Excellent Movies AND Bad Movies!

[daveblackeye15]

Plenty more viewing and guess what I actually watched some movies that society itself would approve of!

Let's get those out of the way first, me and my brother went on a Akira Kurosawa tour!

*spoilers to nearly every movie....just being save*

Seven Samurai. Excellent movie! Often I kick myself when it takes me a while to watch a movie that people praise, this time I didn't because if I watched this when I was say,14-15, I doubt I'd apprecate it like I do now. If you don't know the tale a village threatened by bandits wish to hire samurai to protect them. Everything seems to be well done, the first hour is a band of villagers gathering the samurai and the introduction to said seven. The second are the samurai preping and training the villagers for the bandtis. And the third is the war between the village and bandits. The action is very well done and you don't know if all of them will survive or not. I think this is my favorite Kurosawa movie (so far)
BTW: I think my favorite Samurai might be Kikuchiyo since he seems like the character you can relate to the most and his speech to the six others about how farmers have to lie and kill to survive is my favorite scene in the movie . Plus his sword is big ass awesome. But Kambei ,for being the wise leader, and Kyuzo, for being the silent bad ass type, as close seconds.

5/5 Said to have 'defined' the action movie and just might have.

(as usual for me I'll run out of steam after the first 'big' review)

Rashômon

My second favorite Kurosawa (I've watched three so far). There has been a murder and the movie shows the different versions that each witness claims. I was quite excited to see this because of what I heard and was hardly disapointed. It's got some good fighting, I esepcially like how in the first 'duel' it's all heroic but what actually happened was that they were both hesitante and scared to fight. Great movie.

4/5

Yojimbo. Least favorite of Kurosawa's work but a good movie none the less. For once Mifune plays a calm quiet guy. This was remade as the spaghetti western "A Fistful of Dollars" (the original story I heard came from a book though). The character at least get's to slice up more people than Blondie shoot. I do like how the character get's the two gangs to fight each other it's a good idea and at least it's easier to tell which brother is which in this version. Plus it looks like Japan had it's own version of Richard Kiel.

3/5

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. 3/5


TMNT II Secret of the Ooze. 25/5. Loved Toka and Razar as a kid, still love their costumes but I never noticed as a kid how VERY little the Turtles used their weapones in this. Oh yeah Super Shredder was great but should have had a LOT more time...plus an actual fight.



Them! Bought the DVD, easly the best giant insect movie ever! Wonderful ant effects (and I know ants don't make noises but that sound they emitted still chills me) and it get's points for killing of one of it's main characters. 4/5

Versus. I watched the R-rated version once and swore it off when I heard there's an uncut version. A year later I finally got around to finding and buying it. This version is much better and makes more sense on a few things. In other words: BAD ASS for everyone! 4/5

[RCMerchant]

I like THEM! as wellThe giant ant chewing on a human ribcage is classic.TARANTULA is another big bug favorite.I'm a sucker for 50's scifi.

[Shadowphile]

THEM! Spoiler.....














The thing I find most remarkable about THEM! is that the hero DIES!  The hero never dies in B & W movies unless he is a bad guy to begin with or if he kills somebody who doesn't deserve it.

[peter johnson]

On topic:
I too, love 50's/60's giant bug movies, Problem is though, that once you run out of the classics, it's damn hard to find 'em -- And while I have nothing at all against CGI -- really! -- I'm talking about table top animation/enlarged photography of real bugs/giant fiberglass & cardboard constructs, etc. etc. -- you know, all the old-fashioned ways they used to do this --
     So:  Have you all seen "Monster Island", with Carmen Electra on the cover?  Nobody prepped me for this one -- I was expecting CGI mayhem, especially with the MTV logo on the box, but lo and behold:  ALL animated models, with giant claws and heads made out of foam and fiber attacking real actors!!  Giant ants AND giant mantids!!!  Adam "Batman" West as Dr. Harryhausen!!!  Model forests and cheeeesssy sets!!!  I apologise if I missed the threads on this one, if there were any, but dang, people -- this one's a keeper!  It even has a very bad song interlude (Carmen Electra), just like the teenage giant bug movies of yore --
See it . . .
peter johnson/denny crane

[daveblackeye15]

Really? Maybe I will check out Monster Island then, because like you I thought it'd be CGI mayhem.

[peter johnson]

The animated model Flying Queen Ant kidnaps Carmen Electra & flies off with her to keep her human slaves "entertained" --
Even though it's supposed to be on a "tropical island", it is so obivously Vancouver, Canada, that it ain't even funny -- no, it really IS funny watching all the cloudy breath & girls in skimpy outfits trying to pretend to be warm!  The only "tropical" scenes are the hand-built palm tress on the model sets -- not a speck of CGI in the whole thing!!
REALLY good Praying Mantis mating/fighting scene, and *spoiler* -- well, we all know what a female praying mantis does at the conclusion of a tryst, don't we?  Pleasantly gross . . .
I'd been avoiding this one -- my mistake --
peter johnson/denny crane

[dean]

Ha, that sounds hilarious, and actually sounds similar to a failed TV show I heard about back in the day.  

It was set in some tropical hotel up north, but they filmed it in Melbourne [right down south] and what's worse, is that they filmed it in winter.  So you actually see their breath on the air in those cold days, whilst the extras playing 'dead bodies' floating in the pool almost got hypothermia from lying in the pool all day.

Hilarious.

[Ed, Ego and Superego]

Ahh, I am glad someone is still doing practical effects.  I wtched a series of SciFi Channel originals, and it looks like somone took PSII game monsters and pasted them into a TV show.  NO suspension of disbelief.  
-Ed

[peter johnson]

No, anyone who loves tabletop animation really needs to see this --
This thing was so poorly marketed:   They should've marketed it to monster geeks like us.
Wonderful Homage to Anyone At All involved with this
peter johnson/denny singleframe

[BoyScoutKevin]

Yes, but you also have to remember how he dies. Heriocally, helping to save the lives of two children.

As for "Rashomon," most people know that "The Seven Samurai" was remade as "The Magnificent Seven," "Yojimbo" was remade as "Fistful of Dollars," but how many people know that "Rashomon" was remade as the western "The Outrage" with Paul Newman as a Mexican bandit and Laurence Harvey, Claire Bloom, Edward G. Robinson, Howard da Silva, Albert Salmi, Paul Fix, and William Shatner. Anybody seen the remake of "Rashomon?"