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Frisky Fritz in the middle of his noir steady run crafted this snappy WWII London set spy conspiracy romp, creepy seances and thick fogs and stark shadows and studio era gorgeously lit frames of longcoat caping manhunt mystery filmmaking, sure there are drip drops of sub genre innings and clichés you've seen repeated before but the pacing and rather earnestly strange setup makes it tick like clockwork regardless and is tons of pulpy paperback fun

Ray Milland does a real solid job in his panicky out from the asylum and into midwar espionage chaos furnace role, just a mere year before his oscar winning all timer gig in The Lost Weekend, from his cake winning at the small town fair up until the rooftop climax he gets to sweats about and sneak about the London streets the best he can, to try to unravel how on earth a pastry price could spin into multiple murders and attempts on his very own life, like I said the springboard for the rather typical but expertly directed plot is pretty kooky and oddball but always stringed for the right tones

So many shots here that in the ouvre of Lang definitely won't count for the best or even better, but today they impress the pantalones off me with how tightly staged and purposefully set they are, the final ten minute wrap around finale in particular had some chefs kiss one, like the rooftop window one or the shot in the dark through the door one, overall this is a great no nonsense noir jammer that while not anything extraordinary or super original, is a grade A example of what the crime kino palette of the genre has to offer

In Dan The Man Trachtenberg we, and hopefully the greedy mouse as well, shall entrust the Predator series as it is crystal clear that the fan fun ambitions he boasts for it is exactly the sort of franchise inventive filmmaking we want and honestly deserve in these trying and dry times, all three of the segments here blasts and booms and splashes colorful and crazy actioned out brutal great fighting coreography and hell yeahtastic setpieces, and while one can certainly have a favorite out of the trio bunch none of them slack even in the slightest

For the die hard preddyheads and lore lads I bet that a lot of the slurpy and cheeky details dropped here and there, to not even mention that absolutely magnificent wrap around climax, will have them clap like seals for throwed out sardines and good for them I'll say, the formula to make these movies tick have always been fairly easy to apply if one just have the nerdy hurah spirit for it, and now that Disney have acquired the series and can't seem to know at all how to PG13 universify it, Trachtenberg and Co seems to have been gifted the keys, to be able to go hogwild and teen energetic carefree with it and the results thus far speaks volumes

Loved the distinct new character designs the Preddy boyos also gets in the segments here, swolo bruiser one and a slanky tall ninja one and a space captain ahoy one, let's just keep our fingers crossed that the green blooded and thermovision train keeps going with Badlands, I shall definitely seat my ass cheeks down a theatre as soon as possible for that next chapter, and let's inshallah even more so that we might head for an AVP production

McTiernans jungle sweaty from army cap to army boots ultimate 80's machismo action slasher still kicks some undeniable ass, stock full with iconic mic drop great one liners and muddy caked survival brutalism and ultra destructive fireworks flair, still gets a little aimless here and there but with a cast so phenomenal and Arnold at his straigtfaced Arniest it's hard to knock the genre chugging craftsmanship

" My demons aren't remotely tackled, they're just slightly concussed. "

Name a TV character who has suffered more brawl : Laura Palmer vs Jesse Pinkman vs Chief O'Brien vs Camille Preaker

One of those the bad seeds are leaking through the floorboards smalltown americana murder mysteries, where the mystery and the murder is more or less utilized mostly as a playing field to explore the very "fun" avenues of trauma and anguish and generational trickle down painonomics, perverted distortions of care and affection amplified for greedy self actualisation, so many shattered souls and broken bodies here that aches and screams not nescessarily for help per se but more just to physically emote an inkling of the damage dealt and felt, I can definitely understand some seeing this as a real miserablecore miniseries and too bleak of a time, but man the emotions are so raw and distraugt and effectively portrayed here, I feel like Kirk in Star Trek V a little because man do I need to feel that pain sometimes

This is a rare occasion also where I've actually read the original novel before catching the film or TV adaptation, last friday for some reason I was in the mood for some classy bookworming which my ADHD ass very seldom gets the itch for, so I opened up page one of Gillian Flynns novel and then finished it in two sittings, a classic case of a page turner that just hit the spot perfectly with me, and then I preceded to watch this series during the weekend and finishing up the last episode today, and although there are some clear pros and cons in of media format and how the book contra show unravel the rather intimate story of Camille Preakers journalist homecoming, suffice to say this is a hauntingly fantastic adaptation that I can highly recommend to both fans of the novel or casual "bingewatchers" alike, as long as the grim subject matter of abuse and self harm isn't a major no no because then by all means it's fair to sit this one out

I loved the darker and mellow near shadowy focused lighting here that feels very purposeful and powerful, a stylistic choice to convey a certain hollowed out and unwelcoming mood that goes hand in hand with the family tragedy that has never healed for Camille and her mother, and how that wound is carved into and the grief ed unto her little sister Amma and how they all have to walk on eggshells and play a manipulative poker face game with each other, every scene where Amy Adams as Camille or Clarkson as her mother Adora or Scanlen as little sister Amma shares the frame, is just pure gasping for air knot in the stomache magnetic filmmaking, there is a bathtub sequence in the last episode that pulsated me into near anxiety attack levels because of how emotionally fucked and raw but up close it was

A lot of the best parts of the book are the inner monologues of Camille who is a confident no shit takin' survivor, who is also a very gallows humour pendling depressive alcoholic and misanthropic character, and replicating that unfiltered and rather awful headspace on screen is certainly a near impossible feat, but Marc Vallé and company do get creative and uses flashbacks as stark trigger points to visually evoke something similar and it mostly works really well, one of the greatest segments of the book is other and the clear damaged goods grounds upon which they settle themselves on, and that scene was executed very tactful here and felt just as honest and horrible and beautiful and deeply sad

The characterisation of the stepfather Alan also felt more fleshed out to make a clearer point of his ive relationship to Camille and Adora and Amma, there is a pretty line in the sand obvious complicit representation hammered home that wasn't as present in the novel, the way they bake in the epilogue here was also incredibly clever and diagetically sound, I do feel that Flynns more character study based story gets a little bit of a twisty revelation capper here to shock and thrill the viewer more so compared to the more fizzled out or deflatingly pseudo "live to fight another day" ending of the book, but that is a real tomato / tomato thing and the last shot here and the credits that follow is cinematically brilliant so I'll take it !

Sisu sauna steamy rural melancholy that captures a certain farm life living with a stark realist eye, it's bleak and cold as hell both visually and thematically yet simple slivers of ephemeral connection and communial belonging and a chance of a choice for happiness seeps through ever so slightly, the emotions are raw and palpably powerful and the characters all have this cynical gritty survival of the fittest stumble about to them that just gets to be, a very honest and naked film literally and figuratively

When I saw that my little local arthouse cinema/culture house was doing a rep screening of this finnish tragic slice of life film my gut feeling told me to pay a visit, and man seeing it in more or less desolate theatre with only me and an elderly native fin lady in attendance, who told me beforehand "you'll probably won't get many chuckles out of this one", just felt like the perfect way to catch this sort of nordic bound and bordering on woodsland nihilistic story

Apart from the very blasé and casual copious amount of nudity and sex that occupies much of the time for the water treading lives of the folk we get to see up close here, there is also a very clear link being drawn between christianity or religion as a whole and what a elitistic sham it often is, the village we spend time in here don't have their own priest but do get one who slings by for a funeral to then have a fire and brimstone shame and sin on you all speach, so he then can take advantage of the most god fearing women to lay some pipe, the (HARD)working class of the countryside here and the city preachy men of the church charades about within the unfair system to just fake that something around the snowy terrain works, because boy oh boy does the misersble familes of the film paint a vivid portrait of the opposite

In this brave flogging and vibranium wing flapping entry for a new Cap everything feels all too styleless and on rails for it to deliver much of any patriotic superhero popcorn fun, the most here you go selection of medium shots and establishment shots steeped in colorless streaming wave aesthetics, tying knots to arguably the two most forgettable and meh consensus films of the MCU project in Incredible Hulk and Eternals without any strong ideas of how to waffle them into something more than just a bare plot beat or two, haven't seen any of the Disney+ shows including the one that sort of works as a predecessor for this one so maybe I'm missing context and world building, but this was a pretty damn flavourless Big Mac of sighs and whatevs to me

The action scenes are either very brief and bog standardly coreographed and shot, or becomes overlong weightless cutscene looking CGI drenched galleries where overcrunched VFX artists have to do their darnest to not have it comes of as like a Marvel tie in toothpaste commercial, the red hulk climax is actually pretty alright mostly and half decently exciting but as a structured setpiece it really feels like a mid movie one and not a finale, the sort of sequence that is supposed to rev up the engine and catalyst the narrative into the next gear

We get an amicably teleforded late era Harrison gig and The Great Giancarlo is typcasted once again in a gimmicky stone cold sinister baddie role, but hey kudos to him who can still earn a steady paycheck over and over on the decade spanning hype of him playing one of modern TV's greatest characters, the return to the seemingly pseudo political thriller adjacent and espionage action route and the whole intercontinental conflict that undercuts it, could be given a golf clap for the effort if one wants to be generous but the execution is so going through the motions and toothless, and lacks any of the real propulsion and shake'em up personal stakes that a The Winter Soldier managed to pack with its more sturdy punches, this movie is simply put nothing more than competent filler content for the MCU as a whole, but sports very few merits on its own to make it worth the while if one doesn't feel the need to be fully up to date before the next eventbuster in Avengers clothing hits our cineplexes in whenever it happens

Apart from the ittedly cute bickering suicide pact antenna headed robot couple, and a lil skimpy leather outfit here or there, this italian space battling riffer is a pretty rinkedink hippy trippy late 60's childhood programme seeming ordeal, about as tame and lame and just barely hanging together as these Star Wars exploitative movies can get I'd reckon

It serves you some lightsabers, starkly bright hopsital white shiny Toy'r'us swords of some sorts, and galactic wizards of the bad and good kind in school theatre looking robes, and hey maybe it's the fact that I saw the english dubbed version on a black void swallowing every digital pixel out of my TV set VHS on YouTube, but there is a severe lack of energy or bother from most actors involved here apart from the voice doers for the kinda half fun robot duo, it's so flatly shot and any "action" is as tepid and premature ejaculation done with as possible to just keep the train spinning to that 90-ish minute quota

Snooze-fi from the high heels of Europe that doesn't have any of the smart spending and simple delights of a Corman rip-off, the ingredients are kinda maybe sorta perhaps there but fumbled around with in the most lazy and uninspired ways

From Macchio x Morita to Jaden x Jackie we get this end of the aughts flashed up whopper meal of a remake, the change of setting from a California sunny based one to the urban rumbles of modern Beijing is more than welcomed by me, even though the strong whiff from the era of Hollywood pinging the chinese market interests definitely is the reason behind it, but we manage to get a rather beat by beat but semi distinct retelling out of that simple switch that both culturally and stylistically kinda works

The fighting packs a tad more kinetic punch to it that gets swooshed up by faster cuts and chunkier sound design, not always executed the best and not nescessarily always better than what the worlds oldest teenager Ralphie was getting up to, but for the tournament finale it certainly lifts itself up an excitement level or two in pure martial arts movie fun, sure the villains of this piece feels more anonymous and not as 80's cheese baddie bad but perhaps that helps the final kicker hit even more joyously?

Jaden while not particularly good here is also to my surprise not that bad either as I feared going in, in fact the sweet duoship he has with the violin playing Mei Ying comes of way more cute and age appropriate and earnest as they both are actual young adolescents here, and not flirtacious getting it on high schoolers as Daniel and Ali really came of as in the original, so the two of them as a pair works pretty fine even though Jaden has some clunker reactions and deliveries here and there, I suppose inheriting just a smidgen of a tenth of the moviestar charisma of father Will does help out even when you're not a natural thespian

Sadly as a Jackie Jacker I have to say I'm a wee bit let down, not that I expected some manic Project A Part II gig by the Chantasmo here but the stern and more serious trappings that he often falls into nowadays guides his performance here quite a bit, he does loosen up as we go along and I like how the master and apprentice bond between Jackie and Jaden here also helps Jaden come closer to his new home country and its specific and rich culture in a way, I guess that from a remake of a pure 80's coming of age classic I wanted a little bit more of the goofball wonder and slapstick mastery that Chan has gifted us over the decades, but overall this one is not a shabby, albeit perhaps a wee shaggy (140 minutes ?!), flick by any means

Also it's pretty insane that this film never got an actual sequel of any sorts, probably the most successful hit in recent-ish memory not to cash in on the hype and financial strong waves, on a budget of 40 million it grossed 359 (!), maybe Jackie simply decided that becoming a cultural propagandist for Xi and Co was the better choice going forward

Outsider horndog vavavoom artpiece that is an accidental abstract "so bad it's good" horror masterwork, hitting gemstone rare experimental wavelengths through monkey keyboard smash editing and effects cheapie plug ins, and with a limbo loopy anything goes quality that felt as close to a Lynchian fever dream as probably possible, unintentionally or not this then became one of the most plucked from the bizarro id impulses disorienting motion picture I've ever seen

Unlimited amounts of leering creepshots of crotches and bikini stringed asses, cross dissolves upon cross dissolves and a whiplash inducing 8 ball and a double spinning structure of the sequence of events and how they're cut together, the timeline of what is happening and the geography of where it's happening, and the supernatural answer to why and how it's happening is anybody's guess, can't even imagine a slim outline of what the script in any of the actors hands must've looked like, the dialogue and horror setpieces here really shows how a Troll 2 is a great B-movie production of a terrible idea, whereas this one is just an enigmatic experience trying to stitch together any rhyme or reason for 99% of the choices made

We also have discount versions of both Greg Sestero and Danny McBride in here roaming about, all the girls are dressed in bikinis throughout more or less the entire runtime because *director zips pants* BECAUSE, and then we have the goth ghost (?) girl April who hosts this spooky nightmare of events that is now one of the most fascinating horror characters I've bared witness to, and oh naturally it's all scored to nonstop budget butt rock music imitating the grunge and indie scene that predates it by two decades give or take

Thanks a ton Justin Decloux for putting this one on mine and many other peoples radar, perhaps a real future cult classic for dropped kino babies?

Kicking off my summer of Star Warsploitation with a RLM and Best of the Worst "classic", this Corman riffer of a riffer that reuses assets and a whole damn spaceship from Battle Beyond the Stars is a cheeky and chintzy and childish glee driven little space venture, it's sporadically some good heaps of B-Sci Fi fun but mostly a pretty on rails getting it done affair, very serviceable and likely a title that kiddos of the Coke vs Pepsi decade would rent over and over for cheap, to scratch a teenie weenie bit of that galactic adventurous itch

While there is plenty of stuff that looks quote unquote bad and schlubby and amateur theatre, it has an irable DIY scotch taped and garage welded edge to itself with stereotypical chunky alien costumes and copper tube aaaah looking laserblasters, and in of classing it up a notch we get James Horner doing The Wrath of Khan leftovers which means that the score is really solid all things considered

I do feel however that most of the characters here are pretty bland waffle and they don't come with those cuckoo or flamboyant quirks to themselves that for example Battle Beyond the Stars had, and that the narrative and setpieces are very rinse repeat and gets slightly too repetitive, the kid is half charming and forms a pretty okayish believeable bond with the raid leader Hawk which is at least an attempt at breathing in some emotional life into what is a derivative little space schlocker for toy playing boys, the scene where they chug silver cans of beers and pew pews asteroids was really wholesome though

Sure the title for this B-rung universal horror whodunnit mash up is slightly misleading and sells a monster sizzle that barely amounts to anything actual, however otherwise the sheer professionalitic craft of the studio era sturdy filmmaking, and the comfortably budget belted one locale gothic atmosphere carries the predictable material and makes it a snappy moving little spooky supernaturally tinged murder mystery, in a big doctors mansion where mentalists conjures up skeletons, set amongst the swamp filled with frog croaks and cricket buzz and steamy thick fog that blankets it all, we get a real fun and cosy little genre programmer

Lugosi gets introduced as a butler during a phone call early one so for any Bela Babez out there like myself, set your expectations on the Legend Hungarian Himbo meter to medium or low, Lionel Atwell stars as the more humbug skeptic doctor that gets offed first of all as well, so I guess both of the "stars" here got a quickie shoot and pay a rent contract and not much more, they both deliver adequate roles within those perimeters

The real main duo here is Doctor Harper who is a female psychiatrist that shakes up the manly men milieu with her more young and modern sensibilities and energetic incentive to get to the root of the mystery, and her accidental chaffeur who is a whodunnit/horror author named Dick Baldwin that sports a classic noir look of a trenchcoat and a fedora, and together they form a charming and affable little team here

Will Sloan, of the Important Cinema Club podcast, often mentions how he senses that celluloid and movies shot on actual film have a certain real alchemy behind them and that has stuck with me when catching these ye older horror yarns, for as simplistic and meeting the quota and cliché as they often are, there are shots and lighting and editing choices and an overall approach to stake down a visual moodboard and tactile gothic environment, that just hits diff and comes of more lived in and is felt that many digital contemporaries can't replicate, sure one can try to do a homage or universal horror riffer in this day and age and play around in after effects and premiere pro, but the result can't ever reach the same "alchemic result"

I was totally right in my "killgissning" that this one would fare better and be on more solid logical ground then the worned out third one, while the how behind Miyagi becoming a sort of housekeeping karate master for a young Hilary Swank might be pretty damn silly and contrived, the rest of the film has a more natural ebb and flow and the story in a way feels like a feminine led 90's remake of the original but I mean that in a complimentary way !

I think the ones who really loathe this entry do so for some rather valid obvious reasons, such as the quite trite dialogue at times and perhaps the smidgen too sappy tone that seeps in and the first draft clunky first act, but also probably for some rather sadly slightly sexist reasons too, Swank as the orphan angsty high schooler comes of way more abrasive and middle finger pointing to everyone from the get go, including our beloved japanese-american car salesman/maintenance guy, so it's easy to see how an audience accustomed to the Daniel San and Miyagi dynamic and the bond that has been built between them, could make this restarter/remixer of sorts come of as too hostile and overwrought, yet the way Miyagi eases her down after she gets suspended from school and goes on a lil road trip that gifts us and her a chunky training montage stop at a monk monastery, and how they become closer and closer actually did work on a dramatic storytelling level to me

There is a specific scene towards the latter half where Miyagi disguises up a karate lesson to learn Julie San to waltz, he then brings her the prom dress he has bought and she hugs him and smiles that Swank wide gorgeous smile and says " Miyagi you would have been a great father ", and that callback as sweet and cheap as it should be on paper felt really earned and tugged a little at the heartstrings, the master and apprentice relationship here is almost as good as the first one between Miyagi and Daniel for me, but maybe that is because I very much enjoyed the more no shit takin' attitude and powers converters twangy gig by young Hilary Swank

Also Julie San has a pet hawk she keeps in a big outdoors cage upon the school roof, Michael Ironside has a gang of boy goons called "Alpha Elite" where one of the is played by Walton Fucking Goggins, Miyagi brings over nerf "balls" to the house Julie is babysitting that then turns into a very commercial edited setpiece using nerf toy guns and the like, and the monastery monks visits Boston and uses "zen" powers to pull infinite strikes at the bowling alley, yeah this one is way more fun than the leadfooted and confusing The Karate Kid Part III

With a rather tantilizingly blunt title and Lionel Atwell smiling like a man witch doctor of some kind on the poster, this Paramount horrorish crime yarn does ultimately sell some pulp sizzle that it can't fully deliver, yet Atwell walks the line of being a gentleman apposing skeezy jealous psycho really well and the "killing" scenes, the very last one and the one at the alligator pit, do tingle up some solid pre code atmospheric chills, albeit not as beastly sadistic like Murders in the Rue Morgue or as god fiddly maniacal and existentialist as Island of Lost Souls

Charles Ruggles who I've previously never had the honor of catching on my screens, plays a sobering up has been alcoholic marketing fella for the zoo, and he honestly got some good chuckles out of me with his fidgety and panicky manners, the banquet event scene he orchestrates up had quite a neat balance of actual genre stringed tension and loose goof comedy

It's a fine and very watchable little hour spun one to a horrorhead of all decades like me, although when it comes to classic studio era horror or pre coder productions I can't say that it's a mandatory one, the sewing mouth image early on is probably the closest one to nearly reach the same shock value of the greats, but overall it never bubble up to that top of tops

Now I know that Swanks little installment The Next Karate Kid is the supposed black sheep of the series, but it can't possibly be more structurally wonky and tonally off and as last week of school tired as this third chapter, and way back when this was the finale for Daniel San, sure there is still some undeniable chemistry and wholesome bits between the two mains here such as when Daniel buys a place for Miyagi to open a bonzai tree business, but what starts of as being a simple maniacal Kreese revenger sort of plods along in snow slow tempo and loses its main conceit almost completely, to end up at a very meh karate battle that finalizes the trilogy with a real huh-ish whimper

The start of this made me think that I would catch a cheesy out for vengeance mission by Cobra Kai leader Kreese, in the vain perhaps of The Wrath of Khan but with less potent philosophical undercurrents and more karate flips and kicks, but he yeets out of the film about ten minutes in to return only for the last twenty, instead he sort of gets a rich hotshot sleazer broski to hatch a plan and execute it for him while he is off vacationing, and no I'm not saying this as a word waffle or something that is actually and literally what happens, such a bizarre and plainly put bad and undramatic screen writing choice, I see that some people like the bad to baddest of bad guy cartoony character that is Terry Silver aka Rich Sleazy Tail, but with him in it and yet another karate youth pushing around and terrorizing Daniel, this film really comes of desperate as stacking more villains (3!) just for the sake of it, and none of them really worked for me unironically or ironically and just walked across and filled my screen as the wheelspinning narrative was traversing to its not that flashy destination

There is a ten minute give or take segment where Daniel San and his new flame of the month, now a Molly Ringwald at home looking young actress who apparently played a minor role on Twin Peaks, just lumps and chumps about the woods to dig up a bonzai tree for Miyagis new shop, sure the scene in itself is so purely pedestrian hangout silly in a sort of similar vein to the first two, but it all comes of so fetch questy just to pad the runtime and the vibes are kinda deflatingly floaty and not as carefree and fun anymore, even though his charming babyface might deceive you Ralph Macchio is maybe getting too old for this... thing

This does contain perhaps the cuddliest hug between Daniel and Miyagi though, and sports probably the greatest looking poster of the franchise, but other than that it's a yawny dud for me

Pleasantly meandering and pretty uneventful, comfortably boring and irably concept squandering, the seventh run for Full Moons puppets goes wooden retro and Vive La in the 1800s ( I think ? ), I kind of loved the first five for the cheap skate genre toy smashers they were but man these post "golden age" ones drags a ton, yet I still enjoy the low on fume lameness and frugal staleness of them somewhat

I'm sure that God ( in this case Charles Band ) intended for this to be a teenagers third pick choice from a mom and pop rental a friday night, that you lull yourself to sleep with late at night and then hand in with the rest of the stack having not finished it, so naturally I saw it on my crusty laptop through a little blessed shrine of streaming called Tubi, with some help from a tech friend called VPN, and even so the elementary school play worthy french wobbly accent of Greg Sestero, and the stiff puppet "action", managed to pop as hard as they probably ever can pop with some Domino Pizza ads interrupting now and then

The Halloween maked up baddie calling Toulon "Puppet Master" during the climax, dropping it almost with the same bass crooning vibrato as Palpatine when he knights Ani to Vader, made me chuckle a good Leo finger snapping one so hey far from the worst thing I've ever watched, hell far from the worst I've seen this month even !

P.S apart from Greg Sestero being cast as quite a boytoy looking snack here, it's hard to see any of the De Coteau touch sadly

Switching over from highschool crush rushing and L.A karate wax on wax off training and underdog flipping tournaments, to a summer breezy hangoutesque cherry blossom Okinawa set cheese chiseled romantic homecoming sort of story, the plot is wafer thin and dragged out to maximum length and in of martial arts I've come to that these Avildsen time capsules wont deliver the goodiest of goods, even though the final fight between Daniel San and Satos student was not to shabby at all, but in of just chillout vibes and strutting along with Miyagi and Daniel and the new faces we get there is an airy but fun predictable schmaltziness that I do appreciate quite a bit

What I've also noticed that I dig a ton is just Daniel and his kind of uncool cool, he is an affable actual do gooder that rizzes about with genuine charm, and has a bit of a dorky earnest charisma that both me and the blond varsity girls and Japanese sweethearts like, I also feel like his mentor and apprentice bond with Miyagi softens up a smidgen here and while they were great already in the first, they get a little closer here as we get some Miyagi backstory and a rather wholesome moment with them after Miyagis fathers ing

Probably not "objectively" as good as the original and it's near lab coat distilled and perfectly structured sports movie narrative, but I must say that I felt that the 80's coming of ageness was just as engaging to me here as well, with a new locale twist and some extra XP slots added to Miyagi, Daniel gets one or two filled too although he mostly flirts about with his summer love Kumiko which good for him !

With a monstrous pulpy title and Stuart Gordon at the helm it's easy to presume that this Full Moon production will be a real sloppy topper genre gusher, and make no mistake there is some damn solid gnarly gore bits and deformed freaky castle shenanigans to chew down to the marrow here, but ultimately the film almost works as Gordons own little wonder of a The Shining riffer, but more explicit both when it comes to its salacious and thematic content, grief and guilt and trauma and alcoholism rung midlife dry soul point of no return despair, and man is it a great one !

What makes a film like this tick so well both as a delivering the goods monster roaming gore gothica, and also as a on edge and volatile family strung out tragic gothica, is that Gordon and his ever so great duo in ace of spades Jeffrey Combs, here caught in the middle of his epic Deep Space Nine run, and the impeccable Barbara Crampton knows exactly what numbers to dial and when, it goes from ridiculous and loud with a funny slant in one scene, to broken down and shouting out the pain and misery in the next one, they both goes there over and over and genuinely even shocked a fan like me with his fantatsic and raw they were here, and every little segment we get with our titular freak doesn't hold back at all and a specific bity assault scene is sure to leave an imprint on most viewers

It's a cheaply contained and very small scale film that nontheless manages to serve tons of rich dingy atmos and rattlingly heightened performances and moral dilemmas, the last act in particular makes Combs drunkard screamo neurotic come full circle to right his wrongs, and perhaps even to stake it down and clear his fathers and family name but man it it will not be pretty not a cathartic release, the freak of the castle is not just a physical manifestation of his haunting past and flesh bound faults that tandems along as purely metaphor, he is very much there more as a living breathing parallel and outwardly deformed mirror to the inwards deformed denial that Combs faces

Also the Freaks make up/design work is chefs bloody french kiss, and the sheets get up he goes with for much of the movie is goddamn iconic, honestly this one deserves just as much love as a Re-Animator of From Beyond but for different reasons, Stuard and Jeff and Barb is a trifecta trio indeed !

Damn Daniel ! Back at that highschool jock with them crane kicks !

Doing some long over due homework here and catching myself up with this series of films, since I do feel a cinephile duty beeping me to catch Jackie on the big screen in the legacy sequel/spinoff or whatever Karate Kid : Legends is, and this one certainly karate clicks more with me now that I'm in tune with sincere 80's schmaltz and the Avildsen underdog signifiers, sure the patient plotting and saving the actual martial arts for the very end makes it a bit hangout floaty and not that urgent when in comes to its master and apprentice dramatics, thankfully the climax is a stone cold feelgood grinning classic and the characters themselves are incredibly endearing which makes it still work its charm now some four decades later

Pat Morita as Miyagi has a slightly laid back comedic but not overtly caricature comedic wax on and wax off flow to his performance, Macchio and Elisabeth Shue also strikes up a very giggly energetic romance and more or less from the get go it just fireworks them into a likeable cutie patootie duo, and the spark at first sight between them all feels wholly summer loving, and speaking of that needle drops such as Cruel Summer and You're the Best also colors the airwaves of the soundtrack, and adding all of this together it's not hard to see why this etched itself into pop cultural as being a quintessential 80's staple

There is also a specific training scene between LaRusso and Miyagi towards the final act, where Miyagi finally baseball gears himself up to have punching lessons with Daniel, that is a panning out sunset soaking oner that really shows that even the cheesiest popcorn populist movies of yesteryear, have some real on celluloid beauty to offer you

Also man does that Halloween party segueing into Pat Smacks segment, and Macchios ingenius shower costume, rule !

A little sliver of my dumb schlock seeking soul thought that Viola Davis starring as an ex military president caught in a Die Hard scenario could be harmless silly harrumph fun, but when its Bezos streamer cash behind the project not even the thespian aura of a generational great like her can elevate the lazy and stale and lukewarm tap water glass of a xerox of xerox film that it is, she gets a totally okay last rush of action and a smack around duel with Anthony Starr who chews a minute or two here or there with some raft roaring delivery, but mostly this is a trite and colorless corridor linear Call of Duty campaign mission forgettable feeling one

Haven't seen Olympus has Fallen since way back when it came out but I recall that one being a potently knuckleheaded trashfest with blood popping shoot'em up galleries, something that this one is lacking as it instead opts out for a real PG-13 half measured approach so not to be genre crass or too exploitationy I guess, but then what is the point one has to wonder, since the initial idea is so self aware stupid to begin with ? Why hone it in to feel so flat and flavourless and focus on President Violas family dynamics, and deep fake videos and crypto scams so much ? Sure you can have a waffle of two of that if you want to, if you at least give me more Dame Davis smashing the face of a mercenary with a frying pan, but alas the Viola Violence is kept to diet coke modicum levels

If these sort of microwaved remixer stews of many cliché ingredients taken wholesale from previous action flicks, are to be our times stream slop equivalent of the DTV ones, then at least go full "regal" with them, and let your star have some solid showoffy punch them teeth out and ratatat their heads of fun with it

Slick and rather to the point concept thriller that surfs on some prescient waves to tingle up a simple but sweet cocktail of dark comedic fun, the narratives unfolding and the turns and revelations that it packs might not be the most subversive or super duper substantial, although some slight spoilers that I knew of perhaps tainted them a tad, but it ultimately sets itself up rather early as being more of a "crazy" or "spiral out" funny vibes ordeal, utilizing the inherent thematic base and the springboard it lends for sprinkling instead of salting if that makes sense

And luckily we also got a main duo that consists of two seemingly charismatic and scenery popping up and comers, I really dug Sophie Thatcher in her mormon skeptic role in Heretic and here she really gets to shine in a very precise and mannerism driven performance, and her partner Jack Quaid gets to be his affable aloof doofus self but with a little off the cuff and pretty pathetic "nice guy" touch, the scenes between them and especially towards the end really sings their stringy "fucked up non-couple goals" notes

Very Black Mirror adjacent and surely not the most clever handling of most of the topics it bounces off from to go genre spun fun, but still a breezy contained ride that knows what tone to match and groove to snatch, maybe a wee predictable nd lacking in real shock and awe, but the performances are heightened and bullseye enough to elevate to be a reslly solid one when all is said and done

Rookie Reynolds and Thespian Pathos Denzel jerks around and shoots about in South African vistas, a sort of pedestrian tense action gritty chase'em thriller with some light Tony Scottesque touches, not nearly as stylistically flashy or propulsive but a very fine and watchable little DTV with a chunkier budget dad flick I suppose

Retcons and callbacks and character returns that varies from cheeky fan service to lazy kinda lame emotional stake pulling, yet I'll be damned if the bombastic doom impending framing of the plot and Tom in his tightest undies and flowiest hairdo since number two didn't please the popcorn palette real smooth when he needed to, the first hour is very expo dumpy and franchise loopy but never lost me or completely bugged me out of the final swoosh of it all, and when that arctic scuba dive down to the sevastopol filled out my IMAX screen this sunday eve I was as hooked and shooked to the nailbiting spectacle as one can ever possibly be, impossibly large and swooning Mr Movies Tompa saving the universe sort of stuff

I will say that what sort of world tectonic shifting threat that the AI pushes for here, felt a bit rinse repeat and slightly humongous for humongous sake only to sort of top what has come before, thankfully the team synergy is still sparky good and camaraderie fun here even with the new additions to the IMF squad, Pom is phenomenal and just oozes snappy whacky character gig charisma and Hayle Atwell is a good panicky but confidence intact foil for Ethan, not the bestest line up we've gotten but more than doable for the last run

For as bloated and stuffy and a tad self serious as it gets, I still can't fault it too much since the steroid sweat slabby daredevilness and gasping for air Tommy C out of his noggin vain entertainment swings it goes for works their charm on me completely, a worthy and almost too stacked finale and a lesser entry for the series overall, but pretty damn incredible when it wants to be nontheless

For the franchise ending kibosh and last chosen mission we get a two part mega hauler that starts with this little Dead Reckoning before the final one, it is stock full with a rather contemporary scary AI world succumbing thrilling narrative and tons of Cruise Crazed spectacular action, yet the bigger ifs and buts for me here is less about the allusive or non tangibly broad threat and villain as some seem to think, but more so how our squad we've been trotting around with through thick and thin acts or reacts in perhaps a slightly odd and contrived manner, make no mistake this is a great meaty spy mayhemic ride and chase against the clock classy fun when it wants to be, but to me it doesn't reach the same zenith as a Fallout or the two predecessors in Rogue and Ghost attire

Loved the more laid back tense and basic airport mission, where Benji gets to riddle it out with a enigma spinning bomb voyage machine, the prolonged car chase in Rome ws pretty damn ritsch ratsch funny, where Cruise and his new dragged into the mess of it all associate Hayle Atwell gets motored down by a Humvee step on the gaser Maniac Pom Klementieff, and the orient express last act showcase albeit a tad genre conventional is still staged really well and train whistled high enough to excite me good, and hey it even lends us a villainous KHAAAAAN bit from our in the flesh baddie who is in cahoots with the nefarious AI aka The Entity

There is however a particular character choice here that kinda bummed me and felt like a cheap overwrought ignition pull for the latter half, and also as a sidestepping character development for Atwells more fluffy thief caught on the crossfire, introducing here and giving here a rather strong duoship with Ethan means that the rest of team is sort of benched, they're definitely in it still but our new addition to the team gets most of the shine next to Tom Cruise himself, which could be for or for worse depending on how the last film and second parter ties it all up, as is now I can't lie about being a wee bit dissapointed in how the "end of the end of the end" huge conclusion to this series sidelines some and hones in mostly on Ethan, Fallout felt in many ways like a natural and non forced capper for the series as a whole and in a way this feels like a earblasting encore, but said encore hasn't finished itself up yet for me so we shall see if it will be a rocking the skies fire high one or not

" Please don't make me go through you "

Absolute Action Cinema pure and distilled to its raw alcohol strenghtiest, cough up your balls in a tingle tangle of stunt showy extravagance and maximum daredevilship filmmaking that escalates one blockbuster high at a time and then preikestolen clings and helicopter spins you into popcorn euphoria, the way McQuarrie and Cruise weaves the webs of character forged linkage and anarchist subgroups and chaos reigns betrayal agents, and muscularly extends upon the greatness already found in their first whammy Rogue Nation, simply makes this one tick the clockwork finest and highest, it sort of works as a meaty 2.0 to its direct predecessor and also champions itself as a fantastic standaloner, while kind of coming full circle and tying the knots on what makes Hunt and his IMF friends and the entire series of films so impossibly special

Ferguson returns and is even more phenomenal than previously and really glazes the stakes and chemistry of the group up to another level, newcomers here include a mustache gate Cavill who brings a sort of brash insane hammertude that makes it all the more steamy and punchy, Vanessa Kirby in a sort of spy ice cool femme fatale broker role and Sean Harris in a more bearded bastard and fleshed out villain role, expanding on what came before but pulling out new aces from the sleeve, and man does those aces win round after round, from Halo jumps above Paris to iconic brass knuckled bathroom brawls, elaborate kidnap the prisoner for ransom IMF v the whole french police force operations, and then the out of this stratosphere third act sweat 'em down to the last drip of a drop countdowning Mayhem, where Tom plays with real fucking helicopters like he was in a custom lobby of Battlefield 4

What I appreciate the most about this one is how tightly and meticulously crafted it is on almost a celulloid cellular level, much of the film is sugarstuffed with fabulous and orgasmically strong action yet it also finds some wee minutes for emotional umph and base foundation, narratively and thematically and for our characters, Luther ( Ving Rhames with his side hanging fedora ) shares a real heart to heart "you sure about this, because I am" moment with Fergusons Ilsa here that genuinely got to me, and Ethan Hunt himself gets to have a more bittersweet sentimental breather and reunion of sorts that also moved me, and all of this somehow doesn't come of as tacked on mawkish nonsense but earnest and lived in and real, these guys and gals have been through ringers after ringers, and the bond between them all is gorilla grip hard at this point, badass ride or dies the bunch of them, all of this packed into a plot that swiftly moves and turns its twists and it all just completely works and hooks and shooks

Also some real "damn they're here too ?" faces pop up, Angela Bassett in a stone cold CIA boss above the boss role and Wes Bentley in a friendly neighborhood field doctor role, apart from Mad Max : Fury Road this is definitely the most masteful and jawdroppingly impressive action slapper Tinseltown has produced during the latest 20 odd years or so, not a gram of fat on this boy, just creme de la creme wagyu aaaah escapist sensory melting goodness

Walked into this Quarrie Cruiser expecting an alright slightly forgettable demo movie from before his M:I days, and instead got a pretty snappy conspiracy laced police procedural with a nonchalant charisma oozing one step ahead Tom Cruise in the seat as Jack Reacher, not really an actioner per se but offers up a steadily pulsating car chase through the Pittsburgh downtown, a piss rainy standoff at a rock quarry construction site, and overall some matter of fact brutish beat'em up bits

Final logline would probably be that it is a quintessential example of a Dad Movie, a manly huff puffing Hollywood star with cockadoodle confidence doing his job well with a taking no shits attitude, using both brains and brawn to solve a case as an underground muscle sleuth, we also get a menacing pulling the string villainous soft spoken gig from Herzog and a fired up Rosamund Pike as the attorney going that extra mile to unveil the cover up in cahoots with Risky Reachy, and although the great and rather chilling rooftop shooter intro hints at a darker and grim political thriller of sorts, Quarrie steers the ship into more paperback fun territory balancing clue stuffy investigation and Cruise spotlighting with a touch of levity and medium amount of style

Also during a bar scene David Bowies generational masterpiece Young Americans plays, and Robert Duvall shows up as a shooting range owning retiree fella with a closed but twinkle eye charm, a real good one for a lazy midweek evening watch type of picture this one

As McQuarrie takes his first steps to mingle with the craze of the cruise for another mission oh so very impossible, the series revs up yet another notch and enters its second stage of sorts, plane door strapping and death defying harddrive diving and prime minister assassinating, this one scores high in all areas as an espionage tour de force romper and stomper that delivers perhaps the greatest team ensemble (at least thus far!) taking down a pesky syndicate of baddies called... The Syndicate !

Love how these films know exactly in what dosage and when to peddle the heightened elements of cheeky comedy, or spy thrilling intensity or bonkozoid action or not too shabby actual dramatics, the geography of any given setpiece and the narrative framing is also so damn efficient and enthralling, never do I feel lost in the why and the where, or who or what it is we're hunting (!) down, which makes the data center stunt dive turned morocco motorcycle vroom to the max chase sequence such an air tight near flawless blockbuster chunk of wowifying filmmaking

This little mambo number five also introduces us to the cinematic revelation that is Rebecca Ferguson, herre min jävlaste gud för denna gudomliga svenskarinna som borde vara vår nationalklenod och adlad vid det här laget, who brings her foxy fiercest and rogue professionalist A game, and stuns and guns and just absolutely floors ( literally!!! ) anyone that bumps her way, and the chemistry and doo wop she strikes up with Tom is also just pure old fashioned Hollywood sizzling movie magic, the Vienna opera segment and the clank clinky DIY weaponry that comes with it is an absolute hoot, Ving Rhames being back with his tip tappy fedora warms the soul, and just about any given scene here had me smiling from ear to eat, having waaaay more fun revisiting these than I thought that I would, absolute action snappy and spy swooshy big screen delights

What I suppose would constitute as Brad Birds blank check movie that I being marketed to the heavens and back as a colorful otherworldly adventure, but is in fact a real personal tsk tsk ecological wake up call message packaged into a popcorn futuristic road trip narrative, his mid century aesthetic touches meets up with the more sleek and post everyone owns a smartphone world with clear inspos from your Willys Wonkas and what not, it wobbles between being a lofty youthful dreamers imaginative picture that is fun while being earnest and metaphorically irable, to coming of as a tad too bonk bonk and naively twee and misty eyed in how it delivers its "the children is our future, the children is our hope" punchline

Even so with the wishy washy conceptual execution and simultaneously overcooked but first draft feeling script, compared to most other Disney Live Action Floppies™ of the 2010's, your John Carter or The Lone Ranger or the Gylenhaal blockbuster the world forgot in a nanosecond that was Prince of Persia, one can very much sense a sort of vision and implied and half measuredly impacted main conceit and thematic idea here, I mean the real life parallels and the environmental sting of them are pretty damn obvious from the get go, and I can see why an audience that wanted something more rompously escapist or a simple The Wizard of Oz on and off switch inbetween the futuru-fantastical and contemporary, would walk out confused and disappointed since it doesn't deliver on that which the trailers sort of sneakily sold it as

At the same the film is far from being just some multi million dollar didactic diatribe in flashy cool smooth sci-fi blues and charming George Clooney smirks, it still indeed does tick like a film aimed at the younger populace, and comes with a lot of the same animation swooshes and comfy vibes one can find in Birds masteful Pixar work or The Irong Giant, but he can't really pinpoint all his brainstorms and wants down to a clear and streamlined final input here in the same way, and ultimately the balance between the optimistic fight for a brighter future parts and the doomy gloom man is the worst mammal of all parts, and then the more setpiece popping wondrous segments that brings more base and typical excitement with some flourishes of PG silly action, makes it a rather oss duckling of a Disney dazzle that is too childish and uneven to be hitting it big with the parents and too heavy and loopy to strike a real chord with the kids, which is likely why it tanked financially and led to Brad Bird going back to cartoon drawing board

Cruise is on the rogue mission loose in a film that marries the incoming maximalist stuntman out of his mindness from him, with the gadget fidgety and robust comedic camaraderie globetrotting of what came before for the franchise and the espionage genre as a whole, from a whacky but equally IMF cool prison breakout opener, to the Kremlin infiltration gone kaboom mission failed, up until a final Minority Report coded mano a mano Nyqvist fight in a Mumbai car park, Brad Bird scoops the spectacles and tightens the pace to skin stretchy levels and keeps a propulsive hold on Hunt and his time against the nuclear countdown from first to last frame

Now the Burj Khalifa climbing here that rightfully was splattered all over the marketing and has etched itself into Action Movie Canon like few other Hollywood setpieces, is vertigo doozy fantastic and palm sweatier than a white rapper and paved the way for the Cruise Crazy that would steer the series from here on out, yet the entire sequence of events in Dubai and how intricately that duo arms deal meet up is set up and executed, is nothing short of spy sizzling kino bliss, and the perfect tense and just as remarkable in a different way extention piece, that solidifes Toms window magnet sweeping gig on top of that building, into the all timer setpiece and daredevilery that it is

This might also be the most plot economic one of the bunch as far as I recall, or hell one of the most lean and gripping action driven tentpolers from the last two decades overall, exposition is slipped out swift and smooth so we can traverse from one spectacular locale with a riveting gameplan to boot to another, and yet what Ethan and Co is tracking and what for is crystal clear always, the stakes are giga high yet the film serves a juicy burger of jovial squaded up showmanship that makes it such a baja blast, whether it's Renner dropping "Uranus" jokes mid mission at Simon Pegg, or Paula Patton huffing some vengeance huffs in a glorious punchout with Lea Seydoux

" PRODUCTION VALUE !"

This fan fictionalized Spielbergian entry in the Abrams ouevre was one I recalled very little of, in my mind it was just another half forgotten 80's retro wave riding nostalgia riffer with a squad of rascal youngsters, but having it set at the tail end of the 70's and grounding its sci-fi and fantastical elements quite a bit in comparison to the It duology or the bestest of the bunch Stranger Things, makes it chug along nicely on its own specific remixing merits and almost makes for a more Stand By Me meets E.T summer breezer, not an original pinky finger present dotting the pulse here but still the work of a modest blockbuster craftsman creating a sentimental and wistfully good memory laner

Sure the dumb MO lens flairs of JJ icks me really bad here at times, and the the train crash segment that spins the narrative into smalltown america flipped oopsie daisy down is rather excessive and boomed out and not in a pleasant way, but apart from that the group of friends and the "meta" bits of DIY super 8 filmmaking on the fly makes for some simple but sprawling funsies at the movies, Elle Fanning is effortlessly charming with a steadfast yet optimistic attitude, and the boyos consists of the cocky chubster director and pyromaniac demo man short king, the extreme scaredy cat that even pukes out of fear at one time and then our main make up shy guy that grows in confidence as we tag along, typical as hell ingredients but when cooked right it works !

The creature and its design is very bland though and henceforth more or less kept in the dark or used as more of a sneaky stalking threat, much of the military operative stuff or the single cop dad stuff also feels rather plain and rudimentary, yet it never harps on any one character or part of the story so long to make it grind the momentum down, and what I really appreciated here mostly was the synergy and shooting the shits camaraderie between our kid tyrants and they really clocked it up a notch, and the kinship of loss and housebound hardships that strikes between Joe and Alice definitely works for me, also very much enjoy how some plotlines are kept sort of open ended or half and half ambiguous, the main narrative and its monstrous core gets settled, but as for the kids themselves and what awaits any guess is as good as mine, rather similar to how the best season AKA the first of Stranger Things ended, or how Stand By Me works as a friend groups snapshot of a wild coming of age summer adventure

Perhaps the best Abrams film ?

If Woos end of history rad to the motorcycle jousting bone second one is the black sheep, then maybe Abrams lens flairy and stark color contrasted Bournefied third one is the middle child of the series, I have fond memories of this one wowing my socks off and to be honest there are multiple excting instances and ragtag mission forced spypieces here that still really works for me, while not being as distinctly directed and narratively solid as the first one, nor as balls to the walls ridiculous and overblown as the climax of the second one, this one is a pseudo gritty but fun and snappy 2006 take on M:I, some might say for better and for worse but I overall welcome it

The flash forward balls sweaty tense hostage interrogation opener sets the stage well and hooks you in for a "rabbit foots" chase, Abrams and his co-devils Kurtzman and Orci might have shitstained about for some years now, but I think the very simple no frills mystery box tinged arms dealing macguffin plot they roll around with here works amicably to get Ethan and his affable old + new team of agents onboard, the vatican kidnapping is a breezy more lighthearted objective easily accomplished, that then snowballs into rougher rounds of time ticking bomb clockery and conspiratorial who's who and what for

Sure the editing and it's neckbreaking Greengrass inspiration, and rather safe overusage of shot-reverse-shot claustrophobic cinematography is not the best aesthetic stamp and mise-en-scene to mesh Cruise darling franchise with, yet some of the action bombs away regardless of that such as the bridge attack at the midway point, and the more hand to hand close quarters combat that strings up the last bottled up to explode minutes in Shanghai, it might not nescessarily have one of those iconic setpieces to brag about like most installments, but it does have that villain to shiver your spine, Philip Seymour Hoffman is a ruthless suit and tie morally rotten intimidator that suffocates every scene he's in and is likely the greatest and most memorable baddie the IMF ever encounters

The cheeky smile for the camera final shot before the credits roll is also pretty sweet, I do get why people find this to be lackluster and a lesser entry especially stylistically and action wise, I do find it a wee bit harder to understand the ones that says it's completely boring and is flat TV looking nothingness, come on we get the first real great Tom Run in here and plenty of twisty turns and a on to the next sequence steady pace

" Well that's his speed, 100% pussy. "

Silly as a wet willy high concept literal nuclear arms race thrillride across the desert, with post cold war bawooming extravagance and Woo infused with his crazy craftsman swagger, while I only find Slater to be a fine good guy lead here his parker range partner he tags along with played by Samantha Mathis is a delight, a real regular everyday working class charmer that grits her teeth and flips the kicks when time calls for it, and going up against the cockiest wide grinning ham machinery that Travolta is serving slurpeliciously with ultimate Hollywood Star glee, there is tons of 90's big bucks genre savory excess here to just snack away on

I must say that the cinephile consensus that Woo's american days where filled with mostly duds or studio shackled restraint rings a wee bit false to me, sure even the great hours in the states for him doesn't reach a Hard Boiled or The Killer, but I still sense his pulse and stylish input around many corners here or in a Hard Target or Face/Off, they're muscular and tons of fun americana actioners but yeah they're not his absolute finest, then again is there any non-Hong Kong action film out there apart from maybe Mad Max : Fury Road or Terminator 2 on a good day that you can stack up against his bestest and most iconic works? Instead of viewing it through a "not as masterpiecey as " lense I believe one can still find some shining fun action here

Another factor is that in Hong Kong he often swarmed rather classic or typical cops and robbers and tirades and corruption material, with his amazing gun fu solo swinging imagination and elevated them sort of, in a film like this there's a much more popcorn tailored conceptually streamlined script that makes it not as easy to go all out for him, but man when we get around to the latter half where the tempo ramps up, and especially with the train chugging climax his maximalist fingers gets to press all sorts of military codes to fire breath all over the place, damn wild and very entertainingly so, and after all any film that has Travolta set at his loudest Travoltiest setting earns my respect and a tad of my kino love

While my second screening of this sadly was a real rough one with a BAD rowdy audience, snickering and talking about snap streaks and other Tik Tok aaah meaningless shit on and off for the entire runtime, I still managed to zone into the hits ; the lovely first meeting with Delta Slim at the train station, that barnburning and instantly iconic blues number, the Pale Pale Moon flow of Jayme Lawsons erotic performance intercut with the slowly simmering fangy chaos thats infesting the juke, and then what arguably is the most vital and bittersweet end/mid credit scene I've ever seen

Crowdpleasing as hell and simultaneously rich with text and themes and punchy doses of fun genre influences, from The Thing to The Shining to From Dusk Till Dawn to even my nerdy beloved Star Trek, Coogler manages to cook up something fresh and personal

A Paramount picture where a megalomaniac main star climbing some dumb rock in the opening minutes signals the "worst" installment of a franchise : Mission Impossible II 🤝 Star Trek V : The Final Frontier

From De Palma throwback espionage crowdpleasing pulp to Woo slo mo wooshy finessed earnest schlock when IMF's Himbo Hunt goes down under for another impossible mission, for as much slack as this gets for being an over the top dated as hell Y2K Hong Kollywood ephemeral summer splasher it certainly saves most of its bonkers action for last, the first hour is mostly plodding along with schemy setup that works thanks to Cruise being the star that he is, and Woos flair glistening through even when it's more pedestrian and setpieceless, but man as soon as the dove infested bunker sequence starts that then segues into pure motorcycle madness, it simply becomes a joyous überstyled time at the spy slurpy matineé

Giving Ethan a sort of romantic interest in Thandiwe Newtons masterthief Nyah is a rather hackneyed plot element to smuggle in for sure, yet the hot cheeky off the cuff chemistry between the two gets such a ludicrous intro with the bathtub gag and then the smackadunk car chase, that at least I bought into it and went along with the fun vibes and mandatory stakes it added, Dougray Scott is a pretty whatevs baddie but his scotstralian (?) accent and final one on one with Tommy C was good stuff, and also love seeing my man Richard Roxburgh here, a real childhood favourite courtesy of the perhaps even sillier films than this where he starred, hell this might even be considered the start of the "Villainous Roxburgh Rave" that swept the continents back in the early 2000's, from bleach blond henchman here to masked menace in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and the loudest and campiest Dracula in Van Helsing

The face tech is used over and over to gotcha effect here which feels both lazy but pretty funny at the same time, and the sunny strong visual warmth and narratively patient and/or laid back first half albeit a bit slow and less twisty than the first, is not too shabby and kinda neat, and as someone that has come to love John Woo for being the most imaginative and cojones to ceiling action director ever, and had a real nu metal phase in my teens where Limp Bizkit and their MI2 accompanied hit Take a Look Around was in solid rotation, I must say that I find this uneven and lesser entry to still be pretty damn entertaining nontheless

Naturally everyone knows by now of De Palmas cheeky Hitchcockian flourishes and how he daps them up with more sex and violence and the tango between the two, and this little early 70's grime stylish Rear Window riffer is probably his very first overt attempt at bringing forth the Alfie MO with new daring and dashing effect, much like Dressed to Kill though the wrap around and climax while genre juicy and idiosyncratically nasty also feels a bit rabbit out of the hat twisty and rushed, sure there is setup in both films but the payoffs feel less subversive and/or shocking than what Brian Boy probably intended, then again putting them into perspective in of date of release, they undoubtedly married pulp sensibilities and taboo transgressions really well, that slingered amongst the populace own zeitgeist fears and social ills of the eras

Margot Kidder is absolutely wonderful as usual, I'm a Kidder Kid at heart and love the quebecois snip snappy wavelengths at which she speaks here, and with the tragic real life extratextualism she brings the medical horror portion of the film, and the psychoanalyst abusive text that bakes the final murder mystery cake, taste all the more bitter and bloody than it already did way back when, she really was a true great that we didn't deserve

The flashy style meeting the thematic substance is also darkly funny and early career raw here of course, the blasting strokes of music that intersects the stabbing and the split screen usage amping up the anxious urgency and paranoid state of panic, the telephone "girl" and that "gag" was tense but hilarious as hell, and the twinkles of social commentary and that wild cow next to the sofa last shot, even though it's a specky little thriller that is far from perfect a lot of the chutzpah and propulsive vision carries it along strong enough to be a more than a worthwhile De Palma picture

Some might call this a humble beginning or a quaint genre pleasing starter for the Cruising franchise that would follow, but with pulp purveyor De Palma at the helm and a frisky faced hottie Tom swinging that show me the money cadence and danger zone jetline energy, the very first mission still rocks hard as is and distinctly so, not as mega blockbuster blunderbuss shooting or stuntshow exuberant as the Quarrie installments, but plays more in tune with the spy sneaky and gadget of the week spunky, and swiftly intrigue rich shifteroo switching sides conundrums of classic Bondian and covert ops globetrotters, and man is it a damn fun 90's sheened up example of just that

The dutch angles tilting the sweaty and tense mimers of Cruise and Czerny during that wondrous restaurant finisher to the botched Prague operation that aqua splashes with a chekhovs chewing gum, the stark septic white blinding computer lab floppy discer steal that is up there as one of the most iconic yet simplistic suspenseful setpieces not only for this series but Hollywood as a whole, and then that train choo choo and helicopter hoverum climax that even with ropey and dated VFX manages to pack that B De P excitement and pulpy punch, the film might not be as overtly violent or salaciously sleazoid as some of his early gems, but the need to please takes form anyhow through throwback action funsies rendered via the end of the world state of the kino arts

Also love the smaller details that irons out a more contained and unique tentpoler by modern post MCU boom and COVID measures, how Cruise kinda chumps it hard during the opening act and loses big time to then have to tactically move ahead step by step from there on out, how pseudo gothic foggy the whole Prague run is visually, and how we ooooh shiiiit zoom in on the rat in the vent creeping up behind Jean Reno for both comedic and chest tightening effect, definitely way more fun than I recall but then again haven't seen this one since I was maybe 11 or 12, suffice to say my taste in popcorn poppy cinema have been refined quite a bit since then

Wong Kar Wais vignette vervy bittersweet character piece continuation of a spiritual sequel all wrapped up in sci-fi colorful splashes and hopeless romantic dashes, an audiovisual moodboard of arthouse epic proportions that is as gorgeously engrossing as it is inevitably anti climactic, such often is life and henceforth such often is his fleeting feelsies films as well, and whether the extra baggage touches of what In the Mood for Love brings with it makes the picture a more emotionally responsive experience or not is hard for me to say since I can't rewind and watch this without that context, but ultimately I was heart stunned and then some from this bursting with complicated love kino bouquet, too soon and too late and right person wrong time or right person wrong you etc etc

The mastery that Wong possesses that have swooned me into my sentimental core everytime thus far, is how his floaty and in and out narratives are holstered up by crystalined fragments of complex and at times odd ions and longingly strong impulses, there is a specific storyline here with Zhang Ziyi we're we only get to see the highlights and lowlights and nothing inbetween which symbolizes come and gone relationships so perfectly, or that kiss during the final act in Singapore that just aches and breaks me but in such a somber and almost sweetly melancholic manner, his films are never explicit in actual content seen up on screen but the emotional weight that pressures the air out of every other "there goes that dream" scene, feel wholly sensual and raw and undercuts it all with a quietly brutal honesty

He also weaves a good seam between the fictional sci-fi stories being written on paper, and the real lives outside them that is not only implicated but very much so implemented into them and vice versa, tortured limbo artist who can never let that one whisper out of the other ear is poetic woeism at its finest here, the way Wong reuses the same songs and score cues also just works perfectly, it's clear that he stages his scenes and mise-en-scene meticulously to interlink and strike up a tender and almost lovingly haunting nerve within the viewer, and man does the sunglassed Hong Konger ever succeed so fully in doing so

" Well keep the balls in the air, Reg ! "

Having seen three of these spherical savvy fantasmo bravisimo crazy pictures now I think it's safe to say that I got myself another favorite horror series to babble on about, and that we as a disgraced society have most definitely failed the gonzo talents of the kinographic genre wonders that has been bestowed upon Coscarelli, watching some BTS footage on my Phantasm II bluray he makes it clear that he never intended for a sequel being spun out of his hazy surreal suburban what's it original, let alone a whole decade spanning franchise, but one can also very much sense that he is going for it and doing whatever frees his inventive mind with these films, and that there seems to be very few limitations or restraints and dead set narrative boundaries that ties his vision and entertainment energy maxometer down, and god bless Don the C because these sequels are exactly my ADHD tarzan roar wild tempo !

Once again we get a real in media res starter that picks up with the jumpscare cliffhanger ending of the previous one, and then it's once again off to highway races to track down Tall Man and his grave robbing goons and goops, Reggie almost more or less becomes the de facto main guy here and his rattail hairdo horny heart of gold charm I very much like, even more so when he gets to team up with a Home Alone strategy ninddz elementary school kid with a spinning revolver, and a Vasquez coded ex military girl named Rocky that nunchucks the shits and takes no shit

The spheres themselves just keep on getting more diabolically whacked out and stacked out, and a specific plot development here almost lends a Neon Genesis Evangelion spin to how they work, if you know you know, and the film is just filled with on the road western rhythmic bounty hunting vibes and splattery yum yum horror setpieces, these follow ups shotgun blow out expands on the original premise without sticking to a beat by beat formula or can't do attitude, and answers fewer questions than they raise and always enda with a bonkersly gotch wtf ending, and I love the shiny balls out of them because of that

The most vapid and toothless and divorced dad lame (zzz)low energy biker picture one could imagine, which makes the vanity project element of it all being Harley vroomed up by writer/director/lead Larry Bishops own misty eyed leather vest coolio ambitions so damn groaning and even more cringe inducing, a Tarantino riffer that is even presented/produced by him that is 10000% just a favor for a "friend", a C-list colleague who wanted his film canned and shipped and saw an oppurtunity pitching it as a grindhouse throwback and homage to the MC era of exploitation, well the only thing this is exploiting is the time of its audience and the money and brand rec of Tarantino

I can't recall seeing a movie this aggresively hetero horny without any hints of flair or slight erotic touches, to help its desperate for piping it down middle age schlub foundation amount to any fun at all, ironically or unironically, Jesus of the fuckiest of christ there is a suuuuuperlooong foreplay bit here where a self proclaimed "devil babe" spreads her legs and says to Larry Bishops character "Pistolero" that she is better than Deep Throat, honey my first time in the hay lasting about as long as a Napalm Death song was better than Deep Throat, everyones even most casual sexlives are hopefully better than Deep Throat, I'm so sorry that Mr Director Bishop had you utter those lines

Madsen is here and Carradine is here filling up that QT quota, Hopper swings by a minute or two so you as a viewwr can realize how this mindnumbing exercise in sexist shitty nostalgia ain't even a 1% of what his bikesterpiece Easy Rider was, the dialog absolutely reeks and is overwrought ripoff nonsense that uses fuck more than a Modern Warfare 2 lobby would back in the day that this was out for rental, and there is barely any gang action or standoffs to even talk about here, the final confrontation we get is abysmal and edited to shreds, can't even find a tongue in cheek B-movie angle to enjoy this one through, it's awful kino smegma ring stinky dinky doo doo bleeeh

" - Hey, what do those white wings mean? "
" - They're for licking virgin pussy. Red wings for licking a bleeding pussy. See that? Blue and yellow wings for licking a police woman. Green wings for licking a pussy with crabs. Purple wings... They're for licking a dead pussy... See that? Pill popping, cunt eating, dope smoking, mother fucker. But you know... in a good way. "


These harrowing lines spoken in the film make most Kanye tweets seem almost modest by comparison, Hell Ride indeed

Biting into this second phantasmasplooshed burger I had more of a clue of what supernatural swingy whackamole to expect now from Coscarellis iconic series of films, and even so there are multiple narrative turns and horrorshow setpieces and character quirks here that pleasantly skadooshed my jaw to the floor, we start of immediately where we left of with the cliffhanging jumpscare of the originals ending getting prolonged into a jawa imp crazy home invasion sequence, to then time skip some ten years to go full road movie manhunt mode across lingering ghost towns filled with limbocalyptic dread and oozing unease, but always with a propulsive genre funsies pulse and wild creative free flow imagination guiding every scene

Psychic dream connections, bald guy fetischism, DIY made quadro barreled shotguns and flamethrowers, killing spheres 2.0 that now spin ears and arms off with thrice the speed and incinerates if needed, chainsaw duels and elaborate booby trapping, it's not as ominous and surreal and smalltown mystery tingly as the first half of the 1979 OG, but in of amping things up and playing around with the fantastical toolbox that comes with the territory now this bad boy is stacked with bloody maniacally inventive entertainment, like a whiskey slinging no shits giving adult version of a Scooby Doo episode that delivers wonton of wild pulpy good violence

Scrimm and his imposing slanky lanky doodle posture and general figure makes him an absolute swagger donging horror antag, even though his screentime is rather slim in these first two films, it's pretty hard to accurately describe the mood and silly dilly but kind of demonically ethereal atmos that simmers about always while the film moves along, Coscarelli blends all the ideas and concepts and imagery into a hotpot that is borderline über camp yet sincere fantasy spiced breaking the border of life and death horror, filled to the brim with chunkadunk impressive effects, as of now I might even like this swinging for the shooting the shots fence sequel more than the first one

One of the most hailed Kurosawa ts that also doesn't swoosh into the samurai fold or period piece dramatics, but instead opts for a contemporary (as of it's release date naturally) tensely strung hostage thriller then turned intricate police procedural to end up as a strong social critique stingy gutter rung classist tale of cops and robbers and businessmen, still to this day its remarkable shift in tones and perspectives and how it moulds itself into a way richer narrative tapestry than just a kidnap case for a juicy ransom potboiler, manages to hit a nerve and strike a strong reverberating chord with me and millions of others, thematically timeless and aesthetically vibrant

The entire middle chunk that goes for officer work adding up clues and tips and witness testimonies to narrow it all down to a suspect, that then culminates in a hazy as hell and stylistically near hypnotic stalking the night streets third act, really seals the deal with a unique pinning result, the train sequence here is also an absolute Hitchcockian masterclass but with those Akirasan touches painting up a more cultural specific portrait, from men of the law working day and night to solve the case, to the blackmailed shoe emporium patriarch that Mifune plays, and then the literal shady perpetrator, all sides of this carousel are colored with clear intent and clashing ideals

Particularly love how the very last scene, but the third act in general, hammers home how many of us are reaching for the same goals and tracking the same treasures, but with vastly different maps to guide us and moral comes pinging our norths, and how Kurosawa doesn't nescessarily lay guilt or blame upon any one character for being the one in the wrong, it's all so grim and messy and complicated and the last mano a mano with the glass between dialog back and forther hits that nail on the head

Will be interesting to see how Spike Lee tackles this one, sure he completely botched an american take on an asian classic before with his lousy Oldboy, but whereas that one felt like a studio bagger to earn some simple coin for him, this one is so damn robust with themes regards to class and hierarchies and the grey areas of the objective lawful and unlawful, and considering his love and respect for Kurosawa I can see his version digging into an actually thoughtful "reinterpretation", and not just being a cashgrab remake throwaway project

So many dashing cunnilingus twirly mustaches that lies about in this one, Tarantinos Dragon Inn meets The Great Silence that is pure fun style over substance, a theatre play turned one locale cinematic gruesome and delightful

Peckinpah punchy with muscular squibby results in mudbound trench terrain and spearheaded by a James Coburn nazi sergeant who is pretty damn anti war and anti establishment, as stacked with wild WWII action as it is with fascist bureaucracy, class issues and snake eating its own tail (sub)text, more of a fan of the first half where we get a real frontline broski camaraderie that then erupts into gunfire hell and psychosis aftermath for a lil while, Sam does go for an irable task here in marrying his stylistic überviolent MO with actual commentary content and thinky meat chunks, yet the balance of the two is not always the tidiest and most clear but very interesting and commendable nontheless

Comic book faschy fantasy cop protag goes through the dingy and dirty mid-pocalypse kino ringer as a two man army tango siege thriller one locale brutale, stylised and slo-mo cool but with a straightfaced approach without irony or post modernist quippiness, always comes up as case study 101 in of "where the hell is the sequel ?" and I certainly get why, although the ruffer gruffer standalone that it is works more than fine as is by me and doesn't nescessarily need a follow up, more so than that we need similar no nonsense violent action spectacles to grace our multiplexes more often

Karl Urbans pure dedication to the macho masquerade, Lena Headey as menacingly hot (!?) scarfaced drug kingpin Ma-Ma, and Domnhall Gleeson in a twitchy slave to the rhythm IT savvy gig, tons of creative shootout galleries and a genuine unpleasant escapist dystopia atmos, great stuff indeed

" Why didn't you shoot, Cesca ?"

Pretty wild how much of the nihilistic gang rich dreamy Italiano americana is already here in spades, and would later more or less be thematically revamped into an 80's gruesome milieu by De Palma with coke and Miami instead of booze and Chicago, Muni is as much of a sleazebag as Pacino and the finale packs a real what comes around goes around edge to itself

Some real bear steps up from a production standpoint when we return to the "Poohniverse" of child friendly icon goes on a slashing spree, not only does it looks more like what regular audience would proclaim to be an "actual" movie, but even on a narrative and directorial front it is a more proactive and engagingly sweet stew of various horror ingredients with a not so shabby plot, from trauma vision baiting to gruesome kills being stacked and some rather gonzo experiment genetical gobbledigook creature feature beats, this sequel feels more alive and stock full with swings compared to the modest and doable harmless cashgrab the first one was

I do believe however that the middle section that is a bit light on gore galore and animalistic acre woodsmen havoc, and more Christopher Robin drama and character padding oriented can come of a tad lame and rudimentary, yet when we later on revs up into full honey bloody gear that very basic base almost makes the genre mean spirited setpiece exercise it becomes even all the more surprising and really good (?)

The derpy and chintzy made on a cereal packet budgetness of the first one I kinda liked, but the skexed out ravenous Owl design here and Tigger going full Freddy Krueger mode, and Pooh himself slaughtering a slut it up factory set rave party, definitely makes this clearly the better one and overall a pretty good violenza clownisimo modern slasher

To laymen eyes and ears this smash hit Coogler concoction might seem like a flashy whammy masher of O Brother Where Art Thou? and From Dusk Till Dawn, yet the thematically dense broth that this blues tuned 20th century horror western period piece drama is cooked in is something more soulful and personal than just a great remixer, everyone has been talking about that scene since day one and it really is a sight and sound wonder to behold and enjoy, walking out the theatre I didn't even have to bring it up myself before my mother herself said that it was her favorite scene and that it was absolutely gorgeous and mesmerizing stuff

This film ultimately feels like Cooglers straight from the heart loveletter to music and its inherent reverberating spiritual power, how it can inspire and better our lives and even our selves to become something more and togetherly so, but it also goes fists up and kicks down fully when it's time to vampiric swing into the more supernatural genre goodies, it is a film that has moments of tenderness and ion, moments of rage and pent up frustation, and gets gnarly and filthy when it needs to, and sexy and spicy when it wants to

Double B Jordans is that fantastic and spellbinding movie magic as it's meant to be, Delroy Lindos oldie wisecracking musician made me bust laughs on laughs, Jackie O'Connell is eyes ablaze bad to the bone undead swagger, there is so much packed into this bad boy in of black american history and its intricate and rich culture being vampirised both figuratively and literally here and the illustrous presentation of it feels both rather matter of fact but idiosyncratic, social commentary thick but not in an overbearing or didactic manner at all, the film is fun and funny and heartfelt and sad and romantic and lots of things, definitely will warrant a rewatch rather sooner than later

Also just absolutely love how well this original auteur driven project is doing, the numbers keep ticking and for a hard R rated musically stringed vampy period piece to rake in the bucks, showing that mature audiences still wants mature films that feels honest and pure and excitingly vision intact, just makes me really happy as a kino schlubby boy

" You've failed, your highness. I am a jedi, like my father before me. "

The original conclusion is still the best conclusion and the two hours of Star Wars that I find to be my absolute favorite two hours, of all the episodes and spinoffs and various series that ultimately stacks this Lucas franchise creation now, this very film is the one I've seen the most times and loved the whimsy dimpsy galaxy far far away nonsense out of since I barely could wipe my own ass, I get that Skywalker sibling stuff and a second death star and Endor shenanigans might not be up everyones alley, but to me it's all jolly rogering space fantasy fun to the max that then culminates with a heart to heart, father to a son theatrically bawooming climax that just hits diff, it's emotionally gratifying and tragically resonating yet packed with supernova tons of adventure

All the gonzo Georgie Porgie touches that would flower into even grander gardens with The Phantom Menace and onwards are so odd but endearing to me here, cuddly cute but fierce teddy bear warriors and green orchy looking pig guards and military strategical squidhead lobster men, for better and for worse this first of the last chapters sports a kooky juggling exercise of being the kiddiest whackamole film but with a darker and more personal center conflict in Luke v Vader, and I totally can see why the juxtaposition of all the separate elements there would overhelm and make it ultimately an underwhelming messy experience for some, yet to me the group of characters we've come to follow through thick and thin are just too damn loveable for it to fail

The pure vibes label fits this jedi comeback very well for me personally, and comes with a sort of hangout feel to kick it kapow one last time before the final semester of highschool is over, Jabbas palace and the jizzy squabbles it brings always puts a grin on my face, it also of course leads to one of the earliest examples of horny boyish fan service in slave Leia which has become an iconic get up (down?) within itself, the setpieces reaches the sort of perfect middle ground of being elaborate and slightly bigger than previously but not bloated and too chaotic, simplistically epic but rich in texture and easy to grasp, and man when that Ework horn blows and it's dancing time I just feel at ease and at home, perhaps one of the most flawed films that I can give a maximum star rating to but it just flows and glows in every area for me, and makes me giddy and escapist fulfilled time and time again

From the get go this film that is super soaked in neon and blood and gunfire, packs a real fatal finality to it and a sense that both time and willpower is running out for Jonathan The Baba Yaga Wickster, and what we get is a sort of end of his ropes last hurah that goes for a globetrotting marathon chaos reigns approach, the setpieces are mastodon meatier and more expansive almost like they serve as cinematic video game areas for him to break absolute havoc, and the one man army element of Stahelskis modern action icon reaches its over the top zenith, and the results are pretty damn spectacular and badass

Even though the world itself squiggly loops around much like previous sequels I do find it to be baked into a clearer main conflict and set goal here, also both locales and the cast here is more colorful and zany and fun, New York and Casablanca worked really well in the last one but man the Osaka cherry blossom hotel raid and the ravetastic rainy Berlin nightclub setpiece, and then the entire run to the finish line stretch in Paris from the triumphal arch madness to those fucking stairs, with the amazing Hotline Miami stylised on top shoot 'em up sequence squeezed inbetween, all of the action and the execution of it here is just better and more grandiose and wondrously impressive

Donnie Yen as the calmer than the autumn chill blind friend from Wicks wicked past doing what he has to do, Rina Sawayama with her immaculate pop star aura going stone cold samurai daughter beast mode, Scott Adkins in a gleeful fat suit gig as Berlins and this series answer to The Penguin, and of course yet another fellow countryman great ing Nyqvist and Stormare as being a pesky baddie for John to go up against, Billy of the Skarsgårds deliver a charismatically evil wobbly euroaccented snobby frenchie performance here with full gusto, definitely a splendid chapter and the greatest of the follow ups, will have to revisit the original to see if either that one or numero quattro here is the bestest of the entire bunch

" Do. Or do not. There is no try. "

The iconoclast tentpole movie sequel that all good to great ones have to measure up against and for damn good reason, upping the stakes with a refined less is more approach and a scruffy looking nerf herding rhythm and popcorn crunchy maturity, it ticks and clicks all its gears and cogs into a space locomotive that progresses the plot Lando rizz smooth and have an iconic checkpointesque sequence to please the ass of you waiting around every fifteen minute or so, from snow chilling Hoth battles to asteroid dodging to zenlike Jedi training in the swamps and the ultimate twists of twists, this one still soars among the Bespin clouds as the best a blockbuster and Star Wars film can offer

Also such a tidy and natural flow to its script and stack of characters, the flirty squabblesome edge between Leia and Han and Chewies more comfy cuddly camaraderie with Luke and the droids, Vader being less of a bad guy with a cool suit and becoming a more mysterious all powerful evil man entity with an ace up his sleeve, and Luke being a bit more warm in the clothes yet still not calm enough to understand the balance of his powers and the force that surrounds it, all his convos and interactions with Yoda are golden of course but man does young Skywalkers " - I don't believe it " followed by the green masters "- That is why you fail " so simplistically but fantastically tee up what's about to come later on, even more so in the last installment of this trilogy

Williams also deserves a raise of applause and major kudos because this might be his magnum opus score, from Yodas soul blanket one to the more tender swelling up romantics of Han and Leias theme, and the cuthroat militaristic symphony Imperial March accompanying Lord Vader, the music is the topest of class here and imbues the images of adventure wonder and war amongst the stars perfectly, also more of a sidenote but always love seeing Chewie picking up scrap pile 3P0 and carrying him backside throughout the last act, even the most skullnumbing annoying bot has a place within that fuzzball heart

" Help me Obi Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope. "

No matter what the future holds for the blockbuster cinema world this little can doer ushered in, and its evergrowing capitalist behemoth IP that naturally grew into a giga spawn afterwards, Lucas original first film and dare I say entire classic trilogy will always remain popcorn art masterpieces and untethered escapism like seldom seen since, whether you belong to the prequel revisionist wave or see yourself as a The Last Jedi truther, or perhaps a scholar of the "hidden gem" of the franchise The Clone Wars, I think the sheer simple brilliance and lightning in a sparkling champagne bottle that is Star Wars (1977! The OG!) is undeniable

Even with the silly and tacky and ass wipe ugly dated as fuck specialised CG renditions and add ons, the star swooshed out adventurous pulse is still meteor intact, and the rough around the edges blemishes and tactile lived in-ness that the universe offers as a travelogue on the way to blow up the space nazi base and save the rebellious princess, just completely works its funzone kazzaz all these decades later, characters and plot points and factions are introduced swiftly but efficiently so we can hyper speed around the next corner to find a new galactic conflict to gawk at, masterclass editing and top of the line sound design that tangos away with Williams eargasmic and epic hymns and musical themes

You simply can't replicate this bad boy that forever changed the pop culture landscape with its late 70's summer rupture, hell neither its creator himself nor the biggest Hollywood studio ever known to mankind have been able to come close to the result here, it's a space opera fantastical scoundrel on a rescue mission with lasersword wizards and a WWII trench run shabang, that feels earnestly dorky yet soda pop in the sun cool, the way Luke and Leia and Han as the main trio operates here just sweeps the floor out of any other characters that the series would ever get really, pure determination and confidence and swagger when the time calls for it, hardworking heroics

I love this OG trio-stacker and will likely always do, they're specky and not perfect but they're imperfectly marvelous joyride entertainers, and simplistic and streamlined in all the right ways to make them zing so damn well, it is pretty hard to connect them into the overarching "Skywalker Saga" though, having recently respun the sequels and catched Revenge of the Sith in theatres, I can have my solid fun with parts of them for what they are but man do these three separate trilogies not mesh well into a whole, both stylistically and narratively, the originals are so contained but effortlessly engaging and sprawling with energy and ideas, whereas whether we see Lucas going back to the well at the turn of the millenium, or Disney corpomaxxing the hell out of it right here right now, it just can't capture that "discovering fire" feel that started it all

I think one of the least toxic and obsessive "Star Wars Tubers" Hello Greedo said it best, if there would never have been sequels and a whole media conglomerate what's it born out of this film, it would still be a darn great sci-fantasy flick from 70's that would likely catch on as a cult hit, like a Escape Fron New York or Big Trouble in Little China, too many odd and unique kooky choices made here for it to not be cinema eternal ; Mos Eisley and it's cantina, the droid duo of R2 and C-3PO, the trash compactor sequence, Vaders iconic look and bad guy aura, Cushings and Guiness mere pure presence, and then that walking carpet chewie

Hopefully the fourth was with you !

• Star Odyssey
• Saturn 3
• The Black Hole
• The War in Space
• Message from Space
• Battlestar Galactica
• Flash Gordon
• The Ice Pirates
• Galaxina
• Space Mutiny

...plus 15 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Karate Kid
2. The Karate Kid Part II
3. The Karate Kid
4. The Next Karate Kid
5. The Karate Kid Part III

• Suspiria
• Hereditary
• Mission: Impossible – Fallout
• The Favourite
• Burning
• Climax
• Sorry to Bother You
• Ash Is Purest White
• Annihilation
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

The cinematic experiences that my raisin intellect considers worthy of the highest score ( in no perticular order)

• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
• Mulholland Drive
• Paris, Texas
• Possession
• Gremlins
• Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
• Rear Window
• It's a Wonderful Life
• Oldboy
• The Handmaiden

...plus 70 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Redline
• Lawrence of Arabia
• Leaving Las Vegas
• Exiled
• Dinner in America
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion
• Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time
• Safe
• Bullet in the Head
• Godzilla Minus One

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Puppet Master 4
• Puppet Master III
• Puppet Master II
• Puppet Master 5
• Puppet Master
• Curse of the Puppet Master
• Retro Puppet Master

Pulpy and Brutal

1. Body Double
2. Carrie
3. Mission: Impossible
4. Scarface
5. Dressed to Kill
6. Carlito's Way
7. The Untouchables

A tiny little film collection :-)

• 1917
• 28 Days Later
• 28 Weeks Later
• 30 Days of Night
• 10 Cloverfield Lane
• 13 Assassins
• 300
• 3:10 to Yuma
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• A Serbian Film

  Uncut Bluray/DVD pack 

...plus 1373 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Possibly the greatest animation director of american descent

1. The Incredibles
2. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
3. Ratatouille
4. The Iron Giant
5. Incredibles 2

My ranking should you choose to accept it

1. Mission: Impossible – Fallout
2. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
3. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
4. Mission: Impossible
5. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
6. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
7. Mission: Impossible III
8. Mission: Impossible II

• Mad Max: Fury Road
• The Witch
• The Revenant
• The Lobster
• Amy
• Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
• The Hateful Eight
• The Lure
• Anomalisa
• Green Room

IN NO PERTICULAR ORDER

• Drive
• Shame
• The Skin I Live In
• Rango
• The Adventures of Tintin
• Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
• X-Men: First Class
• Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
• Rise of the Planet of the Apes
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

• Fargo
• Scream
• Star Trek: First
• From Dusk Till Dawn
• Ebola Syndrome
• Trainspotting
• Freeway
• Mission: Impossible
• Crash
• Pusher

• 1408
• Alucarda
• Amélie
• Planet of the Apes
• Babel
• Bad Taste
• Braindead
• Bagdad Cafe
• Birth
• Black Cat, White Cat

...plus 283 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

All sorts of Gojiras stomping and chomping

1. Godzilla Minus One
2. Godzilla
3. Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla
4. Godzilla vs. Hedorah
5. Godzilla vs. Megalon
6. Mothra vs. Godzilla
7. Godzilla vs. Gigan
8. Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II
9. Ebirah, Horror of the Deep
10. Terror of Mechagodzilla

...plus 11 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Jar Jar and his mystery boxez

1. Super 8
2. Mission: Impossible III
3. Star Wars: The Force Awakens
4. Star Trek
5. Star Trek Into Darkness
6. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

• Popeye the Slayer Man
• Popeye's Revenge
• Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey
• Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2
• The Mouse Trap
• The Mean One
• Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare
• Screamboat
• Shiver Me Timbers
• Cinderella's Revenge

• Doogal
• The Ant Bully
• The Emoji Movie
• Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
• Escape from Planet Earth
• Space Chimps
• Space Chimps 2: Zartog Strikes Back
• Planet 51
• Barnyard
• The Wild

...plus 63 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

I like this Wan guy he be very cool

1. Malignant
2. Insidious
3. Death Sentence
4. The Conjuring
5. Aquaman
6. Saw
7. The Conjuring 2
8. Insidious: Chapter 2
9. Dead Silence

• Joy Ride
• Joy Ride 2: Dead Ahead
• Vacancy
• Vacancy 2: The First Cut
• Case 39
• Mirrors
• Thir13en Ghosts
• Ghost Ship
• House of Wax
• Gothika

...plus 131 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• The Tunnel
• The Outwaters
• Horror in the High Desert
• Horror in the High Desert 2: Minerva
• Horror in the High Desert 3: Firewatch
• Quarantine
• Dashcam
• Deadstream
• [REC]²
• The Taking of Deborah Logan

...plus 25 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Baby Geniuses
• Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2
• Baby Geniuses and the Mystery of the Crown Jewels
• Baby Geniuses and the Space Baby
• Baby Geniuses and the Treasures of Egypt

Meixcan misfit with the most sprawling fantasy

1. Pan's Labyrinth
2. Hellboy II: The Golden Army
3. The Devil's Backbone
4. Hellboy
5. The Shape of Water
6. Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio
7. Nightmare Alley
8. Pacific Rim
9. Crimson Peak
10. Blade II

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Aliens
2. Alien
3. Alien Resurrection
4. Prometheus
5. Alien: Romulus
6. Alien³
7. AVP: Alien vs. Predator
8. Alien: Covenant
9. Aliens vs Predator: Requiem

The Italian giallo emperor

1. Phenomena
2. Tenebre
3. Suspiria
4. Deep Red
5. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
6. Four Flies on Grey Velvet
7. Inferno
8. Opera
9. The Cat o' Nine Tails
10. Trauma

...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Teenage mutant super heroes

1. Logan
2. X-Men: First Class
3. X2
4. X-Men: Days of Future Past
5. Deadpool 2
6. X-Men
7. Deadpool
8. The Wolverine
9. X-Men: The Last Stand
10. X-Men: Apocalypse

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Crystal Lakes Mommas Boy and his Machete swings

1. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
2. Friday the 13th Part 2
3. Friday the 13th
4. Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
5. Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday
6. Friday the 13th Part III
7. Jason X
8. Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood
9. Friday the 13th: A New Beginning
10. Friday the 13th

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• The Giant Gila Monster
• Attack of the Giant Leeches
• Night of the Blood Beast
• Creature from the Haunted Sea
• The Horror of Party Beach
• Earth vs. the Spider
• The Deadly Mantis
• The Black Castle
• The Invisible Ray
• The Black Sleep

...plus 159 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• 47 Meters Down
• 47 Meters Down: Uncaged
• Sharks in Venice
• Shark Attack 3: Megalodon
• Deep Blue Sea 3
• Deep Blue Sea 2
• Sharktopus
• The Meg
• Meg 2: The Trench
• Sharktopus vs. Whalewolf

...plus 45 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Copperhead
• Calamity of Snakes
• Stanley
• Sssssss
• Anaconda
• Boa vs. Python
• Python
• Python 2
• Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid
• Snakes on a Train

...plus 12 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Underdog
• Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore
• Cats & Dogs
• Cats & Dogs 3: Paws Unite
• Garfield
• Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties
• Stuart Little
• Stuart Little 2
• Clifford the Big Red Dog
• 101 Dalmatians

...plus 53 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

In no particular order

• Poor Things
• Hundreds of Beavers
• Killers of the Flower Moon
• Oppenheimer
• Godzilla Minus One
• Horror in the High Desert 2: Minerva
• Barbie
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
• Talk to Me

The Gothic backbone of all horror

1. The Invisible Man
2. Bride of Frankenstein
3. Son of Frankenstein
4. The Black Cat
5. Frankenstein
6. Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man
7. The Raven
8. Creature from the Black Lagoon
9. The Mummy
10. The Invisible Man Returns

...plus 8 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• La Dolce Vita
• 8½
• Satyricon
• L'Avventura
• Blow-Up
• The enger
• Elevator to the Gallows
• My Dinner with Andre
• Le Samouraï
• Army of Shadows

...plus 114 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• 10 Things I Hate About You
• She's All That
• Never Been Kissed
• When Harry Met Sally...
• (500) Days of Summer
• You've Got Mail
• How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
• Maid in Manhattan
• Sweet Home Alabama
• The Wedding Planner

...plus 13 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• 1313: Actor Slash Model
• 1313: Cougar Cult
• 1313: Giant Killer Bees!
• 1313: Haunted Frat
• 1313: Frankenqueen
• 1313: Boy Crazies
• 1313: Bigfoot Island
• 1313: Nightmare Mansion
• 1313: UFO Invasion
• 1313: Wicked Stepbrother

...plus 4 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Kiss the Girls
• Along Came a Spider
• Copycat
• Taking Lives
• The Watcher
• The Bone Collector
• Fallen
• Murder by Numbers
• Resurrection
• Twisted

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Everyones favourite kicking and flipping funny man, a mix of his acting bravado and directorial credits

1. Police Story
2. Operation Condor
3. Dragons Forever
4. Drunken Master II
5. Police Story 3: Super Cop
6. Snake in the Eagle's Shadow
7. Drunken Master
8. Project A
9. Wheels on Meals
10. Miracles: The Canton Godfather

...plus 18 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Transgressive edgelord or cinematic genius or both ?

1. Love Exposure
2. Antiporno
3. Tag
4. Suicide Club
5. Cold Fish

• The Exorcist
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
• Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
• Oldboy
• Encounters of the Spooky Kind
• Island of the Fishmen
• Tarantula
• Killer Klowns from Outer Space
• An American Werewolf in London

...plus 4 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Theri
• Pushpa - The Rise
• Pushpa 2 - The Rule
• K.G.F: Chapter 2
• K.G.F: Chapter 1
• Salaar: Part 1 - Ceasefire
• Adipurush
• Brahmāstra Part One: Shiva
• Shamshera
• Thugs of Hindostan

...plus 101 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• The Substance
• Challengers
• Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In
• Dune: Part Two
• Anora
• Maharaja
• Sonic the Hedgehog 3
• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
• I Saw the TV Glow
• Love Lies Bleeding

• Catwoman: Hunted
• Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders
• Batman vs. Two-Face
• Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker
• Batman Beyond: The Movie
• Justice League: Doom
• Batman: Gotham Knight
• Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero
• Superman/Batman: Apocalypse
• Batman and Harley Quinn

...plus 78 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

The franchise we all love to hate yet hate to love

1. Return of the Jedi
2. The Empire Strikes Back
3. Star Wars
4. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
5. Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith
6. Star Wars: The Force Awakens
7. Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace
8. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
9. Solo: A Star Wars Story
10. Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Cabiria
• The Birth of a Nation
• Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages
• Broken Blossoms
• The Avenging Conscience
• Orphans of the Storm
• Way Down East
• The Last Laugh
• Tabu: A Story of the South Seas
• Tartuffe

...plus 74 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Hard Boiled
2. The Killer
3. Bullet in the Head
4. Hard Target
5. Face/Off
6. A Better Tomorrow
7. Hand of Death
8. Mission: Impossible II

Bavarian legend

1. Grizzly Man
2. Fitzcarraldo
3. Nosferatu the Vampyre
4. Aguirre, the Wrath of God
5. The Fire Within: Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft

Imaginative explosions in colorful ways

1. Castle in the Sky
2. Porco Rosso
3. Princess Mononoke
4. Spirited Away
5. Kiki's Delivery Service
6. The Boy and the Heron
7. My Neighbor Totoro
8. Howl's Moving Castle

• Tarzan and the Mermaids
• Tarzan the Ape Man
• Tarzan and His Mate
• Tarzan Finds a Son!
• Tarzan Escapes
• Tarzan's New York Adventure
• Tarzan Triumphs
• Tarzan and the Amazons
• Tarzan and the Leopard Woman
• Tarzan's Secret Treasure

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Fist of the North Star
• Ninja Scroll
• Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust
• Demon City Shinjuku
• Cyber City Oedo 808
• Blood: The Last Vampire
• Kiki's Delivery Service
• Whisper of the Heart
• The Wind Rises
• From Up on Poppy Hill

...plus 166 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.