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Umi ga kikoeru (1993)
Ocean Waves looks nice, but the story's quite dull.
This seems like a bit of a hidden oddity within the Studio Ghibli canon, and part of me was hoping watching it would feel like unearthing a hidden gem.
I can say this much positively about it: I'm surprised it was a TV movie, because animation-wise, this is of a really high quality for the time period it was made and released during. It looks crisp and visually pleasing for 99% of the runtime, and animation shortcuts are rarely noticeable (you could probably find a few more if you were on the look out for them specifically).
Ocean Waves actually falters most when it comes to the story and the characters, which was surprising, because that's not something you need a movie budget to get right, traditionally. I came in thinking it would be compelling enough narratively but lesser visually, and in the end, Ocean Waves was actually surprisingly good presentation-wise but also disappointingly weak everything else-wise.
At least it's not too long. I don't reject watching it. But, at the same time, I don't think it can be recommended to anyone who's not a Studio Chibli completionist.
Wong ga jin si (1986)
A solid action flick.
Michelle Yeoh is very cool. That could be the review; that's enough to make Royal Warriors worth watching.
It's a bit of an oddity as a film, starting out with a dance number and then becoming surprisingly dark, not to mention jarringly violent. It's that kind of hard-edged martial arts movie where the punches and collisions look genuinely painful, and some of the stunts look remarkably dangerous. There are certain parts that aren't entirely believable (an overuse of sped-up footage at the end, and a mat poorly disguised as pavement early on), but most of the action's done really well.
I think it's a movie that hits the ground running to the point where it runs out of steam a little by the final act. It flounders a bit to get to the final action sequence, but once it gets there, it does work.
Some of the melodramatic elements didn't always work for me either, but the core of what's needed for a Hong Kong action movie to shine is intact here, and so I mostly liked Royal Warriors. Michelle Yeoh is very good, and it's interesting seeing a young Hiroyuki Sanada here too, given both he and Yeoh have seen their popularity reach new heights (at least internationally) during the early 2010s. They're both very good here, too.
The Killer Elite (1975)
Not bad
The Killer Elite might be the rare film that peaks with its opening titles, which sees Sam Peckinpah at his most brazen/sassy:
"This film is a work of fiction. There is no company called Communications Integrity NOR ComTeg and the thought the C. I. A. Might employ such an organization for any purpose is, of course, preposterous."
I liked the cast here, given The Killer Elite features greats like James Caan, Robert Duvall, and Burt Young. Sam Peckinpah made much better and more balanced films than this, but The Killer Elite still packs a mild punch. It never quite takes off or soars, but I thought it was decent. The 1970s was definitely a very different time though- the dudes all look like regular dudes, and the film does things like take its time showing Caan's character's physical recovery early on (it's basically the whole first act).
A very '70s flick, it might well go without saying.
Succession: Lifeboats (2018)
An improvement
The third episode of Succession is an improvement over the second. Like the first (also good) episode of the show, it's still a decent way away from great, but you can feel the drama kicking up a notch. Seeing Kendall and Roman in the workplace for most of the episode is a lot of fun, and this episode is kind of notorious for having two very gross/upsetting scenes in it. I think they're necessary, but they were awkward the first time I watched the show, and somehow worse the second time, even though I knew they were coming.
Logan's "return" at the episode's end is also great. You can feel things tighten when he has that scene near the end, even though he can't talk much and has to choose his words carefully. It's that growing conflict throughout the first season that eventually makes Succession become truly great; the second half of season 1 is awesome, and I'm extra excited to revisit those episodes.
Succession: Sh*t Show at the F**k Factory (2018)
If a show's worst episode is still this good, you know it's doing something right.
The second episode of Succession is one of the rare times in the series where things might feel a little too slow. I remember it being pretty good the first time around, but the second time was a little patience-testing in a way I didn't feel with rewatching the first episode.
All the main characters are confined to a hospital for the whole episode, which might work better if we knew them and the dynamics were a little more vibrant. But there's still a lot of groundwork and side characters to be established here, and it's all just a bit too static and repetitive.
The ending of the episode is great, and there are a handful of funny moments throughout. Logan's presence is missed, but the writing and all the other performances are solid. Not up to the show's soon-to-be-established standard, but as far as a "growing pains" episode early in a show's run goes, this is still pretty excellent, all things considered.
Ride in the Whirlwind (1966)
Competent enough
I'm going to be cursed with always getting this mixed up with The Shooting, given both came out in 1966, shared a couple of stars, and had the same director. The Shooting is one I watched ages ago and thought was just fine, for what it was (a small-scale/low-budget Western). I think I avoided Ride in the Whirlwind for a while because I just assumed I would feel the same way about it as The Shooting.
But even if I did, the worst-case scenario was going to be coming away from the film shrugging a little and thinking "Eh, it could've been much worse, for what it was." And yeah/eh, Ride in the Whirlwind could've been much worse, for what it was.
It's a bit bleh, but looks polished considering it was made on the cheap and made side by side with The Shooting. It might be worth a cautious watch for fans of Jack Nicholson, because he has a fairly prominent role here and was also credited with writing this film, but I did think his performance was quite far below his usual standards. He was okay I guess, just not the usual great. And the film as a whole was also just okay.
Leng xue shi san ying (1978)
A minor classic for the martial arts genre.
This was really strong. It's common to get to a martial arts movie and think "the story was a bit whatever, but the action was great," but I got quite invested in the story here. I think it was well-told and less predictable than expected, with a neat structure and two main characters who mostly wanted the same things (a form of revenge), and formed an uneasy alliance that was sometimes mysterious, and occasionally at risk of being challenged.
The action was all super satisfying, too. Typically great choreography, over-the-top death scenes, and some really inventive weapons that made things interesting, particularly in the final fight.
This might even be one of the better Shaw Brothers movies. Definitely an underrated one, in any event.
Hung kuen dai see (1984)
Surprisingly good
I'm going to be writing about lesser-known martial arts movies for work soon, and though I've seen enough to talk about, I thought it gave me a good excuse to catch up on a few lesser-known ones I've yet to see. I've been pretty happy with the whole run so far, seeing a couple of cool Jackie Chan films, King Hu's The Fate of Lee Khan, and now a couple of Shaw Brothers movies tonight: Human Lantern and then Opium and the Kung Fu Master.
The latter was particularly good. Not perfect, and not quite top-tier Shaw Brothers, but quite good, and I'm glad to say it qualifies as under-appreciated. It has a little bit of an odd tone at first, feeling like a goofy comedy with some occasional martial arts, having more laughs than your average "competing martial arts schools" plotline.
But then opium works its way into the plot, one school wants to corrupt the town of another school by making them all addicts, and the drug is shown to start ruining lives. It doesn't handle addiction with care or in a particularly believable way, but maybe points for effort? It does end up pushing the film into more serious territory, and while that was jarring, I think it was for the best. The action - while good before - started to get even more exciting once the stakes were raised.
And it's always cool to see two well-known Shaw Brothers lead actors - Ti Lung and Chen Kuan-Tai, who were also both in Human Lanterns - face off against each other. I always forget how good of a bad guy the latter made, and when they go head-to-head, things get awesome.
It's a bit of a messy film, and some wild tonal shifts are contained within, but I generally liked what it was going for, mostly liked what the story ended up being, and found the action very entertaining.
Ren pi deng long (1982)
Pretty wild stuff.
Human Lanterns goes for broke and mostly works. It's gonzo stuff, being a cross between a martial arts movie and a murder-mystery about a deranged serial killer, all taking place hundreds of years ago (possibly longer).
I like it when a Shaw Brothers movie does something out of left field. This isn't my favorite example of the studio doing that, but it certainly has its moments - enough of them for this to end up being pretty decent. There's enough here that's fun to make it worth a watch for martial arts fans after something different.
It was let down a little, I felt, by being uneven. It committed to different levels of crazy at different points, and feels all-over-the-place as a result. That sense of chaos can work when it's pushed far enough often enough in a movie like this, but I don't feel like Human Lanterns always did the best job at this.
Still, for having some silly horror mixed in with some violent fight scenes, there was a good amount here that proved enjoyable. The kind of thing that gets a caution recommendation, for fans of this style of odd film, at least.
Suspiria (1977)
Very good
Suspiria was the first Dario Argento movie I watched, almost exactly 11 years ago to the day (Letterboxd tells me it was 16 May 2013). In the years since, I've seen most of his filmography, and I think this is the first film of his I've ever rewatched. It was kind of an unfair place to start, because I think it's his best by a decent margin. I'm not the biggest fan of him, but he is an interesting filmmaker, without a doubt, and Suspiria just feels like it offers the most of what makes him compelling.
It's all about how it looks and how it sounds. The use of color and all the sets/locations used are just amazing. It does capture the more nonsensical and indecipherable aspects of nightmares, to some extent, and in that sense, I think it has the capacity to still be decently unnerving. And the score by Goblin just never gets old. That theme repeats so much, but it's continually reworked and always used purposefully, and so I was never bothered by how much the same distinctive passages of music are used.
Suspiria is sluggish in parts, but does fly by when compared to the 2018 version (not exactly a remake). That one I also like, but felt a bit too long. 1977's Suspiria is tight enough so that the slower parts never feel too slow. There are nitpicks to be had surrounding the way it's written, with the characters and dialogue feeling rudimentary, but it's all in the style. It's big, loud, and in-your-face enough that Suspiria works purely based on how it looks, sounds, and feels, the last of those especially so during the more intense scenes. It's a fun horror film, and I think mostly deserves its classic status.
The Love Witch (2016)
Intentionally campy or incompetent/sluggish; witch is it?
The Love Witch was the first movie I saw for a double feature tonight, and I'd never heard of it before. Was mostly interested in the double feature for the second movie, 1977's Suspiria, but The Love Witch was definitely intriguing... But maybe a little frustrating and tedious as it went along, too.
It's distinctive, with memorable visuals and influences taken from all sorts of interesting places. It throws a lot of stuff into a blender and makes you drink it all.
It's good at first, but I think it wore out its welcome a bit in the second half. At two hours, it felt like a bit much, because there's a certain amount of repetition to the story. I feel like the pacing is sluggish, but possibly by design. Lots of lingering shots and scenes that go on about a minute or two longer than they need to, in a way that's either incompetent filmmaking or a wink to a certain kind of campy/old-school film. I'd lean towards guessing it was the latter, but it still got on my nerves throughout the second hour.
Much of this felt like a joke I wasn't quite in on. I can appreciate some of what it was saying, got a few chuckles from it, and the style/visuals on offer, but The Love Witch did prove a bit exhausting by the end of it all. I think there's a very good 80 to 90-minute movie in there somewhere.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)
Ups and downs
I've got some real mixed feelings about this one. Those past three movies were surprisingly good, and I was always skeptical about a fourth. The best thing I can say about the film (besides the special effects side of things) is that it does set itself a considerable amount of time later than the past three. How long isn't exactly clear, but it's good that these are new characters, and new conflicts, more or less.
As for the visuals, as mentioned before, it's all pretty good. It's hard to fault much by way of visual effects here, though there is a certain wow factor lacking. It's all very proficient and largely convincing, but it doesn't pop the way both the Avatar movies so far have, for example. Maybe you need a great filmmaker to know what to do with those visuals. The basics here are strong, because you do generally believe what you're seeing, but creatively, things aren't very inspired, especially when it comes to the action.
It's also too slow/long. To go back to Avatar, I didn't mind that last one being three hours. I wasn't bothered by the length of Babylon or Killers of the Flower Moon. But Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes - on top of having too long a title - is too long a movie, I'd say by 40 to 50 minutes. It needed to be cut down, and it needed to introduce its main villain sooner.
There was only one character I really liked here, and that character wasn't in the movie enough. The protagonist is fine, the main villain is fine (once he finally shows up), and the way future sequels were set up was also fine. It's a fine movie. It's not great. It was too long. But there was enough here to prevent me from calling it bad... though it lacked a certain something to make it feel essential. I'm unsure whether I'll see the next one, to be honest.
Tsubaki Sanjûrô (1962)
One of Kurosawa's most entertaining films.
Back in the day, I watched Sanjuro (1962) before Yojimbo (1961), simply because I found a copy of the former before the latter (though the former's the latter by year of release, and the latter's the former by the same metric).
Anyway, Toshiro Mifune plays basically the same character in both, but otherwise, they're not too connected. Yojimbo's got more of a focus on suspense, and is pretty light on action. Sanjuro has a few more fight scenes - it's a real joy to watch Mifune just mow down guys in the big ones. It's also a funnier film, and possibly the most comedic of any Akira Kurosawa samurai movie. Seven Samurai's also funny in parts, but gets deathly serious during other scenes. Sanjuro stays pretty lightweight and breezy throughout, all things considered.
Despite it being more action-focused and shorter in runtime, I still feel like Yojimbo is the tighter film. It's got the more engaging and satisfying story, too, with Sanjuro really just being about the prolonged rescue of an old man. Still, it's a joy to watch the main character deceive his way through a bunch of scenarios, and then resort to chopping down a dozen guys whenever his words can't get him out of a situation.
Mifune is in his comfort zone, and is fantastic. Having seen most of Kurosawa's other films since first watching this, I also appreciate the performances of Tatsuya Nakadai and Takashi Shimura much more here. The former I've always liked for how chameleonic he is, but Shimura is also so different here to how he is in Seven Samurai; just embodies a rather minor character in a completely different way, just looking and seeming like someone entirely different. Mifune could also do this, but I do like him a lot when he's being very Mifune, and he's at his Mifuniest here.
Overall, Sanjuro is better than I remembered, and almost as good as Yojimbo. A slightly slow second act aside, it's very entertaining.
Il rosso segno della follia (1970)
Pretty pure Giallo
Even for a Giallo movie, Hatchet for the Honeymoon is pretty lightweight and simple, but it has what it needs to get by. There's atmosphere, it looks and sounds good, and it doesn't waste too much time, owing to its runtime clocking in at under 90 minutes.
This is only the second film directed by Mario Bava that I've ever seen. He's a big name and quite revered, but I have wondered if his style is really for me. It could also be that I'm not the biggest Giallo fan, because I only tend to like the movies that fans of the genre love. Those that are considered good, I think are mostly decent, and so on.
Anyway, this isn't bad. It mostly gets the job done. Not essential, but there's enough good stuff for it to be an okay watch.
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
Over-hated
Hadn't seen this since it was in cinemas. I know a lot of people seem to really hate it, and maybe some of those people took some time to turn on it, but I still like it quite a lot.
I like a lot of the contentious creative decisions it makes. I like its attempts to get a little darker and more psychological, and the way the main characters are at each other's throats just as much as - or maybe more than - they work together. Sequences like the party early on and then the hulkbuster scene are top-tier, and Ultron's a fun villain. And, in hindsight, I like the way this hints at a bunch of phase 3 movies.
I had a dream once where I was watching Age of Ultron alone in a living room, and people constantly kept coming into the room, walking behind me and laughing at the fact I was enjoying it. Maybe admitting I still like it in 2024 will make people laugh at me now, but whatever- I still like it in 2024 (that being said, I will agree with the general consensus that it's the weakest of the four Avengers movies so far, though).
Jung on zo (1993)
Messy fun
If Michael Mann took too much Adderall and then collaborated with Jackie Chan, you'd get something a bit like Crime Story.
It's fun and frantic for about an hour of its runtime, and then undeniably loses the plot. I was starting to turn on it all as a result, but then the final 15 to 20 minutes come in and do a pretty good job at redeeming things.
I'd liken it to a slightly more intense and not quite as good Police Story. It scratches the same itch and does contain enough compelling Jackie Chan action scenes and stunts to make it worthy of checking out for fans of the actor.
It's not nearly one of his best 1990s efforts, and it's got some prominent flaws that have to be overlooked to some extent, but I had a blast with most of the action. There's quite a lot of it, and it's of a generally high quality.
Ying chun ge zhi Fengbo (1973)
Pretty good
King Hu is so in his wheelhouse here that The Fate of Lee Khan is sure to provoke feelings of deja vu for anyone who's seen a handful of his greatest hits, but he did this kind of thing undeniably well. There's intrigue and characters all being very shady, mostly confined in a single location that builds suspense, punctuated by brief but satisfying bursts of action throughout, all leading to an inevitably entertaining finale.
But as far as his "deep cuts" go (basically anything that's not Dragon Inn or A Touch of Zen, and even then, those are arguably underrated in the overall scheme of things), this one's good. Some of his more out there films have bored me a little, but this one's solid. Nothing being reinvented and little by way of surprises, but it's a satisfying and well-made martial arts movie nonetheless.
Asagao to Kase-san (2018)
Silly but emotionally honest/authentic.
A sappy and kind of all over the place romantic anime, but it gets it. It's a film that knows exactly what it's doing, and works. I feel like there's something really authentic about depicting young/extreme/overly strong love in such a bombastic way. It's a smart approach, and makes for a film that's best engaged emotionally over all else. Don't think, just feel, and all that.
I also appreciated how it clocked in at under an hour. It's just a straightforward romance story with all the fat cut out, and begins and ends without much by way of nonsense or distraction. You could criticize it for being repetitive and a bit unremarkable narratively, but I liked how it was also straight to the point and certainly successful in conveying some emotional truths. That is sort of what it's like to be in love for the first time, and for that, Kase-san and Morning Glories has value.
Tsuma futari (1967)
A muddled yet sometimes interesting melodrama.
I'm a bit torn about Two Wives, because it feels like it gets a little too complex narratively at some points, but early on, the dialogue feels way too on the nose and obvious. The film feels like it spells certain things out too much (though that could be a result of subtitling; it's hard to know whether or not it's more subtle if you speak Japanese), and then also feels like it rushes a bit, which makes other parts confusing.
Maybe it overextends itself, and the dialogue's blunt to make up for that, but it's also still a decent enough film, even with those flaws. When it's working, it feels moderately successful as a complex and narratively twisty melodrama, and I think the performances are solid. It looks nice, sounds nice, and thankfully isn't too long. I didn't love it from a writing perspective (those flaws come close to tanking the film at points), but Two Wives is still alright at the end of the day.
Xiao quan guai zhao (1979)
Uneven, but some of it's pretty good.
Fearless Hyena continues for about 45 seconds after the main villain is defeated, which is basically an epilogue by martial arts movie standards.
I have always felt like Jackie Chan was really in his element in the 1980s and throughout a good bit of the 1990s, so his late 1970s stuff has never been quite as appealing to me. With Fearless Hyena, I felt about what I was expecting. It's uneven, but the parts that work do admittedly really work, and it's during the better action scenes where you can already see Jackie Chan nearing the height of his powers.
Fearless Hyena is very silly for the first hour or so, and I was with it for a while before getting restless. Then, the tone shifts jarringly, and I felt like the movie lost me even more. Thankfully, in typical martial arts movie style, Fearless Hyena saved the best for last, and the final 15 minutes or so were pretty great; it's basically worth a watch for that whole finale alone, with Chan's physicality being as fun to watch as ever.
It's a lesser-known film for Chan, and one where he was both director and the lead actor. It's competent stuff punctuated by a few sequences of greatness; some brief ones near the beginning and then a lengthy one near the end. It's not his finest hour, by any means, but I had a pretty decent time with it overall.
Blood and Wine (1996)
Blood and Meh
It's fun seeing Jack Nicholson and Michael Caine on screen together, but both are sleepwalking through this film, at least by their standards. Blood and Wine is a bit of a snoozy crime/thriller flick, not really excelling in any areas while also being mildly watchable for most of its runtime.
I come away from it feeling like it was very middle of the road. The only thing that's close to memorable (besides the cast) is the fact that Jack Nicholson's character has a Rasputinian number of violent things happen to him all throughout the film without ever dying. Something about that was kind of funny, because he looks pretty old and kind of frail here.
Rubber's Lover (1996)
I don't know about this one
Look, while there's a lot that could be said about the content of this film, all I'll say is that it was surprising to find it uploaded on YouTube, even if the upload was age-restricted.
I was lucky to even find the time today to watch something feature-length, but I was unlucky that the film I picked was Rubber's Lover. It had been on my watchlist for ages, and it was directed by the filmmaker who did 964 Pinocchio (Shozin Fukui), which is a divisive and confronting film that I ended up appreciating more than I anticipated. I might even feel like calling that one a good movie, in some ways.
I can appreciate Rubber's Lover a little, but not nearly as much. It's stripped down and low-budget as a horror movie, and tries to work within its limitations. To some extent, it works, because I think it kind of sets out what it wanted to do. I more feel that what it wanted to do wasn't enough for something that was an hour and a half long; that or it did actually have loftier aspirations that weren't well explored or communicated.
Option B or C or whatever is, of course, that I'm a dummy, but I think Rubber's Lover was actually a bit dumb instead. I can't muster up hate when it's got the kind of atmosphere it does, and when some of the gross moments are effectively gross, but it all felt a little meandering and maybe even just the tiniest bit lazy, at the end of the day.
Mit mir will niemand spielen (1976)
An unusual Herzog short.
This is another unexpected Werner Herzog short - I've discovered two tonight (it's been too busy a day to watch something feature-length).
No One Will Play with Me is about a bunch of kids, and one of them feels ostracized. Things sort of turn around for him, but there's not really much of a story here, and it does end at a point, kind of anticlimactically.
Still, I appreciate Herzog doing something weird again here (the man is relentless in his pursuit of the cinematically unexpected), and there is some empathy that shines through in this look at bullying and the struggles of being a young kid at school. It might lay it on just a little thick, but it was kind of interesting and I admired the attempt enough to call this one decent overall.
Massnahmen gegen Fanatiker (1969)
Surprisingly hilarious.
Precautions Against Fanatics might represent a young Werner Herzog making fun of the documentary format before being fully established as one of the all-time great documentary filmmakers? I know he'd had a few credits before this one, but it can't have been many. Plus, I tend to associate Herzog's 1960s with short films, and his 1970s with feature films (particularly the likes of Aguirre and Nosferatu).
So this, in a way, feels ahead of its time, or perhaps ahead of Herzog's time. It's so stupid and one-note, but it made me laugh a good deal of the time, being a mockumentary about a bunch of very unusual people who work at a horse track that somehow functions, despite their strange qualities. It's either a proto-documentary parody or a depiction of a very funny and surreal purgatory.
At the end of almost every mock interview, an old guy enters out of nowhere and antagonizes the interviewee, the cameraman, or both... it was sometimes hard to tell, but funny in any event. There's just this chaotic and stupid energy to the whole thing that was infectious, but even at just 11 minutes, I feel like it started to wear out its welcome a tad in the final moments.
For anyone who wants to see Werner Herzog trying to replicate Monty Python (this is the best descriptor I can come up with; the 11-minute short film that is Precautions Against Fanatics fried my brain), this is the film for you!
Nani kuwanu kao (2003)
Snoozy slice of life drama.
The title doesn't lie, because not much happens.
Like Nothing Happened sees Ryusuke Hamaguchi doing his slow-paced, narrative-light thing. While I've liked some of his recent feature films, I've also struggled with his earlier shorts, even though there are clear similarities.
Additionally, the shorts are - obviously - shorter, but I seem to notice and take issue with the slow pace more when things aren't as long. Seems paradoxical, but that's been my experience.
I have to cut Like Nothing Happened some slack for being made when Hamaguchi was so young, and for clearly having modest aspirations as a film. It follows a bunch of ordinary people around and sure, feels like it captures their lives to some extent.
But there's just so little here to grab onto for me. I struggled, but can't entirely hate it, because of its inherent nature and its length (there is apparently a 90-something minute version I was happy to avoid - the version I found was just 43 minutes).