Doug's Sounding Board


14
Aug

Tuesday Media Roundup #21

The Illusionist – I loved the uncertainty it generated throughout the movie about what was real and what was illusion. Plus you generally can’t go wrong with Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti and I think it’s the first movie Jessica Biel is good.

Happy Gilmore – It’s been awhile since I’ve seen it but it’s still great. Also I think the deleted scenes from when his grandma’s house is being packed up should have been left in.

The Shaolin Drunken Monk (Shao Lin zui ba quan) – This film is capitalizing on Gordon Liu’s popularity from Master Killer/36th Chamber. The action is good, the drunken training is good, the voice overs are so bad they’re good.

The Bourne Ultimatum – The first movie was great, the second movie was fun but didn’t really have direction, this one was back to the feeling of the first one. It mirrored the first one in the action and look, had good suspense, good action, and was a good wrap to the series. I’d even see this one a few more times.

Poison Ivy: The New Seduction – Another movie where the third was better than the second. Not to say it wasn’t rediculous, but it’s entertaining similar to how the first one was.

Bandidas – Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz wanted to make a western/comedy and this is what came out. It’s a fun movie!

The Legend of Zorro – The string of good sequels ends here. Not that it was a horrible movie, just missing some things to make it flow together and when you see the deleted scenes you’ll see why. This is the first movie I’ve seen where I think all the deleted scenes should have been included. It’s clear that they were cutting to get the time down, but when you’re already at 130 minutes those extra bits don’t make much of a difference and the resulting movie would have been MUCH better. The only scenes not cut for time were the original beginning and ending. The studio cut those because they wanted to option for more sequels with the same stars, but seeing how long this one took to make that clearly isn’t going to happen. The framing from the original beginning and end would have improved the movie as well.

Stomp the Yard – I like movies about breakdancing and this is kind of one so I had to see it. Fairly predictable plot to hold the dance/stomp stuff; the dancing isn’t as good as You Got Served, but the acting is oscar-worthy by comparison.

Curse of the Golden Flower (Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia) – Another awesome movie from Yimou Zhang! The sets are amazing, the colors are amazing, the cleavage is costumes are amazing! Really though, you can’t go wrong with Yimou Zhang directing Gong Li and Chow Yun Fat in a period piece.

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! – I hadn’t seen any Russ Meyers movies so I decided it was time to change that with three well known ones. The dialogue is awesome, the acting and action is laughable but it doesn’t matter. Generally low budget movies like this don’t look this good. I thought the guy who played the old man was great. Thumbs up.

Motor Psycho – Again, great dialogue and look and with better acting this time. Unfortunately even though it was only 75 minutes it started to drag towards the end

Supervixens – This one is in color and I think I liked Russ Meyers’ look in black and white better. This movie has more comedy in it and by the end it gets pretty strange. I thought the barn sex scene was really funny. After these three movies I have a good idea what to expect from his movies:

  • Women with large breasts (but I knew that going in)
  • Car chases and/or long shots of driving
  • Fight scenes
  • Maybe a rattlesnake bite/suck out the poison scene
  • Lots of fight/death scenes
  • Sex scenes
  • People being blown up

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