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MOVIE COMMENT CATCH-ALL THREAD


jaedmc

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I just picked up a whole passle of stuff from the local store (reviews to come) and the first thing watched was 

 

DRUG WAR (2013, Johnnie To)

 

I've read a lot of good things about this. They're all correct. The film begins with a bang and ends with a whimper, but that is all relative to the story, not relative to whether how good it is. Timmy (Louis Ko) is caught by the police during a completely unrelated drug operation and to save his hide he decides to cooperate due to draconian Chinese laws which would give him the death penalty for meth manufacturing. He leads main cop Captain Lei (Sun Honglei) into the bowels of his organization on an elaborate double-sting. Obviously, carnage ensues, but you don't know when and you don't know how. The film has a fantastic slow burn until the shit hits the fan, and when it does, it just sucks you in further. Trying to make sense of the sting at first was confusing but once you get it you realize you're in the hands of a master and let logic fly out the window just to see more. Ko's character turns are unexpected but they won't be after you see the whole picture and reflect. Bang-up film, one of the best of the year and I'm damn glad to have seen it for rental at some shitty Midwestern video store on the edge of town.

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Captain America is still my favorite of the recent Avengers-based flicks.  Yes, above Iron Man and Avengers both.  I

 

I love the Cap movie too. It hit every note just right. I wish it had not included the stuff in modern times at the end, but I get why it was there. 

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I do not like musicals. I do not like showtunes. I do not like Broadway. But I LOVE Rocky Horror. 

Same here.  I think this has to do with going to see it in a theater almost every Friday for a couple years of college.  I probably saw it almost 120 times and met many great friends.  Every time I would catch it on VH1 or something I'd just end up yelling the lines back at it and honestly I don't think I've ever seen it just normally.

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I just missed two showings of Rocky here but the theater was SO FUCKING FULL that I seriously doubt I could have found a seat. Plus I don't like lines and I don't like crowds (but for this? c'mon). Hopefully with this success the Art will realize that as soon as the students come back to Champaign they can run the film twice every weekend for at least two months until Halloween.

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In terms of modern musicals, I think South Park and any number of Disney features need to be mentioned, with Lion King being the one that stands out as having the most memorable music.

In terms of the classic musical movies, Fiddler has the best book by a pretty considerable margin, even better than My Fair Lady. I think you could take the songs out of both of those films and still have a watchable product.

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The adaptation of My Fair Lady is just a bit to stuffy for my tastes.  The songs are spectacular.

 

 

I can't wrap my head around the idea that The Lion King's songs stand out, as I think it quite easily has a worse set of songs than Mermaid, Beast, or Aladdin.  Except Circle of Life, that one is amazing.  But, even the good ones aren't as good as the ones in the other three films.  Scar's got a good villain song, but compared to Poor Unfortunate Souls or Gaston?  Please. 

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How does everyone feel about Repo! The Genetic Opera?  I was a huge fan of it.

 

Alexa Vega is awful, and the lyrics are abysmal. There's a lot of talent in the movie (Paris Hilton is surprisingly good), but most of it is misused. And the creators are completely hamfisted in their efforts to make it a "Second Rocky Horror". In the past 20 years this is the third time somebody's tried to do such a thing, and only one of them was organic.

 

To throw another excellent musical out there, Hedwig & The Angry Inch.

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And hey, Jae! Great writeup on The Blob. What did you think about the '88 version?

 '88 version is underloved.  I prefer it to the original.
I'm pretty sure I haven't seen 88 Blob since it came out. I'm also pretty sure I first saw it at the Drive In, which is kind of neat. I don't remember a lot about it, but I do remember liking it and the FX of peopple covered and blob stuff freaked me out.Maybe it's time for a revisit. Thanks for reading!
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Check it out again man, I just caught it on a local station of all places (channel 3!) and it was fantastic. Frank Darabont had a hand in the scriptwriting and he puts a very King-ly feel in it. Plus the effects are just boss for the most part. 

 

Only God Forgives was watched last night under, erm, enhanced circumstances and I really dug it. I can see why people would call it a piece of shit. Incredibly slow, Gosling has exactly one show of emotion in the entire film and otherwise is a mannequin, absurd amount of gore, seems to just kind of drift off at the end. That's all the point. It's like a fever dream where real life gets buried in a combination of the color schemes of Argento's Suspiria and Mann's Thief to evoke a state of unrest, of unreality. At its heart I really do think it's a horror film, as I think one of the main characters is a spirit, or at least an avenging angel of death who manifests himself into the real world to wreak vengeance for wrongs done. Who knows. It's a trashy genre film and a classy art-house film rolled together, and a nasty piece of filmmaking altogether, and I want to see it again.

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