Author Topic: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts  (Read 561535 times)

Melvil

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #1650 on: December 30, 2011, 06:19:45 PM »
Wooo! This is like Christmas only better! ;D Enjoyed your reviews as always, pix.

Still, Melvil was quite kind to this film in his verdict, making me feel extra guilty giving up on Keep Cool after just twenty minutes. If he wants me to give it a full look for resurrection, I definitely will.

I don't remember what I said about this in my initial review, but my recollection of it now is that it was a pretty silly movie that was trying too hard to be stylish, but had some charm that eventually warmed me to it by the end. I wouldn't consider it worthy of resurrection though.

BlueVoid

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #1651 on: January 02, 2012, 12:00:28 PM »
Yay Pix! Great job!
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pixote

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #1652 on: January 10, 2012, 01:35:00 PM »
Round One Resurrection Forecast, Films 81 - 85


Dangan Runner (Sabu, 1996)
Lost to Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Overture to a New War (verdict by Melvil)
I spent much of the running time here making comparisons to Postman Blues – and that was before it even clicked in my head that the films are from the same director. I can pretty much just copy and paste my Postman Blues review here and be done with it. Let's see: The opening of this sets up a movie I'd really like to see. Oh yeah, totally. Dangan Runner opens as a coolly comedic heist film, as a nervous loser tries to get his life on track by robbing a bank. I imagine I would've really enjoyed that film, and Sabu – who is generally a very talented director, at least in terms of pacing and style – could have done a great job with it. But the heist goes off the rails before it even begins, and the film becomes an over-the-top comedy about a day-long foot chase through the city streets. Most of the moments of sheer silliness just don't work. For sure, and sheer silliness is more than an element of Dangan Runnerr; it's the foundation. It's as though the filmmakers purposefully undercut the story because they didn't have complete faith in their material. Still true. The difference, though, is that Postman Blues still manages to be a decently entertaining film, on the whole, whereas Dangan Runner goes steadily downhill to the point of being infuriating — even while there's somehow still something a little likeable about it. In other words, pretty much what roujin said. Yep, except in this case, I mean Melvin.



Black Republic (Park Kwang-su, 1990)
Lost to Moe no suzaku (verdict by roujin)
Yet another early 90s Korean film that I failed to watch all the way through. There are, as roujin said, some interesting elements buried within the narrative, but the film makes so little effort to engage with them (at least, not in the forty minutes I allotted it). I was again reminded more of a television aesthetic than a cinematic one. The slow pace doesn't feel at all meditative, but instead just like the producers needed to draw out the story to fill a two-hour time slot. As such, the film is innocuously watchable but hardly entertaining or compelling. It really could have used some commercial breaks to spice things up. Fear not, though, South Korea. I'm sure you'll make a strong comeback in the 2000s Far East Bracket.



King of Chess (Yim Ho, 1991)
Lost to The King of Comedy (verdict by FLYmeatwad)
I still have forty-five minutes left to watch of King of Chess, and I'm determined to do it, despite the film's best efforts to dissuade me. I thought I remembered FLY really loving this film and being reluctant to kick it out (in actuality, he said, "a nice little film to watch, just nothing that is really spectacular") — and between that and the title, I went in pretty much expecting a resurrection. Then the film started, and shit got weird. Like, really weird. First of all, the credits listed both Hou Hsaio-Hsien and Tsui Hark as producers. My mind still can't even process that. And the resulting film is similarly incomprehensible. It opens with a five-minute montage of Mao parades, gatherings, and things, all backed by a very earnest sounding rock song (the lyrics of which weren't subtitled, unfortunately). There immediately follows an audio montage, this one about two minutes long, of random, generic television clips. I guess we're being set up for a dialectical exploration of the cult of personality or something, but then we spend another seven minutes just sort of wandering around a tv studio, not really latching on to any particular character or idea. When the woman who most seems like our protagonist goes to seek help from a friend, we find ourselves immersed in his childhood flashback. We're like twenty-five minutes into the film at this point, mind you, and most of this is edited in that awkward and abrupt early 90s Hong Kong style that always feel so unpolished to me, especially when combined with really awful dubbing (the Cantonese track here is only marginally better than the Mandarin one). And all the while, I'm getting really pissed off, thinking, "Where the f—k is the cute kid who can predict the future?" He eventually does show up, and he's every bit as adorable as the above screenshot would have you believe, but it's kind of all for naught within the mess of this film. It's much more a Tsui Hark movie than a Hou Hsiao-Hsien movie, which is too bad. (Tsui reportedly took over the direction after Yim Ho left the project in frustration.) I'm guessing the source novel is really, really fascinating. I mean, it just has to be.



Samurai Fiction (Nakano Hiroyuki, 1998)
Lost to Dr. Akagi (verdict by smirnoff)
Oh right, this movie. It feels like the work of very talented high schoolers. "Hey, dudes, let's make a samurai flick this weekend." "Aw, why? They're so old-fashioned." "Not our movie, man. We'll get Koji's older brother to play some electric guitar solos during the fight scenes? It'll be awesome!" And more power to them, I say. It's just not for me. I gave up after twenty minutes. Maybe if the black-and-white photography had looked better, or if the fight choreography held any interest, or if the jokey anachronistic stuff had been funny, or if I'd watched it with Tequila's younger self. One thing I did like, though: the three hundred-year old story is being recounted in voiceover by a samurai in the present day. That intrigued me, leading me to believe the movie was going to be like a Japanese Highlander meets The Navigator: A Mediaeval Odyssey. But no. And the original Japanese title, SF: Episode One, had me thinking it'd be like Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins. But no.



Sumo Do, Sumo Don't (Suo Masayuki, 1992)
Lost to He's a Woman, She's a Man (verdict by roujin)
I so so so want to resurrect this. But even taking into account my occasional sumo fandom, it's just not good enough. I enjoyed it more than anything else this round, though. As roujin said, it's just another movie about a sports team made up of a band of misfits. Very predictable, but pleasantly so. I really liked most of the leads and am curious to track their progress throughout the rest of the bracket. (And maybe now I'll finally watch the Oscar-winning Departures, just to see what Motoki Masahiro is up to seventeen years later.) It's simultaneously homoerotic and homophobic, which is always an interesting blend, and it definitely had me smiling on more than a few occasions (and not just at offhand references to Wakanohana and Takanohana). Overall, though, it just needed a bit more polish and a bit more spark to the narrative. I've been wanting to see it since well before this bracket started, and I'm glad I finally caught up with it, but I'd stop short of recommending it to anyone else.

Up next: Eighteen Springs, Bad Movie, Getting Any?, Love Letter, and Ermo.

pixote
« Last Edit: January 10, 2012, 05:06:15 PM by pixote »
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smirnoff

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #1653 on: January 10, 2012, 05:16:25 PM »
SF must've been rough going indeed. And you saw the best parts too (the first 20 mintues)! Good job putting it to bed!

Ermo, in your next set of movies, was one of the strongest of the losers I encountered... it's one of a the few films that doesn't make me cringe at the idea of you having to see it. :)

pixote

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #1654 on: January 12, 2012, 01:10:38 AM »
Ermo, in your next set of movies, was one of the strongest of the losers I encountered... it's one of a the few films that doesn't make me cringe at the idea of you having to see it. :)

Postmen in the Mountains is still the film to beat, as far as the ones you've kicked out of the bracket go. And it's now made it all the way to the third round (which is farther than Lost and Found, the film that knocked it out in round one; it got beat itself in the second round by the Princess Mononoke juggernaut).

Bullet in the Head, 6ixtynin9, and Operation Scorpio weren't bad either, and I'm looking forward to revisiting Maborosi and seeing Ermo.

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mañana

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #1655 on: January 12, 2012, 06:17:51 PM »
"Not our movie, man. We'll get Koji's older brother to play some electric guitar solos during the fight scenes? It'll be awesome!"
Ha, love it.

Good reads, as always.
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Jared

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #1656 on: February 20, 2012, 08:51:05 PM »
Cageman (1992)



Cageman isn't a movie that I had even heard of when I took on this matchup, so I wasn't really sure what to expect at all going in. Didn't read a plot synopsis or even what genre of movie it was. The film starts out with an old man in a cage, with “Happy Birthday” being sung in a rather eerie manner. I was kind of afraid I had stepped into some kind of crazy horror thing! Following this however, the setting of the movie kind of zooms out, and you realize that the old man is one “Cageman” within a hostel, as we then see a whole community of them.

After spending a little bit of time getting to know the community, in which we see that the people are actually pretty  happy for the most part, we learn that the building is in an area that the government is targeting for redevelopment, and that it will have to go. It probably takes about 45 minutes or so to get to this thread of the story, which basically carries the film for the remainder of its rather long runtime.

The film does such a good job in setting up its characters and then shaking up the circumstances of their lives. We see them working together on some things and disagreeing on others as they deal with having their backs up against the wall. The situations we get throughout the movie work with varying degrees of fun. Best of all is probably in the middle of the movie, when some of the politicians involved in the decision of redeveloping the area decide to stay in cages as a PR move.

Ultimately I thought the journey was a lot of fun, all though the final destination of the movie is a little bit heavy handed and unsatisfying. Its a minor complaint though. I was reminded of another movie that I believe is in this marathon called “Shower”, which similarly details a group of people dealing with the potential loss of a place they love. Cageman probably doesnt work as well as that movie does, but it's pretty close.

VERSUS

Not One Less (1999)



Came into this movie with a little bit more familiarity, having seen a couple from Yimou Zhang (Hero, Raise the Red Lantern).

Not One Less is the story of a 13 year old girl, Wei Menzhi, hired to be a substitute teacher for a month in a very poor mountain village in China. The regular teacher informs her that students have been leaving here and there and offers her a small bonus at the end of her term if all the students remain in the class while he is away. Having already seen her being a little bit of a pest about getting her full payment up front, it becomes a little bit worrisome to the viewer early on what this incentive might mean.

Once Wei starts running the class, it is apperent pretty early on that she is wildly unqualified and way to immature to take on 30 or so kids that are probably only about 5 years younger than her. Her management of the class is laughably bad.

The plot thickens when the class misfit unexpectedly leaves the village to go to the big city. Nobody except Wei seems too upset about this really, as this is a fairly common occurrence. We then go into the second half of the movie, which is basically a long display of her stubborn willpower in an effort to get the child back to the village. She doesn't particularly act with intelligence or common sense (she has amounts of money greater than the bonus she is shooting for pass through her hands a couple times even) but never stops plowing toward her goal. The character wasn't really all that likeable to me throughout the majority of the movie, but eventually you get the sense that she has stopped caring about her bonus and is more concerned with accomplishing her task.

This was a pretty good one as far as I'm concerned. The ending here feels even more heavy handed than that of Cageman, even giving us title cards that feel like a public service announcement regarding poverty in the village schools. The whole thing gets very Lean on Me, which is really a jarring twist considering how largely incompetent or misguided our protagonist has been throughout the movie.

Verdict
This probably will be a disappointment to some because I'm going against a pretty cool movie, but I liked Cageman just a tad bit better.  Feel guilty sending a good film by Zhang home, but I see verdicts against Kar Wai Wong and Akira Kurosawa in this round, so I guess no one is invincible. Don't be mad. Just doing what I have to  :)

Cageman wins.


this was fun. Ill jump in again once Netflix availible or movies I can find elsewhere become availible.

smirnoff

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #1657 on: February 20, 2012, 09:48:47 PM »
Brackets! Anything can happen!

I just wish it wasn't this. :D

Bondo

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #1658 on: February 20, 2012, 10:03:53 PM »
I see verdicts against Kar Wai Wong and Akira Kurosawa in this round.

Hello! 8)

I did think of Shower when you were describing Cageman but it would have to be crazy good to match Shower. The premise of Not One Less sounds very good.

pixote

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #1659 on: February 21, 2012, 11:45:50 AM »
this was fun.

God, I never get tired of hearing that.

(Nice verdict.)

pixote
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