That Funky Monkey
Nov. 26th, 2003 06:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyranoSo as an excuse to keep from writing my FLtD fanfic, I'm writing movie reviews.
Last movie review was Hero. Apparently I'm on a kick.
Cradle 2: The Grave
That's how it was marked in my Netflix envelope. My guess is they assumed anything this limp had to be a sequel to something.
If there were a plot, there would have been too much of it. As it was, there was too much pointless exposition, macho posing by a bunch of rap stars, and too much lame excuse for character development. Way not enough ass-kicking flying punching Jet Li.
It wasn't bad. It just wasn't anything. The film has two redeeming points, both at the end. One, a move Mark Dacascos pulls off during the Boss Fight and the other happens during the closing credits.
Those two moments give the film two wags out of five.
Shanghai Triad
Moody foreign film, languid and slow moving. For the first ninety minutes I was unentranced, but not enough to shut it off. I got a call to go out to dinner, shut down the disc and ran. The next day I fired it up, just to check out the last fifteen minutes. Wow. Dramatic shift. Once people started dying.... the characters were still well-fleshed but unsympathetic, very little was still happening, but all on the sudden there was some emotional impact.
Which rachets this Gong Li flick up to three wags out of five.
Quentin Tarantino presents Iron Monkey
I am told by those In The Know that if I'd seen the original I would not have been as enchanted by this film as I was. The Adventures of Young Wong Fei-Hung, essentially, with lots of very cool fights choreographed by Yuen Wo Ping who rocks my world.
And the kid is really good! Liked this film a lot. Very good, not a cinematic classic or anything but much much fun. And I said 'Damn!' several times.
Four excited wags.
Last movie review was Hero. Apparently I'm on a kick.
Cradle 2: The Grave
That's how it was marked in my Netflix envelope. My guess is they assumed anything this limp had to be a sequel to something.
If there were a plot, there would have been too much of it. As it was, there was too much pointless exposition, macho posing by a bunch of rap stars, and too much lame excuse for character development. Way not enough ass-kicking flying punching Jet Li.
It wasn't bad. It just wasn't anything. The film has two redeeming points, both at the end. One, a move Mark Dacascos pulls off during the Boss Fight and the other happens during the closing credits.
Those two moments give the film two wags out of five.
Shanghai Triad
Moody foreign film, languid and slow moving. For the first ninety minutes I was unentranced, but not enough to shut it off. I got a call to go out to dinner, shut down the disc and ran. The next day I fired it up, just to check out the last fifteen minutes. Wow. Dramatic shift. Once people started dying.... the characters were still well-fleshed but unsympathetic, very little was still happening, but all on the sudden there was some emotional impact.
Which rachets this Gong Li flick up to three wags out of five.
Quentin Tarantino presents Iron Monkey
I am told by those In The Know that if I'd seen the original I would not have been as enchanted by this film as I was. The Adventures of Young Wong Fei-Hung, essentially, with lots of very cool fights choreographed by Yuen Wo Ping who rocks my world.
And the kid is really good! Liked this film a lot. Very good, not a cinematic classic or anything but much much fun. And I said 'Damn!' several times.
Four excited wags.