|
Snowman_McK posted:Thanks for this. Where should I start with Teruo Ishii? I've never heard of him. The best entry point is probably Blind Woman's Curse, which features an ultra cool Meiko Kaji in her first starring role and is an easy movie to find. The story is purposefully incoherent, like all of Ishii's stuff from this era, but full of great imagery and weird humor. But if you want to start with the heavy batshit stuff, Horrors of Malformed Men is a hypnotic fever dream of sleaze. Ishii also made a slightly more conventional action movie called Female Yakuza Tale (a sequel to Sex and Fury) starring Reiko Ike as the naked knife wielding badass. All of these movies are cheaply made, sleazy and kinda funny, and wildly inventive.
|
#
?
May 14, 2021 12:14
|
|
man
|
|
| # ? May 27, 2024 11:22 |
|
|
Seems good timing for Accented Cinema to throw out this overview of sleaze: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVZ3duVORbo I have simultaneously seen far too many, but also far too few of these.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2021 13:54
|
|
|
Snowman_McK posted:
Lithgow’s had a real funny career, he bounced back and forth between murderous creeps and goofy dopes for a long time. He was DePalma’s house heavy for a while, he was the lead villain in Footloose, Buckaroo Banzai and Cliffhanger. Third Rock unfortunately mostly killed that off, except for Dexter
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2021 14:15
|
|
|
ynohtna posted:Seems good timing for Accented Cinema to throw out this overview of sleaze: I wish these movies were easily available, I'm just salivating at the thought of all of these!
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2021 14:21
|
|
|
ynohtna posted:Hell yeah, definitely! its funny to think that John Lithgow used to just be the bad guy in movies. Tho he's a fantastic serial killer/assassin in Blow Out.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2021 15:38
|
|
|
married but discreet posted:I wish these movies were easily available, I'm just salivating at the thought of all of these! If anyone wants to seek these out, you'd be surprised how many of them are on YouTube in their entirety or even available on Prime. People will upload them in full to adult video sites also. NSFW of course https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac8WLeTCqPs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JSUviKREgs Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 15:47 on May 14, 2021 |
|
#
?
May 14, 2021 15:39
|
|
|
David D. Davidson posted:Yakuza Apocalypse is like Miike wrote the script for a yakuza movie then dropped some acid beginning work on the second draft. sounds like Point Blank, one of the greatest movies of all time.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2021 15:41
|
|
|
Neo Rasa posted:If anyone wants to seek these out, several of them are on YouTube in their entirety or even available on Prime. and judging by the clips shown, most of them have had a HD release at some point. I bought a region free bluray player years ago, best hundred bucks I ever spent.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2021 15:46
|
|
|
Shageletic posted:sounds like Point Blank, one of the greatest movies of all time. if you havent seen yakuza apoc you should. every 20 minutes or so it shifts gears in a very unpredictable way
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2021 18:24
|
|
|
mastershakeman posted:if you havent seen yakuza apoc you should. every 20 minutes or so it shifts gears in a very unpredictable way I loved the guy who played Mad Dog in the Raid wandering round as a student or hitchiker, but that's his cover and he's actually a badass. They pull the 'here he is, meek and unassuming...oh poo poo he just beat everyone up' switcharoo like four times. Also, they don't tie him to the plot till quite late, so there seems little reason for this student/hitchiker to be kicking the poo poo out of everyone for most of the movie. Yakuza Apocalypse is...interesting. I don't know if I'd say it's good, but it's definitely worth a watch.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2021 05:01
|
|
|
Snowman_McK posted:I don't know if I'd say it's good, but it's definitely worth a watch. You could put this quote at the top of every Miike DVD cover tbh.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2021 08:34
|
|
|
NoneMoreNegative posted:You could put this quote at the top of every Miike DVD cover tbh. Except 13 Assassins, which is just straight up really good.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2021 09:45
|
|
|
Also, Audition.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2021 09:52
|
|
|
Neo Rasa posted:If anyone wants to seek these out, you'd be surprised how many of them are on YouTube in their entirety or even available on Prime. People will upload them in full to adult video sites also. Herman Yau's CAT III movies with Anthony Wong are all insanely nasty and not for the faint of heart, but also lowkey absurd funny. Taxi Hunter it's probably the weakest of the three Yau made with Wong, but it features some peak Hong Kong fashion courtesy of the late great Ng Man-tat  This is probably the most normal outfit he has in this film. It's also on Youtube but with chinese subtitles only.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2021 14:22
|
|
|
So having just spent the weekend working on a future extreme bloodsport video game for the Toronto Game Jam, I decided to celebrate by watching the original Rollerball (1975) for the first time since I was a kid, and man, that movie does not hold up. The fake sport of Rollerball is super well thought out and realized, you can totally understand how it works, the arena looks like a real rink, the hits look brutal and exciting. Basically, any time they're actually playing Rollerball, the movie kicks rear end. The problem is that the movie's over 2 hours long and they play for maybe 20 minutes of the total screentime. Now that could be forgivable if the rest of the movie was entertaining in other ways, but it's really, really not. The whole plot completely focuses on a single character, Jonathan, the star player of the Houston team, played by James Caan, and the fact that he's mysteriously being asked to retire. There's endless scenes of his boring rear end talking to people about this and wondering why they're asking him to retire, investigating the reason he's being asked to retire, asking people directly why he's being asked to retire, etc., peppered with half-hearted attempts at world building. It's all very dull and drawn out and shot in the most boring way imaginable. The few tidbits of worldbuilding we get are somewhat interesting taken on their own, but they're mostly revealed by bored-looking people mumbling dialogue while shot at a completely motionless flat angle, which makes it very unexciting. The movie also seems to have the Demolition Man problem where people are completely unaware of very recent history that they should remember from just living through it. The big problem with this movie is encapsulated in the reveal we eventually get of the reason the evil corporate overlords want Jonathan to retire: They're afraid a player doing so well for so long will encourage people to have individuality, which will mess up their control of society. Now, putting aside the fact that having celebrities achieve artificial success to give people the illusion of freedom is a great way to pacify society, this focus on a single character and his problems are the movie's big flaw. This is a team sport, and it should be structured like a classic team sport film, albeit with weird sci fi elements. The team should have a cast of diverse characters we all get to know, including a rookie with a bad attitude (who is technically in the film but gets a single line of dialogue), trying to make it to the championship and learning to get along, and Jonathan being asked to retire should just be a second act complication to the overall story, instead of the only thing anyone cares about. Maybe the corporate overlords don't want the team to win because one of the other overlords wants his country's team to look good this year. Instead we cut to the rest of the team once, maybe twice in the entire movie when they're not on the field, and it's all about Jonathan and his quest for boring individuality. At one point in the movie, Jonathan's best friend and the team's second best player gets brutally attacked on the field, which leaves him a vegetable. This'd hit a lot harder if that character had gotten to be a real character, but there's no time for that. Even the ending of the movie is about our hero scoring a single point all by himself in spite of the other team being given instructions to kill him and an unfair advantage, which isn't nearly as exciting as an ending where the match itself is on the line and that's what motivates him to score the point. I feel like rewatching the remake now, because for all its flaws, I feel like they got the whole "team sport should be about a team" aspect correct. Anyway you can download and play Hateboard 2145 here, I guarantee it's more exciting than this movie. Lurdiak fucked around with this message at 05:23 on May 18, 2021 |
|
|
#
?
May 18, 2021 05:19
|
|
|
Lurdiak posted:So having just spent the weekend working on a future extreme bloodsport video game for the Toronto Game Jam, I decided to celebrate by watching the original Rollerball (1975) for the first time since I was a kid, and man, that movie does not hold up. The fake sport of Rollerball is super well thought out and realized, you can totally understand how it works, the arena looks like a real rink, the hits look brutal and exciting. Basically, any time they're actually playing Rollerball, the movie kicks rear end. I watched about the first twenty minutes and came, I think, to a similar conclusion. I can't really remember it because it is, as you say, kind of dull. I watched the to end of the match with the Japanese team. It is, surprisingly, a pretty well thought out sport for a completely made up one. You're right, it is thematically confused. It's a testament to how badly the red scare broke the American brain. Corporations, in our current world, thrive on the idea of individualism. The idea that one can make it, can succeed in this world, is a vindication of that system ("they/I did it, why can't you?") Someone like Jonathon would prove to the population that their system works. See, anyone can succeed! Billionaires, movie stars, youtubers, sports stars...they're all held up that way now. But collectivism, to an audience raised on being terrified of communism, makes a much better villain. Collectivism results in things like strikes, unions, collective bargaining, things that utterly undercut the power of a corporation and the accepted worldview that lets them succeed. It's a film that sets itself up on a fundamentally broken premise.
|
|
#
?
May 18, 2021 05:43
|
|
|
If I remember correctly, part of the Overlords' fear was that a single successful individual could rally the people behind him in a revolt. Jonathan would have had the motivation to do so because the system hosed him over despite all his fame.
|
|
#
?
May 18, 2021 06:01
|
|
Grendels Dad posted:If I remember correctly, part of the Overlords' fear was that a single successful individual could rally the people behind him in a revolt. Jonathan would have had the motivation to do so because the system hosed him over despite all his fame. Nah see, that would make sense but they don't even go that far. They're just mad he hasn't eaten poo poo in 10 years of Rollerball, which apparently exists specifically to make people not be individualist. quote:No player is greater than the game itself. It's a significant game, in a number of ways, the velocities of the ball, the awful physics of the track, and in the middle of it all: men - playing by an odd set of rules. Its not a game man is supposed to grow strong in, Jonathan. You appreciate that, don't you? quote:In my opinion, we are confronted here with something of a situation. Otherwise, I would not have presumed to take up your time. Once again, it concerns the case of Jonathan E. We know we don't want anything extraordinary to happen to Jonathan. We've already agreed on that. No accidents, nothing unnatural. The game was created to demonstrate the futility of individual effort. And the game must do its work. The Energy Corporation has done all it can, and if a champion defeats the meaning for which the game was designed, then he must lose. I hope you agree with my reasoning. And here's more of that lovely anti-collectivist rhetoric from our hero: quote:Jonathan E.: I've been thinking, Ella. Thinking a lot... and watching. It's like people had a choice a long time ago between having all them nice things or freedom. Of course, they chose comfort. Yeah, ending poverty is bullshit if it means some guy can tell you to quit playing Rollerball! 
|
|
|
#
?
May 18, 2021 06:14
|
|
|
Just watching In the Line of Duty and it's pretty good, not exactly top tier of HK kung-fu but definitely fun 80s flick. Great fights on planes, boards in cars and bulldozers. But this reminded me, a few months ago a tweet made the rounds with a fight scene from a HK movie between an Asian and a white woman I think, and it was awesome. But I don't remember what it was called or if it involved Michelle Yeah. Any ideas what that was?
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2021 23:13
|
|
|
mobby_6kl posted:Just watching In the Line of Duty and it's pretty good, not exactly top tier of HK kung-fu but definitely fun 80s flick. Great fights on planes, boards in cars and bulldozers. Are you talking about the chain whip belt scene with Cynthia Rothrock?
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2021 23:15
|
|
|
Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Are you talking about the chain whip belt scene with Cynthia Rothrock? Yep that's it! Thanks! Had to Google it a bit but thats the fight and it's in Righting wrongs. And I was wrong about one of them being asian, but it does look like it was filmed in HK.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2021 00:40
|
|
|
We get so few midbudget action movies these days that I'm actually looking forward to a cynical John Wick ripoff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9OmtkCDWTM
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2021 14:19
|
|
|
dokmo posted:We get so few midbudget action movies these days that I'm actually looking forward to a cynical John Wick ripoff. Also, Karen Gillan is great.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2021 15:00
|
|
|
Yea that one seems like it's going to be more cast driven than action driven. There's only so much you can do unless the actresses have done that John Wick style training like Halle Berry did.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2021 15:03
|
|
|
dokmo posted:We get so few midbudget action movies these days that I'm actually looking forward to a cynical John Wick ripoff. With Paul Giamatti and the kid it feels more like a Shoot 'em Up ripoff. Which is not a bad thing in any sense.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2021 16:35
|
|
|
I hope it comes out good, but the tone of the scenes in that trailer are way too forcibly over-stylized for my taste.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2021 16:45
|
|
|
Wrath of Man isn't good. Somehow, Jason Statham going on a revenge spree against bank robbers is...kind of dull. I didn't mind the flashback structure. I thought it worked kind of well and it gives us more time with a very good cast, but Ritchie didn't know when to cut it out. The last heist in the film is, obviously, going to have a complex plan that, also obviously, goes off the rails. But, since they keep the gimmick of flashing back to the meeting, it's going off the rails as we're told how it was supposed to go. That could have worked, but it's not nearly tightly edited enough for that and instead the whole final sequence is kind of limp. What's truly unforgiveable, though, is that the action just isn't very good. They put the single best moment in the trailer and that seemed like the only good idea they had. Everything else is pedestrian shots of people shooting off camera. It's a real shame since it starts very, very promisingly.
|
|
#
?
May 26, 2021 05:03
|
|
|
yeah, wrath of man was surprisingly dull. the trailer sold a very different film.
|
|
#
?
May 26, 2021 09:15
|
|
|
Horizon Burning posted:yeah, wrath of man was surprisingly dull. the trailer sold a very different film. Oh, in one sense it's completely accurate. All the cool moments in the trailer that sold me on the film were in there. It's just that there was nothing else to like. They literally put every good shot in the trailer. I miss when Jason Statham would just make five cheap, dumb movies a year where he'd drive quickly, take his shirt off and fight people, and also one movie like Hummingbird, whatever the hell that was doing.
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2021 02:02
|
|
|
Electronico6 posted:Herman Yau's CAT III movies with Anthony Wong are all insanely nasty and not for the faint of heart, but also lowkey absurd funny. Tat is one of the all time greats! Just rewatched Fight Back to School since some of my friends hadn't seen it. Man, so many great HK movies, I've been getting back into them.
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2021 06:25
|
|
|
Say, I'd like to request some recommendations. For movies in this scene including also thrillers, action comedy, action drama etc, since I've seen a wide variety mentioned in recent pages. I'm looking for great 80s and 90s HK and Japanese movie recommendations. Action is welcome, but I'm mainly looking for ones that rock you as a story, or have characters that delight, just really entertaining movies. Not ones that are primarily for the fights. Seems this and the martial arts thread have the most knowledge of HK and Japan cinema in general, so if you sneak a couple non-action movies in the list, that's cool with me too. I've seen most of the big officially released in US action movies like the Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Donnie Yen ones. And for popular gems I've seen In the Line of Duty 4, Tiger Cage 2, Righting Wrongs, Iceman Cometh, John Woo's stuff, Stephen Chow (mainly comedy but still must see), Jackie Chan, etc. For Japan I'm covered on the kaiju stuff, Zeiram, lot of anime, Ryuhei Kitamura, Miike, and Takeshi Kitano. On John Woo style stuff I've also seen a lot of Johnnie To, Ringo Lam, and Tsui Hark. I just really dig the 80s and 90s for cinema. And HK especially just seems like they were on fire in those decades for me stylistically. Thanks. Or, as a bonus question to open it up, any non-English language 80s and 90s movies. Heavy Metal fucked around with this message at 03:16 on May 28, 2021 |
|
#
?
May 28, 2021 03:12
|
|
|
Heavy Metal posted:Say, I'd like to request some recommendations. For movies in this scene including also thrillers, action comedy, action drama etc, since I've seen a wide variety mentioned in recent pages. Regarding Tsui Hark and Johnnie To, check out The Heroic Trio and The Butterfly Murders for sure. The Heroic Trio I think is on YouTube, just make sure not to watch any version of it that's shorter than 86 minutes (if you find the full 88 minute version you're in luck as I don't think it's actually online anywhere). A not great print of The Butterfly Murders is on either Tubi or Prime. Both these flicks are really really really cool for a lot of reasons. Heroic Trio is a batshit superhero flick with some light dystopian aesthetics mixed with mystical stuff and it stars Anita Mui, Maggie Cheung and Michelle Yeoh it fuckin' rules and has some great ambiance. Like it's just awesome to see a superhero movie filtered through this lens and the whole cast is fun. Anita Mui did the theme song too.  Same with The Butterfly Murders, this was Tsui Hark's first movie and it starts out seeming like a sort of typical wuxia flick and then...becomes like an almost giallo/slasher movie with a an all black armor-clad killer whose identity is a mystery and everything. The story's about these folks getting murdered so a reporter enlists a fighter he knows and she gets some allies too and they all venture to this supposedly abandoned estate to investigate, but then they find a cave network under it stuff happens. It's really cool to have these kinds of character archetypes in this claustrophobic setting, the story is actually pretty cool, and it does a good job making things feel dangerous. Also sort of notable is that none of the weaponry in it is like of the "graceful" or "noble" variety, everyone's using axes, clubs, explosives, like it's not a graphic movie in any way but it really has this great dangerous/brutal tone to it I appreciate. And it's got some really cool imagery:      Another that's on Prime I would absolutely check out is The Bride with White Hair. This one stars Leslie Cheung and Brigitte Lin and is one of the most beautiful movies ever made and the characters are awesome. Ronny Yu directed this and interestingly some of the action elements are repeated in Freddy vs. Jason and it's funny how they work equally well in those totally different contexts. Something I love about this movie that the entire movie is very clearly shot on sets and super stagey intentionally but the lighting and a how it's shot is just so damned good it's beautiful and really adds this fairytale feel to it. The story is a romantic tragedy and the cast sells it. All three of these flicks have action but it's not really the focus of the movie or why they're awesome. There's a fantasy movie with Chow Yun-Fat and Emily Chu (she played Leslie Cheung's wife in the A Better Tomorrow movies) called Witch from Nepal that's pretty fun. It's a very light flick and you're mostly there to see Chow Yun-Fat get into hijinks. I think it's on Prime. This one is interesting because it came out just a few months before A Better Tomorrow. For flicks form Japan, have you ever seen Yakuza Law, Kuroneko, Horrors of Malformed Men, or Blind Woman's Curse?
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2021 04:18
|
|
|
Much thanks for the cool recommendations! I haven't seen any of those except Heroic Trio. It is fun that Maggie Cheung and Anita Mui were in seemingly everything, they show up in a lot of the comedy and misc stuff I've been checking out lately.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2021 04:25
|
|
|
Crimson Rivers might fit your bill. Turn of the century French detective thriller with Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel. I always thought of it as kind of a more interesting reaction to Se7en, but since everyone else on Earth seems to like that pile of crap no I'll just stick with that description.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2021 04:47
|
|
|
Right on. Do you dig the sequel by the way? I'll pop that on the ol' list.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2021 04:52
|
|
|
It's....okay, not the same thing at all. But I'm absolutely convinced that they spoof part of it in Hot Fuzz
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2021 05:41
|
|
|
I remember Crimson Rivers mostly for the stunning scenery in the Alps and the seemingly random fight scene inspired by Virtua Fighter. Another good French movie from that time is The Nest/Nid de Guepes from 2002 which stars Nadia Fares from Crimson Rivers.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2021 08:47
|
|
|
Heavy Metal posted:I'm looking for great 80s and 90s HK and Japanese movie recommendations. Action is welcome, but I'm mainly looking for ones that rock you as a story, or have characters that delight, just really entertaining movies. Not ones that are primarily for the fights. Seems this and the martial arts thread have the most knowledge of HK and Japan cinema in general, so if you sneak a couple non-action movies in the list, that's cool with me too. On The Run (1988) is a superior character driven thriller with neo noir accents and an oppressive tone. Harrison Ford used to make movies like this all the time, sometimes almost this good. Yuen Biao plays against type as a desperate ordinary guy on the run from killers (he gets one small stunt to remind everyone he is in fact Yuen Biao, but otherwise plays the scared normal guy straight). Hong Kong did not make a lot of movies like this, which is a bummer. And speaking of great thrillers, Tell No One (2006), a French mystery thriller about a man who receives a message from his dead wife. Falls outside of your 80/90s request, but I always bring it up when people ask for thriller recommendations.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2021 12:15
|
|
|
I’m sure you’ve seen Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky, but the same director did an action-horror movie with Chow Yun-Fat and Maggie Cheung called The Seventh Curse, and it’s absolutely buckwild. The opening scene plays like a dry run of the hospital shootout from Hard Boiled, and then it’s revealed the main character (Siu-Ho Chin) has been infected with a 7-step blood curse he must be cured of before he dies. There’s a lot of wild poo poo like Chow Yun-Fat wielding an RPG, 100 children getting crushed so their blood can be used in an immortality potion, a skeleton rips off a dude’s head and eats his spinal cord (this is the director of Riki-Oh after all) and it’s completely bonkers. There’s also the "Jackie Chan" movie Fantasy Mission Force, which is similarly weird, featuring Roman gladiators in Nazi cars, and a scene transition that goes from a village of Amazonian women to a haunted house. Real goofy poo poo.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2021 14:22
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 27, 2024 11:22 |
|
|
X-Ray Pecs posted:I’m sure you’ve seen Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky, but the same director did an action-horror movie with Chow Yun-Fat and Maggie Cheung called The Seventh Curse, and it’s absolutely buckwild. The opening scene plays like a dry run of the hospital shootout from Hard Boiled, and then it’s revealed the main character (Siu-Ho Chin) has been infected with a 7-step blood curse he must be cured of before he dies. There’s a lot of wild poo poo like Chow Yun-Fat wielding an RPG, 100 children getting crushed so their blood can be used in an immortality potion, a skeleton rips off a dude’s head and eats his spinal cord (this is the director of Riki-Oh after all) and it’s completely bonkers. Just want to second that The Seventh Curse is an absolute must watch movie it fuckin' rules. I wish Fantasy Mission Force was better, the first half of the movie after the intro is such a drag but it's also definitely worth watching for how goofy it is and for the Nazis in 70s muscle cars in a movie set during WWII and all the other stuff that goes down in it. dokmo posted:On The Run (1988) is a superior character driven thriller with neo noir accents and an oppressive tone. Harrison Ford used to make movies like this all the time, sometimes almost this good. Yuen Biao plays against type as a desperate ordinary guy on the run from killers (he gets one small stunt to remind everyone he is in fact Yuen Biao, but otherwise plays the scared normal guy straight). Thank you for this! Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 15:18 on May 28, 2021 |
|
#
?
May 28, 2021 15:10
|
|