A grimy serial killer flick from the guy who would go on to direct Wild Things. The performances by Rooker and Towles were chilling. There were even moments where Towles outnastied Rooker, and that is really saying something. The fact that this was based on a real-life story made all the more icky.
I had a great time watching this with Michelle and Sophie.
Anthony Wong plays a lowly traffic cop who is obsessed with action movies. When the bank across the street from his intersection gets robbed, a chain of events is set in motion that gives him the opportunity to prove that he can be a real-life action hero.
Cop Image is a fun action comedy with a strong mystery subplot. Most of the movie actually plays out as police procedural of sorts. We follow Wong on his misadventures as he stumbles…
A wonderful movie, this, and the most fun entry in the franchise, at least it is for me.
Always a great time watching The Last Crusade with Michelle.
A heroic bloodshed movie from director Yuen Jun-Man, starring quite a few Hong Kong heavy weights (most notably Lo Lieh, Simon Yam, Jacky Cheung and Dick Wei).
I enjoyed Bullet for Hire's vicious opening and closing acts, but the frivolous middle part was a real drag. I didn't like that the focus shifted to Cheung's upstart character. His inexperience and cockiness were played off for laughs, but he was annoying the shit out of me. Lo's character on the other…
It has a dubious premise, but Marshall and co. are somehow able to make something wholesome out of it. I don't think it would have worked as well with different leads however; Hawn's and Russel's chemistry is off the charts here (for obvious reasons) and they are fun to watch.
The more Alan Silvestri movie scores I hear, the more I come to the realization that the man is awfully one-note.
I had a blast watching one of Michelle's childhood favourites with her.
You killed many, you are perverted
A serial killer flick from Ivan Lai (The Blue Jean Monster), with LOTS of full-frontal nudity and graphic sex(ual violence). The 90s atmosphere is palpable, not just because of the fashions, but also in the way the movie was shot. Lai certainly took inspiration from American movies of the era in that regard.
This contains great performances from Jade Leung, Mark Cheng and Lo Hung.
There is a shoot-out scene that reminded me of the famous one in Heat.
I still haven't seen the Michael Powell classic
A supernatural s̶o̶a̶p̶ ̶o̶p̶e̶r̶a̶ dramedy from Yang Chuan, the director of Seeding of a Ghost and Hell Has No Boundary. I didn't have any subtitles available to me, so the dialogue went over my head. Luckily, I was able to piece together most of the plot by reading this write-up beforehand.
Ghost's Lover spends far too much time in relationship drama territory for my liking. The supernatural shenanigans don't even occur until the last 25 minutes of the movie. Up until that point this mostly consists of lame comical situations and nudity/sex.
Very disappointing.
Jean Sorel is annoyed by his wife's (Ewa Aulin) flirtatious nature towards other men, so he starts hooking up with his mother in law (Lucía Bosé). That's it. That's basically the entire gist of The Double. The movie is visually appealing however and the story unfolds in an out of sequence order, making it feel extremely off, almost (fever)dreamlike.
This could definitely be considered giallo adjacent.
My fourth Kôyû Ohara movie is a particularly subdued pinku melodrama about obsession, murder and a special kind of sibling love. I actually thought Female Leopard was rather tasteful, at least when compared to most of the other Roman Pornos of the era.
I realize that I am starting to sound like a broken record, but it just has to be said that these movies look absolutely exquisite.
Another chopped together movie from the Ed Wood of Hong Kong cinema, Godfrey Ho. I can't tell you much about the plot, because I gave up on following the "story" about 5 minutes into my watch.
The source movie has three cute switchboard operators thwarting an assassination attempt on a millionaire who is apparently their boss (?). Something like that. The girls also go on a boat trip and are attacked by ghosts or whatever. Very spooky!*
The Ho inserts…
What a wonderful surprise this, my tenth Tsui Hark movie, turned out to be. Full of impressive stunts, flashy visual tricks and general what-the-fuckery, Knock Off is a huge improvement over Tsui's other American production. Mickey Rourke and Dennis Rodman don't make a reappearance here, but Jean-Claude Van Damme does, and he's a lot of fun. He brings a levity to the movie that I am not used to from him. He walks around with a stupid grin (and a…
Another Wong Jing banger.
I think the best way to describe Magic Crystal is as the Amblin movie that Steven Spielberg never made. Here, Wong successfully merges a martial arts heavy action-adventure plot with a kid focused fantasy subplot about a talking magic rock. It is bonkers, but it kind of works? It works better at least than 98% of the Hong Kong movies that try to condense multiple movies into one.
The fight sequences are nothing short than phenomenal…