Movie Thread

[Guest]

It was definitely changed and sanitised immensely from the novel.

[Guest]

Yakuza movies kind of fall apart here too, because while Japan has strict gun laws, they're not so strict as to make getting guns *impossible.*

Theres a pretty nice movie called Bullet Ballet where the MC's main goal for half the film is to get a gun in Japan. Worth a watch.

[Liar Revealed]

Oh, that totally made me thing of Kurosawa's Stray Dog. Haven't seen it in decades. But It starred Toshiro Mifune as a cop whose gun is stolen by a criminal. The criminal goes on a murder spree with it and the cop has to track the guy down to restore his honor.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

Man, I have yet to see Mifune in anything that is not a samurai flick. Gotta keep that movie in mind.

[Keith Chegwin]

If you're looking for non-jidaigeki Mifune/Kurosawa films, High and Low (Heaven and Hell) is a good one

[Guest]

Man, I have yet to see Mifune in anything that is not a samurai flick. Gotta keep that movie in mind.

Try the Drunken Angel. Mifune plays a Yakuza member in that but it's very atypical of a Yazuka film in terms of themes and plot structure.

[rabidtictac]

Drunken Angel and Stray Dog are both pretty alright. I remember enjoying each for different reasons, although I found Drunken Angel kind of slow and stereotypical of Mifune films. What I mean by that is a lot of Mifune films have similar elements, and in the case of Drunken Angel, IIRC there's a very clear "bad guy/bad influence" Yakuza who shows up, and a "good guy/good influence" old wise dude who contrasts with him. Drunken Angel was less than what I expected or wanted. I prefer the yakuza style of Takeshi Kitano or the Battles Without Honor or Humanity guy.

[veris leta facies]

Get Out (2017)

Much to my surprise, this wasn't that bad at all. Definitely not worth of all the praise it received, but surprisingly good concerning it's a current year++ movie about racial tensions written and directed by a black man, even as his debut film.

The first 3/4 of the film works well, there's a constant sense of inexplicable uneasy dread and the mystery is intriguing, but the final quarter fizzles out to a generic slasher ending where the protagonis escapes, turns out to be a killing machine and slays his captors one by one. Reminded me of the ending of Hostel which I also hated. The dialogue is a bit hit and miss, most of it is alright, but at times it's quite .. like when the head of the family philosophizes how fire resembles life and death, how the sun itself will eventually die etc, corny as hell, doesn't sound anything a seasoned scientist would say.

The social phenomenon around the film is really more interesting than the film itself. As said, it is a current year movie about racial themes made by a black man and it is actually a quite OK ~6/10 movie, so no wonder it got such lavish praise, won an Academy award, 100% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes etc. For white Americucks wallowing in "muh white guilt" applauding this film functions as absolution and it's a perfect way to show off how aware and righteous persons they are.

Shit like this is made to ingratiate current meme critics. Now is The time for all Spike Lee juniors to pick up a camera, shoot any shit they like and superimpose it with racial themes. Critics just can't go without praising it if it turns out to be even semi-OK movie.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

The dialogue is a bit hit and miss, most of it is alright, but at times it's quite .. like when the head of the family philosophizes how fire resembles life and death, how the sun itself will eventually die etc, corny as hell, doesn't sound anything a seasoned scientist would say.

It's, like, deep, and philosophical.

[Kugelfisch]

"They don't feel the need to justify their dumb shit as much"? You haven't seen contemporary shounenshit that's all about what I like to call "power porn", where the writer invents some intricate system how of all the different moves work so characters can spend a few pages explaining how special they are.

See, that's why I actually liked One Punch Man. It's not just that super heroes just plain exist and that's it. It's that some really, really dumb shit exists, yet there isn't actually any world building going on.
Dude ate too many crabs and turned into one himself? Yup, checks out. It's not even that that's some established or later explained mechanic or something. That just happened to that guy. There are no power stones or whatever. People gain super powers through all kinds of means just willy nilly and they never bother to justify that - and that's a good thing.

They even make a point out of not really giving a fuck. Saitama couldn't care less why some fuckboy got super powers now or what their motivation is. Need a punching? Get punched. He may be the most exceptional being in a universe full of extraordinary things. Which is why the viewer/reader cares about him, not why monster of the day #2495 has powers or whatever.