John Wick Chapter 3 Parabellum 2019 Derek Kolstad created the characters and wrote the story, he's joined by Shay Hatten, Chris Collins and Marc Abrams on the screenplay, the director is Chad Stahelski.
Keanu Reeves returns as John Wick and the movie starts where the second film ended. John's killed someone in the New York Continental and the High Table has decided that John's got to go. The $14 million bounty on John's head has everyone wanting to kill his ass. As John kills his way through the streets of New York, hardly anyone seems to notice these blatant killings going on. That's New York I guess. I read that the film's body count was 164.
John calls in a favor from the Director and heads for Morocco. He wants to find the Elder and he has to kill a lot of people to get to him. The Elder gives him a chance to redeem himself but he has to kill the Manager of the New York Continental then knuckle down to what ever the High Table want. He agrees.
The High Table has sent an Adjudicator to punish the Manager and the Bowery King for helping John in the last movie. They need to step down, they have a week to get their house in order. Neither is too interested in giving up their power. That will cause trouble in the third act and I'm guessing in the 4th Chapter.
John eventually gets back to New York and killing some more people. He joins the Manager in defending the hotel from an attack by the High Table. Eventually the Manager turns on John to save his own hide. Lucky for us the Bowery King's minions find John and bring him to their boss. From the convo, it looks like there's some vengeance coming in the 4th film.
Some people complained that the film was just more of the same but it did well at the box office. I have to admit the fights got a bit tedious. Nothing that a bit of speeding up won't fix. I enjoyed it well enough but it's going to be a while before I get back to the series. It'll have to be all over when I do.
The Flesh And The Fiends 1960 Director John Gilling wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay with Leon Griffiths. Robert S Baker and Monty Berman were the producers.
I had watched the British version of the movie on YouTube about a week ago. A few days later someone mentioned the Kino Lorber DVD on a film blog. It was released as having the British version of the film and, as a bonus, the shorter US release but the reviewer pointed out that the version on the film was really the slightly longer European version. I decided to order that and it came today. Tonight seemed like a good time to check out the two versions on the disc. The slightly longer European version has a bit of nudity in a couple of scenes. They often did that in the UK in the 60s. You could see boobies in the European market much earlier than the UK or the US. Since I'd just seen the film and the tiny differences were so unimportant to the story I decided to put on the commentary by Tim Lucas. Lucas has plenty of info on the film. He's usually fairly competent as a commentary.
The story is about Burke and Hare, the cash for corpses guys, and their enabler Dr Knox. Peter Cushing plays the doctor, George Rose plays William Burke and Donald Pleasence plays William Hare. The two scumbos see what a lucrative trade there is in the dead. They're quickly offered an opportunity, being skint, they take it. Money figures large and the men quickly turn to murder to get fresh corpses.
Even though others question Dr Knox's lack of interest in the legalities of the scheme he plows on ahead ignoring anything but achieving his vision of a well trained medical force. Eventually Burke and Hare kill too many, they're arrested and tried. Hare turns King's Evidence and Burke gets a ride on the noose. Hare's blinded by some locals. Dr Knox pissed off those same locals but they don't do anything like that to him. He's exonerated by the medial board and the movie ends with him receiving a standing ovation from his class.
In the real story, Dr Knox was slowly pushed out of the University, he lectured in the US but lost his license to do that. He had a small practice before he died. Hare was released from prison and after the police help him out of town, they abandoned him on a road to England, no one ever heard of him again.
I really enjoyed the film the first time and again the second time. I did watch the shorter version of the film, released in 1965 as The Fiendish Ghouls, but I fast forwarded through some of the scenes a bit. They cut about 20 minutes out. The important scenes are there but some good info is missed. The British version of the film had been released in the US in January 1961 as Mania and then as Psycho Killers. It wasn't too popular and didn't get such good reviews. Some have come to appreciate it over the years. I liked it enough and I hope to see it again someday.
I watched John Wick 3 on June 4. I thought there were too many fight scenes but I think I liked this a little bit more than you. Maybe I just liked the dog.
I can't remember having seen the other films.
Posted by: Gary | November 21, 2020 at 02:25 PM