PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 942

Punk Samurai Slash Down 2018 Based on the novel Panku-zamurai, kirarete sôrô, screenplay by Kankurô Kudô, directed by Gakuryû Ishii.

A ronin gets involved with the court squabbles of a small lord and a lot of people and monkeys die. There's a fair bit of action and plenty of comedy, as the movie progresses it gets weirder and weirder. You can get a bit of an idea from the trailer link in the title above.

I enjoyed most of the film but I doubt I would buy a copy of the Blu-ray. I might not get back to it.

The Amusement Park 1975 Screenplay by Wally Cook, directed by George A Romero.

I'm not going to buy a copy of George's film either. The Wikipedia called it an American psychological horror film. Fancy description. It's an hour long short that George produced for the Lutheran Service Society of Western Pennsylvania as an educational film about elder abuse. He shot it in 1973, It premiered at the American Film Festival in 1975 and wasn't released anymore. In 2020 it was restored and we watched the Blu-ray that came out of that work.

An old man wanders around an amusement park, he talks about the plight of the elderly and has plenty of age related issue examples. The park is noisy and filled with people aimlessly milling about, getting in his way. Why anyone would go there is beyond me.

If I saw this on YouTube and George wasn't directing, I doubt I'd sit through it to the end. I got the message loud and clear and it's pretty sad to see there's not been much improvement since. Glad to have seen it but I wouldn't need to see it again.

The House With The Clock In Its Walls 2018

The House With The Clock In Its Walls 2018 Based on the John Bellairs novel of the same name, screenplay by Eric Kripke, directed by Eli Roth.

Ten year old Lewis goes to live with his Uncle Jonathan in New Zebedee Michigan. Uncle Jonathan lives in a big old mansion that could easily be mistaken for a haunted house. The man who lived there previously was a warlock and Uncle J is one too. UJ's best friend Florence Zimmerman is a witch and she lives next door.

Lewis breaks the big rule in the house and open the locked vault and steals the magical book he finds. He uses a spell in the graveyard to impress a friend but it only revives the dead warlock Isaac who used to live in the house. Isaac returns home to unleash the deadly clock he'd hidden in the walls of the house. It will turn back time so he can live without the annoying humans he's come to dislike so.

It was fun and there was usually something going on most of the time. I was happy to have seen it and I'll want to watch it again someday.

Friday Night Movies 914

Border 2018 Based on the short story of the same name by John Ajvide Lindqvist, screenplay by Ali Abbasi, Isabella Eklöf and John Ajvide Lindqvist, directed by Ali Abbasi. John's horror story collection is also home to the story that became the film Let The Right One In. No vampires in this film but there are plenty of other creatures in Swedish mythology.

A Swedish fantasy film about a woman with a secret. She meets a man with the same secret and discovers more about her past. You can get some idea what it's about from the trailer above. There's a good script with a good cast to bring it to life. I'm glad to have talked myself into picking up the Blu-ray. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone but there will be those that appreciate it.

The Contractor 2022 Written by JP Davis and directed by Tarik Saleh.

A decent looking film with a poorly written story about a guy I wouldn't want to spend any time with. The 30 minute opening act is so tedious we were internet browsing, complaining to each other on the dullness and wishing, out loud, for something to happen. Interminable! (Imagine that in Wallace Shawn's voice.)

Chris Pine plays a Green Beret that gets tossed out of the service for taking steroids. Faced with money troubles before he gets tossed out, he's no clever monkey despite being a Green Beret, he joins up with a mercenary group. Ben Foster plays an old military buddy and Kiefer Sutherland plays the head of the group.

Chris goes on a mission to Berlin, spying on a scientist that he's told is working developing some sort of virus for some terrorists. Turns out the guy's got some sort of cure going on. Things go wrong during an extraction of the virus, Chris kills the scientist and burns his lab. They have a fire fight with the police and everyone is dead but Chris and Ben. Ben goes for help while Chris rests from his injured knee. Back in Berlin Chris is attacked by men Kiefer sent. He escapes and returns to the US to inflict some vengeance on Kiefer.

It stinks! Don't watch it. The action is only about fair and there's not that much of it. There's way too much back story with Chris's past and it's so poorly told I just want to smack everyone involved with the flaming skull of Paul Naschy. I didn't need to see it and I'm glad someone else paid Netflix to send it to them.

Friday Night Movies 902

Monstrum 2018 Story by Jeong-uk Byeon and Heo-dam, screenplay by Heo-dam and Jung-ho Huh, directed by Jong-ho Huh. A Korean giant monster story set in the 15th century.

King Jungjong's got some trouble with his Prime Minister. The PM is turning the citizen's against the King with a series of plots to instill fear into the citizens. He plans to depose the King and take over. There's a plague going on, and now, a monster is killing the locals in the countryside.

Yoon Gyeom was a member of the King's guard but he had a difference of opinion with the king and was booted out of the court 5 years earlier. Yoon had gone to live in the countryside with his right hand man Sung Han and Myung, a young girl he'd saved from being killed by the Prime minister's men. The country is having many issues and food is short. Muck of them are the PM's doing. He's totally ruthless and human lives mean nothing to him.

The King send Heo to ask Yoon to help find and kill the monster. The King suspects it's the Prime Minister behind the beast but there is no proof. A large group of men are organized, they march into the woods intending to flush the beast and kill it. The group is half civilians rounded up to help and 100 of the Prime Minister's soldiers. The soldiers soon turn on the civilians but the monster shows up and all hell breaks out.

The rest of the movie is about trying to survive the monster and the Prime Minister. There's plenty of action, colorful locations, a great giant monster, plenty of court intrigue, an incredibly scummy villain, endless slaughter and wonderful explosions. Entertaining enough for me to order the Blu-ray. I will want to see this one again.

Men On The Hour 1977 Written and directed by Ming-Hua Chen. A dull kung fu film made soporific by the dubbing. It was a struggle to get through the thing. I have rarely seen a worse kung fu film. You can check it out on YouTube but I wouldn't recommend it.

Friday Night Movies 886

The Knight Of Shadows: Between Yin And Yang 2019 Written by Liu Bohan and Jian Wen, directed by Vash.

Every couple of years I go out and look for Jackie Chan DVDs, there's usually something I haven't seen yet. In this action fantasy movie Jackie is a demon hunter who lives in a house on a pinnacle of rock. He shares the place with some fairly friendly demons. Jackie hunts bad demons and that's a good thing, the nearby town has a nasty but beautiful lady demon who's collecting 16 year old girls. They've been imprisoned in a tapestry until lady demon is ready to suck out their souls to prolong her life. The town's magistrate is upset because his daughter is the latest girl to disappear. Jackie soon figures out what's up but he's got a fight on his hands, that lady demon is a nasty piece of work.

There's plenty of action and running about during the movie, much of it augmented by CGI sets and characters. There's plenty of flying through the air, one of Jackie's demon pals can turn into a flying boat with Reed Richard arms. Good thing, what with living on the top of a pinnacle of rock and someone falling off the boat all the time.

I enjoyed the movie, especially the first half, the last half bogs down here and there with all the melodrama concerning the romance of two characters. It's colorful film with beautiful and stunning scenery. I liked the film's sense of humor. Glad to have picked up a copy, I'll want to watch it again sometime.

Beyond The Infinite Two Minutes 2020 Written by Makoto Ueda and directed by Junta Yamaguchi.

A guy discovers his TV is a portal to the future. Trouble is, it's only two minutes ahead. All the action takes place in a small apartment block. The man lives in an apartment above a restaurant, his TV is broadcasting an image from the restaurant below that two minutes in the future. Several people interact with themselves from two mins into the future. Odd complications start happening when they try to extend the time from 2 mins to 4 mins etc. It looks bad when some criminals come by but the time police will help sort that out.

It's all filmed in one long take with everyone moving about from place to place in the building. They do quite well on that. Not that I was trying to catch them out on the action, I was having enough to do to keep up with the story. I enjoyed it, it's more entertaining and clever than many of the recent Indy time travel films that I've seen. Many of those were tragically dull with story's that end tragically because the scientists were stupid. This film has a fun premise and a good sense of humor. The acting was alright and the characters believable. I doubt I'll get the DVD, I might never get around to it again.

Friday Night Movies 882

Benny Loves You 2019 Written, produced and directed by Karl Holt. It's a British horror comedy about a murderous puppet with Karl playing the main character.

Karl still lives with his parents, he's a toy designer who's having a poor time at work where he's not coming up with interesting toys. On his 35th birthday his parents are killed in a freak accident, nearly a year later he's about to lose the family home because he's crap at his finances. He's never had to survive on his own because he stayed at home with mom and dad. Karl is a big loser at work too, he's fallen so far in the company the owner fires him. He then hires him back for a low level job with a big pay cut. Loser that Karl is he stays on.

While packing up he's convinced himself he needs to adult up and he decides to throw Benny, his favorite toy as a child, into the bin. Benny becomes a homicidal murder machine, starting with all of Karl's stuffed toys and then grinding up the neighbor's cat with a lawnmower. Karl calls the police and they come by, they think he's been stalked by someone but they can't find any evidence of a break in.

Benny kills the estate agent and Karl has to clean up and hide the body. The police turn up to pick up a camera they left there. More and more people are killed and everywhere Benny goes turns into an abattoir. For no reason that any of us could understand Karl hooks up with his co-worker. Most of the other co-workers are killed when Benny is taken to the office by that co-worker. Benny can't stand anyone but him getting any of Karl's love so he tries to kill her. Lucky for them the local coppers save their lives and help cover up Benny's murder spree by blaming it on one of Karl's co-workers. It's OK he was a pretentious twat and no body liked him. Besides, who would believe it was a puppet anyway.

The movie struggles to be funny, many of the jokes fall flat. I found it predictable and I'm usually pretty blase about that sort of thing. It could really have used a punch up in the script department. I think Karl is a better director than he is a writer. He made a decent looking film that cut together pretty well. I did get a few laughs out of it, Benny was usually entertaining. I don't feel I need to see it again but I was glad to have seen it. That Benny doll above is about $35 on Amazon. A little too much for me but I like it.

Bleeding Steel 2017 Written and directed by Leo Zhang. I bought a copy of the Blu-ray because I like to have Jackie Chan movies. I don't keep up with him though, I'm usually playing catch up. I see from a quick scan on Amazon I need to order a few more Jackie films. I'll have to go check the IMDb and make a list so I don't miss any. I'm not sure I'm that interested in the mountain climbing movie.

Jackie is a cop with a dying daughter, he's on his way to the hospital to be with her but police work interferes. He gets involved with a massive fight with a grotesque costumed villain called Andre and his black leather clad henchmen. They're after Doctor James and his metal heart. There's a big battle and Jackie blows up the villain. Jackie is lucky to be alive but he finds his daughter has died.

Thirteen years later we meet some other characters in Sydney Australia. Turns out that Jackie's daughter didn't die, she received the Doctor James metal heart and magical cell rejuvenation serum. She's grown up in an orphanage and doesn't know that Jackie is her dad. More costumed villains show up, the baddie from the big explosion among them. There's plenty of action as Andre tries to kidnap Jackie's daughter. He wants her blood for a transfusion.

The action scenes are big and noisy, there's plenty of bullets flying, high tech pistols blasting, explosions and people jumping around and punching each other. There's a big fight on the roof of the Sydney Opera House and you really get a good view of the roof tiles. Sadly the script is so poor that it lets the movie down. It's filled with nonsense and cliches, it lacks any good humor. The dubbing isn't very good either. I bought my copy from Hamilton Books and it's the Canadian edition. It only has English or French audio, the US has a Mandarin track. I put that on my Amazon Wishlist. It might be worth the tenner.

The Last Warrior 2018

The Last Warrior 2018 Written by Vadim Golovanov and Rustam Mosafir, directed by Rustam Mosafir. A Russian called The Scythian over there. It's a fantasy tinted 11th century drama with lots of killing.

Life among the Russian tribes in the 11th century is hard and dangerous, they don't get along well and it's all about power over your neighbor. The Scythian tribe has fallen in statue and numbers, they are reduced to being mercenaries for the more powerful tribes. A Scythian raiding party steals Lutobor's wife and child so he goes after them with a Scythian guide called Marten. There's plenty of fighting and slaughtering. The fights are fairly good, it's a bit Mad Maxy at times, it's hard to be original when it comes to that sort of thing anymore.

Mixed in with the fighting is a bit of character development and a bit of commentary on the changes in their lifestyle. I wouldn't want to live there, then. Entertaining to see in a movie. There's plenty of cool scenery, sets, costumes and makeup. Plenty of gore too. Someone's getting something lopped off every every few mins. More for the fan of that sort of thing.

A-X-L 2018

A-X-L 2018 Written and directed by Oliver Daly. The film was funded by Kickstarter, there was a 2015 short as a proof of concept. The feature flopped at the BO, making $8.5 mil on a $10 mil budget, and this is Oliver's first and only feature film. At least so far. He doesn't even have a Wikipedia page but he has an IMDb listing.

Some smug overconfident guy called Andric is head of a robotic dog project for Craine Systems. It's a military project. One day the dog runs off and a young dirt bike rider called Miles finds him hiding in the desert. The dog is programed to pair with it's soldier. All the soldier has to do is press the remote. Miles presses the remote and the dog is his new killing machine pal. It's not that kind of movie, no one gets killed. It's a teen action film with a big CGI robot dog who's more interesting than the teens. That's kind of sad in a way.

The critics didn't care for the movie much, it does better on the IMDb where it scores a 5.3. The main complaints I see in the comments are it's clumsy, derivative and forgettable. Sadly, valid complaints. There are certainly many better man robot films. I didn't care much about the characters but I did like the dog some. The CGI on the dog was quite good but I didn't buy the design. Perhaps I've seen too many General Dynamics videos. There's really nothing original in the film. The villain is so much like a thousand other smug pricks working on secret military projects. I gave it a 4 on the IMDb, I noticed I was bored during some parts of the film, mostly the teen melodrama, there's a rival on the dirt bike track, a girl to fight over, and some dad business I could do without. Still, another SF title on the list. Someone was nice enough to pass the DVD along to me, I'll keep it, don't know if I'll get to see it again.

The LEGO Movie The Second Part 2019

The LEGO Movie The Second Part 2019 Story by Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and Matthew Fogel, screenplay by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, directed by Mike Mitchell. I got the DVD ages ago and it's just been sitting there.

Emmet lives in the rubble of the first movie, it's called Apocalypseburg, and he's still an upbeat guy. Duplo aliens have been attacking and a space-suited alien kidnaps some of Emmett's friends. Emmet and Wildside go rescue them.They have a lot of wacky adventures doing so.

It goes on and on for 107 minutes, about 25 minutes before the end we get to the human side of the story and that kid's pretty much a dick who didn't want to play with his sister. He has to have all his LEGO put in tubs to change things.

I found I wasn't as enthused by the movie as I was by the first movie. None of the songs were as good as Everything Is Awesome and I have kind of hear that song enough for now. I'd be less likely to watch this again than the first movie.

Friday Night Movies 851

Wooshi: The Demon Slayer 2009 Written and directed by Choi Dong-hoon. A Korean fantasy comedy with plenty of action and effects.

The movie mixes events from the modern day and 500 in the past. Some of the characters are immortal beings, others have magical powers. Back in the past the goblins have taken the Flute Of the Prophecy. The Immortal Taoist Wizards band together with The Master and Hwadam and banish the goblins from our world. They retrieve the Flute, break it in two, and in trust half to The Master and Hwadam. When The Master is murdered his student Wooshi is blamed for the crime and imprisoned in a painting. We know it's really Hwadam what done the dirty deed. He's a real monster.

In modern day the Immortal Taoist Wizards find the goblins are escaping their imprisonment and hiding among the humans. They can transform, only their green blood gives them away. The Immortal Taoist Wizards get Wooshi and his dog pal Chorangyi out of the painting and they have a smashing time fighting the goblins. On top of that it turns out Hwadam has gotten even more evil.

It's action packed and the magical effects are top notch. The story has a nice sense of humor and the baddie gets put down. I was glad to have picked up the Shout Factory Blu-ray from Hamilton Books for a fiver. I'll watch it again.

Crumbs 2015 Written and directed by Miguel Llansó. A rather surreal Spanish-Ethiopian science fiction story set some centuries after a big collapse. Candy is a deformed man who lives with a woman in an abandoned bowling alley. He scavenges for ancient artifacts, there's some sort of economy left over that allows a trade in collectibles. Above the landscape, floating in the sky, is a dormant spaceship. It's been there since before the big collapse.

There's a rumor going around that it's coming back to life and Candy thinks they should be on the ship if it leaves. He sets off an a quest for tickets, wondering through the landscape, following the train tracks. Eventually he finds a guy running a cinema showing the Turkish Superman film.Candy throws his Superman top into the river and the movie is over.

It's such a personal story that I can't tell you what it's all about. It was sort of interesting to watch, wondering what was going to come next, but the message is so lost in the medium that Marshall McLuhan would just tell me to go to bed and not think about it.