What was the last movie you've seen?

[Michi]

New write-ups of the week:

Gingerdead Man 2: Passion of the Crust


Yeah, the title doesn't match. This is Full Moon. Don't expect too much. That place has problems.

The killer cookie is back, and this time he's stalking the idiots that populate a run-down B-movie studio. Except this time he's not out for revenge, but instead intends to transfer his soul into a human body with the help of a evil book and a few human sacrifices. Oh, and there's a robot with working lasers. Because of course a cheap horror film studio would have that lying around.

Well, it took them a couple years and another film, but Full Moon and Charles Band seem to have finally figured out that the premise of the killer cookie was hella stupid, and instead of trying continue the serious tone of the first film, the better option would be to just run with and embrace the stupid. The movie is essentially Full Moon jumping fully on the self-referential self-awareness bandwagon. The result is 82 minutes of Full Moon and Charles Band making fun of themselves using a wise-cracking, murderous cookie. It ends up being more entertaining than it deserves, and thus 10x better than the first film. Still not good, mind you. But much more entertaining.



Eye See You



An agent is on the trail of a ruthless serial killer, and brags that he's close to catching him. But the killer is one step ahead of the agent and quickly punishes him for his bravado by killing the agent's friend and his girlfriend. The killer is eventually killed, but agent is so distraught with grief that it's ruining his life. So his friend checks the agent into a remote rehab facility in the middle of nowhere that's specially catered to helping cops. But, - Surprise Surprise - , the killer isn't as dead as people thought, and he's back to add another heaping dose of torment to the agent.

I was looking for some winter themed movies, or at least some snow themed ones, and ran across this little thriller that Universal apparently hated so much that they abandoned the rights to it and like to pretend it doesn't exist. Quite honestly, I don't think it's that bad. In fact, I actually quite liked it despite it's flaws. Horribly predictable? Sure. Wants you to suspend your disbelief with some of the questionably logical actions the killer is able to pull of. Yup. Inexplicably ignores Stallone, the film's main character, about midway through the film until he's needed again in the last twenty minutes? Um...yeah. That's a bold choice there, movie, but still not a total deal breaker. Though I'm beginning to see why the studio may have had some issues with it. Still, I fount it to be a very pretty looking, nice, light thriller film if you're the type who can turn your brain off while watching movies. It's free on Tubi if you want to give it a watch.

[MrPopo]

I totally get why Gingerdeadman exists. The title alone is worth enough money to make a movie. I am fascinated that a sequel was made.

[Michi]

I'm actually quite shocked a sequel got made, given how mind-numbingly boring the first film ended up being. Seriously, if anyone's thinking about watching the first one, don't subject yourself to that. It hurts. If you want to watch one, watch this film instead. It has a 4-minute summary of the first film, which is leagues more comprehensible than the movie itself ever was.

And the first film actually managed to garner TWO sequels, plus a cross-over with the studio’s killer bong franchise. I will not be watching that last one. As I've found I can only handle so many Full Moon films in a single month.

[NotLuke]

I'm telling you, this new Spider-Man movie really makes you feel like you are watching a Spider-Man movie.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Here are the last four movies I’ve seen, all Prime Video, and my personal tag line for each:

The Farmer and The Belle: Saving Santaland - “Pander Harder”
Christmas Recipe for Romance - “Not Another Cooking Show Christmas Movie”
A Country Christmas - “Christmas Songs Sung with a Twangy Voice”
Christmas in Royal Fashion - “This Prince Must Be from a Pretty Poor Country”
The Spirit of Christmas - “Making Out with a Hipster Ghost at Christmas!”

Of these, Christmas in Royal Fashion is easily the worst. Just laughably, MST3K-level bad. The Spirit of Christmas, on the other hand, was actually pretty good!

Anyone else watching trashy Christmas movies this December?

[Golgo 14]

A friend of mine is a connoisseur of Hallmark Christmas movies. One year he sent me a dvd of Cancel Christmas featuring 80s staple Judd Nelson as Santa Claus. It's been a while, but my memory is that it was kind of like a lesser episode of Quantum Leap. Oh boy!

[REPO Man]

Mickey's Christmas Carol is one I revisited recently. Still so heartwarming.

I used to have the book on tape, for those who remember the book and cassette combos from the 90s.

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They usually came in magenta, like the Snow White one I used to have.

[Raging Justice]

Police Story



So I am checking out lots of Asian movies, particularly those of the martial arts variety...or just action in general. Anyone with a serious interest in old Hong Kong or Asian action movies knows that it can be a bit of a pain finding a good version to watch. A lot of these movies suffer from edits, censorship, bad dubbing (though some people actually enjoy those), bad visuals due to old, damaged prints, poorly translated subtitles, not to mention there often being multiple versions or "cuts" of a film so you don't know which one to watch. I found a cool site called Hong Kong Rescue that tries to do definitive versions of some of these movies. They are technically a bootleg site, but the work they put into this stuff is impressive and they have quite a few Jackie Chan movies.

So I checked out their release of Police Story. I'll copy paste from their site what makes the HKR version of this special:

"After many years of neglect, Jackie Chan has finally started to get some respect on home video. However, our release of Police Story stands head and shoulders above the rest for a few reasons.

First, we took the unprecedented step of completely restoring the Japanese Extended Version.

For many people, myself included, the Japanese Extended Version of Police Story, with it's extended opening and closing, alternate credits and outtakes, and additional scenes and re-edited scenes, is actually superior to the Hong Kong theatrical cut.

Until now, it's only been available on a Japanese laserdisc and as a bonus on a 2013 Japanese Blu-ray.

The source used on the Japanese Blu-ray was in terrible shape. It's obviously an extremely worn and damaged 35mm print many generations removed from the original negatives, that apparently haven't survived.

It even includes burnt-in Japanese subtitles on the right side of the image, which is distracting for English-speaking viewers and covers up important parts of the image.

What we did was to use the recent 4K restoration of the Hong Kong version for all scenes we could, and then fully restoring the Japanese extended scenes and color-grading them to match up seamlessly with the Hong Kong version.

We used Digital Vision Phoenix and The Pixel Farm's PFClean to remove thousands of instances of dirt, dust, scratches and broken frames.

We even took it a step further and removed ALL the burnt-in Japanese subtitles using a variety of methods that are too complex to describe.

Many people said this couldn't be done, but we worked frame-by-frame for several months and managed to make it look completely seamless.

This is an example of how we're willing to go above and beyond in service of classic Hong Kong cinema.

The subtitles:

As is our usual policy, we spent considerable time re-translating the dialog to ensure our subtitles are the most accurate on the market.

But we went a step further and had the Police Story theme song ("The Hero Story") translated into English for the very first time.

A carefully-selected collection of audio tracks:

Our release includes a more comprehensive audio selection than any other.

Finally, you have the option to toggle between every audio track that you’d want for this film, including no less than four commentaries."

So I checked out the extended Japanese cut. It's basically a comedy, action movie. I had a lot of fun. Jackie's fun to watch in much the same way Bruce Campbell is, he's really in his element when he's doing wacky stuff and light hearted comedy and he does it with a very old school flair (very Buster Keaton/Charlie Chaplin) and lot of slap sticky, physicality. He can be a bit too silly at times, but he's generally very entertaining when doing the goofball, comedy stuff. I don't know why, but watching this made me think of how fun a movie with Jackie Chan and Bruce Campbell in their young, prime would be.

Anyway, the plot is fairly standard stuff for a cop movie, but the characters are great (particularly the two female leads) and the actors put in good performances. The action is far and away the best part of the movie with awesomely choreographed fight scenes and crazy stunts. No CGI, no stunt doubles, everything just looks real, and the action is FAST. Blink and you'll miss something. I love it. These are what make a lot of these types of movies so much fun to watch. There's some amazing moments involving vehicles in this film as well.



If I have some minor gripes they are these. The comedy stuff can feel a bit much at times, but I found it mostly enjoyable. There's a moment where Jackie busts into an impromptu dance sequence that put a smile on my face. The movie seems to almost go into romcom territory at one point though, which may not appeal to some people. At times I was getting impatient waiting for the next action scene. I appreciate when movies like this attempt to tell a story instead of just being mindless action...but I'm kind of here for the mindless action Don't go into this expecting just action scene after action scene. The middle part of the movie kind of forces you action junkies to be patient...maybe for a bit too long. At least it gives the action sequences a chance to breathe and stand out more. Another small gripe, one crazy stunt Chan does get replayed two times. This kind of took me out of the movie a bit. I expect instant replays from sports, MMA, and pro wrestling...but not from a movie. Granted the stunt was awesome, but it still felt weird.



Overall though, a fun movie with some decent comedy, good characters, and AMAZING action. Highly recommended and I can't wait to see the other Policy Story movies. In fact, Hong Kong Rescue has Policy Story 3, but not 2 oddly enough.

Feel free to recommend me some other movies like this by the way. I have watched a lot of Asian martial arts or action movies, but much of it is more modern stuff like the Ip Man movies, The Raid, The Raid 2, Hero, House of Flying Dagger, Sha Po Lang (Killzone).The Man from Nowhere, On Bak, etc. I'm looking to check out some more older stuff as well as more niche, obscure, and even cult, B movie, type stuff

[stickem]

finally sat down with my kids and watched "8 bit Christmas". like most reviews, It's A Christmas Story with nes instead of the bb gun. I enjoy this movie more. I've grown to hate the other lol, probably because this is the time period i grew up in, not the 60's. I didn't like the fact violence in video games was brought up. it wasn't a thought back in those days at all and felt like a lazy copout on the raffle bit. should have had the main kid lose out to a kid whose parents took that shit to work and sold hundreds, like that one kid every year in school while everybody else had to go door to door.. And the fact nobody had one in the movie... everybody and their brother had one and it was 1986, not the late 80's lol.

[Michi]

New write-up:

Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver



In this horror spoof packed to the brim with references, the Gingerdead Man escapes the cookie insane asylum he was being held at and manages to stumble upon a time machine, that transports him away from his pursuers and into the distant past and safety of a 1970s roller disco rink. What's a murderous pastry lost in time to do? Get to some murdering, of course!

This is the final installment of the Gingerdead Man trilogy before they smooshed him into a crossover film. While the second installment was stupid fun, this one just ends up feeling stupid. The film tries to spoof a lot of other, better films, but the movie is so poorly put together that whatever amusement you might get from the references like Porky's, Silence of the Lambs, and Dr. Who will be extinguished real quick. The plot is incoherent, the characters are annoying, and the effects budget has taken such a plunge that they even used CGI for the bloodsplatter. In short, it's no bueno and they should have quite while they were ahead. But alas, they didn't and we ended up with this.