Ridley Scott is a director who is fantastic at building worlds. In Blade Runner it was the future of Los Angeles. In Gladiator it was Imperial Rome. In Kingdom of Heaven, it’s 14th century Jerusalem and Palestine. Read more
Edge of Sanity is an interesting, but flawed film, taking the Jack the Ripper case, and combining it with Robert Lewis Stephenson’s classic work of Victorian horror – The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Read more
This time we continue with “The Yakuza Papers” with Part 2 – “Proxy War” Read more
This time we continue with “The Yakuza Papers” with Part 2 – “Deadly Fight in Hiroshima” Read more
After my written reviews of the Yakuza Papers series, I’ve adapted them into a series of video reviews. Read more
Civil War, as a Comic Event, was something of a spectacular failure. I haven’t been good at doing video posts on my blog the past few weeks (something I’ll try to fix shortly), but this past week I did a video post on YouTube about Civil War, the comics, event, and how that could have been fixed.
The film version of Civil War has none of those problems. Instead, it’s one of the top films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to date. There will be some minor spoilers in this review (below the cut if you’re reading this on my blog). Read more
Megazone 23 – Part 3 is probably the most Cyberpunk part of the Megazone 23 series. The other installments had artificial intelligences and rebelling against the man. However, Part 3 has more hacking, human cybernetic augmentation, and dealing with human society’s relationship with the planet. It’s also the weakest part of the series. Read more
Megazone 23: Part II is a more violent film than its predecessor, but it does a good job of providing closure to the franchise – which is almost unfortunate because three years after this film came out we got part III.
When 8 Bells Toll is a film that really feels like it desperately wants to be a Bond film, but doesn’t even remotely feel one – instead feeling a more conventional mystery thriller.
Dark City is a gloriously wonderful film, which pays homage to Film Noir from the ’40s and ’50s, German Expressionist film of the 1920s and ’30s, and (to a degree), psychic battle manga like Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira and Domu, along with the series Locke the Superman (which in turn inspired the first two works). Read more
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, suffers the same array of problems that the Michael Bay directed Transformers films have suffered. The film takes emphasis away from the title characters of the film to put an increased focus on the human characters. To the film’s credit, it doesn’t clutter up the film with the samedegree of human characters as the Transformers film did, but those elements of the film distract from the main thrust of the narrative. Further, the rest of the film’s action is so cluttered and chaotic that it can’t compensate for the rest of the film’s weak points. Read more
It’s odd how much polish a film series can undergo over the course of two years. The first installment in the Yakuza Papers series of films came out in 1973. This film, the final installment in the tetralogy came out in 1974. Kinji Fukasaku was already an accomplished director when he made the first film, but over the course of two years he quickly came up with a very definitive style to this series. Read more
When I heard that a Deadpool movie was in production, as a fan of the comics I was pretty pumped. That said, a situation like that is almost a recipe for disappointment – Star Wars: The Phantom Menace really shows how much high expectations can lead to equally high disappointment. Fortunately, there was no disappointment to be found for me in this film. Read more
The problem with getting into the later installments of the Yakuza Papers series of films is that by the later installments Kenji Fukasaku has gotten into a stylistic groove when it comes to what this series of films are – what they look like, what they sound like, and how their action is presented. Read more
There is one Bond film that, before today, I had not seen: The Spy Who Loved Me. I refer to official Bond films, as opposed to parodies like the ’60s Casino Royale, or knockoffs like Never Say Never Again (which I have seen), and spiritual ripoffs like Operation Double 007 (as seen on MST3K). Read more
This is a gorgeous, darkly beautiful work of film that’s probably the most surreal work that Oshii has made (helped by the fact that Yoshitaka Amano did much of the art for the film and co-wrote the story). It is the first film I’ve seen that I don’t feel qualified to analyze. Read more
TMNT is a film that has the heart that the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film had (and the other two sequels lacked), but it falls short in a few significant places. Read more
This time I’m taking a look at the documentary, Charles Beaumont: The Short Life of Twilight Zone’s Magic Man. I was provided with a copy of this documentary at no cost for purpose of review from the film’s director at OryCon 2014. Read more
It’s been a while since I reviewed a martial arts film from Hong Kong, and even longer since I reviewed a film from Shaw Brothers. With Netflix including more and more of the Shaw Brothers filmography, now is as good a time as any to revisit the studio and their works. Read more
Proxy War, along with the second film in the series, Hiroshima Deathmatch, are really where the Yakuza Papers series really kicks into high gear with showing the real nature of the Yakuza life. Where the sophomore film in the series introduced a new character, followed him through his induction into the yakuza, until his ultimate death, Proxy War returns us to following Bunta Sugawara’s character, Shozo Hirono, as factions within the old guard start playing the new generation of yakuza against each other, while Hirono himself tries to reconcile this current chain of events with the yakuza code of honor. Read more
This week I’m putting together a video with some speculation on Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and how The Prophecy from the prequel trilogy might tie in to the film’s plot (if it comes up at all). This was recorded Thanksgiving Weekend, well before the film came out, as a little sealed envelope – if my predictions are right, then I’m a genius! If I’m wrong, I look like a moron! Either way, you win! Read more
Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is probably the work of literature that has been most frequently adapted to the screen that wasn’t written by William Shakespeare. With so many adaptations, it’s probably hard to pick the best. I’d probably put the Muppet version at the top of my list, but aside from that, the 1999 made-for-TV version starring Patrick Stewart as Ebenezer Scrooge is my number two pick. Read more
After the original The Yakuza Papers came out and did incredibly well at the box office, a sequel came out with a relatively fast turnaround. Unlike the first film, the sequel, Deadly Fight in Hiroshima, bypasses Bunta Sugawara’s character, Shozo Hirono (who does appear in this film as a cameo appearance), for a new character, and new story of induction into the world of the Yakuza.
Read more
It’s weird watching Rashomon after seeing multiple films and episodes of TV shows that used the central narrative device of Rashomon after the film came out. On the one hand, it’s a film that did a lot of this stuff first, but on the other hand, it is still, in a way, somewhat old hat.
Probably what makes Rashomon work as well as it does is how the lies in the story are presented. We have the initial witness testimony, showing the discovery of the body. Read more