2 Fast 2 Furious: John Singleton

I probably would have given John Singleton's 2 Fast 2 Furious a higher rating if it wasn't so blatant in its ripping off of Rob Cohen's The Fast and the Furious. More than just being a sequel, much of it feels like a straight-up retread of the original movie: Paul Walker goes undercover to take down thieves by posing as an illegal street racer. But the chemistry between Walker and his new partner Tyrese Gibson was sturdy enough to carry the film between its impressive action scenes. Well, the action scenes were mostly impressive. Some of them, particularly the first street racing scene, overused CGI to the point where it felt like we were watching a video game cutscene. But when the action scenes in this film work, they really work. The "scramble" was pure visual poetry. The image of a smoking car jutting out the back of a yacht was delightful. And the sight of a car getting crushed beneath the wheels of a 16-wheeler is one that I won't be forgetting anytime soon.

6/10

The Fast and the Furious: Rob Cohen

[Revisit Review]

The actors in Rob Cohen's The Fast and the Furious get by with more charisma than actual acting talent. Both Vin Diesel and Paul Walker are rather wooden (with the latter delivering most of his lines like he's trying to emote for a high-school play), but they manage to carry their roles competently enough. The action sequences were much more arresting than I remembered them to be. The scene near the end where Diesel & Co. try and rescue a compatriot from a shotgun-wielding truck-driver was downright poetic. And I never get tired of watching cars drive beneath 16-wheelers.

7/10

Here Comes the Groom: Frank Capra

I don't think that Frank Capra's Here Comes the Groom could get made these days. Not because it's particularly offensive or racist or anything, but because its main narrative is kind of skeezy. It focuses on a newspaper reporter played by Bing Crosby who, in an attempt to woo back his once fiancee, adopts two French war orphans and brings them home to the States. After being told that he has only a few days to become legally married before the US government removes the children from his care and returns them to France, Crosby begins to use every trick in the book to manipulate her into marrying him. Of course, this is difficult considering that she has already accepted a marriage proposal from another, more wealthy suitor. Part of Crosby's plan is getting the children emotionally attached to her and vice versa. Listen, I totally understand that in the context of this movie Crosby is a nice, warm-hearted guy. He really does mean well. But this plot still feels gross. It doesn't help that the musical numbers are some of the most jarring and perfunctory that I have encountered in quite some time. None of them cleanly transition from the non-musical scenes. Therefore, each one of them arrives with a resounding, uncomfortable thud. Still, it was nice seeing Louis Armstrong pop up for a bit in one of the first musical numbers. But what was up with the prolonged opera sequence near the beginning? Did it really have to go on for so long?

5/10

Home: Tim Johnson

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-home/53168.

2/10

Get Hard: Etan Cohen

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-get-hard/53139.

3/10

Bwana Devil: Arch Oboler

Arch Oboler’s Bwana Devil is woefully incompetent. And it’s not just woefully incompetent, it’s stunningly racist. And it’s not just stunning racist, it’s boring. This is a film where the White Man must save native Africans from vicious man-eating lions. Of course, first the half-naked African warriors must be literally reduced to tears by the beasts they have literally been trained their entire lives to hunt. I am stunned by how awful this film is. Their night shots aren’t even day-for-night; they’re day-for-day. It incorporates stock footage in ways that would make Roger Corman cringe. There are even moments where the actors perform in front of rear projections of said stock footage. The perfunctory love story doesn’t start until an hour in. Nothing about this film works. It’s bad, bad, bad, bad, BAD.

1/10

Doomed to Die: William Nigh

William Nigh's Doomed to Die was the first Mr. Wong film that I have ever seen. But having seen it, I'm not entirely sure that it even was a Mr. Wong film: the titular character gets barely any screen time. He doesn't even get a proper dramatic entrance. Instead, in his first scene he just sorta wanders onscreen. There really isn't anything remarkable about Doomed to Die. There's a lackluster murder mystery plot and boring, run-of-the-mill cinematography. I was pleasantly surprised by Boris Karloff's performance as Mr. Wong, though. Considering that the film was made in 1940, I was fully expecting the character to be a Fu Manchu-esque grotesquerie. But Karloff brought a lot of quiet dignity to the role. He brought so much quiet dignity that you had to really squint and pay attention or else you'd forget that his character was in the movie in the first place.

5/10

A Girl in Every Port: Howard Hawks

To read this review, go to: http://theblackmaria.org/2015/03/23/b-rolls-howard-hawks-a-girl-in-every-port-1928/.

7/10

Algie, the Miner: Harry Schenck, Edward Warren, Alice Guy-Blaché

Although there may have been two other directors, Algie, the Miner saw Alice Guy-Blaché at the height of her abilities as a filmmaker and as a practitioner of standard Hollywood film grammar. The film tells the story of a foppish man played by Billy Quirk who is given an ultimatum: in order to marry the woman he loves, he must prove himself a man in one year's time. And how would American men in the early 20th century prove their manliness? Go West, of course! So he becomes a miner, abandons his more "girly" mannerisms, saves his employer and friend from alcoholism, becomes a "man," and claims his bride. Gone are the frigid tableaux that dominated Guy-Blaché's earlier films. Although many scenes are done with static shots, there is a good smattering of editing between medium and long shots as well as camera pans. It helps that Quirk gave a funny (yet dated) performance.

The Magician's Alms: Alice Guy-Blaché

In my opinion, Alice Guy-Blaché's The Magician's Alms is one of her best shorts. First off, it features some of her best jump cuts: a magician makes a table, feast, waiter, and cigar appear for a homeless beggar. My favorite jump cut was when he made the aforementioned waiter appear from a tiny doll that he placed on the ground. But what really sold me on this particular short was its moral. After the magician gives the beggar a meal, new clothes, and his youth back, he tests the man by appearing to him as a beggar himself. When he refuses to give alms to the magician, he removes his disguise and takes back all of the gifts he had given him. By including a moral, Guy-Blaché elevated it from a mere spectacle film.

Turn of the Century Surgery: Alice Guy-Blaché

I'm honestly not entirely sure if Alice Guy-Blaché's Turn of the Century Surgery was meant to be a comedy or not. It's a short about a couple of surgeons who chop off a patient's right arm and leg and then re-attach two new ones. First off, they reattach the new limbs with what I assume to be glue. This might be comedic, but considering the title, this may have been sincere speculative science-fiction. But, the first thing that the patient does when he is re-awakened is dance about like a flapper. Maybe the joke was that they re-attached the wrong limbs (maybe the limbs of a female dancer?). But again, this might just be speculative sci-fi. But the biggest clue as to whether or not this film is a comedy is the giant sign looming in the background that says in French and English: "Please Do Not Cry." The jump edits that transition between the actor playing the patient and a large dummy used during the surgery scenes aren't very smooth, but Guy-Blaché gets points for effort.

The Race for the Sausage: Alice Guy-Blaché

Alice Guy-Blaché's The Race for the Sausage might be the pinnacle of the "chase film," that short-lived genre of movies from the very early 20th century that balanced narrative storytelling with delirious spectacle. Perhaps the best known example of the genre is Edwin S. Porter's How a French Nobleman Got a Wife Through the New York Herald Personal Columns (1904). But Guy-Blaché blows that film out of the water with this madcap story of a pooch who pilfers a string of sausages and leads a group of townsfolk on a chase. Unlike the aforementioned Porter film, the interconnected segments of people running in and out of frame do more than just provide the spectacle of people running. Each segment is also a set-up for slapstick. One segment has them smashing over a street-vendor's wares, another has them disrupting a peasant woman with a cart of animals, another has them running through a nice house, and so on and so forth. There's even a running gag that provides a darkly sinister undercurrent to the film: a woman with a baby carriage gets pulled into the chase and knocked over multiple times. And how does that sub-plot end? With the baby carriage getting run over by a train.

The Bricklayers: Alice Guy-Blaché

In just under two minutes, Alice Guy-Blaché manages to predict the likes of the Keystone Cops, Buster Keaton, and the Three Stooges with her 1905 short Les Maçons, translated as "The Bricklayers." Basically, two cops keep interrupting with a group of bricklayers at a construction site and wacky hijinks ensue. The slapstick here, while primitive, is still oddly effective in its timing. In the second half we get two different slapstick bits going on simultaneously as one cop flounders on the ground while the other pursues the bricklayers on their scaffolding. But the best part is when the skinny cop climbs to the top of a ladder only for it to fall backwards. The actor managed to flip the ladder around mid-fall so that he would land on top of it instead of beneath it. Then he dismounts with an impressive somersault. As I said, it isn't hard to see parallels between this moment and the later work of Buster Keaton, particularly the film Cops (1922).

The Birth, the Life and the Death of Christ: Alice Guy-Blaché

For a pre-Griffith, pre-DeMille historical epic, Alice Guy-Blaché's The Birth, the Life and the Death of Christ is impressive. Considering that it was made in 1906, the wide variety of sets, costumes, and onscreen performers is nothing short of remarkable. I counted two segments where camera pans were utilized, perhaps the most noteworthy being during Climbing Golgotha where the camera slowly pans left to track Jesus ascending to his execution spot as he climbs the hill. Even more incredible is the fact that I think that the scene was shot on-location and outdoors. The logistics of organizing the multitude of extras and the camera equipment must have been nothing short of Herculean. Guy-Blaché also uses fade-ins during scenes with angels, such as during The Sleep of Jesus where a choir of heavenly hosts appears and serenades the baby Jesus. The jump cuts from Georges Méliès' A Trip to the Moon (1902) spring to mind in comparison. But I can only imagine that executing a successful fade-in or fade-out was more difficult. What's more, they weren't there just for the sake of spectacle; they were genuine narrative devices. The Birth, the Life and the Death of Christ represents an early use of special effects to veer away from what Tom Gunning referred to as the Cinema of Attractions.

Cannibal Apocalypse: Antonio Margheriti

Every square is a rectangle. But not every rectangle is a square. Likewise, every zombie is a cannibal. But every cannibal isn’t a zombie. The monsters in Antonio Margheriti's Cannibal Apocalypse are referred to as cannibals, but they're really zombies. They eat human flesh and whomever they bite turns into one of them. I suspect they were only called cannibals because the studio wanted to cash in on the cannibal craze. Anyhow, Cannibal Apocalypse is short on coherency but long on style. One of the more interesting aspects is the groovy soundtrack which provides odd, disquieting counterpoints to the gruesome goings-on of the plot. Some of the acting is rather solid. There's a wonderful scene early on where the protagonist tries to negotiate with an old veteran buddy who has become unhinged and barricaded himself in a mall. But for the most part Cannibal Apocalypse is forgettable.

5/10

I Confess: Alfred Hitchcock

[Revisit Review]

To read this review, go to: http://theblackmaria.org/2015/03/17/b-rolls-alfred-hitchcocks-i-confess-1953/.

8/10

The Man from Planet X: Edgar G. Ulmer

Edgar G. Ulmer's The Man from Planet X is a triumph of style over substance. Lord knows there isn't much substance in this film. Ostensibly an alien invasion film (and not just that, but one of those charming films that only really seemed to exist in the 1950s where a single alien arriving in a single spaceship is expected to secure the entire planet earth, subjugate all of humanity, and lay the groundwork for an invasion), it veers into odd Invasion of the Body Snatchers territory in the last act where the unseen foe starts to capture and control members of a community isolated from the outside world. But what the film does have going for it is a solid atmosphere and excellent cinematography courtesy of John L. Russell. The Moors where much of the action takes place are dark, foggy, and ominous. There’s a fantastic shot early in the film in an observatory where the entire screen goes black for a few seconds. It's just a shame that Mr. Ulmer couldn't get a better script to work with.

6/10

Alice: Jan Švankmajer

[Revisit Review]

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/the-film-canon-alice-1988/52385.

9/10

Faust: Jan Švankmajer

I think the thing that I admire most about Jan Švankmajer's Faust is that I haven't figured all of it out. It is a film of endless layers, bottomless complexities. Why the scenes with the impish marionette? Why are marionettes so extensively used in the first place?  What's with all of the seemingly random asides involving bystanders? If I watched this movie a dozen times, there would still probably be nooks and crannies left for me to discover. But unlike most deliberately complex and opaque films, I honestly believe that everything in Faust was put there for a reason. I don't think that he just threw random objects and images at the screen. The centerpiece of the film, in my opinion, was the scene where Faust summoned Mephistopheles with a magic circle. The editing blew my mind. The only magic circle scene that rivals it was the night of temptation in Terence Fisher's The Devil Rides Out (1968).

9/10

They Were Expendable: John Ford

[Revisit Review]

To read this review, go to: http://theblackmaria.org/2015/03/10/b-rolls-they-were-expendable-1945/.

8/10

Little Otik: Jan Švankmajer

I never thought that a movie would ever turn me off of food as a concept. Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972) came close, but the scenes involving food were mercifully few. Jan Švankmajer's Little Otik, on the other hand, assaults the audience with almost nonstop scenes of disgusting food being eaten, chewed, slurped, and cooked. One scene where a young girl bends over her plate and sucks the yolk from her egg almost made me physically nauseous. But it's appropriate, I suppose. After all, this is a movie about consumption. More specifically, an infant made of wood that can't stop eating. I suppose that the film could be interpreted as a metaphor for the anxieties and stresses of parenthood. But I think Švankmajer was more concerned with the motif of eating and consumption. Švankmajer's use of stop-motion animation was down-played in this film, giving me a chance to evaluate his visual language with greater scrutiny. His use of quick, extreme close-ups and sudden camera movements seem to emulate a child's enthusiasm for a new toy or curio. How appropriate, considering the source material.

8/10

Assigned to Danger: Budd Boetticher

Alright, so, I'm starting this review literally less than a minute after I finished watching Budd Boetticher's Assigned to Danger. And I realize that even now I still hardly have any idea what in the hell I just watched. Something about a bank heist gone wrong? An insurance investigator? A wounded gangster holding up in a building with his abused wife? And for some reason the insurance investigator just happens to stumble upon them and manages to defeat them? Am I getting that right? Oh! And what about that part where the untrained (at least I have every reason to believe he was untrained) insurance investigator manages to successfully remove a bullet without the proper medical tools and without killing the patient? What was up with that? Bleagh...these early, nitty-gritty Boetticher movies are beginning to run together...

4/10

Tank Girl: Rachel Talalay

You know what the bitch of it is? There are things about Rachel Talalay's Tank Girl that I actually like. Well, there's one thing: Malcolm McDowell. As silly and preposterous as his character and performance are, he can be legitimately terrifying. There is one scene in particular that really dazzled me where he makes a disgraced general walk across a floor of broken glass before he can humiliate and execute him. Plus I loved his "tube that gets smaller and smaller" torture technique. The animated sequences which homage the original comics aren't half bad, either. It's just the rest of the film that is a chaotic, poorly executed mess. It aims to be an anarchic blending of genres, but the devil-may-care comedy REALLY doesn’t mix with scenes where the heroine is threatened with gang rape. None of the scenes that are supposed to be sexy feel sexy; they feel skeezy and unclean. This is probably due to the fact that many of these "sexy" scenes include the eponymous Tank Girl's best friend, a prepubescent girl, as a bystander.

2/10

Unfinished Business: Ken Scott

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-unfinished-business/51910.

3/10

Last Action Hero: John McTiernan

One of the best criticisms I've heard of John McTiernan's Last Action Hero was that it felt like a 2+ hour Saturday Night Live sketch. And that's only partially true. The first 30-40 minutes feel like an extended SNL sketch. And quite frankly, they are the weakest. They rely on approximately one joke: action movies are CRAZY, yo! But once the second act gets rolling it develops its own identity and becomes a surprisingly well-crafted action movie. The scene involving Schwarzenegger and a corpse, a nerve gas bomb, a funeral, and a crane holds up to this day. But what really shocked me was how cynical and intense the film could get. Charles Dance gives an astounding performance and his "experiment" to see if the real world works like the movie one is legitimately chilling. The line where Schwarzenegger admits that he's never really talked to a woman before does more to deconstruct the action movie protagonist stereotype than anything else in the movie. Is Last Action Hero perfect? No. But there are enough good things about it for me to consider it a quality movie.

7/10

Forty Guns: Samuel Fuller

Forty Guns has some of Samuel Fuller's most daring and risky cinematography. It's obvious that he was awed by the possibilities of wide-screen cinematography and that he took every chance possible to show it off: bold compositions and impressive tracking shots dominate almost every scene. His use of tracking shots are particularly notable, especially one amazing scene where the camera starts with a bird's-eye view of a couple of lovers necking in a barn before rolling down to floor level. And yet the story doesn't manage to match the film's intense imagery. I didn't buy Barbara Stanwyck's character arc which began with her as a powerful landowner and ended with her as the protagonist's squeeze. The pathos just seemed perfunctory. Stanwyck also doesn't get enough screen-time to be properly nasty and vindictive. That's not to say that Forty Guns is a bad movie. But knowing Fuller, I'm surprised that it wasn't a lot better.

7/10

Antichrist: Lars von Trier

[Revisit Review]

Of all of the gruesome, disturbing, gory moments in Lars von Trier's Antichrist, the one that disturbs me the most is the short scene where Charlotte Gainsbourg forces the wrong shoes onto her child's feet. This is something that I think many people misunderstand about Antichrist: it's a gory film, but it's first and foremost a violent film; the gore is a natural extension of the story, but not the story's ultimate goal. It's also a heart-stoppingly beautiful film, too. But who cares! Blood and gore and pulverized testicles!

9/10

Fourteen Hours: Henry Hathaway

There's a famous anecdote which says that Federico Fellini was inspired to cast Richard Basehart for his role as the Fool in La Strada (1954) after seeing his performance in Henry Hathaway's Fourteen Hours, a gripping drama-thriller about a man who spends fourteen hours contemplating suicide on the ledge of a New York City hotel and creates a media circus. The film is remarkable and rivals the work of Billy Wilder in its contemptuous, cynical examination of how the public reacts to the spectacle of a man threatening to kill himself. In a curious move, it also features a number of brief vignettes of bystanders whose lives are changed by the events that they witness, including scenes featuring Grace Kelly in her cinematic debut. But I opened this film discussing Basehart's performance and I feel I should return to it. It is absolutely flawless. And yet, I find myself being drawn to a different performance as the one which I consider to be the most memorable: Paul Douglas as Charlie Dunnigan, a street cop who becomes the first responder to the crisis and eventually Basehart's confidant and friend. His performance is remarkable: restrained yet punctuated with intense emotional outbursts. We truly get the sense that he is a no-nonsense blue-collar joe with a big heart who is in way over his head. I've been sitting on this movie for months, waiting to get through a queue of foreign movies before I returned to good ol' Hollywood. And let me tell you...Fourteen Hours was worth the wait.

8/10

The Lazarus Effect: David Gelb

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-the-lazarus-effect/51545.

5/10

Walkabout: Nicolas Roeg

[Revisit Review]

Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout is one of those blessed few films that can literally change the way you look at the world. Roeg's cinematography, his sensational use of intellectual montage, and his themes of what binds and divides the human species make Walkabout not just a film, but an experience. I have to say, though, I don't remember the film being so damned melancholy. But that's a good thing. Walkabout is an adventure and its ending should be treated as one: with sublime remembrances and pained memories of chances taken and not taken.

10/10

The Heroic Ones: Chang Cheh

A lot of credit must be given to director Chang Cheh for managing to juggle 13 principle characters in his 1970 martial arts epic (and considering the size and scale of the story and production, the term "epic" is appropriate and not just an adjective) The Heroic Ones. The group fight scenes are fantastic: chaotic and bloody; busy yet not crowded or cluttered. You would think that watching one or two fighters go up against 10+ foes simultaneously would get boring after a while. But it doesn't. The Heroic Ones also scratched a very peculiar itch I have for kung fu films: it highlights a minority culture that doesn't get much (or any) exposure outside of China. In this case it was the Shatuo people, a northern tribe of sinicized Turks who seized great political power in the 9th and 10th centuries. Because of the nature of the narrative (which concerns Chinese political struggles and uprisings), it isn't able to explore the idea of the Chinese frontier like King Hu's Dragon Gate Inn (1967). And though it is briefly mentioned, the idea of Chinese prejudice against their powerful northern neighbors doesn't play an important part in the story. Oh well...review the movie you have, not the movie you want.

In May of 2018 I wrote a proper piece on this film here:

https://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/121077/film-canon-the-heroic-ones-1970/ 

8/10

L'Age d'Or: Luis Buñuel

[Revisit Review]

I'm giving Luis Buñuel's L'Age d'Or a 7/10 ranking for the same reason that I gave one to Béla Tarr's Sátántangó (1994): I don't know if I can give a score to such an experimental movie. Of course, I wouldn't hesitate to give Un Chien Andalou (1929) a 10/10 score. But that's because it had a fundamental impact on both the surrealist movement and the cinema itself. L'Age d'Or feels like a retread of ground that was covered more thoroughly (and succinctly) in Un Chien Andalou. The anti-clericalism and focus on human sexuality was certainly more pronounced in L'Age d'Or, but I feel like Buñuel was just using the same tools he used in his earlier film. I can't say that he pioneered anything new with it. Still, L'Age d'Or is an important piece of cinematic history and its surrealistic techniques, though recycled, are interesting enough to warrant a 7/10 placeholder score.

7/10

Last Hurrah for Chivalry: John Woo

The great tragedy of John Woo's Last Hurrah for Chivalry is that its storytelling can't match its action scenes. For such an early movie, it's astonishing to see how in-control Woo was with his fight choreography. The group sword fight scenes, particularly the ones at the start and end of the film, are especially astonishing due to their size. Framing them like they were scenes out of one of the musicals that Woo grew up watching and loving, they are filmed largely in medium-long shots with long(ish) unbroken takes. I've rarely seen a martial arts film where the fighting looked so much like dancing. The individual villains in the third act have some of the most iconic and memorable fighting styles outside of the Five Deadly Venoms, particularly the Sleeping Buddha, a swordsman whose skills are unsurpassable...as long as he is asleep. He is now on the short list alongside Long Armed Devil from Chang Cheh's One-Armed Swordsman (1967) and the yoga master from Jimmy Wang's Master of the Flying Guillotine (1976) as one of my all-time favorite kung fu antagonists. But the central narrative about deception and shifting allegiances wasn't handled properly. By the one hour mark I had completely lost track of the story and who was fighting or not fighting whom and why (although I had mostly figured the story out again in time for the last act).

7/10

Gandahar: René Laloux

Comparison's between René Laloux's Gandahar and Fantastic Planet (1973) are perhaps inevitable. Both are cerebral animated science-fiction films full of strange art, strange worlds, and even stranger creatures. But Gandahar is a more traditional narrative epic: it follows a Chosen Hero going on a Quest to Save the World. And while the character and creature designs in Gandahar are more creative and extreme, it is the Draags' home planet from Fantastic Planet that feels more, well, alien. Fantastic Planet felt like a story that took place on a completely different world while Gandahar feels like it takes place in an exaggerated, fantastical version of our own. The choppy, minimalistic animation style also didn't lend itself well to the climactic battle scenes. And even worse, the film completely loses steam during the third act. Gandahar is a fascinating experience. But it is also a lacking one.

6/10

The Triplets of Belleville: Sylvain Chomet

[Revisit Review]

Sylvain Chomet's The Triplets of Belleville is one of the most human animated films that I have ever seen. This is due in no small part to the designs which transform even the most insignificant characters into exaggerated grotesques. In a strange way, this embraces and emphasizes the characters' humanity. The pantomimed storytelling was a brilliant touch that makes the film even more memorable than it would have been if it had used dialogue. And whatta soundtrack!

8/10

McFarland, USA: Niki Caro

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-mcfarland-usa/50820.

7/10

Hot Tub Time Machine 2: Steve Pink

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-hot-tub-time-machine-2/50781.

2/10

A Better Tomorrow 2: John Woo

A Better Tomorrow 2 is like if John Woo wanted to do an over-the-top tribute to John Woo. It takes everything that Woo did in the first film and amps it up to the nth degree: the obsession with honor and loyalty, the theme of redemption, over-the-top violence, and, of course, Chow Yun-fat being awesome. The last shoot-out is one of my favorite Woo sequences. And considering his pedigree, that is saying something. How can I not love a shoot-out that involves what I assume to be a samurai sword?  But what really tickles me pink is the film's conception of America: everybody is either armed to the hilt, a violent asshole, or a violent asshole armed to the hilt. The fried rice scene is pure gleeful lunacy. I don't know if any other actor other than Chow Yun-fat could have pulled it off. I also loved how the film dropped all pretense of having Ti Lung as the star: even though he's a "supporting character" this is Chow Yun-fat's film. He has the best scenes, the best lines, and the best action beats. And the bit during the final shoot-out where he repeatedly underestimates the power of his bombs and grenades was just adorable.

7/10

A Better Tomorrow: John Woo

[Revisit Review]

Though John Woo would go on to perfect the heroic bloodshed genre with such films as The Killer (1989) and Hard Boiled (1992), A Better Tomorrow has an undeniable power. It has a simple earnestness (aided in no small part by the wonderful soundtrack that sounds almost like Nino Rota and Ennio Morricone had a Hong Kong love-child) and a fierce style that make it delightful even in its heavier moments. But unlike his later films, A Better Tomorrow doesn't feel like an action movie, but a very intense drama broken up with the occasional action scene.

8/10

The Black Raven: Sam Newfield

Sam Newfield's The Black Raven would make a good stage play. Not "good" as in "of high quality." But "good" as in "of sufficiently engaging yet vapid quality that it would successfully distract the dinner-theater audience members from their lukewarm plates of spaghetti." Almost the entire film takes place in the eponymous Black Raven, a spooky hotel near the US-Canada border. One by one a host of crooks, suspicious ne'er-do-wells, and not-so-innocent bystanders file into its lobby during a vicious thunderstorm. Throw in a murder and a satchel full of stolen money and you have a passable mystery film. And that's what The Black Raven is: passable. It's not memorable, not exceptional, and not even that good. But it's passable.

5/10

Killer Mermaid: Milan Todorovic

Milan Todorovic's Killer Mermaid is another one of those films that leaves the viewer with nothing but questions. For instance, why would you take a traumatized woman with a crippling fear of water on vacation...to an island? Why does the film's ominous musical stings sound like the theme to The X-Files? Why did they think that they could get away with creature effects that look like they were purchased from a Spencer Gifts? Why the obsession with Moby Dick? Why did I expect anything different from a movie where one of the producers was the catering company? And why, oh why, did such a terrible, generic movie have such incredible, beautiful cinematography? I'm not kidding: Dimitrije Jokovic's HDCAM cinematography, especially his exteriors, was fantastic. It's like if Sven Nykvist did the cinematography for a Herschell Gordon Lewis splatter film.

3/10

Fog Island: Terry O. Morse

Terry O. Morse's Fog Island has a familiar pulp narrative: a mentally unstable man invites his enemies to a secluded mansion where he plans to kill them off one-by-one via a series of ironic traps. To the film's credit, Ira H. Morgan's cinematography is excellent: noir-esque lighting turns the mansion into a chiaroscuro nightmare with isolated light sources illuminating only fractions of rooms and backgrounds. But the tragedy is that Morse didn't have the directorial chops to pull off all of the intrigue that the story demands. What should have been a brooding, suspenseful thriller becomes bland and pedestrian with static visual language, an unoriginal screenplay, forgettable performances, and even more forgettable characters (although I did like that one "psychic" woman). It doesn't help that by the last 20 minutes I had no idea what was going on. Here's a free tip: 2- and 3-shots are not the best technique for framing important pieces of expository dialogue. They make the viewer's eyes wander. And eventually, they begin to glaze over.

4/10

One Mysterious Night: Budd Boetticher

So...this is how the mighty Budd Boetticher got his start in feature-length pictures, eh? I have to say that it was a lot better than some of the other debut films I've seen (The Delinquents [1957], anyone?). Clocking in at only an hour, One Mysterious Night was the seventh film in the Columbia Pictures Boston Blackie series. While nothing special, the plot was serviceable and the characters pleasing enough. Mercifully, none of the comedic relief roles were grating or annoying. One Mysterious Night has about as much in common with the rest of Boetticher's filmography as Les affaires publiques (1934) has with that of Robert Bresson. But it's still worth watching for Boetticher aficionados. Plus, it introduced me to a great new character that I'm eager to explore. This Boston Blackie is an ex-con who helps the police and a master of disguise? I'm sold!

6/10

When the Wind Blows: Jimmy Murakami

Jimmy Murakami's When the Wind Blows is the anti-Grave of the Fireflies. Isao Takahata's film is a masterpiece, make no mistake. But it takes every single opportunity to tug on the audience's heartstrings. It uses every single emotionally manipulative tactic imaginable. But the characters in When the Wind Blows approach the destructive nature of war with a stiff upper lip. They try their damndest to downplay and ignore the devastation caused by the nuclear apocalypse. And because of this, their suffering and eventual demise hit harder than the death of Setsuko, at least in my opinion. When the Wind Blows is one long, unendurable tragedy that hurts the very soul long before the bomb is actually dropped (the announcement of which, I might add, comes at exactly the 30 minute mark). The film made me reflect on my own mortality and through this made me feel like I was dying along with the protagonists. In my eyes, it is the greatest film about nuclear weapons ever made.

9/10

The Killer: John Woo

[Revisit Review]

To read, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/the-film-canon-the-killer-1989/49721.

10/10

The Illusionist: Sylvain Chomet

[Revisit Review]

The first time I watched Sylvain Chomet's The Illusionist I was a blubbering, crying mess barely ten minutes into it. This time around, I managed to keep myself from weeping. But it was no easy task. The Illusionist is one of the most deft blends of comedy and tragedy since Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush (1925). But whereas Chaplin veered more towards comedy, Chomet veered more towards tragedy. The Illusionist is one of the best films about father-daughter relationships that I have ever seen as well as a devastating reflection on modernity in the entertainment industry. The scenes with the suicidal clown and the alcoholic ventriloquist...I tremble just thinking about them. The animation is a wonder to behold, magnificently capturing the body language and visual style of Jacques Tati. One last thing: without realizing it, I serendipitously discovered that I re-watched The Illusionist on the fourth anniversary of my first viewing of the film on February 10, 2011. Maybe there's a bit of magic in this film after all...

9/10

Kirikou and the Sorceress: Michel Ocelot

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/the-film-canon-kirikou-and-the-sorceress-1998/48731.

9/10

Dragon Gate Inn: King Hu

If the storytelling had been a bit tighter, I would have had no issue making King Hu's Dragon Gate Inn the second kung fu film that I have ever given a 10/10 rating to. But as it stands, the story can be a bit hard to follow. More than once I found myself asking who certain characters were and why they were fighting each other. But it never got to the point where I was frustrated. Everything else about the film works. The fights aren't just great, they are given incredible dramatic weight. I loved seeing a kung fu film set near China's frontier, a setting that I still feel is criminally underused. The scenery and buildings all seem dusty, sun-bleached, washed out. In many ways this feels like a Western, especially considering the fact that the film revolves around a small group of individuals in a single building being accosted by armed outsiders (Rio Bravo [1959] anyone?). This is a siege movie masquerading as a kung fu epic that channels American (and Italian) Westerns. It is, in a word, exquisite.

Check it out! I wrote a piece about this movie!
http://theretroset.com/dragon-inn-and-out/ 

9/10

One-Armed Swordsman: Chang Cheh

Chang Cheh's One-Armed Swordsman is proof that a mediocre movie can be redeemed by an excellent antagonist. He’s one of the best evil-for-the-sake-of-being-evil villains I’ve ever come across. His name is Long Armed Devil and to get revenge on a rival sword master he decides to murder all of his disciples and family members using a "sword-lock" that unfairly immobilizes an opponent, thereby allowing them to slice their stomachs open with their other hand. I felt genuine hatred for that bastard: cheating and then laughing as he murdered novice after novice like he was some big shot. He has a great evil laugh, too: a quick series of wide-mouthed bellows as he leans his head towards his back. Of course, one of the film's biggest problems is that his victims keep falling for his "sword-lock" despite the fact that many of them literally see him using it on other people. It's like those characters in Italian zombie movies who never shoot the undead in the head even after being told to. The insipid love triangle sub-plot did little to endear the film to me, as well. But the fight scenes (as repetitive and frustrating as they can be) and Long Armed Devil more than make up for these faults.

7/10

Heroes of the East: Lau Kar Leung

Lau Kar Leung’s Heroes of the East (1978) is a great film...in theory. The central idea is a martial arts fan's dream come true: a showcase of Chinese and Japanese fighting styles going toe-to-toe in a series of grudge matches. The central idea of the film is practically revolutionary considering the anti-Japanese sentiments that usually dominate the wuxia genre: that Japanese martial artists are honorable and highly skilled. And I don't want to under-emphasize how important that is! But I would like to point out something that almost sabotages the film: the Japanese never win a fight. Not even once. If the film wanted to point out that Chinese and Japanese martial artists were equals, having one side dominate the other isn't the way to do it. And quite frankly, some of the fight outcomes are straight-up bullshit. Perhaps the most insane example is when the protagonist defeats a Japanese karate expert...who has presumably trained for his entire life...after spending only a few minutes learning Drunken Kung Fu. And yes, I do mean minutes. And then there's the time when the Japanese judo expert is defeated thanks to the bystanders cheating and sabotaging him with oily rags. Again, the fight scenes are dreams come true. And I adore the idea of mutual respect between Chinese and Japanese fighting traditions. But for equality to be equality, both sides have to be, y'know, EQUAL. Also, I didn't like how the Japanese wife character became essentially irrelevant after the first half. She was the most interesting character in the entire film and she didn't deserve to be shunted into the background.

7/10