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I watch some 400 to 500 movies a year. I consume movies, with a strong focus on foreign fares (mostly Asian) and off-beat oddities. I built this site to keep track of my DVD collection, write reviews, maintain a blog where i write weekly about the US Box office numbers and various movie-related news, keep track of every movie i watch, collect DVD covers and set-up virtual shelves and so on. RatingMovies.ComŽ was born and grew from there.
I made all those sophisticated tools available to anybody so you can do all of this too. This is a site for film and DVD enthusiasts (i.e. freaks) where you can build your own communities, with your very own movie and dvd lists, reviews, blogs and RSS feed, mailing lists, a home page like this one, and even keep track of movies your friends borrowed from you.
I saw Paranormal Activity (2007) a couple of days ago and it had close to no effect on me. To work for me, horror needs to be psychological above all else, and about humans "misbehaving" towards other humans. I don't get much affected by ghost stories, or supernatural stuff in general. I like Halloween 1 (1978) for instance for its technical aspects and creativity, but Jason never scared me. Get me Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre 1, The (1974) however, and i get queasy. Orochi is all about human emotions taken to the extreme, and as such, got to me.
Set in 1950's Japan, a successful and rich woman is one of the top actress alive. Her family is renowned for "producing" the most beautiful women in many generations. However, the family is actually cursed: when all the females turn 29, they turn into horrible monsters. This time around, there is a plan, to raise another girl as a sister, sharing the same blood type, and see if a blood transfusion can help alleviate the curse.
This movie is very subtle, and centers mostly on sisterly jealousy, and what those 2 women will end up doing to one another. It's "enhanced" by some girl in a deep red coat that seems to be floating around. She is some sort of demon with powers, but not interested in the least bit in interfering with anything, although she interacts with the sisters at multiple times. She is a curious observer that is interested in how humans create their own fate, she's trying to learn something.
The movie is fantastically made. The cinematography and art direction are stunning, with deep lush colors, a mesmerizing mansion filled with rooms and furniture and paintings and other works of art. Every frame is a pleasure to watch, and reminded me a lot of the Korean sensation Tale Of Two Sisters, A (2003).
TRAILER:
This is horror the way i like it. There is not a lot of blood, but the atmosphere is so thick and full of all sorts of bad emotions, from jealousy to revenge, and eventually, madness. It's engrossing and visually gorgeous. With Epitaph (2007) having been made recently, maybe there is a trend going on to make gorgeously produced horror films. That would be so cool as visually stunning horror films are kind of something of the past.
I really don't see the point. I am the first in line for really hard horror films, but i need to get emotionally involved, or intellectually tickled, in order for that sort of film to have any effect on me. I can shake in my boots at the idea of watching again Texas Chainsaw Massacre 1, The (1974), Aftermath (1994), Ichi The Killer (2001), or Irreversible (2002). These are movies that keep me emotionally engaged just with a fleeting thought of them, long after i last watched them.
This however is complete boring drivel. It is faux-snuff to the extreme, with the movie starting in some sort of room where 4 people are sitting on the floor, bound and gagged, with some weird "helmets" on their heads. We see 3 guys coming in, with butcher outfits, and video cameras, and we learn those idiots have captured those 4 people to make a snuff film. And those 4 people, in order to make it more realistic, are wearing camera helmets, so some of the action can be shot in the first person. What follows is simply boring stuff for the good first half of the movie, followed by the actual torture and murders. But so much of it is filmed from those stupid helmets that you, the viewer, basically don't get to see anything whatsoever. It's so shaky and out of focus half of the time that you are left scratching your head as to what the director intended to say with this piece.
Here, there is simply NOTHING. This is torture porn (as it is known) at its most vile and boring. There is no insight into the perpetrators or the victims to make you care either way. The gore is really light, with just a lot of faux-ketchup to make it look tough, and the camera work is supposed to be realistic, but instead robs the viewer of any way to get into the movie. This is just a miserable failure that should have never been made after a first casual read of the script. Damn, i struggle to have my film funded, and when i see this, i get upset. Thank god this was just 74mn and that i must have spent less than 40mn in total in contact with that drivel thanks to fast-forwarding.
In 2001, as South Korean cinema was reaching for its heights, My Wife Is A Gangster 1 (2001) was a quirky off-beat comedy that became a little international success, spawning a few remakes, and 2 sequels. One can argue that Ah Long PTE LTD (2008) is a liberal remake of it, although it takes so many liberties (probably for legal reasons) that it has many differences.
Set in Singapore, it follows the life of tom-boy Li-hua Wang who becomes the leader of a Loan shark gang after her old father retires. Obsessed with remaking the image of the organization, she takes drastic measures to bring in a more humane face for the business. In the process, she marries an ultra effeminate dance instructor Fang Jojo as an arranged job, but of course, they start to like each other, and he comes to her rescue when another gang closes in, and so on and so on. The movie is basically a series of gags and over the top fights.
The movie is not boring, but it's not good either. The gags are not very creative and center too much on the effeminate husband as a source of laughs. There is nothing that hasn't bee done a million times since Cage Aux Folles, La (1978) over 30 years ago. As a liberal remake of My Wife Is A Gangster, it lacks everything that made that film good: the acting is pedestrian, the writing is not polished, and visually, there is very little that is of any interest.
This is disappointing since director Jack Neo made a couple of really good movies before such as I Not Stupid 1 (2002) and I Not Stupid 2 (2006) that were fresh, fun, and great family entertainment. Ah Long is just not of the same caliber.
Take martial arts and cooking, two of China's favorite pastimes, and you can get a pretty good movie. Although comparisons with God Of Cookery (1996) are unavoidable, this movie is quite different, and not as good. There is decent martial arts, thanks to Hong Kong legend Samo Hung, and great cooking scenes that will make you salivate to no end thanks to Iron Chef level cooking. So the film gets a few good points for this. But otherwise, the film is quite pedestrian, with a story we have seen a million times, OK acting but not much.
Wong Bing-Yi (Samo Hung) is one of the best chefs around, who is as good with his martial arts techniques as he is on the stove. Framed one day while preparing a banquet that ends up poisoning all the guests, he is sent to jail. Many years later, when he is out, he goes to one of the top restaurants around and takes the top Chef job there. He takes an apprentice, and soon enough, some bad guys learn that he has come back and want revenge... All culminates in the Chinese Cooking Olympics of the great Chefs of the nation when Bing-Yi's apprentice battles with the Chef who had one in the last cooking Olympics 4 years before.
The Martial Arts is OK, but not much more. At times, you can see fairly bad editing and see that Samo Hung didn't do all his stunts. This is surprising since he is a God of Hong Kong Martial Arts, and he proved a few years ago in SPL: Saat Po Long (2005) (one of the best Martial Arts films of the decade) that at 53 and weighing 300 pounds, he still was a great master of the genre and as ferocious as ever. Here though, you can still see his skills, but he is getting older. There is also the more troubling issue that the Martial Arts scene seem to be an after thought in the movie. Many of them are quite useless from a storyline point of view, even if they are decently done.
Where the film shines is with the cooking. I love those Chinese movies where cooking is a central part of the story. And it's cooking at its utmost delicate and surprising. Watching the movie, i was reminded of some of the early episodes of the Japanese Iron Chef show which was so dazzling. This alone saves the movie from being a C.
Overall, this is a film for the curious mostly, people who want to have a look at Samo Hung's magic, or people who like food and cooking. But for even more fun, God Of Cookery remains the classic in the genre.
Once in a while, someone asks me why i watch so many movies. The answer is simply that i love movies. But then the question becomes: how can you watch so many movies? Yes, i do watch many: with about one month left to go in 2009, i have watched over 800 films already. Yep, that's over 2 films a day. I can watch 60-70 movies a month in average. My secret is that i can bend time to slow it down, and so i have more than 24 hours per day to enjoy life! No joke.
I am not really proud of watching so many movies or anything like that: it just is. I just love it, although i do get to see a lot of crappy or mediocre movies, most of them really. But once in a while i catch a real gem that makes the past 10 turkeys worth it, a movie that i simply wouldn't have caught otherwise and end up loving. I may have seen a quick trailer, or read a quick review, and that was enough to tickle me and make me want to try it. I put it on my Netflix queue that is hundreds long, and a year later or so, after bubbling up to the top, the movie ends up in my mailbox. My bar is pretty low because i want to experience all kinds of movies, and i can!
Deadgirl (2008) is such a movie that immediately made me forget the 10 lemons that preceded it. Within the first 20mn, it became one of my favorite horror films of all time and didn't let go until the end. It instantly joined the ranks of sick, twisted and perverted fares i love such as:
These are just a few off the top of my head from my much larger list of favorites, and if you call yourself a horror fan, these are must-see. Then you have to add this movie. Deadgirl (2008) is probably one of the most original Zombie movie i have ever seen, although i believe i may have to argue with another horror fan one day that it is indeed a Zombie movie and not something else. It is gritty, suspenseful, horrific, twisted, unsettling, and i didn't move from my seat the whole time. The story is dead simple.
Rickie (Shiloh Fernandez) and J.T. (Noah Segan) are two best high school loser geeks buddies who have known each other since kindergarten. Rickie is shy and introverted while J.T. is aggressive and edgy. One day, they accidentally discover a girl (Jenny Spain) in the basement of an old abandoned asylum: she is naked, shackled on a table, covered by a sheet of plastic, and dead... Or is she? As soon as the boys approach her, she takes a breath of air and open her eyes. Startled, Rickie freaks out and leaves while J.T. stays, fascinated by the girl. But quickly, that initial fascination turns into a sick fantasy. With nobody around, and apparently no risk (she seems under the influence of heavy drugs), he decides to rape her. The girl immediately reacts violently, tries to bite him, and to "defend" himself, he strangles her to death... Except that a few minutes later, she takes a breath of air again. Stunned, J.T. tries to strangle her again, and then stabs her and shoots her, but the girl simply won't die. What follows is that the dead girl becomes J.T.'s sex object and he starts to bring in another loser pothead friend to show her off. Who is the girl? What is she? Where does she come from? She can obviously be very dangerous, so who is going to mess up this paradise on earth and be killed?
INTERNATIONAL TRAILER
This movie is certainly not for most people. It is very unsettling and provocative. It has ample gore but also graphic "rape" scenes and an imagery of 16-year old or so boys at the cusp of adulthood about to make one big giant mistake. This movie is interesting because it works on so many layers of social commentary. First, there is the obvious woman-as-a-sex-object theme, where several teenagers take as an excuse that she is dead (or rather undead, as if it were any relevant to what was going on) to do unspeakable things to her. She doesn't speak, is inanimate most of the time, and is purely an object except when she gets animated and she becomes a danger. As a sex fantasy, she is OK as long as she is controlled, 100% subdued. Otherwise, she is deadly. It's a complete binary state, and the ultimate objectification of woman. The language J.T. uses to convince others at the school to join in is disturbing as well and only reinforces the core tenants of the film. Ultimately, as any good movie in the genre of the past 10 years (Audition (1999) showed the way), women get the upper hand and terminally dispose of their aggressors. There is a very funny scene where 2 teenagers try to kidnap a woman at a gas station which turns out in unexpected ways, and in the final scene, the girl frees herself and goes on a rampage. The aggressive cro-magnon male figures get what they deserve.
Second, it's also a coming of age story where boys are becoming men and have to take decisions that will affect their "morality" as future adults. Whereas JT descends into horrific acts and loses a complete sense of what's appropriate, Rickie simply cannot take that step and is more and more repulsed by his former friend. United at the hip for so many years, buddies forever, the boys take diametrically opposed paths and become enemies to the death.
Third, mixing death and sex is a potent choice to rattle some cages. It is a common fascination for any healthy teenagers. But taken to the extreme, it certainly becomes pathological. The Zombie theme adds an interesting twists that effectively enables the young men to transgress their morality with almost a built-in sense of impunity since she's dead. As if her being dead, even if that were literally the case, changed anything to the horror of the acts. It's a complete sociopathic disconnect. I thought this was to me one of the most important part of this film. Is an act good evil in and of itself, irrespective of any context, or is good and evil relative? I have asked myself those questions relentlessly in the past decade with many events surrounding the war on terror such as the use of torture. It is easy to take sides in a shallow way, but thinking harder about the subject takes a lot more time. In this film, a combination of a degrading attitude towards woman (it's telling that one of the kids has no mother it seems) and the hint of "it's OK because she is dead", something that is completely absurd in the real world, turns the story upside down.
Finally, the writing is so damn good that so much is, and remains, mysterious, without i felt, making the film frustrating. Because there are so many other layers to hang your hat on, the main mystery surrounding the girl is something that can be left to the imagination. We never find out who the girl is, where she comes from, and what she is, but that's OK. This is why i say that one day, i see myself arguing with another horror fan about whether this qualifies as a Zombie movie or not. To me, the behavior of the girl makes her obviously a Zombie. But i can understand why some people may think otherwise i guess. In a double writing twist, the dead girl is not just an object in the story, but it's also a device in the structure of the film too.
This is a fantastic movie for the true horror fan. It is violent, gruesome, and touches on so many social themes in a very raw fashion that many people will be turned off just by that alone. But otherwise, a complex multi-dimensional story that is sophisticated and original, great visual execution, and very good performances overall, all add up to create a unique experience. Highly recommended. I am jealous of this film. I wish i had written and directed something like this. The whole production team is fantastic and i can't wait to see more from them.
Absolutely stunning, in the vain of other recent films from this great director such as One Night In Mongkok (2004) and Protege (2007) for which i gave high marks as well. Here, we find Jackie Chan completely out of his normal range in the role of an illegal Chinese immigrant moving to the Shinjuku area of Tokyo and building a small empire only to see it dissolve due to the greed and insecurities of his friends.
This is an epic story that follows Chan's character from rags to riches and back to rags. It covers illegal Chinese immigration in Japan, the Yakuza wars, and the political system in place that sustains it all. The entire cast is wonderful, especially Chan who puts in the best performance of his career, probably because he's in a role that no fan will recognize, and he pulls it off perfectly. The writing is top notch, pulling in lots of details and a pan-asian perspective that is very cool.
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