What Have You Just Seen... Marks Out of 5

EvaUnit02 · Post by **EvaUnit02** » 01 Jan 2007, 05:05

AH, the fellow who made Cyclo.

Knetan · Post by **Knetan** » 01 Jan 2007, 06:10

hey,

The Sun Has Ears 3.5/5

It doesn't reach quite all the way but Yim Ho's village drama is tension-filled, speaks of being torn between choices and is very absorbing throughout.

Top Banana Club 1/5

Ay ay ay...directed by Anthony Wong and a glimpse into the mind of one of Hong Kong's best. Scary. Not funny and the movie is more of an in-joke amongst Wong's friends probably. Whatever...

Lourdes · Post by **Lourdes** » 01 Jan 2007, 12:31

Cyclo
Whilst it is more 'real' than Papaya it really lacks focus and character development. I feel that part of the problem is that it tries to be critical and in trying to do that tastefully there are too many individual stories that aren't covered effectively. Even the main plotlines are undeveloped and a little disappointing. As in Papaya there is some really out of place music but one piece is just brilliant, Radiohead's Creep. There's this amazingly angsty sequence with Tony where it plays and it's so perfect. Speaking of Mr. Leung he doesn't say a word except in voiceover but my God he looks sexy.

Vertical Ray of the Sun
Couldn't finish it. It' so sexy and beautiful and it's even much better musically but that can't make 2 hours about who's cheating on who bearable, I gave in with about 15 minutes to go. My original opinions on the three films remain the same. Papaya > Cyclo >>>>> Vertical.

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I have to point out that all three films like fantastic. Papaya is from 1993 and it looks as good as Asian films made today. I guess that's one big advantage of them being French productions although there are many later French films that don't look nearly as good.. Even the oddball discs I watched looked good. Papaya was a non-anamorhpic R2UK and the other 2 were HK or something. They looked just great.

American History X
It'd been a while, such a good film but I realised it doesn't have a while lot of meaning till towards the ending. Only three years for curbstomping a guy to death then he gets out because he got arseraped. But I do like the "Just when I thought I was out…they pulled me back in!" part before the finale.

Korei
Hmm. Well it's like any other Kurosawa film, as in it's bascially about struggle, breaking, unrealised dreams yada yada. This one goes supernatural with a dark haired girl but not exactly in the regular sense. It isn't at all scary or suspenseful and I think that's probably intentional to illustrate a point. The other films by him I've seen are never entirely realistic and never entirely predictable but this one was entirely predictable and entirely unrealistic. Dark haired little girl ghost everywhere just became stupid. Wasn't impressed with this one. Acting and everything are good but too much of the plot was out of balance.

Shingster · Post by **Shingster** » 01 Jan 2007, 14:41

I thought Korei was hit & miss as well, one of the problems I had with it was just how unbelievably stupid the main characters were at times. Made for TV film though IIRC, so that explains why it's more contrived and uneven than most of his other output.

Yi-Long · Post by **Yi-Long** » 01 Jan 2007, 16:47

Seabiscuit: 4.5 outta 5.

Great movie, great great GREAT performances. I had never seen it before but obviously heard lots fo good things about it. It still lived up to it's hype though.

BiscLimpkit · Post by **BiscLimpkit** » 01 Jan 2007, 23:28

Life of Brian 3.5/5
Pretty funny.

DangerousLeeHandsome · Post by **DangerousLeeHandsome** » 01 Jan 2007, 23:31

Twins Effect
Finally saw this movie after passing it up so many times. I went to the flea market and saw it for a good price and picked it up. No bootleg here; it's an actual genuine Universe 2 dvd version. My expectations were quite low going into this but surprise surprise--I liked it! Donnie Yen's fight choreography, the comedy bits and solid CGI kept me glued to the screen. The Twins don't look bad either. 3/5

Rob-B-hood
I'm fairly disappointed with this one. Stupid plot, stupid characters, and the movie drags on for over 2 hours!!! The action scenes are forgettable. The jokes are dead. Daniel Wu's Brokeback Mountain gay joke was NOT funny. Leave the gay jokes to Kevin Smith or anyone else who can write funnier gay jokes. I'm a huge fan of JC's so as you can imagine, it's hard to admit it when one of his movies sucks. Rob-B-Hood is waay too cute for its own good. 2/5

Fatal Contact
Where do I even begin. This movie left me extremely confused and infuriated. Is it an action movie? Is it a melodrama? Or is it a Shakespearean tragedy? I don't fucking know!!! This movie tries to be all of those in one movie and it fails miserably! The film opens quite strong with Wu Jing showing off his wu shu skills while a gang leader looks on hoping to recruit him to join his underground fight club. From there, we get some pretty darn good fight sequences. I personally loved Wu Jing vs. the dude with nails imbedded in his shoes and gloves; cool stuff. The third and final act just completely falls apart. Everything gets more and more rediculous. Without giving anything away, I'll just warn you that this is NOT the feel good movie of the year. For the fight scenes alone, I'll give Fatal Contact an extremely generous 2/5.

BiscLimpkit · Post by **BiscLimpkit** » 01 Jan 2007, 23:35

DangerousLeeHandsome wrote:Twins Effect
Finally saw this movie after passing it up so many times. I went to the flea market and saw it for a good price and picked it up. No bootleg here; it's an actual genuine Universe 2 dvd version. My expectations were quite low going into this but surprise surprise--I liked it! Donnie Yen's fight choreography, the comedy bits and solid CGI kept me glued to the screen. The Twins don't look bad either. 3/5

Try the sequel.

thelostdragon · Post by **thelostdragon** » 01 Jan 2007, 23:55

BiscLimpkit wrote:
DangerousLeeHandsome wrote:Twins Effect
Finally saw this movie after passing it up so many times. I went to the flea market and saw it for a good price and picked it up. No bootleg here; it's an actual genuine Universe 2 dvd version. My expectations were quite low going into this but surprise surprise--I liked it! Donnie Yen's fight choreography, the comedy bits and solid CGI kept me glued to the screen. The Twins don't look bad either. 3/5
Try the sequel.

Beware, it could harm you like it harmed Tom.

EvaUnit02 · Post by **EvaUnit02** » 02 Jan 2007, 02:43

DangerousLeeHandsome wrote:Rob-B-hood

Seriously, did anyone really believe for a second believe that yet another rehash of "Three Men and a Baby" would be any good?

tom2681 · Post by **tom2681** » 02 Jan 2007, 02:49

Hey, I liked it.

grim_tales · Post by **grim_tales** » 02 Jan 2007, 10:35

C'est La Vie, Mon Cheri - 3.5/5

Touching film with a cute turn by Anita Yuen

I don't know who the male lead is though.
Like the birthday party scene with the well known jazz/swing song

Knetan · Post by **Knetan** » 02 Jan 2007, 10:47

hey,

I don't know who the male lead is though.

Lau Ching-Wan, star of films such as Big Bullet, Full Alert, Victim, Lost In Time.

Carrie Ng (Naked Killer) co-stars as well as Petrina Fung (Fung Hak-On's sister) and director Derek Yee regular, his older brother Paul Chun (saxophone playing father).

grim_tales · Post by **grim_tales** » 02 Jan 2007, 10:53

Thanks

Knetan · Post by **Knetan** » 02 Jan 2007, 11:00

hey,

it's worth checking into Derek Yee's filmography, grim. Highlights include his debut The Lunatics (one of the most harrowing films I've ever seen), People's Hero (hard to obtain now and kind of like a HK Dog Day Afternoon, starring Ti Lung) and his more recent drama Lost In Time (with Lau and Cecilia Cheung).

EvaUnit02 · Post by **EvaUnit02** » 02 Jan 2007, 11:25

Das Boot DC - 5/5
I found this utterly exhilarating - tense and exciting action scenes, superb pacing, terrific plot and characterisation. A truly flawless film IMO.

What happened to Wolfgang Petersen? I c'mon, Troy? Utter garbage.

Transporter 2 - 2/5
Stupid stupid movie with a stupid stupid virtually non-existent plot. Daytime soap calibre acting. I expected nothing stellar at all in aforementioned departments, but it was just so so bad. The CGI was utterly terrible. Fun martial arts set-pieces though and I was never bored watching it - for what it's worth.

The first one at least has the French locales and Shu Qi as a distraction, as well as the hilarious grease fight.

grim_tales · Post by **grim_tales** » 02 Jan 2007, 11:26

Thanks. Haven't seen any of them.

degeneration · Post by **degeneration** » 02 Jan 2007, 13:52

Life Of Brian 4/5
I still find it hilarious... the girlf didn't find it that funny though, but she's not seen any monty python stuff before at all and barely even knew anything about them!!! So I don't think she quite got the humour style. DOn't have a clue what she did while growing up that she managed to go without seeing any monty python ever! Not only that but she'd never seen ANY of the Star Wars films either, until recently... which brings me on to:

Star Wars: A New Hope 4/5
DAMN YOU GEORGE LUCAS!!! Fantastic film, but why of why did he have to make some of hte changes that he has?!?! Greedo shot first dammit.

The EMpire Strikes Back 4.5/5
as above - changing Boba Fett's voice, the sound from his ship Slave-I... while it does make it more in fitting with the prequel trilogy, it still is changes that I'm not used to so therefore don't like!! But with all these things that he's changing so it fits in more with the prequel trilogy, why couldn't he at least make the prequel trilogy so that some basic scripts elements fit in?

Return of the Jedi 4/5
As above pretty much. My girlfriend now understand what people mean by return of the jedi slave Leia!!!

All above lost 0.5 cause of the changes.

EvaUnit02 · Post by **EvaUnit02** » 02 Jan 2007, 14:17

degeneration wrote:Greedo shot first dammit.

Actually, Greedo didn't even get a chance to fire at all.

thelostdragon · Post by **thelostdragon** » 02 Jan 2007, 14:45

degeneration wrote: Life Of Brian 4/5
I still find it hilarious... the girlf didn't find it that funny though...

Man, we watched this one in our religion class. The only people that could laugh, were those who already knew the movie, including myself, the teacher and some other guy. The rest of the class didn't even get the jokes and I was really surprised that nobody even heard about the film. I think it is Monty Python's best.

Shingster · Post by **Shingster** » 02 Jan 2007, 15:49

There was a nice 1hr program on the problems the Pythons had with Life of Brian when it came out back in the late 70's. I had to laugh when they explained that the film was banned outright in Norway, so when the Swedes got the film they gave it the tagline: "So funny, they banned it in Norway!"

Knetan · Post by **Knetan** » 02 Jan 2007, 16:01

hey,

We like to make fun of Norweigans.

grim_tales · Post by **grim_tales** » 02 Jan 2007, 16:07

Holy Grail is funnier IMO but Life of Brian has some classic scenes - "Blessed are the cheesemakers", "What have the Romans ever done for us?", Biggus Dickus"

BiscLimpkit · Post by **BiscLimpkit** » 02 Jan 2007, 16:23

That Biggus Dickus scene was class.

Happy Feet 2/5
Should be called "Crappy Feet" :x

Markgway · Post by **Markgway** » 02 Jan 2007, 16:30

EvaUnit02 wrote:Seriously, did anyone really believe for a second believe that yet another rehash of "Three Men and a Baby" would be any good?

Nope. And I was one of the first to say so when the story was revealed. I'm kinda avoiding this one because I know it'll piss me off.