Bullets 'n' Babes

In the theatrical trailer, Angel Eyes is "The Ugly" and Tuco "The Bad," which is the reverse of their designations in the actual film. This is because the Italian title translated into English is actually The Good, the Ugly, the Bad, not The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and the Italian trailer had "The Ugly" and "The Bad" in that order. When the trailer was transferred to English, The Ugly and The Bad were not reversed to coincide with the altered title, causing the incorrect designations.

OK, you decide. Who's uglier Lee Van Clief or Eli Wallach?

Thanks LD. I presume you mean the US Theatrical Trailer (why isnt this on the SE? Why only the French trailer?) IMO Angel Eyes is probably the most evil character in the film, Tuco is a bastard also (like when he tries to hang Blondie in his room) but strangely seems more "human" than Angel Eyes IMO.
No-one in the film is what they seem. At times Blondie seems pretty dark for a "good" person.

24 - Season 1 - 4.5/5
24 - Season 2 - 5/5
24 - Season 3 - 3.5/5

Awesome series.

Really... you'd rate Season 2 above Season 1? I much preferred the smaller scale story of the first season. It felt a lot more personal - you were with Jack through the whole ordeal.

Season 2 got a bit ridiculous at times (although I still love it!).

Have you not watched Season 4 yet?

Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh - 3.5/5

Lovely. charming (if occasionally twee) childhood film. No-one can ever replace John Fiedler and Paul Winchell who both did a superb job as Piglet and Tigger respectively Sterling Holloway (as Pooh) is fantastic too.
Highlights include Pooh getting stuck in Rabbit's hole, Rabbit getting lost in the forest and halucinating, and the disturbing "Heffalumps and Woozles" sequence

For some reason, in the "Honey Tree" segment, Christopher Robin's voice sounds different from what it did when I watched the original featurette back in the day (before my brother taped over it ) He sounds a tad more English than American.
Also CR's age may have been increased in the shorts as he looks older - in the books he is about 5 (I think) - conversely in the shorts, Roo is nicely written to represent the age of a 5 year old boy.

ROTK: EE (Part One) - 5/5

Brilliant film so far The interweaving stories are great - preparing for war, the friendship between Frodo/Sam disintergrating and then Frodo tells Sam he doesnt need him anymore.... ... ..... :crybaby:
Plus comedy hobbits Pippin and Merry, and special mention must go to Andy Serkis, who is superb as Smeagol/Gollum.
The sound is tops also. I cant wait till I can hear it in DTS!

Edinburgh Film Festival Review Part I

MirrorMask - 4/5 (UK)

Another title taking advantage of digital backlot (around 90% of the movie is filmed using blue/green screen). So visually, it's up there with Sky Captain, Casshern, Sin City and Immortel. However the budget it considerably less than the aforementioned titles but still looks great to my eyes.

It's a sort of modern "Alice in Wonderland" tale, from the stunning imaginations of Dave McKean and Neil Gaiman. We see fantastic creatures, costumes and artwork. Fishes swimming in the air, floating giants, skateboarding books etc. Great story as well about a girl escaping her current lifestyle as a circus performer.

The director was there, got to ask him a question. He's such a pleasant modest chap.


36 Quai des Orfèvres - 5/5 (France)

Excellent cop drama on a bigger scale than Infernal Affairs. In fact, I say it's better. It's tense, unpredictable and every single character plays a vital role in shaping the story. Awesome soundtrack as well. Everyone's so tense and pissed off - nobody smiles in this film. They all look so old from the stress and the smoking.


A Bittersweet Life Theatrical Cut - 4/5 (South Korea)

Didn't really notice any difference between this and the DC. Film's cool but not the masterpiece I was expecting.


On a Clear Day - 5/5 (Scotland)

Amazing. Stars Billy Boyd. Tigercage and myself made complete tools of ourselves in front of him. We both got really drunk after the film and caught the end of the aftershow party.


Land of the Dead - 3/5 (USA)

Enjoyable nonsense. Not scary nor was it gory. It's rated a 15 btw, so quite tame. I much prefer Resident Evil and 28 Days Later.

The director made an appearance but I was too drunk to care. The fans were loving it though, some dressed as zombies for the UK premiere.

Long Dark Kiss (a.k.a. Bound by Lies) - 1.5/5
What a waste of time. Steven Baldwin (yes, brother of Alec Baldwin) plays a cop who is unfaithful to his wife and who has to uncover a murderer.
The explosion and the car chase in the beginning was not only inspired by the film "The Corruptor", scenes have been cut out of that Chow Yun-fat flick and just inserted here.

Cellular - 3/5
Very cool film and Jason Statham as a bad guy is really cool. How ever, I got a bit bored by constantly mentioning how great modern technology is and what you can do with it.
Great car chase and cool hero.

The Clearing - 3.5/5
Robert Redford gets kidnapped by Willem Dafoe. Very good kidnapping film. It switches between Redford's character's family and the kidnapping. Although Dafoe plays a kidnapper, his character is rather friendly to Redford's. Later in the middle of the film we find out that when the story switches to the family it actually takes place a few days after the kidnapping part.

The Machinist - 4/5
Actually, I'd give it a 3.5/5, but the fact that Christian Bale dropped 60 pounds of weight for this film left me amazed. What a devoted actor, especially if you think about the fact that he gained so much more weight later for his role of Batman.
As for the film, it is a suspenseful film about a lonesome man who hasn't slept for a year and who keeps forgetting stuff. One day at work he is spoken guilty for an accident in which a co-worker loses his arm. Now it seems that everybody he knows, people at work and the women he associates with, have turned against him with a conspiracy.

LD, you seen Session 9? Same director as The Machinist and is uber creepy. You're never sure what's happening exactly.

I look forward to future Brad Anderson titles.

Session 9 rock casue it has Caruso in it 8) I love the guy, even before CSI Miami.

but while I am on this thread I may as well contribute once in a while.

last film I revieed was

Unleashed aka Danny The Dog 4 out of 5

Danny (Jet Li) is a slave, a dog, a fighter/enforcer for his Gangster master Bart (Bob Hoskins). Danny does what he is ordered to from his master, and its not a nice life for poor little Danny, as he basically kicks peoples heads in and that's pretty much all he does in his sad life. Until one day things go a little bad for them and Danny escapes into the real world and gets away from his nasty past life. A friendly Piano Tuner Sam (Morgan Freeman) takes him in and together with young music student Victoria (Kerry Condon), he starts to feel what life is like. But the good times cannot last forever and it all starts to come back to Danny, in brutal ways.

I have waited to see this film for a long time, and its taken a long time to get to the cinema screen. After all the waiting I can say yes it was worth the wait, and director Louis Leterrier follows up The Transporter with another really entertaining movie, if a lot more grit and nastiness.

Its a strange film with a slightly dark tone behind it all. It is always watchable and at times a lot of fun, but its always uneven and quite an odd film really in its swaying ways. It can be very violent, and fights are fast and vicious, but then we have sentimental scenes to make you smile as Danny learns to be more human and experiences life for the first time, and its all played out well and feels right. Its not shy to lay down some slightly out of this world bits to the mix and it can be a little "out there" at times, and not exactly like real life at all in its over the top portrayal of Glasgow life.

The setting is supposed to be Glasgow, but its inhabited by some very weird people, dressed up and looking like something from another world entirely. In the underground scenes it reminded me a lot of the Matrix at times, with exadurated characters dressed up in stylish cloths and queer hairstyles and such, hell it even looks like the Matrix in the Underground scenes with its desaturated, limited colour pallet and grim stark cold looking sets. Out of the Underground scene, its more lifelike even if some of the gangster characters are a little too British and maybe a little over the top in their ways, it seems fairly real if a little caricatured on a few members of the cast here and there. Still watching Morgan Freeman and Jet Li walk into the Spar is interesting in itself and brings it closer to reality .

The fight we see in the movie are all well made and don't seem to overly rely on wires (well not obviously). It seems to be more reality based fist and feet work, as the various fights get down and dirty and characters are not afraid to do anything to win in the action scenes. Danny is small and makes up for this with speed and the determination of a dog. He will get stuck in and take the blows handed out to him, he doesn't seem to care really that he is getting smacked about, as long as he can get in there and belt them in the face a few more times. Its well put onto the screen and the sound really amplifies the various blows dished out in the movie. The fights are not way over the top in the violence stakes, but they can get quite hard at times with plenty of headbutting and bone crunching added in the scenes. Its not the most bloody film ever seen on screen and it does seem to hold back a few times on that side, but it does its job well and some fight come off very well.

The film isn't the most action packed of Jet's Career really and it only features maybe four extended fights in the running time, and all seem to work in various ways. The best of them all is probably the ending for me as Danny gets to fight an unnamed man in white, with no eyebrows or hair, strange I must say and very out of the Matrix indeed! He just appears and gets stuck in. Danny and the man in white really get to work some top moves into the fights as they battle thru an apartment building in some showcase fights. The bathroom close quarters fight scene is maybe the best in the film as they pound away at each other with barley any room to even breath, never mind fight. All the fights have some stunning moves dotted about them, and while they do use wires on occasion they don't stand out to bad, and the slow motion effects only enhance the fights and take the edge off some of the wire work. Overall I liked the fights and while some maybe go a little fast for my eyes, they all seemed well made and full of energy, its just a shame at times you know Danny is just to hard for his own good and rarely gets anyone to match his skills.

The out of the underground scenes with Morgan Freeman and Kerry Condon are very sweet and are a polar opposite of them nasty times in Danny's life. its fun watching Danny do simple things for the first time and seeing the emotion in his little face really is a lot of fun. Its melodramatic and maybe at odds with the rest of the film, but it works and I cared about the trio and wanted to see more of them acting together on screen. Freeman is always a joy to watch and again he racks up another top notch role, and the small family unit really work well together and it would be interesting to see this bunch follow thru in some sort of sequel and see more of them interacting together. Kerry Condon started off a bit skittish and maybe a little crazy, but by the end of the film she has calmed down and feels more real, as do most the cast and the scenes of the three together really work and add in some great piano scenes and it just is feegoodtastic stuff.

Jet Li is the star and he gets to go thru a lot of on screen emotions. Desperate times of beatings and solitude locked away in his dark kennel under constant verbal and physical abuse from his ungrateful owner Bart, and all his various scumbag followers and underlings. His life is crap basically and Jet shows his silence, and shows us how immune to it all he is. When he gets into the real world Jet brings to life Danny in many scenes, and his face lights up the screen and I really felt the guy was advancing in his small life, to become a bit more lifelike and human. It isn't over played and Danny kind of felt like a real guy in an awful situation and Jet did a fine job of bringing such an oddball to the screen, as it could have went very wrong.

The rest of the cast are fine and various British actors litter the movie, some you know, some you don't, but they feel right for the film even if there voice work seems way over the top for my likes. Even Bob Hoskins goes a bit too far at times and most the brits seem to be trying to go for overacting awards in some scenes, by putting on severe thick accents which can become a bit to much. Hoskins seems to be going with the flow and at times feels a little more than the cartoon menace he tries to be, he is not shy to get stuck in himself and spends most the film shouting and being a very angry person. We don't get to see many sides of him really and he is solely there to rule Danny and his various minions, but I guess he does what he needs to and doesn't hold back much of his darker side.

Its just a great film and its quite different from any of Jet's past films, hey for that matter its just a very different film from anything I have seen before, and its not afraid to try something different. Louis Leterrier directs it all well and hopefully his future films will be on par with this and The Transporter. He can direct and he does it well, and it feels suitably different from anything I have seen for a long time. The music is excellent and compliments the film well with its at times delicate tones, to its pumping beats. A bit like the film then, a mixture of speeds and styles all muddles into one to create the final piece, and Danny the Dog while it wont change the world, it will stand out for just being that bit more off centre than the norm.

Silver Knife - 4/5

Title of the film: Silver Knife.
Alternate title: Korean Pie.
Year: 2003.
Country: Korea.
Director: Kim Sun-Deok.
Cool actors: Song Jae-Ho (Memories of Murder)

Silver Knife is a relatively unknown movie (no reviews on koreanfilm.org or anywhere else), hence why I was interested in watching it.
As it turns out, Silver Knife is a very funny little comedy about sex.

It begins like every other korean teen-movie: with the introduction of 3 girls and 3 guys.
The girls:
-There's the patriotic ex-military chick who hasn't had sex in a looong time.
-There's the girl who pretends to be a virgin but sleeps with pretty much all the guys she can find.
-There's Min-Seo, the real virgin who wants to get married before having sex.

The guys:
-There's Joohak, who wants to sleep with Min-Seo.
-There's the impotent college student who wants to find a girl who doesn't care about sex.
-There's the surfer with a perfect body.

The movie is full of innovative jokes, but they're sometimes hard to follow.
Being typically korean, the puns are hard to get (the awful subtitles on my dvd don't help).
Ultimately, the movie works because it doesn't take itself seriously at all except in the last part (typical korean melodrama).

How do I summarize the plot to a friend if my phone's almost out of batteries: "3 guys and 3 girls go on a vacation together and then gradually become friends.
What's next ?
Hypocrisy, sex, premature ejaculation, karaoke, sex, condom jokes and sex.
Did I forget to mention sex ?".

The scene that I love and would like to see one last time on my death bed: The scene where Joohak takes Min-Seo to an island and then pretends to have lost his return ticket, just so he can take her to a motel and have sex with her while they're stuck on the island.

The thing that makes me want to throw a molotov cocktail on the movie screen: The jokes that I can't laugh at because of my limited knowledge of korean culture.

-------------

This movie is available at DDDHouse for HK 40$.

The Killer (on the big screen ) - 4.8/5
Was back in New York this weekend and got to see it on the big screen, so i just wanted to brag for a minute
Still remains one of my all time favorite action films.

Sin City - 4/5
A perfect adaptation of a comic to the screen. Granted that it really was nothing more then an exercise in stylized violence, i loved it

Red-Eye - 3.8/5
I actually really enjoyed this flick. Although a bit ridiculous at times, it was still very entertaining and actually quite funny. I have not liked alot of Wes Craven's work, but this one was a good time.

ReconFive wrote:The Killer (on the big screen ) - 4.8/5
Was back in New York this weekend and got to see it on the big screen, so i just wanted to brag for a minute
Still remains one of my all time favorite action films.

Damn you ! Would you please have a look at this thread
https://www.bulletsnbabesdvd.com/forums/ ... .php?t=906

Can you imagine what I feel like? I am so tempted.

Yep, I posted that just for you LD

You should go! I personally love going to film conventions/festivals, not only to just see the movies but to meet and talk to people who have similar taste in cinema.

Of course, it all depends on the money issue... but you'll get to see ALL those classic John Woo films on the big screen! I was thrilled just to see The Killer.. but Hard Boiled... That alone should be worth the price of the ticket

:happy1:

Sex and Lucia 2/5

Only gets this cause of the nudity!!! Not enough of it to be a sex film, but not enough of an interesting story to be a story film. So it ended up being neither.

Sex and Lucia fits into the betty blue catagory for me, its a pretty daft film to buy if your after lots of sex (though it does have more than Betty Blue in it but still) and whilst I thought the concept was great, the whole 'erotic' explanations were very unecessary...

hm, high brow reviewing

Prison on Fire - 3.5/5
Cool film and another showcase of what a great actor Chow Yun-fat is. I like Ringo Lam's style a lot and Roy Cheung is really good at making the audience hate him.

Waterworld - 4/5
I think this damn movie is great and i don't care what anyone says
Sure there are endless things that don't make any sense..
Sure there are tons of plotholes that are left unexplained..
But its a FUN movie with a good story and characters, and it looks fantastic.

I, for one, admire the effort that went into this production. Shooting out in the pacific ocean with sinking sets, bad weather, its pretty amazing that the movie was even finished.

I am hoping for the longer 176 minute cut to be released on dvd.

I really enjoyed that one, too. Great action and the visuals, even though it's just always the sea, are wonderful and always make me wanna go sailing.

I also think they have spent WAAAAY too much money on this film (was the most expensive film ever shot at the time of release).

I thought Waterworld was pants... but on a related note I enjoyed Kevin Reynolds' The Count of Monte Cristo, a surprisingly serious and respectful take on the classic Dumas novel. I waited for it to show on TV because I thought... "hmm... from the director of Waterworld AND Prince of Thieves!" but I was wrong.

Waterworld Extended cut is far better and it really improves a superb film even more and I am very glad I got it as I think its all new footage I want to see.

I would have to give the film 5 stars myself I adore it in every way, and the extended cut I have just makes the whole film far richer, and gives most the cast more plot, like Deacon loves golf and thats the only reason he want Dry Land evil man and golf, cannot beat it.

Deacon loves golf and thats the only reason he want Dry Land

Are you serious ?!
GOLF ?!

Too bad they only show the theatrical version on french TV. I'd love to see the extended cut.

Yup Golf! its very good seeing the reasons the film does things for, the bits cut explain soo much! Deacon acctually carries a walking stick/pole thing about in the whole film if you notice, its a bloomin Gold Club as we see it used in the longer cut
he uses it in the film and it explains why etc.. a more rounded man in the extended cut I say and far funnier when you get his reasosn for being Evil, he just want to play golf.

yeah i remember watching the extented cut on TV and thinking that golf thing was a riot. I find it infuriating that there is not one country in the world that has released the director's cut of this movie on dvd. Stupid Universal.

On the subject of Kevin Reynolds, has anyone here seen 'Rapa Nui'? Its the only Reynolds film i have yet to see, and it seems to look quite good. The only dvds i have found are the French, Korean, and Russian.