Beautiful, heart touching movie, a feast for the senses. 8.5/10
Giuseppe Tornatore and Ennio Morricone.
La leggenda del pianista sull’oceano
I saw Drunken Master (1978).
[Recommended]
I’ve seen about 20 Jackie Chan movies where Jackie Chan does stunts.
Out of those 20 or so movies, this is my favorite.
I’ve also seen this Jackie Chan movie more than any of his other movies.
I watched the English dubbed version, and the voice acting is pretty good.
The music is also very good, though sometimes the music and sound effects are kinda jarring.
The plot is just about perfect.
My favorite parts of the movie are the training sequences.
I don’t know why, but the training in this movie is extremely entertaining.
The action sequences are excellent.
A lot of the actors in this movie are also in Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow (1978), which is Jackie Chan’s breakout role.
The final battle of Drunken Master is epic.
Although this movie has a good sense of humor, because I’ve seen it dozens of times, I didn’t find myself laughing out loud very much.
I would rate the movie PG-13 for plenty of kung fu violence and plenty of moderate swearing.
Sisu (in theaters, released later in USA)
Sisu is a 2022 historical action film written and directed by Jalmari Helander. Set in Finnish Lapland during World War II, the film follows a gold prospector who attempts to secure his stolen gold and defend himself from a Nazi death squad led by a brutal Schutzstaffel officer. The film stars Jorma Tommila, Aksel Hennie, Jack Doolan and Mimosa Willamo.
This movie shares some DNA with the first John Wick movie.
Biggest differences between Sisu and Wick:
- No secret societies or hidden world here, the plot is very straightforward
- this man’s durability is over-the-top from the start. Explanation: tenacity. (he takes serious damage but mostly powers through)
- Gore
- Mostly takes place in unpopulated open country
- Protagonist doesn’t speak till near the end
- The dog survives
Found parts of this movie to be surprisingly funny. The action got creative at times and the plot actually had me guessing at points.There was enough flavor here to make it feel like more than Finnish Wick to me. Overall, I’d recommend it.
BTW, dialog was in English and not Finnish. I had expected subtitles to be honest.
I saw Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022).
[Recommended]
Wow, this movie is something!
I can see why it has won so many awards.
The acting is excellent, as is the music.
The plot is pretty crazy.
I think the movie is mostly drama and sci-fi, with some action sequences.
Although the drama parts are done well, the sci-fi and action sequences are far more entertaining.
Most of the action sequences are choppy, but they are still fun to watch.
I just wish there were more action sequences in the film.
Maybe half of the movie is in English, with the other half in Mandarin/Cantonese.
The editing of the movie is pretty impressive.
Even though I didn’t like the drama elements all that much, because this movie is so different than anything I’ve ever seen before, I recommend the movie.
I can’t believe this movie was made for only about $14 million.
It seems like a much higher budget movie.
The movie does seem a bit pointless by the end, but it’s still a fun ride.
1 Thank
There is a saying: “Less is more.” Well, the people that made EEAAO said “More is more!” By the 20 minute mark, I was fatigued and completely desensitized to the rest of the movie because there was just so much stuff flying at me in rapid succession. Nothing registers because you’re forced to move on to the next thing before you have a second to react to the thing you just saw. I love Michelle Yeoh, but this movie was a mess. A better title would have been Too Much Crap, Way Too Fast!
1 Thank
Yes. It jumped around way too much. The action scenes were pretty good, but it was painful to try to follow the plot.
I am not interested in watching it again… FWIW
I loved the movie.
I’m still thinking about the movie today, and I almost never do that the day after I watch a movie.
I also want to watch the movie again soon, and I haven’t had that reaction to a movie in years.
I liked how the movie jumped around a lot.
I said that I thought the movie was kinda pointless by the end, but that’s just because the movie didn’t take the path that I was expecting.
I hope to see more movies similar to Everything Everywhere All at Once in the future.
Austin Powers Films (1997-2002)
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
Austin Powers in Goldmember
I’d never seen any of these before. I was vaguely aware of their existence and decided the time had come to check them out. Overall, they weren’t great. I think they followed the Bond formula too closely. It’s part of the gag for him to do Bond things, but that also makes the movies really, really predictable.
Standout gags for me:
- the “strategic placement” of items to hide Austin Powers’ junk from the camera. I liked how over-the-top and creative they got.
- the shadow puppet gag from the second and third films. The one in the third film just tickled my funny bone somehow and I started laughing so hard I was in tears.
Other than that most of the humor was just routine bits of obvious Bond parody that didn’t really land for me. It was pretty wild watching movies from this era though, felt like I opened a time capsule even more so than watching a film from the 30s or 40s. Weird
1 Thank
she said
I saw The Legend of Drunken Master (1994).
[Recommended]
This movie is also known as Drunken Master 2.
It’s not a sequel to the first movie–it’s more of a reboot.
Both movies are amazing, though I prefer the first one.
The first one has a much better plot and it has better voice acting in the English dubbed versions.
The second one has better stunts.
Yep, the stunts are pretty insane in this movie.
I don’t think a movie like this could be made in the U.S. because the stunts are so reckless.
I wouldn’t be surprised if plenty of stuntmen got seriously injured in the making of this film.
The plot is good, but the voice acting of the dubbed version is lacking.
The music is excellent, but there are long stretches without any music, which is not a good thing.
Some of the action sequences are unreal.
For example, the final battle sequences are extremely entertaining.
By the way, I think the English dubbed version that I saw had Jackie Chan speaking English–it sounded just like him.
I would give the movie an R rating for a whole lot of violence, and some moderate swearing.
The Pawnbroker (1964)
Rod Steiger doesn’t just provide a powerful performance that anchors this film - he inhabits the character to an extent rarely seen on film up until that time. And it’s a character unlike any other that had been the focus of a major studio movie up until that time. The other performances of the main characters are equally effective, and the film was ground-breaking in several ways.
Steiger plays Sol Nazerman, a Jewish man who lives with his sister-in-law and her family on Long Island, New York. Sol is uncommunicative with his own family and the customers at the pawn shop he manages in Harlem, New York City. He speaks in monosyllables, and seems to keep his human contacts to a minimum in the course of his day. The reason for his demeanor gradually becomes apparent when we see brief mental flashbacks of his previous life in Europe, 20 years earlier, when he apparently had a wife and children in a bucolic, beautiful setting. When Sol’s sister-in-law prods Sol to discuss a trip she wants to take to Europe, to see their family relatives, there is a crack in Sol’s placid demeanor - he is clearly agitated, and he has a brief flashback memory of happy times in his former homeland, with his wife and children, being interrupted by events not shown as the flashback ends. Sol refuses to discuss the trip.
Later, in the pawn shop in the City, more events occur that cause Sol to have more flashbacks, bringing back more memories Sol has suppressed for years. We learn that Sol lost his wife and children in the Holocaust of the 1930’s-40’s, and that the terrible memories of that time haunt him to the point that he has banished all his emotions, his hopes, and the pleasures of life, including any positive contact with his family, acquaintances, and customers at his shop. When Sol’s emotional shell is broken by the events in his shop and in his life, the pain of all his memories is unrelenting and unbearable. The movie was unique for its time in not providing any easy resolution or answers to the evils that resulted in tragedy in Sol’s former life in Europe, and in his current life in the USA.
The movie was also unique in its jazz music score (Quincy Jones’ first movie score), and in its brief nudity that was a problem with the MPAA until an appeal by the producers resulted in the MPAA Appeals Board eventually granting the film a Production Code Seal - the first movie with nudity to be granted a Seal. The sets were deliberately created so as to highlight cages, bars, wire, locks and alarms - to show that, although Sol was no longer in a concentration camp, he was still imprisoned by his memories of that time. Director Sidney Lumet said that he was influenced in making this film by two previous films by the French New Wave director Alain Resnais: Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), and Night and Fog (1956).
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968)
Alan Arkin gives an amazingly nuanced, energetic and heartbreaking performance without speaking a word in this extraordinary film, based on the novel by Carson McCullers, that still holds up today with the best of movie dramas. Arkin plays a deaf mute man, known only as Singer, who moves to a smaller town and takes a room in a boarding house so he can visit and watch over his long-time friend being treated at a nearby psychiatric hospital. The friend is the only person in Singer’s life who can communicate with Singer using sign language. Singer can read lips and he writes notes to other people on a small paper pad he keeps with him at all times. Sadly, the irrational and anti-social behavior of Singer’s friend renders a psychiatric hospital the only option to keep him out of serious legal troubles.
Once Singer moves to his new town and into his room, he becomes a confidant and friend to everyone he meets, and he goes out of his way to be kind to his acquaintances - from the 16-year-old daughter of the homeowners who rent him his room (Sondra Locke), to the African American doctor in town (Percy Rodrigues) who refuses to treat the town’s white residents, until Singer pesters him into helping a drunk stranger down on his luck, to the doctor’s daughter (Cicely Tyson), who’s boyfriend gets into trouble by defending her against the town racists attacking them.
Singer exerts a lot of effort in his humble, sincere desire to be helpful to everyone, it seems, including his hospitalized friend, who gets into more trouble when he is released from the hospital for a day. Singer has to think and act fast to prevent a meal with his friend at a fancy local hotel from ending in disaster, but he generously treats his friend to a nice day and saves his friend from further trouble. Unfortunately for Singer, he realizes during the course of the day that his friend’s behavior is not improved by his stay at the hospital, and when Singer is surprised by the news that his old friend has suddenly died, he is shocked and deeply saddened.
As we see the various characters in Singer’s life focusing on their own problems and on the drama in their lives, nobody seems to realize that Singer is suffering in his silence. We can see that the lack of human connections imposed by Singer’s inability to speak and hear, and the self-centered focus of those around him in dealing with the immediate concerns in their own lives, serve to isolate Singer and deprive him of human companionship. It is to this film’s credit, especially for a film released in 1968, that the movie provides no easy answers to Singer’s isolation, or to any of the other social and personal problems encountered by the other characters. The story is a courageous exception to the standard movie stories of the time, and stands with very few movies of that era in its honest, intelligent depiction of a kind, generous human being that is living in a personal torment invisible to others, and in its equally courageous and honest depiction of the consequences, all too often.
1 Thank
I saw The Fearless Hyena (1979).
This movie is just okay.
It’s the first movie that Jackie Chan directed.
He also stars in it, and he’s one of the writers of the film.
Although I know that Jackie Chan can direct a great movie, his directorial debut is disappointing.
The worst part of the movie is the audio.
Some of the music and many of the sound effects are jarring and annoying.
In the English dubbed version, some of the characters, especially Jackie Chan’s character, have annoying voices at times.
Some of the sound effects and some of the action in the movie is like a Looney Tunes Bugs Bunny cartoon, and not in a good way–it’s cartoonish and unprofessional and it just doesn’t work.
The acting in the dubbed version is not that great.
The plot is decent.
Some of the action sequences are pretty good, but some are not that great.
I think Jackie Chan learned from his mistakes in making this film because some of the later movies that he directed are excellent.
I would give the movie an R rating for violence and some language.
1 Thank
The Quiet Girl (2023)
The Quiet Girl is a quiet gem of a movie that makes the most out of its sparse dialog. The story, which takes place in rural Ireland, is about a young girl named Cait who lives in a tense, unhappy home with her sisters, her mother, and a father who does not seem to have any interest at all in his children. Her father, in fact, is hostile to almost everyone, including the young woman in town with whom he is obviously carrying on, without hiding that fact from Cait. Cait’s mother is pregnant, and when the time approaches for her to give birth, she asks her middle-aged, childless cousins Eibhlin and Sean on another farm three hours away by car to board Cait until the arrival of the new child.
At first, Cait is apprehensive about moving away to live with an older couple she does not know, but her apprehension soon gives way to grateful astonishment when she is cared for with real kindness and generosity for the first time in her life. Eibhlin is immediately outgoing in showing her affection for Cait, but Sean is aloof - somewhat like her father - and seems to keep his distance at first. Gradually, though, Sean warms to Cait, and in the slow, long takes this movie gives us in almost every scene, we see him reaching out to develop a special relationship with Cait. We also find out why Sean had kept his distance in the beginning, why he and Eibhlin seem fearful about letting her wander around the farm, and why he scolds her angrily when she wanders away from him in her first days working with him in the barn.
This is simply a beautiful, subtly-powerful movie about the healing power of family bonds based in kindness, and the ability of those bonds, and that kindness, to help us deal with grief and move forward. The story is told mainly in images, with minimal dialog and many shots that linger, but all the dialog is well-chosen - not a word is wasted in telling the story - and the photography is exceptional. Also exceptional is the acting, in particular by young newcomer Catherine Clinch as Cait, who gives an astonishingly effective, heartbreaking performance. In Gaelic and a bit of English, with English subtitles.
1 Thank
We enjoyed that one. It’s nothing that’s going to blow people away, but it tells its story well.
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I agree that it’s very well put together. I’m sure many people will not be interested, due to the lack of violence, sex, and the other elements that normally draw large audiences. But it’s good to know somebody else here saw it and appreciated it.
I saw The Fabelmans (2022).
[Recommended]
This Stephen Spielberg movie is semi-autobiographical.
The first 25%-30% of the movie is kinda slow and uninteresting.
The rest of the movie is absolutely brilliant.
The acting is just about perfect, as is the music.
The movie is mostly a drama, but there are other genre elements every once in a while.
I don’t usually like dramas unless they’re done very well (like this film.)
This isn’t Spielberg’s best movie, but it is extremely good.
There is some hatred in the movie, which is normal for dramas, and I don’t usually like to watch characters that are hateful, but it works in this movie.
The ending of the movie seems abrupt and kinda out of place, but I really enjoyed the totality of the movie.
I saw Dragon Fist (1979).
[Recommended]
Wow, this movie is amazing.
I wasn’t expecting much because this film only has a 6.1 on IMDb, but this was a very pleasant surprise.
The movie has a lot of drama, a lot of action, and some suspense.
The drama is done extremely well, the action sequences are top notch, and the suspense is just beautiful.
There is no comedy in this movie.
It’s a very serious film, and it has quite a dark theme to it.
The plot is excellent.
The voice acting in the English dubbed version is very good, though at least one female character has a somewhat shrill voice.
The movie has great music.
The audio to this movie isn’t perfect, but considering it’s a 1979 movie starring Jackie Chan, the audio is really darn good.
I rank this movie almost up there with Drunken Master 1 & 2, two of my favorite Jackie Chan films.
The director, Wei Lo, knew what he was doing with this movie.
Strangely enough, this was Wei Lo’s last movie that he directed.
I would give the movie an R rating for violence.
Absolutely Anything - guy gets galactic powers for aliens and can wish anything to happen by waving his hands. Entertaining and funny movie, but nothing spectacular. I would rate it 7/10.
One of Robin Williams’ last movies.
1 Thank
Masterpiece. 9/10
