(1997) dir. Patrick Yau
viewed: 08/23/03
After having read a little article on Johnny To in Giant Robot magazine, I decided to check out some more of the films that he had worked on. I had seen Fulltime Killer (2001) last year, a film that he had directed, and while perusing the magazine’s list of interesting [...]
Archive of entries posted on August 2003
The Odd One Dies
Final Destination 2
(2003) dir. David R. Ellis
viewed: 08/16/03
Having Enjoyed the original Final Destination (2000) so well, I felt moderately compelled to watch its half-assed sequel, despite suspecting that it was likely nowhere as interesting, clever, or funny. Still, I harbored a moderate hope, despite the fact that most of the principals, including star Devon Sawa [...]
Audition
(2000) dir. Takashi Miike
viewed: 08/10/03
Many writers have cited Audition as Takashi Miike’s strongest film, or at least among his strongest films. And at last, I think I finally have started to “get” him. Having watched The City of Lost Souls (2000) and more recently The Happiness of the Katakuris (2001), I wasn’t [...]
Bob le flambeur
(1955) dir. Jean-Pierre Melville
viewed: 08/09/03
This is the third Jean-Pierre Melville film that I have seen, and the first that I have seen on DVD, since I have had the good luck to watch Le Samouraï (1967) and Le Cercle rouge (1970) at the Castro Theater, which is obviously preferable. At least this time, I was [...]
Intacto
(2001) dir. Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
viewed: 08/13/03
This clever Spanish film has an interesting premise. The characters of this film inhabit a subculture in which luck is traded or absorbed or stolen from individual to individual, and ultimately won and pocketed like some “soul”-like cash. In this sense, it functions as some sort of low-tech [...]
A Fistful of Dollars
(1964) dir. Sergio Leone
viewed: 07/05/03
In preparation for watching The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly at the Castro Theater as part of our Monday Night Movie Club, we decided to watch the first two films of what is now referred to as Sergio Leone’s “Man With No Name Trilogy”. I had, of course, seen this [...]
Phone Booth
(2002) dir. Joel Schumacher
viewed: 07/10/03
Produced from a screenplay by weird/cool indie filmmaker Larry Cohen, Phone Booth is a low-budget idea produced in big-budget, pseudo-”guerilla filmmaking” style by Joel Schumacher, one of my least liked mainstream directors, whose other bad films include Batman & Robin (1997) (the film that killed the Batman franchise) and 8MM (1999). [...]
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
(1966) dir. Sergio Leone
viewed: 07/07/03 at Castro Theater, SF, CA
I was on vacation for a while and had hopes of catching up on my little diary entries. Now, much later, I am afraid that I am not going to do these films the sort of justice that I would have, having come right off [...]
The Shining
(1980) dir. Stanley Kubrick
viewed: 07/14/03 at Castro Theater, SF, CA
Seeing The Shining on the big screen was quite a treat, as I had only once before seen it, on a tiny little television in the UK probably about 10 years ago. The film is moody and extremely visual, building tension with its slow pace [...]
28 Days Later…
(2002) dir. Danny Boyle
viewed: 07/12/03 at Fremont Theaters, San Luis Obispo, CA
A really enjoyable “zombie” flick from England, 28 Days Later… is a fairly ruthless and exciting. I am a fan of the “zombie” subgenre of horror. It’s one of those weird little subgenres that seems to lend itself to social commentary almost [...]
