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Hey Leonardpine, thats a great film, Oldman was excellent in it! Did you by any chance used to watch the Moviedrome cult series on BBC2? Alex Cox did marvellous intros to each film! Ah those were the days!
I did indeed watch the Moviedrome series, @Mathis1
Alex Cox's intro's were really cool. I really loved his one for the showing of Manhunter and if i remember rightly, he also did a really informative intro to Kiss Me Deadly
There were some really good cult movies in that series which also introduced me to the work of Sam Fuller.
I unashamedly love this film and watching it last night made me really wish EON would have gone against the de-facto 'no American directors' rule and tipped John Frankenheimer to do a Bond film.
Everyone rightly raves about the two car chases in the film, but it's Frankenheimer's handling of everything else that always impresses me - his clear and precise blocking and staging of every scene, the unshowy use of Steadicam (there's not really a directorial 'look-at-me' long take in this film), and his direction of the three smaller scale action setpieces in the film (a suspenseful exchange leading into a shootout under a bridge in Paris, a foot chase in Arles, and a dramatic climax at an ice rink) are all excellent; I always imagine what the Siena foot chase in QoS could have been like if it had been done in a similar style to the Arles sequence. Frankenheimer actually respects an audience's need to have spatial clarity and geography when watching a film that many directors seem to ignore nowadays, with maybe Christopher McQuarrie being an exception.
Put that together with David Mamet's script, and the natural chemistry and talent all the main actors have, and a Bondian bonus of Michael Lonsdale, Sean Bean and Jonathan Pryce popping up, and you get this superb end result.
Great film and your review has motivated me to finally purchase the Arrow remastered blu ray, which I've been dilly-dallying on.
And the Arrow disc is well worth the money as the remastered picture quality and the new special feature with the cinematographer are excellent, but the main selling point imo is actually Frankenheimer's commentary ported over from the old DVD - he's so lucid in terms of explaining his filmmaking rationale it's a joy to be able to listen to him.
You can still catch some of those intros on YouTube ! He did a great one for An American Werewolf in London and Mad Max 2!
If I recall Sam Fuller featured a few times Shock Corridor was in there if I recall correctly.
I recently heard there is a campaign on line for BBC2 to bring it back! I would certainly welcome it...not to mention the great horror double bills that used to show on Saturday night!
I haven't seen the film in ages and so can't wait to get to it again. I fully agree with your earlier point about the way he stages and directs action with spatial clarity. Well put. As you said, McQuarrie does it similarly and I think Nolan can be good on occasion too, particularly in the Batman films.
That said, the first version of the film, directed by Paul Leni in 1927, is probably the best and most visually interesting, thanks to Leni's roots in German Expressionism.
When wasn t he?
I will have to have a look mate.
I loved Shock Corridor and The Naked Kiss. Both shown on there I think.
Definitely bring it back!
I have not watched that early film, it's available for purchase or rental on Amazon though the reviews say the film quality is poor. I am looking to get it on dvd, though because of the films age maybe the version on Amazon is as good as it gets.
This is very good and rather unnerving film. I definitely recommend watching it and hopefully going in with as little knowledge as possible.
For those who've seen it or don't care about spoilers, here are some more detailed thoughts:
- The early scenes are set in the mainland, in the midst of a local celebration, so the streets are littered with people and bursting with activity (even in this jolly situation, the loud noise of the fireworks feel foreboding of the events to come). This creates a fantastic contrast to the later scenes set in the island, with barely anyone around. It also enhances this sense that in heading for the island along with the protagonists, we're venturing into the unknown, possibly never to return "home".
- There is nothing like horror in broad daylight, in seemingly idyllic surroundings, rather than creepy old houses in the middle of the night.
- While the potential motivations for the kids' behavior are strongly hinted at, I appreciate how there is no surefire explanation for what triggered said behavior. Being a biologist, Tom suggests it might have to do with some kind of instinct of natural selection, but otherwise things remain ambiguous.
- The scene with the kids playing pinata with the corpse of the old man works as a terrific little callback to the earlier pinata scene in the celebrations.
- While the film is certainly not without violence and bloodshed, there are several moments in which acts of cruelty and perversion are only hinted at, to great effect. The cheerful mood in which the children are when they go around slaying people is particularly unsettling.
- Bleak and depressing, but perfectly appropriate and satisfying ending.
- The film hints at the contrast between individual and group behavior in how individuals treat children as something that is almost sacred, while societies as a whole partake in situations which result in the death of many of them. Interesting idea.
- Lastly, the movie has some splendid acting courtesy of Lewis Fiander and Prunella Ransome.
Yeah Nolan's action staging is reasonably solid; the fact he uses handheld cameras with wide lenses most of the time mitigates shakycam effects so it's not as disorientating as say when Paul Greengrass directs action. And then when he shoots in IMAX, he rarely moves the camera and hardly cuts the action (as the IMAX cameras are too bulky to move and it would be nauseating on a massive IMAX screen respectively) - so although some of the fight choreography can be pretty naff (particularly in The Dark Knight Rises), at least you can see what's going on, which is definitely good in my book.
I'd definitely second all of that - Nolan takes the time to clearly set up all the pieces he'll have in play but also does it with panache and (as you said) atmosphere; the quick prelude to the TDK armoured truck ambush where he uses ominous aerial shots of the convoy and isolates Zimmer's score to herald the Joker's incoming attack is an excellent case of this. It's not particularly a suspense sequence as the ambush occurs pretty rapidly, but it gives the viewer a great moment of expectation before the action begins, at least in my eyes.
Just think what he could do with Bond.
I've seen this dozens of times and just now noticed the incredibly short appearance by Bill Paxton - nice little Terminator reunion, of sorts.
While a bit primitive by today's standards(or even 1940 standards), it was an interesting cinema antique to take on its own terms. A precursor to the 1997 Jim Carrey hit Liar, Liar.
I love this movie-- and the crazy soundtrack to accompany. 80s cheese at its best.
It's great stuff, pure 80's cheese jam-packed into a brisk 90 minute runtime. It's guaranteed entertainment every time I fire it up.
Did you know that the average Indonesian person bleeds more than non-Indonesian people by about tenfold? You will once you see this film. Did you know that the average Indonesian martial artist can survive being shot multiple times and absorb blows and knife slashes, one of which would undoubtedly cripple regular folk like us? You will once you see this film.
Compared with its peers, The Night Comes For Us lacks the narrative simplicity of The Raid and the beautiful cinematography of The Raid 2. What it does have, though, are some of the most batshit crazy fight scenes you have ever seen. And as noted above, they get bloody. Really, really bloody.
Timo Tjahjanto's never shied away from explicit violence, with his previous flick Headshot also bordering on the exploitative, but it's with The Night Comes For Us that he truly establishes himself as an innovative hyper-surrealistic action director, the kind of which Hong Kong used to produce in order for Hollywood to steal.
Joe Taslim is Ito, a top-level people butcher from a group called the Seven Seas. The Seven Seas are a secret, secret-police style outfit who take on all the really nasty work for the Chinese Triads. After massacring an Indonesian village, Ito takes pity on a sole survivor, a little girl, and spares her life. The Seven Seas - with their strict no-failure policy - don't have time for Ito's shit, so they send a barrage of their dumbest henchmen commanded by their smartest lieutenants to find and kill Ito, the girl, and the unfortunate half of Jakarta that gets in the way.
As far story goes, that's all there is to it really. The film is loaded with extraneous characters that make the film feel more dense than it actually is, but who really serve no purpose other than to get sliced up into several little pieces or get their throats ripped out after delivering small monologues and expositional moments.
And that's totally fine. Because the fight sequences are astonishingly inventive. Tjahjanto, with a little help from the increasingly reliable Iko Uwais (who is not just a star here but also the fight choreographer), continuously strives to make the action as mental and as visually stimulating as he can, blending the signature Pencak Silat style with that of a gory horror film. One early sequence stands out; Ito attempts to retrieve money from an old acquaintance who now runs cocaine out of his butcher store, only to be double crossed and forced to fight a half dozen henchmen in a packed meat room - utilising a circular saw, pig’s trotter, and meat hooks as weapons. It's beautifully grim.
And that's just one of many. Taslim is strongly physically supported by Uwais (doing good work in his first villainous role), Julia Estelle, Dian Sastrowardoyo, and Hannah Al Rashid; all of whom get a standout moment in the 110 minute melee of super-stylised slicing and punching. Rashid's is particularly brutal, with her character proving to be one of the most memorable female martial arts villainesses since Estelle's own Hammer Girl in The Raid 2. When the inevitable three-way smackdown between the three female badasses finally happens in the last third, it doesn't disappoint.
Your tolerance for it will depend on how much blood you can handle with your asskicking, and it's not going to win any screenwriting awards, but Tjahjanto has certainly made one of the best martial arts films of the year that will undoubtedly make a few lists of the best action films of the year, too.
As a shallow exercise in gruesome, inventive brutality, The Night Comes For Us is a blast.
⭐⭐⭐☆☆
Twilight 1998, its been a few years since I watched this one, it's decent modern Noir and worth it for Newman, Hackman and Gardner alone.
SOME SPOILERS
Pros:
●Michael Myers himself. Holy sh*t this movie just nailed this character. James Jude Courtney is simply phenomenal as the Shape. The way he moves and the mask is perfect. Possibly my favorite since Nick Castle or Dick Warlock.
●Jamie Lee Curtis. I've yet to see her deliver a bad performance. She's great here.
●The kills. I think they got a perfect balance for the amount of gore. One of the things I hated about the Rob Zombie films is how they dwelled on the gore so much. Seriously Rob, I don't need to see a guy get his head sawn off with a piece of glass for two minutes. Anyway, the kills in this are basically like in the original while others are more brutal. Some are left more to the imagination and it works perfectly. The only others in the series to get it right so far is H1, H2, and H4.
●The showdown between Michael and Laurie. Definitely better and more brutal than in H20.
●The score. Thank God for John Carpenter. The music for this film is amazing. Enough said.
●The cinematography. Beautifully shot.
●The title sequence. You'll love it.
●Allison. Laurie's granddaughter. I actually really liked her character and wouldn't mind seeing her return.
●The nods to previous films.
Neutral:
●The atmosphere. While it has its moments, the movie lacks the Halloween atmosphere that is SO important for this series. Then again this has been a problem since H20. The first six films nailed it IMO.
●The humor. Some of it worked but some...ehh.
●The two journalists. I liked the woman character more than her partner. They just came across as (sorry for their expression but it's the only one I can think of) snowflakes. Their deaths however are a highlight of the film.
Cons:
●The writing. For every brilliant line, there's a totally cringeworthy one. I know this series isn't exactly Shakespeare but this isn't just an average slasher film. Definitely needed some polishing.
●Some of the characters. Laurie's daugher(I forget her name), her husband, some of the teen characters, and the "new Loomis" really drag this movie down. The doctor could have been dropped all together.
●Laurie's character. Dedicating her life to preparing for Michael's return would have made more sense if this film included H2 and the sister angle but here it just makes no sense. And it just feels like a different character. One of the few things H20 nailed was Laurie and how she responded to the 1978 events.
●The ending. Just felt so anticlimactic and sudden. I'm curious to see what the original ending was.
So overall, I'd give it a 6/10 or a C+. I enjoyed and was entertained. But after such a long wait, the anticipation, and the fact that critics were actually praising a slasher film and calling it the best since the original made my expectations just too high. I'll need to see it again to really form my opinion. My top five remains as:the original, 2, 4, 3, and the producers cut of the sixth film. This movie beats the hell out of the Rob Zombies films, Resurrection, and possibly H20 and 5 but that's it. I still recommend it. Cheers.
I really liked the way the film used the "journalists". Lets face it, they weren't journalists. They were podcasters. And that was a perfect example of the film showing how the world within the film had moved on from Michael Myers. Nobody takes serial killers seriously anymore in a world where a teenager can murder fellow students with an assault rifle. The film directly says that too, in the conversation between Allyson and her friends. The podcasters were an extension of that motif. The new film tries to show us how little of a deal is made about Myers now, and then proceeds to show us why he should be a big deal. I liked that.
Though admittedly, the podcasters were still a bit annoying - but I suppose you wouldn't enjoy their demise as much if they were likeable.
I rated it a bit more than you did @Remington, but overall that was a good review.