I've heard people talk about this one like it's some sort of enormous step down from the first two, but I don't know man. Keanu breaks Boban's neck with a book. He stabs a guy in the eye. He kills multiple goons by getting a horse to kick them in the head. There's a whole sequence where Keanu and Halle Berry shoot like 100 guys in the head while two cute attack dogs bite their dicks. The cinematography is fantastic…
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The Man with the Golden Gun 1974
I'm tentatively returning to my Bond watch-through after a 3 year break.
These early Roger Moore Bonds in the wake of Eon being forced to wrap up the Spectre story arc are kind of fascinating. It seems pretty clear that they didn't know what to do next, so they decided to lean on doing weird genre pastiches. Live And Let Die is a delirious mashup of a blaxploitation movie, a Caribbean zombie movie, and a silly southern crime caper movie,…
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Royal Warriors 1986
Some really great choreography and stunt work, especially in the hijacking sequence and the restaurant shootout, which are just stellar. Michelle Yeoh and Hiroyuki Sanada absolutely kick ass. The sudden and harsh shift in tone around the 30 minute mark, where it suddenly goes from a Yes Madam-esque action comedy to something a lot darker and meaner, is a really startling and novel move, but Michael Wong's character never seems to get the memo that the tone changed and continues…
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The Fugitive 1993
One of the great Chicago movies, made by a director (and a star!) with a native's eye for this city. It looks and feels distinctly like Chicago in a way most other big budget movies shot here don't. The downtown scenes with the St. Patrick's Day Parade set piece are the most discussed, but the nighttime helicopter shots and the sequence shot in Pullman really nail the point home.
While I've never watched the TV series, I can understand why…
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The Heroic Trio 1993
I love the world of this film... hot vigilantes, every room has 30 foot ceilings, skeleton... this movie has it all.
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Edge of Tomorrow 2014
Pretty great! I wish more big Hollywood action movies were like this. It's funny, not because characters are making sarcastic little jokes to undercut the seriousness, but because its central premise is an absurdist nightmare that naturally generates funny situations. It's great that Tom Cruise has just enough of a sense of humor about himself and his public image to star in something like this where he has to be an incompetent coward for half the runtime. Kind of a rare quality among big movie stars these days. The Rock would never star in something like this.
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Everything Everywhere All at Once 2022
Not bad but pretty disappointing considering the immense hype around this. I think I would've preferred this if it was played relatively straight with fewer jokes. I don't think the Daniels are very funny. Compare this to something like The Simpsons' "Time and Punishment" or Futurama's "The Farnsworth Parabox", which contain so many great and hilarious "goofy parallel universe bits" in such a short amount of time you get delirious watching them. The Daniels basically came up with 2 goofy…
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Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles 1975
Why is that even a lot of the positive reviews of this movie call it boring? This is one of the most compelling and invigorating films I've ever seen. I had to pause it twice to deal with some practical concerns but other than that I did not take my eyes off the screen a single time. Probably the greatest example I've ever seen of a movie silently teaching you how you're supposed to watch it. The opening 30 minutes…
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3 Women 1977
Pretty fantastic. Altman riffing on Persona kind of like he did in Images, but a lot more successfully. I've seen a lot of great dreamlike movies before, but this is the one that best captures that feeling of when your "character" shifts to someone else in the middle of a dream, where suddenly you're a different person but the switch is so seamless you don't notice.
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Stagecoach 1939
I first watched this back in 2018 when, for a variety of reasons, I often struggled to stay awake while watching movies on weeknights but would still force myself to finish them anyway, so it didn't make a huge impression on me at the time. Watching it again with a clearer head, this is kind of a perfect little adventure movie. A tight 96 minutes with 9 major characters, they all have distinct nuanced personalities, they all have interesting dynamics…
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Distant Voices, Still Lives 1988
One of the best and most honest films about nostalgia and memory I think I've ever seen. Such vivid characters and evocative storytelling shown through a hazy fractured lens, like real people looking back on half-remembered moments, remembering the feelings more than the specifics. A truly fascinating work.
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The King of Marvin Gardens 1972
I liked this more on a rewatch. It lacks the drive and clear sense of purpose of Five Easy Pieces (largely because Carole Eastman did not write this), but Rafelson's focus on performance and location really makes this work, and he and Kovacs always know where to put the camera for maximum effect. This is also more effective watching it in the context of the BBS Collection, the last movie in the set is a sad farewell to the old Atlantic City boardwalk, much of which would not exist anymore mere months after this movie wrapped.