Tag Archives: Film Review

film, videos

Film (Vlog) Review: Shin Godzilla

There’s a new Godzilla film out (for a limited release) and I saw it in theaters. Here are my thoughts! Continue reading →

Standard
film, Hong Kong Action Movies

Film Review: The Mission (1999)

Johnny To, as a director, has two extremes. On one end is gritty crime thrillers like the Election duology – which may have an action scene or two, but which otherwise are generally grounded in the real world. On the other end is Exiled, a film which has a fight scene early in the film where several characters in a firefight cause a table to flip and spin end over end with their bullet hits, but ultimately both come out of the fight uninjured. In the middle lies The Mission. Continue reading →

Standard
film

Film Review: Barbarian Queen II – The Empress Strikes Back

Barbarian Queen II is, basically, a somewhat nihilistic gender-swapped version of the Robin Hood story – princess is heir to throne, king has gone off to war and is presumed killed in the field, with the King’s evil brother planning to usurp the throne, princess flees to forest and builds a band of bandits to fight back against Not-Prince-John. Continue reading →

Standard
film

Movie Review: Deathstalker II

Deathstalker II is a fun dumb movie. It’s the kind of film where there is a title-drop in the film that incorporates the number (sort of – the line being: “I’ll have my revenge, and Deathstalker too!”). It’s got a soundtrack by Casio, exterior sets from a Renaissance faire, pants made out of pleather because they ran out of their leather budget, and female characters who wear as little as possible in the hopes that the audience won’t pay attention to any of the rest of the film’s shortcomings. Continue reading →

Standard
film

Film Review: Star Crash

There are some genres of cinema that have been lost to technological developments and rise of global interconnectivity. One of these genres is the “Italian knockoff of an successful American film.” One of the more impressive parts of this cinematic sub-genre is the science fiction film Starcrash, directed by Luigi Cozzi under an American pseudonym to conceal the film’s true nature. Continue reading →

Standard
film

Film Review: Solaris (1972)

When it comes to the “science and technology” part of Science Fiction, there tend to be three axis of thought, that end up forming into a sort of spectrum-ish thing – like those charts used in some video games where your character’s stats are portrayed in context of a geometric shape, with portions sticking out in different directions based on how you’ve chosen to weight things. There’s a technical term for this, but I don’t know what its. Continue reading →

Standard
film

Movie Review: X-Men – Days of Future Past (Rogue Cut)

When it comes to comic book films, and adaptations of comic books to the screen, there are questions about how you adapt certain comic book concepts to the screen, and as cinematic universes get more involved, there is no question that has lingered in the background more than “How do you clean up a cluttered universe?” How do you not only pull a retcon, but a big universe altering one?

Days of Future Past not only attempts to pull such a retcon, but succeeds, by creating a situation where the X-Men films can change course to a new path different from the first 3 films, while still giving credit to where the earlier films worked. Continue reading →

Standard
film

Movie Review: Damnation Alley

I’m a fan of the Fallout series. I love the world those games build, and consequently when I discover a work that is formulative to that universe, it tends to give that work a little extra appeal for me. It’s part of the reason why I like some of the later portions of The Martian Chronicles and why I enjoyed A Boy and his Dog, which is a review for another time. Damnation Alley is a little less known portion of the sub-genre, but is still a remarkably enjoyable film. Continue reading →

Standard