RIPD, older (circa 2013 ish?) flick on netflix. meh, was ok (think men in black style story with ryan reynolds). i’ll take it over the fluffy stuff alternatives the missus would likely prefer…)
Have you watched Brother? The US produced one by Kitano starring Dr Foreman from House MD?
Even when he makes a bad movie, it’s amazingly, epically, hilariously bad. I’ve watched it like 5 times. Shit, even Ashley Banks from The Fresh Prince of Belair and the bald Hispanic guy from the end of Training Day make an appearance for a couple of seconds.
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Yeah, even when it’s spectacularly bad he brings some weird aesthetic angle that you simply cannot dislike.
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He’s got some kind of weird deconstructionist, “break down and simplify everything” kind of shit going on. The dude even claims he shoots ALL his movies in sequence. I remember some behind the scenes show where he told this to Hou Hsiao Hsien, a fucking great Taiwanese filmmaker(Goodbye South, Goodbye), and the latter was fucking flabbergasted when he heard that lol.
Have you watched Violent Cop? I’m like 70% sure Tarantino got that Bruce Willis shootout scene in the street in Pulp Fiction from that movie.
And, talk about fucking coincidences… I actually thought The Village was trying to pull off a Kitano with regards to the simplistic angles, purposefully out of frame shots, long takes and editing when I first watched it lol.
Kitano would always say he doesn’t know how to make movies but he has an art background, which is why his movie look like what they do, and people who complain that he doesn’t know how to make movies are “right” lol.
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It’s such an…unusual film. An uncomfortable perspective on the concept of violence and revenge, a negation of the Dirty Harry appeal. I’m pretty sure he took some of the aesthetics shots from one of the most insane documentaries of all time that came out just a few years before Violent Cop.
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Wow it does look like he did. From what I read, it was supposed to be made by Kinji Fukasaku but he turned it down or something. I always thought Kitano was trying to make something completely different from what Fukasaku would have done.
I don’t think it’s a good movie as a whole even though it has some great scenes. It looked like the dude REALLY didn’t know how to make a movie and never bothered to learn how to but he kept the stuff that worked and somehow formed his own style with his later ones.
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I watched Brightburn and Army of the Dead yesterday. Brightburn wasted a cool idea but I somehow still enjoyed it. Really gorey effects too.
Army of the Dead was just some good stupid action, would recommend
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My wife and I enjoyed Brightburn. Not executed that well, but it was some fun gore. I started Army of the Dead last night but it was nearly 11pm when we kicked it off and I started dozing about a half hour into it so I cut it off, will finish tonight.
Forgot to say I watched The Vault, the Spanish-English heist movie with Freddie Highmore. Haven’t seen a heist movie in a while, so I had fun. Nothing that clever, a couple nods to Ocean’s Eleven (including a direct mention), couple suspenseful parts, and an open avenue to a sequel. 5.5/10? That may be generous - the characters are pretty one-dimensional, which wouldn’t be much of a problem if they hadn’t REALLY tried to make the protagonist an in-depth character. Maybe it’s more of a 5. Oh well - it’s watchable, and I like heist movies.
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I watched Brother again after talking to @loppar .
It’s still one of my favorite comedies.
Takeshi Kitano plays a Yakuza dude who gets his gang taken over. He goes over to the US to find his nephew and decides to set up his own gang there. That’s basically what happens. It’s the absurdity that takes place that makes it so entertaining.
There’s a scene where a guy gets his finger cut off as punishment. One guy asks the Japanese yakuza lieutenant:
“What happens when you cut someone’s finger off?”
Dude replies in a strangely nonchalant yet gleeful manner;
“He can’t swim straight anymore.”
Yakuza head sees one of his henchman’s head placed on a stick at his doorstep. He says, “What a terrible thing to do.” as if someone just cut in line at the supermarket.
Fucking LMAO-ed.
This is a Kitano movie filmed like a Kitano movie but with horrible English dialogue that makes no bloody sense and lots of scenes just look weird because I’m guessing the US actors don’t understand what to do in front of the camera since his style of directing is so unique and I don’t think they had a good translator on hand.
A Kitano movie is basically a tragedy filmed like a comedy. Like what Stephen Chow does. Kitano was already a famous comedian and game show host in Japan before he made his first movie. Anyone ever heard of Takeshi’s Castle? It was a game show that I think it was released all over the world but I never bothered to watch it.
But while Stephen Chow’s work is over-the-top and often laments the devaluation of the good in human nature in modern society, Kitano’s work is gritty, grounded and explicitly nihilistic. Stick with his gangster movies and Zatoichi. I hate his real comedies(Kikujiro) and pseudo-arthouse “experimental movies”.
If you want to watch something weird but fucking entertaining and violent, I highly recommend it although I can’t call it a good movie but it does have it’s moments of pure Kitano brilliance. There’s a seppuku scene that’s so well edited it was worth the price of admission alone just to see how it was executed.
If you want to watch a good Kitano movie, watch Hana-bi.
5.5/10
On a side note, I remember watching a movie called Blood and Bones(no, not the US MMA movie), which was a Japanese-Korean epic depicting the lives of the Korean community in Japan after they lost the war. It was a serious tragedy that won lots of international awards and Kitano played the lead role of a sociopath who abused his family and everyone around him.
It was screened exclusively in only one cinema dedicated to only screening arthouse flicks over here.
Because it was KITANO doing all the violent abuse, a group of friends and I couldn’t stop laughing in the cinema, which pissed everyone in the theater who had never watched his previous movies off. It was like laughing during Schindler’s List. There were lots of "ssshh"s and a couple of other people laughing at the same time.
In our defence, Kitano had such an overwhelming presence the FILMMAKERS decided to edit out a lot of historical scenes that obviously had more footage like an attempted commie revolution and it became mostly “Kitano beats everyone up”. The director reportedly waited for 3 years to make the movie because he only wanted Kitano to play the lead but I don’t think even he expected him to devour the screen the way he did.
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You should watch that documentary I’ve posted a clip from - it’s creepier that most horror movies I’ve seen.
The plot is simple - a former Japanese soldier is tracking down and confronting fellow soldiers from the WW2 New Guinea campaign whom he suspects of having been part of a cannibalistic plot and the movie ends up with attempted murder.
Just to be clear, it’s a documentary.
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What? Holy crap, ok I’ll go do that lol.
Is it available in English?
Are you replying to me?
Brother takes place in the US and is shot in mostly English other than the intro which takes place in Japan.
I haven’t watched the documentary @loppar recommended but I doubt you’d want to watch one in a different language from it’s original one. I’d watch a badly dubbed bad movie only because it adds to it’s “badness” but not a documentary lol. I’m pretty sure there will be subtitles.
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My wife absolutely refuses to watch movies with subtitles, and it’s one of my top criticisms of her, haha. I’m with you on the bad-dubbed bad movies for sure, but for anything decent, subtitles are king - your mind begins to pair the words with the emotions of the actor automatically pretty early on, and 10 minutes in you forget you’re even reading them. It’s not something we talk about ever, it’s more just me being frustrated about how many amazing foreign movies she’s missed out on.
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I get that reading subtitles can be tedious for some especially if you want to concentrate on what’s going on onscreen. If you’ve watched old HK movies with their original subtitles, the English subs were so horrible they made you even more confused lol.
That being said, I have to watch some US movies and most British movies where a lot of “street” vernacular is used with the English subtitles on or I won’t be able to understand them.
Sometimes I can’t even understand what characters are saying because of their accents. I don’t have this problem when it comes to TV shows.
This comes to mind
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Shit, I watched this in the theater and there were no Chinese subtitles. We have them here for some movies. At that time, I couldn’t understand what everyone else other than Vinnie Jones was saying either lol.
I am a native English speaker and still struggle with Brad Pitt’s accent still
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Haha, I was literally about to say Snatch is the perfect example of that! I watched it with my Dad years back and he got visibly upset about not being able to understand ANYONE, much less Brad Pitt. Except for Dennis Farina. WHO WAS AMAZING.
I’ve worked in Dublin for a short time so the Irish accents I’ve heard weren’t that much of a problem - but the Travelers…now that’s something.
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