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avalyn11
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The Hitman's Bodyguard (2017)
Delightful rapport between the two stars and a bit more intellectual than most action movies
I went to see this as a free preview a week before it was released to theatres. Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Reynolds make a great team. They're very funny together and they maintain that humor throughout the movie. Elodie Yung (RR's love interest) in particular was very believable as the put-upon ex-girlfriend. The direction and cinematography were well-done as well.
I recommend this if you enjoy either of the stars' works or action films in the vein of "2 Guns" or Gerard Butler's recent works.
SLJ is simply on fire here. He appears to be having a wonderful time despite all the chaos surrounding him. RR, while not as much on fire, as such, still manages to make a great had-enough straight man who nevertheless manages to be funny when he can get a word in between SLJ's non-stop one-liners and jokes.
My only issue, which is not a complaint, is that, like almost all other action movies, it's not really believable. The premise isn't even believable. The events in the movie (other than Gary Oldman's scenes - each of which he steals with seemingly impish glee) would never happen in real life.
Other than that, watching this movie is a fine way to spend 2 hours. Would watch again.
Oh, and watch out for the small role played by Selma Hayek. She plays an insane Mexican killer, and the scenes with her cellmate are comedy gold!
Punk'd (2003)
MTV sinks to previously unfathomable depths
While it's true that MTV hasn't produced a decent non-music show since the 1980s, Punk'd takes the cake as the worst show they've ever bothered to air. Igonoring, for the moment, that Ashton Kutcher is an annoying idiot's idiot, the "pranks" that they pull often look like real sting operations or whatever "official impersonation act du-jour" they're pulling this week. Personally, I'd love to see the entire cast and crew arrested and jailed for imitating law enforcement officials.
I was totally ambivalent towards this brain-melter until the subject was Pink, one of my favourite people, so I admittedly have had a bias against it since then. If I was ever the subject of this festering mound of compost, I would sue MTV and the makers of this show within the hour I found out that it was all staged.
Unfortunately, since the whole show is so intellectually devoid, that problems means that it'll be around forever and ever due to the high ratings that corn-fed suburban trash-o-philes that watch it.
The Grudge (2004)
The only movie that has ever succeeded in frightening me
I like to think of myself as a steeled, seasoned horror movie buff. From the tameness of most of the mainstream films (Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, etc.) of the 1980s, to the exploding-zombies/eating-brains Italian fare of the 1970s, to the best/worst of what Japan had to offer since they adopted the horror movie into their cultural identity, I thought I'd seen it all, until I saw The Grudge.
It's really no different than many other horror movies, in that it's really just a ghost story. However, it's told from a vastly different perspective, making a very significant departure from the tired ghost story genre. Though the score kind of spoils some of the scares in advance by getting too caught up in itself, every appearance of Toshio and Kayako made me practically jump out of my skin. No movie has ever actually scared me before, until this one did. Just the way Kayako moves, like a cross between a shambling zombie, a dying fish, and a river of hair, she continually appears to devour her victims (or at least scare them witless) in the most unsettling way imaginable. And the scary part is that there's really nothing unique about it; it just works.
I have seen the "Ju-On" movies, and they were scary enough, but not enough to make me jump, probably due to their relatively modest budgets. However, the American remake of those movies, with an ample SFX budget, really does it justice. Kayako has gone from tight close-up/lots of makeup to fluid CGI movements, though director Shimizu does stick with the traditional approach at times, which is perhaps what drives the Kayako character, making her into a kind of ultimate movie villain, even though she has no lines and appears for the visual fright aspect only.
If you haven't seen the Japanese "Ju-On" movies, you might want to do so before seeing The Grudge, if only to provide a bit more backstory than The Grudge can come up with.
All in all, The Grudge is an excellent movie, far from a clumsy American remake of a well-done Japanese original. It's a good movie to see on a date, especially if you or your date scares easily. If you're like me, you'll be half-expecting Kayako to slither out from a closet, or Toshio to be peering up at you from underneath your desk, for weeks afterwards. I give it 4/5 stars, if only for the non-linear storytelling employed by director/writer Shimizu and cinematographers Ettlin and Yamamoto.
Ginî piggu 2: Chiniku no hana (1985)
Underwhelming
Perhaps it was all the hype among gore movie fans that ruined this movie for me. Perhaps the previously obtained knowledge that the events in the movie are fake ruined it. In any case, it's really not as difficult to watch as others have said it is.
I normally freak out when I see blood in real life, and I have just about no interest in gore movies. I watched this one based on the unbelievable amount of praise I'd read about it. I was expecting to be nauseous, lightheaded, maybe even sick to my stomach while watching this movie.
Instead, I was just bored. It's fairly obvious that the insides of the victim's limbs are made from beef; the dismembered limbs seem kind of floppy, like they're not held together particularly well; real intestines don't look like water balloons; and perhaps most tellingly, a hand dismembered at the wrist would not be able to grip something -- the act of gripping requires the use of muscles in the arm and wrist.
If I'd watched this with no prior knowledge of what I was going to see, it might have had its intended effect. If I'd seen it when it first came out in the 1980s, it would have scared the hell out of me. Otherwise, it's just a Japanese man with bad teeth, playing with special effects models, and reciting lame poetry between each limb-hacking session.
I wasn't even disgusted by this movie -- I was just bored by it. It's so obviously fake that it should only be watched when studying the evolution of special effects.
Mitchell (1975)
100% guaranteed to turn you off
(Note: This review applies only to the MST3K version -- I haven't seen the uncut version.)
What can be said about Joe Don Baker as Mitchell? He's fat, he's tactless, he's greasy, he walks with a pronounced gait. As the title character, he generally just wanders around from scene to scene, stumbling onto various situations that really have no cohesion and don't seem to be at all related. For example, that stuff at the beginning with John Saxon killing a burglar -- about halfway through the film, Saxon appears again and attempts to bribe Mitchell, but we don't see him again after that, or hear about what became of him.
Along the way, Mitchell stuffs his face, sleeps with Linda Evans (ugh!), arrests Linda Evans, gets into the most unhurried car chase scene ever filmed, loses a battle of wits to a little boy, and at the end of it all, he shoots Martin Balsam for no apparent reason.
Mitchell is kind of funny, though, in that unintentional 1970s kind of way. All the cars are gigantic land yachts; everyone has that goofy 1970s shaggy hair and awkwardly cut clothing; and all the police roles are of the extremely stereotypical 1960s-70s type (think "Dragnet" and "Adam 12" for inspiration); and on top of that there isn't one single likable character in the whole thing. Martin Balsam's character is bearable, mostly because he's just boring ("I say you're a bad butler!"), as opposed to being actively irritating like every other cast member. Everyone else, from the police chief, to the burglar, to John Saxon's date, to the old Mafia don, to that weird guy that appears seemingly for the sole purpose of being shot by Mitchell, to the old lady in the patsy heroin delivery car, to the Andy Kaufman lookalike thug, to all of Mitchell's co-workers, everyone in this movie is as annoying as a car alarm and as bland as an infomercial.
If you're after character or plot development, you won't find any traces of it here. If not for Joel and the Bots, I doubt very many people would be able to endure this movie, without being incited to acts of senseless violence. I heartily recommend the MST3K version, though. :)