not as good as the first one but nobody's perfect, including original director Johnny Mak's brother Michael, who took over the series, here the criminal mainlanders are pressed into informant and infiltration service with the promise of freedom and citizenship and the title certainly lets you know how that goes, it's less ambiguous and more sentimental and operatic than the first yet it's still a VERY bleak and deterministic tale, still with its own moments of extreme violence (including a…
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Gunman's Walk 1958
this movie reminded me of the time Richard M. Daley's nephew murdered a guy and got 60 days in jail
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Reckless 1984
The feature film debuts of director James Foley and screenwriter Chris Columbus and if you know anything about these guys you can pretty easily tease out what’s going on here (besides the stunning on-location-in-Ohio cinematography by a pre-marty Michael Ballhaus): Columbus’ semi-autobiographical adolescent male fantasy about an outsider (Aidan Quinn, brooding in a leather jacket) fucking the cheerleader (Daryl Hannah) and escaping the dead end of a deindustrialized rust belt was given not just the sleaze treatment but ambiguity (shades…
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Planet of the Vampires 1965
One of the most striking looking and boring films ever made, a wild combination, the non-existent pacing heightens the paranoia and psychic double crosses, the candy color lighting and Ulmer-esque low-budget set design and black vamp suits do the rest
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The Vikings 1958
Color and carnage and vikings with NYC accents; in general I prefer Fleischer on a smaller scale and register but this is Hollywood Spectacle of the finest order and, in many ways, a warm up for his Biblical masterpiece Barabbas (1961)
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