Letterboxd — Your life in film

I love me some Takashi Miike. This is one of his more polished films although its not lacking the usual carnage, chaos and utter destruction. The entire second half of the film is a swordfight! A massive town devastating swordfight featuring virtually the entire cast in a battle to the death.

The film is not without flaws. The bad guy is almost cartoonish in his evil ways. The 13 protagonists makes it hard to route for the good guys because there are so many and mostly underdeveloped. The two rather offset each other and keep the runtime around 2 hours. A necessary decision.

I was really not expecting this. 21 Jump Street is clever, funny and extremely likeable. Not only that but Channing Tatum actually found a personality from somewhere. All in the name of comedy. He makes for a great straight guy opposite Jonah Hill's surprisingly thin funny guy. Its one of the best cop buddy pairings since Lethal Weapon. Its not a brilliant film but it does play off action movie tropes quite nicely and provides satisfying scenes throughout. Most importantly it'll make you laugh.

Run-of-the-mill French revenge thriller. Basically Jean Reno intersperses time talking to people with occasionally shooting them.

I'm starting to think Christopher Walken can save pretty much any film. Regardless of how strong his co-stars are or how decent the script is. Here he makes a generic road movie work. Its all about father-son bonding and yet his eccentricities overpower everything. There's one scene that was improvised and it feels so real that I wish they'd shot the whole movie as improv. The rest of the time its touches of Walken that own all. Singing, dancing, being scared of blenders. Its all in here. The man is a genius. If you're making a film and you can afford him, do it.

I don't understand why I like Timur Bekmambetov movies. He uses many of the same directorial crutches that I hate in other directors. Like slo-mo and style over substance. There's just something visually stimulating about his films that I find irresistible. So even though this is a big dumb movie, I actually enjoyed it.

I guess the idea of Abe Lincoln running around splitting vampire's wigs with a silver axe just floated my boat.

Like watching someone you hate play the worst video game ever made.

I saw this the other day it depressed the hell out of me. Which is probably why no one wants to pay Billy Bob Thornton to make movies. How do you sell it? "This movie is a total downer". SOLD!