Joe brought the BluRay of Battleship and we watched most of that. Joe warned us of the weak character developement scenes in the beginning of the movie and we fast forwarded through bits and pieces of those. There was a soccer game that went on too long and it got the same treatment. It's rare we push the fast forward button and I really have no issue with it. Not all movies are good 100% of the time. Your finger on the FF button can make a 131 minute long movie a nice bit shorter. That's always good and you know we did not miss anything important. Scientists discover an earth like planet far off in space and they send a signal. Some time later some spaceships come and splash into the sea. One of the alien ships hits a satellite on entry and as the burning ship tumbles through the sky, spewing red hot metal and smoke, it leaves a nice swath of flaming destruction across the Hong Kong skyline. Nice CGI of buildings getting damaged. The aliens set up shop near Hawaii. The US and Japanese Navies are having training exercises in the area. The aliens pop up a huge energy dome that ships, planes, and radio can't pass through. Two US, and one Japanese, destroyers are in the dome. The aliens ships are big and noisey and have lots of transforming and anime inspired parts and weapons. One of the destroyers goes on the offensive and it pretty much gets blown to bits. The Japanese Captain takes them on next and he's sunk. At least there were some survivors from that. The last ship, now commanded by the troubled hero of the story tries a different tractic and doesn't attack. The aliens leave them alone. From the outfit of a captured alien they figure they have trouble seeing in the light. That helps bring the aliens down and the earth will be saved. At least for now. Hopefully Battleship 2 will have some space battles. That would be cooler. The movie is directed by actor/director Peter Berg. His last movie was the 2008 Will Smith superhero comedy Hancock.
Battleship is pretty loud and there's plenty of destruction. It's in the Bruckheimer/Silver/Bay blockbuster style. Reality is bent to serve the story and the pyrotechnics. The audio is full and rich and every action seems to have a swoosh or roar or a boom associated to it. There's nothing overly original about it but the action parts deliver some entertaining film. There are some good characters, doing some heroic stuff, who occasionally toss out some bad dialog. I didn't care that much for the romantic subplot and some of the other plot points just didn't make much sense. As the story served the action and the style, it didn't matter that the USS Missouri couldn't have had any live ammo on it and it couldn't have taken just an hour to fire up the decommishioned ship from it's current job as a museum. I have no problem with that, I treat it the same way as I would a fantasy movie with elves, trolls, witches and all that magical mumbo jumbo. It does help remind me that it might not always be a good idea to send out signals to space. I know it's too late and we've got a lot of 'splainin' to do for some of the tv and radio that's been beaming out through the galaxy. Hopefully, you and I will be dead before the aliens get a chance to listen and come looking. Keep watching the skies. Call if you notice anything.
I'd been a big fan of the 1967 Seijun Suzuki film Branded To Kill since I first saw it in Jan of 1999. It's a Yakusa picture about a guy who's the #3 hitman in the Japanese crime world. He's played by Joe Shishido whom some Mystery Science Theater 3000 fans will recognize from the Fugitive Alien episode. Joe agrees to help a retired hitman, Kasuga, get back into the business. They go to the Yakusa boss who hires them to protect a guy while he's travelling from one town to another. Along the way they are ambushed and the Kasuga freaks out and is killed. Kasuga kills the #4 hitman and Joe and the client each kill some assassins. The two get away but are soon attacked again. The #2 hitman is killed when Joe torches his hidout. The client shoots #2 while he's running around on fire. Now #1 and #3 are the top hitmen. Joe doesn't know who #1 is but he'll soon find out. After the job is done Joe heads home to his wife. His car breaks down and he gets a ride from a stone faced gal who's got a death wish. She drops him off at this apartment and Joe and his wife have some naked time. There's a lot of nudity in the movie. The Yakusa boss sends Joe to kill some business men and Joe delivers their dooms in some stylistic ways. Some of them are a bit impractical but it's a movie heavy on style. The gal with the death wish turns up with a new assignment which gets flubbed by a butterfly. Things start to go wrong for Joe after that. Eventually Joe and #1 finally go head to head. It doesn't end well for anyone.
Suzuki had made 40 films for Nikkatsu before Branded To Kill and his later efforts were getting more and more stylish and abstract. The movie wasn't very successful and the studio had already warned the director about this. Suzuki got fired and he sued. He won a bit of money from the failing Nikkatsu film company. Nikkatsu went on to make softcore roman porno while Susuki got blacklisted and didn't make a movie for 10 years. He worked in commercials and did some tv. You can read more on the link in his name above. The movie is out in the US from Criterion. I have the earlier version but the disc that Sperhauk picked up from the library is a new dual layer remastered film. It looks much better. That's the one to get. It has the short interview with Suzuki from 1997 that was in the earlier Criterion dvd as well as a new interview with him and another with actor Joe Shishido that turned out to be rather entertaining. I'd also recommend Suzuki's Tokyo Drifter. It too has had a new dual layer release. If you check out the link to BTK above you can find Tokyo Drifter on one or another of those YouTube pages. Not everyone is going to like it, but hell, you can say that about any film. For the right person it will be worth sitting through. It could be you.
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