A Woman, A Gun and A Noodle Shop 2009 Screenplay by Shi Jianquan and Xue Jianchao, directed by Zhang Yimou. It's a remake of the Coen Brother's film Blood Simple.
Everything centers around the noodle shop in the middle of nowhere. The desert is beautiful, with rows of brilliant pastel colored hills. The people in the noodle house aren't quite so beautiful. The old man is the owner, his wife buys a gun, her lover is worried. The lover works at the noodle shop, the owner pays a soldier to kill the lovers. Of course, it all goes wrong, quite nicely, and it was fun getting there.
It's a nice adaptation and I liked the more humorous take. Glad I took a chance and bought the DVD, I'll hopefully get to watch it again someday.
Dog Eat Dog 2016 Based on the Edward Bunker novel of the same name, screenplay by Matthew Wilder, directed by Paul Schrader.
Nicolas Cage is a crook out of jail, he hooks up with William Defoe and Christopher Matthew Cook. They are absolute scum. They get hired to kidnap a kid, they screw it all up and everyone dies. Since it's a Paul Schrader film there's some onscreen jiggery pokery. The last several minutes are annoying. What am I supposed to make of that. Paul's inner brain and I don't get along.
It looked pretty good for a fairly low budget film. It was shot in Cleveland over 25 days with a crew of recently graduated film students. It didn't do well at the BO. Critics were mixed and it has yet to break 5 on the IMDb. I kind of feel 5ish, if it had been more original, I might have liked it a bit more but these aren't interesting individuals and I've seen their story over and over. I'll still keep the DVD, I might want to watch Nicolas and William chew some scenery.
Immortal Demon Slayer 2017 Director Derek Kwok co-wrote the screenplay with Hai Huang, Hezai Jin, Fan Wenwen and Henri Wong, they adapted Jin's book Wukong Biography. The movie is called The Tales Of Wu Kong in China and it's another Monkey King movie. It's supposedly set 500 years before Sun Wu Kong goes to war with the Heavenly Kingdom.
There's a long complicated plot involving a lot of people, some of them have powers of one sort or another, hardly any of them are on the same page. There's plenty of action, romance and murder. Good reminder, humans and gods don't mix, someone always winds up dead, and it isn't that immortal guy.
I enjoyed it for the most part and would watch it again. I suppose I could have a Monkey King marathon. That would take a while, I know I've got six Monkey King films, I think there's at least another. Oh, well, some other day.
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