...) but I felt the energy of the old movies for the first time in a long time...
New police story. I'm used to Jackie's comedies, so this film was a little shock. It's a bit macabre, but I liked it. 8.5/10
Spoiler Dunkirk -- I'm an unabashed fan of Chris Nolan's films since Memento -- his study of temporal non-linearity and spare use of embellishment for its own sake (the anti-Bay/Snyder), lend his films an unmistakeable feel that's both new and cutting-edge, yet rooted deeply in traditional, classic techniques. If I were to compare him to his counterpart in electronic music, it'd be Squarepusher (Tom Jenkinson, not surprisingly another boundary-stretching artist from England). A devoted student of classical technique, used in laterally-thought, untrod soil... My first viewing of this movie was so outside expectations (even for Nolan), that it felt irritatingly terse. Being aware this is probably due to some shortcoming of my own (and that Nolan doesn't insult his audience's intelligence by dumbing down the material if at all possible)... I watched it a second time. This is when a lot of the pieces began to fill out and match others' lobes and notches, properly... The use of time overlap and flashback was (at least to me) too steep a device to use so early in the film, as war movies I've come to hold as the gold standard for Second World War stories (Saving Private Ryan, at tippy-top), use a much more linear & solemn but beginning-to-end tone, peppered with the panic and violence of combat -- much like war itself. However, the second time I could appreciate another aspect of combat, under-appreciated by those who dramatize it for the screen -- how the tension of war and the individual experiences of those facing death, removes any sense of time's linearity -- your memories become a collection of moments, packaged in horror, fear, anguish, desolation -- time ceases to exist. That's what this film expertly fit together with micron precision... those who live through the brutal triages of combat, bring back emotions, made tellable by contexts... not the other way round. Other than some rather unrealistic decisions made by some of the characters (I appreciate Nolan's sparse use of blood and gore, even if WWII was full of it... but can we fire our guns when the enemy is in the crosshairs, please?), and lack of character development, probably due to prioritizing the short run-time... this was a very nice story of human decency and bravery under impossible circumstances, told in a new way, to address an ancient truth of combat. His decisions to use more physical props rather than CG, is also a great plus in my book (a la Tom Jenkinson's bass in his music). 9/10
Spoiler The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring -- Seventeen years. It's been 17 years since this movie's name was on cinema marquees everywhere in the States, disappearing over me as I went to see it with mates (as well as my future mate). Meaning this movie is older than quite a few posters here, reading this review. Time flies... What does TFOTR feel like, watching it on streaming technology impossible by standards of its time, its two other trilogy-mate films taking the Oscars by storm, setting new standards for fantasy film profitability, props and sfx quality, tasteful use of CG, and efficiently filming a whole trilogy at once and debuting them all a year apart? Both behind the camera and on-screen, this trilogy set the pace and moved the bar up, in some cases irreversibly, for others to top with even more high-quality genius... That said... watching this in the highest resolution possible, I did see some artifacts of an era without the kind of camera tech we enjoy today (RED Epic, Arri Alexa, Sony CineAlta), but I'll chalk this up to watching a seemingly endless barrage of Marvel movies, filmed at higher and higher resolutions, for the past ten years. Also, having seen the excellent DVD sets and their exhaustive and surgical decomposition of every scene and prop, makes watching the movie almost anti-climactic -- an experience I can liken to, was my awe and reverence for sportbikes and riding them with skill... until I became a mechanic and racer. When you name a demon, it loses its power -- similarly, when I learn all of the not-necessarily-awesome things that make up every awesome thing... it loses that mystique with every step of progress into competence. Not that you can't love an awesome thing like wrenching or racing... but the mystery in it that may sustain your enthusiasm, will in no uncertain fashion, go away. Never meet your heroes? Exactly... TFOTR was like that, having not watched this sprawling, near-4-hr movie end-to-end since the last edition of the DVD set debuted (2006?). As the least favorite of three films, it already had a knock on its pate... but does have one of my favorite scenes in the trilogy: the introduction of Liv Tyler's Arwen, when Liv Tyler was at her most spectacular... recalling her devotion to Aragorn in the garden at Rivendell. The accompanying music, Enya's 'Aníron', is perfect for the scene in a way few movies have managed before or since. But the rest of the movie has a strange issue with pacing I can't put my finger on... it's as if either I'm actually beginning to get used to the ADHD-like pacing in modern movies... or more likely, the editors of this movie simply wanted to showcase so much stuff they'd slaved long months to achieve with so much groundbreaking sfx and prop work -- understandable, but palpable. This pacing issue improves despite the similar runtimes of the other two movies, so think it may just be a first-run thing on such a gargantuan project. In all, 17 years... after breaking the mold in so many areas, dissecting itself and embedding into the minds of moviegoers so deeply, it approaches parody in pop culture, a la the Harry Potter effect the leads in that franchise know well. I almost felt a pre-emptive fatigue, just seeing this movie finally (finally!) making it onto the slab at Netflix... what, with their Amazon-like throw-money-at-it strategy, NF-funded projects are now not quite living up to quality standards -- oops! -- wasn't surprised this site is only posting up D-movies nowadays. But back to TFOTR... while some of those feelings of enthusiasm and wonder were dredged back up from under layers of subsequent experience... it was a somewhat bittersweet reunion (which, full disclosure... is a flavor I tend to prefer -- or have just gotten used to -- at my age). Still can't wait for LOTR: TTT on NF, to pick up that shard of enthusiasm and run with it... if they ever stop making crap homebrew. 6/10
Spoiler Blade Runner 2049 -- the original Blade Runner has to be in the top 3, if not the tippy-top, sci-fi movies of all time in my mind. That doesn't automatically ingratiate this movie into that list, much the contrary... Cyberpunk became a bona fide obsession for me, during the early '90s. Already had an established sci-fi bent as a kiddo, definitely helped by notable anime & tokusatsu subbed in the States during my childhood, like Raideen, Mazinger/Z, Denjin Zaboga, Ultraman/Ultra 7, Geta Robo/Z, Kikaider/01/ Hakkaider, Kamen Rider/V3. Later came Star Blazers and Robotech, the US versions of Uchuu Senkan Yamato and Macross/Southern Cross/Mospeada, which also built upon that. A natural inclination to tinker with things mechanical (probably inherited from my sugar mill factory foreman grandfather) set me on a path to appreciate things related to cyberpunk, eventually culminating in worshipping OG Blade Runner. However, I didn't like OG BR in the cinema -- I'd actually seen it in its theatrical run. Like many, felt its band-aided voiceover, sloppy editing and way-ahead-of-its-time subject matter-for-US-'bawdy'-ences (esp in Hawaii), put this preteen kid off. Thought it was kinda cool, but didn't really elevate it until another milestone was passed -- my introduction in 1992, to the growing wave of cyberpunk manga titles coming from Japan. Appleseed. Koukaku Kidoutai (Ghost in the Shell). Gunnm (Battle Angel Alita). Bubblegum Crisis. Dirty Pair. Patlabor. And as if to seal my fate with an elegant wax stamp... also about this time, came across a writer named William Gibson, and his seminal hit Neuromancer... the one title you must read to have any tenuous grasp of what cyberpunk is. I lived in comic book stores at the time, esp the Crystal Mall in D.C., waiting for Dark Horse's graphic novelization of cutting-edge manga volumes... Many ways to become an aficionado of cyberpunk... from the classic sci-fi route (Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Wells, Heinlein, Herbert), the modern sci-fi route (Pratchett, Guin, Niven, Dick), or like me, the cyberpunk route (Gibson, Stephenson, Sterling, Rucker, Cadigan). Then there's TV sci-fi (Trek TOS, ARK2, TNG, Buck Rogers, Battlestar Galactica) and countless movies, well-done (2001: A Space Odyssey, Terminator/T2) and not (Battle Beyond the Stars, They Live, The Hidden)... But back to OG BR. This was a horrendous nightmare of worst-case scenario events that could ever happen on a film shoot... won't go into them as it's already a long post. But suffice to say no one on set was particularly invested in its success. However, enough casting, improvisation, cinematography, soundtrack, and physical fx magic came together, in the right era at the right time, for me 10 yrs later to be completely engrossed in its near-perfection. A pre-Jedi Harrison Ford is just accelerating up his trajectory to super-stardom, pre-batshit angelic Sean Young is beyond iconic as Rachel, and newcomer Daryl Hannah, as well as most of the supporting cast, had iconic parts -- an almost Spielbergian use of the Odyssean-cast-of-characters trope that director most recently (and obviously) used in another sci-fi blockbuster, Minority Report. Less the slop and plot holes and sappy ending, this movie sticks in your mind -- a trait of the best movies, never mind sci-fi. Now on to 2049, and I'll keep it brief: this new movie suffers from a glaring lack of the same things that made OG BR great. It's very heavy-handed, plot lines lead nowhere, character development is spotty at best, and the supporting cast don't matter to you by the time they're dead. There are more loose plot threads in this film than a cat scratch post made of terry cloth. Villeneuve concentrates so much on one plot line, that the trouble he takes putting other characters into that plot line, seem more arbitrary than an organic consequence of the route the plotline takes. And will someone please stop casting Jared Leto in movies -- his pompous bluster of Wallace was plastic, graceless, and took me out of the movie to get oxygen, as he sucked that bad. While that one plotline was engrossing enough to follow and did make for an okay movie (less almost everything else wrong with it)... it wasn't a sequel to OG BR. Not by a long shot. *sigh* Hollywood again screws up another property I cherish from my teens and early 20s. Ghost in the Shell was a fiasco of fake-it-till-you-make-it overpromising schadenfreude word-salad hype from its director. They're still arguing the marketability of Evangelion here (*cringe*), as well as Cameron's Battle Angel. Stop trying to 'improve' or 'new twist' iconic cyberpunk properties, Hollywood. I liked Villeneuve's other movies... but he should've stayed a million miles away from BR. If Ridley doesn't want to do it... then move on. Don't try to improve what doesn't need these tedious sticky fumblings in the back seat of cars. 4/10
Surprisingly no one rated Black Panther here. It's the most hyping movie of early 2018. Mine: 4.8/5. It's true that it's one of the best Marvel Movies. Pacific Rim: Uprising is gonna be next movie I'm gonna watch.
Black Panther. I really liked it. It was...different and I enjoyed the whole film. 9.5/10 PS1: one of the things I liked was the characters. For example, the 'bad guy' is far more than 'I want to be rich and powerful'. And I'm happy the character of Everett K. Ross has got so much weigh in the plot. PS2: the post-credits scenes stink, specially the second one...we waited to watch them, but it was a waste of time... PS3: isn't it funny? Bilbo and Gollum again in the same film...
Tomb raider. I confess I barely remember Jolie's films but this one really reminded me of the game. However, it's true that sometimes I felt like 'are you kidding?'. 7.5/10 Spoiler: Spoiler Yes, there are some things that are quite unbelievable (and I'm not talking of slaves that sometimes looked like they had gone to the barber the previous day ). For example, it's too hard to believe Lara dashing through the jungle killing people with perfect aimed arrows only hours later she had been hit hard, had fallen from a waterfall and had been seriously injured in her stomach... Another impossible thing is Lara jumping over the chasm at the end...I can't buy that. The film was very thrilling, anyway...
Tomb Raider 7/10 Not worth a re-watch. Too many things that didn't quite feel right even if I'm usually quite good at suspending my disbelief while watching movies.
