Serious Movie Discussion XLII

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Edit: spoilers for The Wailing. I suggest watching it with no preconceptions of its plot.

I wish I could discuss it more in detail with you but what a mindfuck this movie was lol and its been a little while since I watched it. As far is the ending, iirc I thought the voodoo guy worked with the devil, who was the old man

Yeah. I completely agree with but they kept you in suspense and kept switching up the perspective for the final few minutes until you realized the truth about the old man. I think that's the idea... That the suspicion and mistrust corrupt the soul.

I like how the priest suddenly manned up and was the only one to see the truth, but when he approached the moment of decision the demon mind fucked him into oblivion. Very horrible ending for everyone - much like many of those beautifully twisted Korean films.
 
Yes, myself and @iGnP have seen it and had a discussion awhile ago about it. Brilliant film, one of the years best for sure.
I've actually watched it like two more times since we talked. Caught a lot more in those viewings. PM me if you wanna discuss haha
 
I've actually watched it like two more times since we talked. Caught a lot more in those viewings. PM me if you wanna discuss haha
I need a rewatch myself lol is it just this movie in particular you're into or do you follow Korean cinema?
 
I need a rewatch myself lol is it just this movie in particular you're into or do you follow Korean cinema?
My cousin went to watch it when it was in a few select theaters in Los Angeles. He loved it and told me to watch it. Since then, I watched it w my girlfriend and w my dad bc he loves horror movies. I'm not really a big movie guy but I'll definitely look into horror movies if you have any suggestions
 
My cousin went to watch it when it was in a few select theaters in Los Angeles. He loved it and told me to watch it. Since then, I watched it w my girlfriend and w my dad bc he loves horror movies. I'm not really a big movie guy but I'll definitely look into horror movies if you have any suggestions
The Invitation is the best horror of this year imo. If you have Netflix its on there. Definitely worth a watch. That film needs more love.
 
The Invitation is the best horror of this year imo. If you have Netflix its on there. Definitely worth a watch. That film needs more love.
I'll watch it tomorrow. Good looking out
 
Finally watched The Revenant. One of the best movies I've ever watched, easily too 5
 
Anyone seen Son of Saul? I can't stop thinking about it. Not the kind of movie I thought I'd want to watch twice but I feel like I need to see it again. Brutal film about Holocaust workers.
 
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So I finally got around to watching The Act of Killing... and it was better than I expected.

The premise of the documentary: Joshua Oppenheimer contacts leaders of the Indonesian death squads (whom are portrayed as heroes in Indonesia) and contracts them to direct their own movie about their role in the death squads. He pretends to be on their side and gets them to tell him their story openly and honestly. The death squad leaders take them to their old prisons and describe their murderous ways (with pride and glee)

They explain how the gangsters, government, media & soldiers all worked together to kill all the communists in the country (without reason) One of them, Anwar Congo (the man who is the chosen to direct the film) tells his story with shocking honesty, since he's haunted by nightmares and thinks it might help to get it off his chest.

By being put into the role of director of the film, Congo was forced to put himself in the actors shoes, as they're being tortured to death. As the re-enact the incidents, the camera focuses of Congo's face and his reactions. You get to look right into his sole. They even force him to play one of the torture victims, which really gets to him.

One thing really stood out, something we've discussed in this thread. The death squad leaders said they loved American gangster movies and would try to mimic the way they killed and tortured people, then they started trying to out-do the film directors... Their favourite method of killing was "piano wire strangulation"

It was hard to watch and it was deeply disturbing, but man is it a powerful film.

Also, fuck the Academy for not giving it the win. They gave it to a documentary about background singers instead... and they wonder why Chris Rock joked that the Academy is racist towards Asians.

But anyways, this documentary is highly recommended. It's truly amazing and a great example of just how powerful movies/documentaries can be. Oppenheimer can no longer return to Indonesia btw, for fear of his life.
 
@Bullitt68

So I finally got around to watching some of the old Cheh Chang movies you recommended...

Good call. I'm still sticking with my original statement about Jackie Chan taking HK kung-fu/action films to new (and dizzying) heights, but I have a new respect for HK KF films from the 70's now.

I watched:

Crippled Avengers (1978)
Five Venoms (1978)
Five Element Ninjas (1982)
The Masked Avengers (1981)

My original complaint about 70's era HK kung-fu films was that the fighting styles is too acrobatic and not creative enough for my tastes... I still pretty much feel the same way about the acrobatics, it's fun to watch and certainly impressive but at times it feels more like I'm watching dancing compared to fighting. As far as the creativity goes, I see I was wrong, Cheh Cheng is one creative dude.

Often in the old kung-fu flicks the fighters always fight in the same style. For example, to be a drunken boxer, you need to use drunken boxing. We know from watching MMA that styles make fights. Why would you try and beat a drunken boxing specialist with drunken boxing, when it's not your specialty? That's silly. Cheh Chang really took the "styles make fights" element of Kung-fu to new heights, and it made for a really interesting watching experience.

Five Venoms and Five Element Ninjas I liked the most. Both were great movies, with creative fighting styles and cool weird weapons. You can tell that Cheh did a lot of research into the older styles and weapons (with a focus on the more obscure ones)

I'm going to order "House of Traps" since I can't find it online anywhere. The house full of traps looks amazing.

Thanks for the tip.
 
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I've watched a ton of interesting movies since I last posted ITT, but this one was really interesting. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068676/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

It's also known as "Lady in Red" (1972) and it stars Angela Mao, but Sammo Hung plays a prominent role in the film as well. I'm pretty sure it was Sammo's first big role in a movie, he was only 20 at the time of it's release, so it was cool to see young Sammo, but what really made the experience interesting was the plot... it's almost identical to Bruce Lee's "The Chinese Connection, aka Fists of Fury", yet Hapkido only came out almost 9 months earlier.

Angela and Sammo both played the Bruce Lee role, taking their turns getting revenge on the Japanese school. Another difference is that Hapkido takes place in Korea (and China to a lesser extent). It's not just about the Japanese oppressing the Chinese, they also oppress the Koreans here as well.

In the Angela Mao version it's Hapkido vs. Judo, after the Japanese ban Hapkido, in Korea and China.

There are several scenes where the Judo students break the Hapkido schools sign, and vice versa, just like in Fists of Fury.

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The guy with the glasses is in both movies, but in Hapkido every Japanese student (apart from him) is as cruel and hateful as he was in Fists of Fury. Also in Hapkido he's the only Japanese guy who isn't a total prick and he can fight.

I figured @Bullitt68 would like this movie since he loves Bruce Lee, 70's HK kung-fu films, and Sensei Seagull (who put Hapkido on the map in America)

Hapkido manages to pack more fighting into a slightly shorter run-time as well. But obviously Angela Mao and Sammo can't match Bruce's speed and skill when it comes to fighting.
 
@BeardotheWeirdo

Too busy for a mega post (and optimistic that @europe1 will be able to comment on the stuff you watched) but real quick:

1) I'm glad you liked the Chang Cheh movies you saw, but you didn't even watch the best ones. No The One-Armed Swordsman? No The Assassin? No Golden Swallow? No Flying Dagger? No Man of Iron? The Venoms are cool, don't get me wrong, but if you're already liking Chang Cheh but you haven't seen the movies I listed, then just wait. His stock is going to continue to rise for you the more movies of his you watch. That's not to say he didn't make any duds. He actually made so many movies that there are plenty of duds. But there are more hits than misses and a lot of his hits are among my favorite of all Hong Kong martial arts movies.

2) Hapkido didn't come out before Fist of Fury. Fist of Fury came out in March of 1972. It was then followed by Five Fingers of Death in May of 1972 and those two films would make up the double bill that would pretty much introduce all of North America to Hong Kong martial arts cinema. Hapkido then followed in October 1972. And Angela Mao is my favorite female martial arts star. Her kicks were fantastic, particularly her spinning kicks, and unlike Cheng Pei-pei, who I like and I'm not trying to bash, Angela actually looked like she knew what she was doing and had enough skill to be able to both execute the martial arts and turn in legit performances at the same time. You should check out The Tournament (it's on Youtube if you can't find it). Not only does she have some of her best fight scenes in it, there's a whole Kickboxer-esque plot about Muay Thai, which, of all the martial arts featured in the movies that came out back then, was almost nonexistent as far as Hong Kong martial arts cinema was concerned.

3) Seagal put Aikido on the map. Aikido is Japanese and it's all about joint locks. Hapkido is Korean, and while it incorporates grappling techniques from both Aikido and Judo, it's very heavy on kicks after the fashion of Tae Kwon Do.
 
There was a Muay Thai fighter in Master of the Flying Guillotine right? I recall he was the one who gets trapped in the burning house.

Fist of Fury and Five Fingers of Death is a pretty sweet double bill.
 
I've been wanting to catch this. It is a mostly faithful adaptation? I really love the original novel (1818 text > 1831 text) but I might actually love the 1931 film more, even though it's so different. Then again I haven't watched the movie since reading the book.

I've heard mixed things about the film Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, but I should probably give it a watch considering I like De Niro and Branagh.

Hmm, yes I'd say it's mostly faithful. Things happen in a slightly different order and in slightly different ways. The biggest difference was that the scarcity of dialogue relative to the book causes them to lose some nuance in the character motivations (in Victor especially, though the monster is excellent) and forces them to make the themes a little more explicit (too much so, in some cases). There were also some new "progressive" motifs that felt a little out of place.

I'm sure I've seen one or two film adaptations but I really don't recall anything about them, maybe I'll investigate.
 
I wached The Hustler and really enjoyed it but I couldn't help but compare to The Cincinatti Kid which i thought was way better. There are some great scenes in it, moslty George C Scott in the bar, but I felt it wasted so much time with the chick. She was unbearable, and I hated the storyline. I also thought it was weird to have Eddie play Fats right away. I like that it didnt waste time setting up the match, but conceptually it's hard for it to have the same magnitude when he does beat him several times, but ends up losing because they play for 40 fucking hours straight.




Also watched Beyond Outrage. Solid sequel. Better than the first, but nothing great. I hope he makes another one
 
@BeardotheWeirdo

Too busy for a mega post (and optimistic that @europe1 will be able to comment on the stuff you watched) but real quick:

1) I'm glad you liked the Chang Cheh movies you saw, but you didn't even watch the best ones. No The One-Armed Swordsman? No The Assassin? No Golden Swallow? No Flying Dagger? No Man of Iron? The Venoms are cool, don't get me wrong, but if you're already liking Chang Cheh but you haven't seen the movies I listed, then just wait. His stock is going to continue to rise for you the more movies of his you watch. That's not to say he didn't make any duds. He actually made so many movies that there are plenty of duds. But there are more hits than misses and a lot of his hits are among my favorite of all Hong Kong martial arts movies.

2) Hapkido didn't come out before Fist of Fury. Fist of Fury came out in March of 1972. It was then followed by Five Fingers of Death in May of 1972 and those two films would make up the double bill that would pretty much introduce all of North America to Hong Kong martial arts cinema. Hapkido then followed in October 1972. And Angela Mao is my favorite female martial arts star. Her kicks were fantastic, particularly her spinning kicks, and unlike Cheng Pei-pei, who I like and I'm not trying to bash, Angela actually looked like she knew what she was doing and had enough skill to be able to both execute the martial arts and turn in legit performances at the same time. You should check out The Tournament (it's on Youtube if you can't find it). Not only does she have some of her best fight scenes in it, there's a whole Kickboxer-esque plot about Muay Thai, which, of all the martial arts featured in the movies that came out back then, was almost nonexistent as far as Hong Kong martial arts cinema was concerned.

3) Seagal put Aikido on the map. Aikido is Japanese and it's all about joint locks. Hapkido is Korean, and while it incorporates grappling techniques from both Aikido and Judo, it's very heavy on kicks after the fashion of Tae Kwon Do.

1) Surprisingly they were pretty much impossible to find online, that's why I took so long to watch them. I eventually realized some were on Netflix (in Canada) so they were my only choices. I also watched the Kid with The Golden Arm, before you recommended Cheh Chang but didn't realize it was the same guy. I liked that one a lot too. Also you recommended the Venom movies, and I don't recall you mentioning those other ones except for the one-armed Swordsman, which I can't find online. I'll add those to my watchlist though

2) For some reason the IMDB app lists the US release date for The Chinese Connection first, but for Hapkido the HK date is shown first. Threw me off. I almost watched "The Tournament" but I watched "paper Marriage" with Sammo first (which featured terrible boxing/kickboxing fights with Sammo, then I remembered how bad the boxing was in Jet Li's "Born to Defense") and decided against watching it. The ending to Paper Marriage was great though, there's a long final fight scene in the West Edmonton Mall (the whole movie was filmed in Canada, by a HK crew) that was meant to rival or mirror the ending to Police Story. It seemed to be the film where Maggie Cheung decided to prove her toughness after Jackie called her out on it. There will probably never be another movie like that, they literally beat the crap out of Maggie Cheung. Her stunts were probably better than Sammo's were, which says a lot since Sammo tried to recreate the (falling through the canopy) scene from Project A, but to a lesser extent. My only minor complaint about Angela (in some scenes) is that she doesn't kick with much power at all, but tbf that was standard at the time.

3) I thought Aikido came from Hapkido, but after some research I see It didn't.
 
Five Venoms (1978)

As far as the creativity goes, I see I was wrong, Cheh Cheng is one creative dude.


One of the things I really like about Five Deadly Venoms is that opening scene where the various venoms are introduced. It's so stylized and cool, as if the old master is telling the tale and what we see is the young pupils imagination of what he is being told. It's a real moodsetter, even though it takes up so little of the running time, it's effects saturates the rest of the narrative. Just imagine the movie without those moments, it just wouldn't be the same, the ambiance would be completely diffrent. It's one of those examples of a little bit of craftsmanship and creativity impacting the overall film a lot.

And the whole narrative overall is just cool as well.


Five Element Ninjas (1982)

Five Element Ninjas is a cursed film for me. Every copy of it that has fallen into my hands has been deficit in some way. Sound and picture out-of-synch and such things. Happy that at least you've managed to see it.

Crippled Avengers (1978)

Ah man, Crippled Avengers. What the fuck was that movie? It was one of those films where you asked yourself, "Seriously, this actually exists"!?

I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. The film starts with a villain de-arming a little kid. It's supposed to be this really horrible moment but it's just so goofily done that it becomes hilarious.

And the rest of the violence is so hilarious over-the-top too. That metal-arms guy obliterates bones like Shane Carwin obliterates brains. Ip Man did this really great scene where Donnie Yen breaks the bones of his opponents -- yet's Crippled Avengers does the same but it's fucking hysterical because of how bad it is.

But overall... it was just such an undignified film. The whole crippled martial artists angle came off as so crass that it irked me (especially that mentally retarded guy). Unlike something like say, One Armed Boxer (1972) where I just laughed the whole way through.


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That was one of those lines that always stuck with me. So juvenile but just the context and delivery of it was so fun.:D


but Sammo Hung plays a prominent role in the film as well.

I'm going to say something that will force me to hand in my HK film-fan card. I wasn't cognizant of the fact that that was Sammo Hung until now.:oops: I guess I just assumed it was some random pudgy Chinese guy. In hindsight... shit he is pretty hard to miss!:eek:

When I first saw it, I guess I was most familiar with Majestic Eyebrows (of Big Trouble in Little China fame, where he also played Majestic Eyebrows). But yeah Angela Mao really is the star of that show -- and I remember thinking that her fights were quite thrilling indeed.

but what really made the experience interesting was the plot... it's almost identical to Bruce Lee's "The Chinese Connection, aka Fists of Fury", yet Hapkido only came out almost 9 months earlier.

I didn't really think about that either when I first saw it.

But HK kung fu productions can be so formulaic that one gets a bit dull at noticing things like that. Costumes and archetypes are so ubiquitous that you get blind to the similarities between pieces as anything other than genre-trappings. Wasn't the hapkido master-costume also in both films, as it's a common costume in many other films.?

No The Assassin?

Still haven't been able to see that one despite searching:oops:

and unlike Cheng Pei-pei, who I like and I'm not trying to bash,

If I'm allowed to do some haphazard theorization in here. I listened to the audio commentery that Pei-Pei did for Come Drink With Me (alongside our main-man Bey Logan). In it she spoke a few words on the Celebrity Culture of Hong Kong cinema. Back then, it was the women who were the stars, the celebrities, the ones who were top-billed and recieved special threatment (until that scoundrel Bruce Lee came along and mucked it all up!)

Looking at some of her roles, like say, That Fiery Girl, I'd almost wager that Pei-Pei was threated more like an celebrity off-and-on screen, while Angela Mao was handled more like an martial artist. The roles that Cheng were chosen for does seem to contain a bit more of glamour than you'd expect from someone in the martial world.


there's a whole Kickboxer-esque plot about Muay Thai, which, of all the martial arts featured in the movies that came out back then

Chang Cheh did a Muay Thai centric movie. Death Ring from 1983. If memory serves it was really awful though, and really misinformed on how Muay Thai is supposed to work.


There was a Muay Thai fighter in Master of the Flying Guillotine right?

As long as we're name-dropping Kung Fu movies with Muay Thai in them, One Armed Boxer feutured a duo. Whom hilariously enough did a spastic version of the wai khru ram muay before every fight, accompanied by traditional music, of course.:rolleyes:

I've been wanting to catch this

If you watch it and end up enjoying it, feel free to add me to your enemy list.:D

Finally got round to seeing Paths of Glory last night, what a film...

Man I straight-out missed the very existence of this post by like a week. I feel kinda bad about it.:D

Yeah, Paths of Glory is just superb in that way only Kubrick's films can be superb. It sorts of feels like the product of a younger, more raw Kubrick, from the time when he was still angry with the world. The emotions, statements and messages are presented more openly unlike his later career when he would mask them with decorum and subtilty. Lots of his movies contain some sort of negative portrayal of the powerful and wealthy -- those in power -- but in Glory his loathing is laid out right in the open.

I wached The Hustler

I was really put-off that movie for some reason. I agree that certain scenes where, in plain wording, great. The scenes feutering Eddie and Fats sportsmanlike rivalry was really good. But it was so... haplessly predictable. It felt as if we were just going through the motions. There is no catharsis, or peaks-and-valleys or anything, you just stocally go through everything until the ending. I've sort of had this problem with many Paul Newman films, like Hud for example which I watched recently. There is just something in the tone that is off-putting to me. :confused:

eventually realized some were on Netflix (in Canada

You get Hong Kong classics on Canadian Netflix? Swedish Netflix is mostly the standard fare from the 90's and 00's Hollywood productions...

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I wached The Hustler and really enjoyed it but I couldn't help but compare to The Cincinatti Kid which i thought was way better. There are some great scenes in it, moslty George C Scott in the bar, but I felt it wasted so much time with the chick. She was unbearable, and I hated the storyline. I also thought it was weird to have Eddie play Fats right away. I like that it didnt waste time setting up the match, but conceptually it's hard for it to have the same magnitude when he does beat him several times, but ends up losing because they play for 40 fucking hours straight.

It's going back a ways for me now, but I definitely felt the same way comparing the two.

I really loved The Cincinnati Kid...it was high up there for my favorite McQueen films.

I don't remember thinking much of The Hustler, and I think I also watched it in close proximity to The Sting, which - starring Newman and being a con movie - I also felt was overwhelmingly better.

I remember not being at all interested in any of the Piper Laurie scenes especially.

My memory is such shit now, because i bombarded it with too much at once in my 2-year classic film run.
 
I don't know, I always loved The Hustler. Especially this scene:



"....and he knows, just feels...."

The Cincinnati Kid will always be my favorite of those three though. And Ann Margret in that is just illegal.

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