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Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles 2011
Like Zodiac, but for street art. Much more interesting as a study of the creative/obsessive output of the folks who are intrigued by a long-running series of mysterious urban installations than as an investigation into the artifacts themselves.
As a native New Yorker (drink!) of a certain age, Toynbee tiles were to crosswalks what discarded Whip-It! canisters were to playgrounds or Santorum-covered condoms to public parks. Something you see (and step over) hundreds or thousands of times over the years…
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The Killer 2022
Nothing revolutionary but you gotta respect a movie that both understands and can demonstrate the distinctions between heroic bloodshed, Wick-fu, and Gun Kata. The turned-to-11 tropes and oversaturated (to the point of blowout) colored lighting are offset by a gleefully cynical tone, with a dead-eyed antihero protagonist whose occasional lapses into sentimentality are the only evidence he might not be a flat-out psychopath.
The title is just the beginning of a film that wears its countless influences and borrowed aesthetics…
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Prince of Darkness 1987
What's frightening about this rebound from writer-director John Carpenter after the unjust box office failure of Big Trouble in Little China (1986) isn't just the obvious. Sure, an "Anti-God" possessing academics to ensure passage into our earthly realm to herald the apocalypse is plenty unsettling. After the slasher era conditioned audiences to stupid characters, Carpenter introduces individuals with a life's calling of applying rationality to the theory of nature's tiniest interactions.
A group that one can't automatically scream at over…
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Revenge of Mr. Willie 1999
The Important Cinema Club Super Scary Horror Movie Challenge: Entry #18
Filled category: A horror film about a killer body part
Grotesquely flabby and takes way too goddamn long to get moving - there is no reason at all for this to run 105 minutes, 80 minutes at best is the limit for what this film has to offer in my opinion, especially when it takes 40 goddamn minutes just to get to the goddamn thing promised by the goddamn…
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Jigsaw 2017
I've grown to truly enjoy these films. I was dismissive of them at first (like the Fast and Furious franchise) until the day I had a blast watching one of the earlier sequels in the theater in Taipei. I was sitting in the theater when I suddenly felt a bunch of eyes facing my direction from audience members in front of me. I was wondering why all these people were looking the opposite direction of the screen. At first I…
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Las Vegas Bloodbath 1989
Mark of a truly loathsome work: When, during a midfilm longueur, you find yourself actively wishing for the film to get ugly and misogynistic again just so you can fucking feel something.
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Panic in Year Zero! 1962
I saw this back in college, on a VHS tape I ordered through ILL when I was working through AIP movies, but I'm not sure I actually watched it to the end-I have dim memories of being disappointed it wasn't as goofy as I hoped/expected or possibly the people I was watching it with rejecting it. When I stumbled upon it on Comet TV during nap time today I left it on-and in interested the Baroness enough that she was…
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Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever 2002
A horrible, excruciating experience equivalent to watching someone else play a bad video game on a semi-functioning television.
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Rolling Thunder 1977
I plopped on my couch expecting a meat and potatoes '70s exploitation action picture about a 'Nam vet with a hook hand, but did not brace myself for Rolling Thunder to go Paul Schrader dark. What an icky sweat soaked screaming surprise! This plays like a bleak and gritty character driven modern western with some stunning photography and chilling performances. The shadowy torture/interrogation scene left me shook! And the way Tommy Lee Jones says, "I'll get my gear" with that…
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The Man with Two Heads 1972
My brain was actively trying to think of other things during roughly the first half of this. Then it got nasty, and therefore, far more enjoyable. Probably the only Jekyll and Hyde adaptation in which Hyde is more empathetic than Jekyll. I'm now going through Andy Milligan's filmography at a rate of about one film every four or five years, which I think is about all that I can handle.
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Victoria 2015
Sebastian Schipper's one-take thriller is a remarkable piece of logistical filmmaking wizardry, and a tense thriller for a good proportion of its running time. Laia Costa is the title character, a Spanish girl working in Berlin who falls in with a group of petty criminals to eventual horrifying effect. Victoria seems remarkably credulous about a gang of n'er do wells, one of whom is a pretty obvious Neo-Nazi, though some basis for that is explained as the story unfolds. The…
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Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny 2016
The road to the sequel to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was clearly a convoluted one. Look no further than the 20 or so assorted producers, including everyone from the Weinsteins to Hong Kong movie expert Bey Logan, Star Trek and the X-Men's Ralph Winter and Norwegian director Morten Tyldum, plus myriad others - though notably, the original's director and writer, Ang Lee and James Schamus, are nowhere to be seen.
The film finally arrives, in English, as a Netflix original…
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