Beckett
From Netflix
8/10
A solid mid tier thriller about being stranding in a foreign country movie. The kind of there where there’s a mystery but it’s not that they’re all secretly out to get you or the hostel series.
Knock off (tsui hark 98)
Second tsui hark / van damme collaboration after double team.
The plot is of course nonsensical (hong kong jeans salesman gets mixed up in a conspiracy involving Russian mafia and Cia where miniature explosives are hidden in knockoff objects) but also very difficult to follow with constant twists on characters’ allegiance.
However the action is great, and tsui hark’s camera work is insane (feeling almost like an experimental film at times). This reminded me of his “time & tide” (which I need to rewatch) but shorter and with the added van damme comic relief which is great.
All in all surprisingly good movie and my favorite van damme so far, highly recommend if you’re into HK action.
BTW this has a 4.9 on imdb and 8% (!) on RT which shows how useless these ratings are for this kind of movie (who are these people watching them for the plot ??)
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If we all write the Criterion Collection do you think we could get Double Team inducted into it?
We might get one of the ppl who design fake Criterion covers to make this one…probably the best we can hope for 
Free guy was worth the matinee price. Entertaining with some heart.
Co-sign. I had some Fandango credit that I wanted to use before the Covid situation possibly gets even worse here, and I was pleasantly surprised. Jodie Comer GOAT. Disney/Marvel/Fox merger integration GOAT.
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Yawn.
On the other hand, a friend of mine went to the Shang Chi premiere and says it is phenomenal, the least “marvel-like” Marvel movie he’s seen, and ranks pretty close to Black Panther as one of the best Marvel movies ever.
Already have my Imax tickets.
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Still making my way through Criterion’s Neo-Noir collection. I’ve already mentioned that Across 110th Street and Death of a Chinese Bookie are must-watches. You guys probably already know The Long Goodbye and Chinatown are classics, not much to say there.
Blowout was a meh premise with a meh execution. John Travolta is a sound design guy who uses his audio engineering skills to almost stop a murderous John Lithgow.
As an I, Claudius fan, I was excited to see my man Sir John Hurt starring in The Hit, plus Paco de Lucia is on the soundtrack. Movie kinda dragged, unfortunately.
The Onion Field and Manhunter were both okay but didn’t really stay with me. Not much to say about 'em.
Body Double actually got so bad that it veered into “so bad it’s hilarious” territory for me. Literally lol’d in several spots.
David Mamet’s Homicide is an outstanding old-school, tough-guy cop flick. A+.
Bad Day at Black Rock is a Western noir with a solid cast of 50’s actors: Spencer Tracy, Lee Marvin, Anne Francis, and Ernest Borgnine. Spencer Tracy as a one-armed traveler who uses karate to beat up cowboys is worth seeing even if the ending annoyed me. This movie largely revolves around the Japanese Internment, which probably was a raw nerve in 1955.
Brick is a very early Rian Johnson joint that takes classic film noir tropes and re-imagines them taking place in a high school setting. It’s both a send-up of the noir genre and also a very sincere love letter for classic detective films.
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Man I saw Brick in the theatre ages ago. I really liked it, although it is a touch “cute”.
Did you spot the 80s superstar as a background (nonspeaking) character here ? (if you haven’t this is around the 91’ mark…it’s pretty funny to see)
I can’t find a good screencap but imagine inserted here Travolta’s sad face in the ending as a reaction to that statement 
Body Double is maybe not so great as a standalone film, but as an irreverential Vertigo remake it’s pretty elite. Takes some guts to make a movie whose idea is to take one of cinema’s most loved classics, and remake it into a sleazy 80s style, changing the story so that for instance instead of the main character recognizing his dead lover in the street, he recognizes her ass in a porn trailer and then auditions to be a porn actor so that he can have sex with her (and that whole scene is pretty great too…)
Anyway as someone who used to be obsessed with Vertigo, I really enjoyed the idea of revisiting it critically by taking everything that was ridiculous in its “love story” and pushing it to the max.
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My wife and I are watching Saturday Night Fever. In the first thirty minutes there are like 20 seconds of plot. Its really weird.
Wait, there’s a movie named Blow Out with the exact same plot as Blow-Up except it’s an audio recording instead of a photograph?
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Made it 30 minutes into The Green Knight, turned it off after a 3 minute dolly shot of patel on a horse walking into the foreground with nothing else going on.
Yeah I think Blow Out was inspired by Blow-Up.
If you liked these films, you may also enjoy The Conversation.
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I was thinking of going to see this is a new art cinema that just opened… maybe I’ll wait for a different film.
It also shamelessly rips off Rear Window! You gotta love the chutzpah.
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Actually probably would have stuck it out but the wife was absolutely hating it and it clearly didn’t respect the viewers time. The imdb reviews are hilarious.
The Conversation and Enemy of the State make a great double feature. Hackman kinda plays the same role and it’s fun to imagine the latter as a sequel showing what happens to the character 25 years later.
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