[Closed] Recent Viewing Part III

Of course, just wanted to see if any would take that comment seriously. I came close to stopping the movie a number of times but each time I thought I'd give it another 5 minutes to see more Chriqui. What a groan-laden film!

Can't say I have my head much in the media either. My ears just sort of switch off when the discussion turns to sport!
My boss will probably be very upset, if that's some consolation! He's even over in the UK at the moment, so I'm sure he's catching hell over it.

Curse of the Mummy the Hammer film

I enjoyed the first half a lot.
Never giving up on dreams while life gets in the way was wonderfully depicted in a way that was emotional, but never broke the Disney hypersentimentality barrier for me.

(And I did so enjoy the little tip of the hat to the silent 1925 version of The Lost World).

Sadly for me the bittersweet tone (and the somewhat surreal sensse of humour) wasn't maintained in the second half when it gave way to Indiana Jones-ish hijinx.

It was still fun, but it made the film a little less evenhanded for me.
Based solely on the first half, Up would have been in the top three Pixar films for me. As a whole though, I did enjoy The Incredibles (still the most mature, smartest and dramatically balanced Pixar film yet) and Ratatouille better.

Giacchino's score is fine, but not especially...well...special.

I actually stopped the movie a couple of times, and I've seen some shite in my days, so when that happens something must be really wrong

but like you, the actress just kept luring me back

Mobile phone version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZizirLeQiFM

BBC version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTU9lQA-IU8

The Killer and Hard-Boiled

Those classics made me a fan of John Woo in his Hong Kong days. I always loved Face/Off, I actually like Broken Arrow and M:I-2 is a good watch once in a while and I do like Hard Target. Except that he's very much meh in Hollywood. Windtalkers tries to be a serious movie, which features Nicolas Cage in his one-face "Hello, I Hate My Life, It Really Sucks!" mode and the bland Paycheck (wonderful Powell score, yes) has Ben "I Have the Charisma of a Wooden Block" Affleck and, to be honest, after this it took me Dark Knight to realize that Aaron Eckhart actually CAN act. It didn't even have the over-the-top villain to boot (mostly courtesy of the charmingly charismatic John Travolta, but Lance Henrikssen and Dougray Scott had that too).

His Hong Kong movies are different. The best thing about them are of course the action scenes with hyperkinetic and great camera work and meticulous, even if oft-improvised, choreography. Hard-Boiled has the wonderful UNCUT three-minute sequence during the climactic hospital shootout (very violent, very graphic, very dramatic, using the patients as hostage and sometimes even cannon fodder, look at that Hollywood, the consequence is SHOCKING, but also rather meaningful). Except the pure action, the characters are great. Maybe one of the reason why his Hollywood movies were subpar (except Face/Off really, that one has the level of his Hong Kong movies, but Douglas gave him pure freedom) is that he never wrote his scripts there.

Chow Yun-Fat is amazing and his chemistry with both Danny Lee and Tony Leung respectively is great. Characters are really the strength of the movies, also the strong stories.

I loved the movies, both of them. Action-wise, Hard-Boiled wins, character-wise - The Killer is much better.

Music? Generic electronical scores, Zimmer and Powell did much better in Hollywood (I am also a fan of Horner's Windtalkers score, which was heavily mistreated in the movie though). The use of James Horner's Red Heat in The Killer borders on funny at some moments and once (when [spoiler]Yun-Fat's future girflriend gets blinded by him in the beginning[/spoiler]) is even jarring.

I like 'em both too, yet I only saw them when I saw every Woo made in Hollywood, so I did not grow up with them, sadly, and I really think that would've been much better.

The one point I have with those two films is an aesthetic one: the sound is so flat and one-dimensional I cannot enjoy them as much as his later Hollywood films (Face/Off, Hard Target and M:I 2 do it for me), but that doesn't mean I don't respect 'em for what they are: high octane action flicks that give a well deserved meaning to the term 'gun ballet'. Really, they're awesome flicks but man, I hope one day these get remastered with new sound. Such a shame that all these great Hong Kong flicks of the day have such lousy sound. Can I hide the fact that I am a total audio nut? I mean look at what they did with Star Wars. The sound is as good as any film recently released, and that flick is over 30 years old.

And isn't there a bit of Predator 2 in 'Hard-Boiled?

I agree with your review Pawel. I haven´t still watched a Hollywood movie as intense, violent and dramatic as the last 40 minutes of Hard Boiled. Have you seen A Bullet in the Head (Woo´s more personal project) and A Better Tomorrow 2 (with another epic finale)?

Quite a switch in genre.

Surely the clue's in the title?

Keep that in mind if they ever make a sequel titled "Ocean Ducks".

It's such a silly movie. There's moments of great style (both versions of throwing the money onto the pier from the boat are classic DePalma setups), but mostly it's a letdown.

I need to watch more movies - for a moment I thought it was the name of one film!