PhillipMedoc

Instructions Not Included (the #3 movie that nobody knew about) is actually a Spanish language movie that didn't even get a wide release, so that's fairly impressive. I think we'll start to see more of this in the future. If Jack & Jill can make $75 million domestically, a studio could put George Lopez or someone in a Spanish language comedy and give it some decent promotion; I bet it'd turn a huge profit.

Angela Bassett's partner in this movie is named "Detective Justice". I can't even.

"You go down where?" "To the optimuh... uh... eyeglass store."

It looked like the fucking Temple of Doom, like waiting in line at Disneyland for the Indiana Jones ride.

jk, y'all.

Yeah, that was bizarre. It just shows how little thought was put into it, because they obviously edited in the Casablanca footage in post; Wayans was only filmed from the front with a projector behind him. Also, when they were outside, the theater's marquee displayed that along with Casablanca they were showing Philadelphia Story. I was like "that's a way better movie, go see that instead!" Seriously. And what revival houses are running Casablanca and Cary Grant films? I guess it's LA, but still. One of his daughters recently wrote a memoir and apparently says some serious evil shit went down between her father and her (I don't know exactly what). Some people have accused her of making this up now to create controversy in order to sell her book, since it's been over 20 years since Kinski died. But he was obviously a super fucked up person, even though I'd like to believe that child abuse would be a place he wouldn't go. Who knows; it's her word against a dead person's. I hope she's found some peace in her life. And the other director you're thinking of is Dario Argento, whose daughter Asia Argento has been naked in many movies but nothing ever happened with her dad, to my limited knowledge.

Speaking of Jurassic Park, that relates to what is my favorite/most infuriating "this is not how computers work" scene ever -- when Jeff Goldblum makes a computer virus to fuck up the alien ship in Independence Day. It's wrong on every possible level; what a fortunate coincidence that the aliens are running Windows 95 and use 3.5" floppy drives. No, no, no, no, and no. They're fucking aliens from another planet, they're obviously using Amigas.

Poor Jeff Healey. At least he was unable to see these shitty fuckin' movies he was involved in.

Burden of Dreams, by the wonderful and underappreciated documentarian Les Blank, who was a lifelong friend of Herzog. He departed this mortal coil back in April. His films are truly wonderful and explore parts of American culture that don't get a lot of attention. My favorite part in Burden of Dreams is when they're on the ship in the river, it sways rather dangerously in the current and one of the crew gets a fairly large gash on his arm as he's jolted. They pull out a bottle of vodka and are pouring it on the wound, taking swigs of it at the same time. Herzog is a crazy, crazy man. Les Blank was also involved in the short Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, which is included on the DVD of Burden of Dreams (at least on my copy). Basically, a young Errol Morris wrote to Herzog about filmmaking, and Herzog replied that if Morris actually finished his first film, Herzog would eat his shoe. Of course, Errol Morris made that movie (and many others) and Herzog cooked and ate his shoe. Anyone interested in Herzog or guerilla filmmaking should check out My Best Fiend, which is primarily about Herzog's relationship with Klaus Kinski but also shows a lot of low budget movie production processes. Good flick. Yeah, I kinda want to do a supercut of all Jason's Seagal readings. I actually wished I had waited to watch Glimmer Man until I had listened to the episode; I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more (which is to say, enjoy it at all, cuz I thought it was terrible).

That's a good one. Seeing Martin Sheen's mirror punching scene being filmed is amazing; the man is incredibly drunk, and yes that's his blood. To be fair, that's like the fifth window he's gone through; I'm fairly certain he has a mutant healing factor, and that explanation was edited out.

I'm "working" so I can't watch that but I can already tell you what it sounds like: lots of clicky clacky typing sounds random graphs and progress bars moving the monitor being reflected on someone's glasses "Alright, I'm accessing the main database." "Let's see... the password might be... yes! We're in." "Damn, they have a firewall. Okay, this will take me a minute to hack." The best one ever is the CSI one we're they're staring at an online chat room; one of the detectives says "This is in real time" and another one says "I'll create a GUI interface using Visual Basic to see if I can trace their IP address" which makes NO SENSE AT ALL. It's just word salad.

Duuuude, on that same "WOW! COMPUTERS!" tip, check out Hackers. Even if you don't know anything about tech stuff, it's so dumb, so much a product of its time. Totally hilarious.

The Good, The Bad, The Weird is entertaining as hell; watch it immediately. Fun action and art direction, and it's got some handsome men in it, so there's some eye candy for the ladies, too. I Saw The Devil is super intense, I wouldn't say I liked it but I'm glad I watched it. Branded To Kill is the movie that nearly killed his career. The studio thought it was too weird and didn't want to put it out; Suzuki sued them since it was in his contract that they had to release it. They acquiesced, and subsequently terminated his contract. He didn't work with another major studio for a long time after that. I haven't seen all his stuff, since some of it isn't available in English, but I can definitely recommend: Youth Of The Beast (1963) -- Criterion, so it's possibly on Hulu and should be available on Amazon. This is a great Yakuza drama/action flick, very violent, and some interesting stylistic decisions -- you can really see Suzuki's style. Also the first of four movies he made with Jo Shishido, the chipmunk cheeked guy from Branded To Kill. (Trivia: those cheeks of his were implants. Apparently, that endeared him to Japanese audiences.) Probably my favorite after Tokyo Drifter and Branded. Detective Bureau 2-3: Go To Hell, Bastards! (1963) -- Another colorful Yakuza flick, this one is a little more light hearted and even sort of wacky at times. Almost feels like a 1960s Bond film. Underworld Beauty (1958) -- An earlier B&W movie. American noir in a Japanese setting, diamond thieves and double crossing. Well shot and the lead actress is gorgeous. Tattooed Life (1965) -- Another Yakuza flick that Suzuki was churning out for Nikkatsu that would be a forgettable genre flick in another directors hands. This one is gorgeous, of course, and slower paced; it's the story of two Yakuza who attempt to double cross their boss, run away and hide as laborers, and fall in love with the wife and daughter of the crime boss. The romance is well executed (something Suzuki does particularly well, even in violent movies) and the ending is really great. Kanto Wanderer (1963) -- Damn, he was prolific in the 60s. This is kind of a similar story to Tokyo Drifter, although instead of a young Yakuza trying to leave, he's attempting to stay and follow the Yakuza code honorably. But it delves much deeper into the complexities of "honor" than many films do, even many Japanese ones. It's very colorful and there's stuff in here that Tarantino certainly uh, "borrowed" for Kill Bill.

Along the same lines, 25 after Repo Man, we got this shitfest:

There's boring ego stroking shit about Scorsese, Spielberg, etc; the only documentary I can think of at the moment which is actually interesting is Overnight, which is about the making of Boondock Saints (a movie I loathe). Basically this fucking bartender in Hollywood with no resume gets a one in a million shot at getting to direct his script with funding from a major studio. He then proceeds to act like a grade A bigshot who is ordering people around like he's Michael Bay or something, just acting like a complete egomaniac dickwad when instead he should be so grateful and thankful to everyone. It's pretty incredible to watch and also fuels my hate for Boondock Saints.

"Do you know more about fighting than you know about tornadoes?" "His fight face seems like he's squeezing out a hurty poo." Jason seemed to be in high spirits for this one.

He gave ZERO fucks about his current wife. When she had her first scene, staring through the window, I wasn't even sure who she was. Like maybe his sister, someone else taking care of his kids (who he also cared very little about). He barely talks about his wife and it doesn't even make sense that someone would want to be married to this character. So much of this movie feels like it was made up after the fact, in an attempt to cover up huge plot holes or character motivations.

That's one of the only things I liked about it; there was basically zero exposition, it dropped you straight into the story. There could have been another 30 minutes or so in the beginning of establishing Seagal's character and how he's the fucking Glimmer Man and his Buddhism beliefs or whatever, having him transferred to LA, etc. I imagine they had more of that but possibly cut it for time, mercifully.

Yeah, in 2013 with LGBT rights momentum cresting everywhere, we have a major motion picture telling us that lesbians just need the right man to fix their broken sexuality. Fuck you, Riddick, and whoever wrote this garbage. Incidentally, I've heard Pitch Black is a decent watch? Is that so? Like if I wanted a fun, mindless action movie.

Un Chien Andalou and Tokyo Drifter, good description -- it's very colorful and surreal (in the real sense of the word, not the loose way people toss it around today to simply mean "weird"). Tokyo Drifter was another Blu-ray I bought during the sale. Seijun Suzuki is possibly my favorite director and I love that movie to pieces. I saw Happiness of the Katakuris in the theater when it came out. Great stuff, although I think Miike works on so many projects and sometimes spreads himself a little thin; his stuff can be uneven. Did you know that Happiness of the Katakuris was based on an earlier film by Kim Ji-Woon, who made the wonderful Tale of Two Sisters, The Good, the Bad, the Weird, and I Saw The Devil?

Straight to video garbage. She also played a stripper in Striptease and Mulholland Drive. This looks like a Troma movie, or early John Waters. Apparently this film was the brainchild of a superfan of the original Showgirls, who had a falling out with Rena Riffel and ended up making another unofficial sequel to Showgirls called Showgirls: Exposed. This looks like some weird shit. I might have to check it out (as I do love me some Showgirls).

Can someone give me a brief plot summary and what the "twist" is? I have no interest in seeing the movie but I'm curious as to why it's generating this discussion.

Hey, check out my avatar! Hausu was one of those crazy movies that floated around on old P2P networks and traded among cult movie enthusiasts. I had a shitty copy for a few years and was really surprised when Criterion picked it up; it was very obscure even among film nerds. I bought the Blu-ray during the Amazon sale a couple months ago. It's a great transfer and it has some nice extras. Absolutely next level bonkers movie in the best possible way. I can't think of another movie that is this insane on purpose. The director was involved in some other kinda fun martial arts/mysticism movies ( is good); he did another movie called "Drifting Classroom" based on a manga which is almost as crazy as Hausu. It's not available anywhere except as a pretty bad VHS rip on some private torrent sites. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuFiFE-ifRk I highly recommend Hausu to everyone; it's in my top 10 of all time, for sure.

I missed that, and by the end of the movie I was really frustrated that I had never even heard the phrase used. There's a scene with two of the bad guys saying something like "Do you know who he is? They used to call him The Glimmer Man blah blah" like the narrator says in the trailer. I feel like they came up with the movie's title after shooting was completed, and then filmed that scene in post production so they could justify the name. Other than that it's never even vaguely referenced by anyone else except that he has a mysterious past.

I felt exactly the same. In the middle of my notes (first time I've done this for a movie) I wrote "KINDA BORING MOSTLY". I'm sure they'll make a great episode out of it but I got very little enjoyment out of watching this. A few things: The tone between buddy cop comedy and super gory murders was very jarring and dissonant. Speaking of gory murders, the killer must have had some really strong drywall anchors for those crucifixions. When examining a cadaver, this exchange happens: "Nice tits"; "Yeah, a little too nice." Does it ever rain this much in LA? Was this movie filmed during a Sharknado? 56 minutes until the phrase "Glimmer Man" is said, and then never again. Seagal shows very little interest in his current wife and children but cares a lot about his dead ex-wife. Lie detector scene was so dumb -- "Nobody's ever beat this before"; "He must have total control of his emotions". Obligatory police captain saying "I need your badge and your gun on my desk." Wayans dives/gets thrown through windows at least five times without being sliced into ribbons. Seagal's martial arts fighting up close looked like little girls slapping each other. And lastly, the story was weird and confusing. Did we find out who the actual serial killer was? Because the "bad guy" who killed Seagal's ex-wife was not the serial killer, correct? And what was the point? I forgot what the plot involving the two other businessmen or whatever was. And at the end of the movie, the captain is congratulating Seagal when he should be arresting him because they did a bunch of shit without their badges, murdered people, illegally recorded phone calls, etc; all the evidence would be inadmissible in court. I will say I laughed once in this movie: when Wayans told the two little kids to run away, he says "and take Whoopi Goldberg over there with you."