Watched the Flash which is a meh and Guardians of the Galaxy which is okay.
Sound of Freedom was excellent
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It was fantastic.
Chernobyl was the best miniseries since Band of Brothers.
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Watched 封神榜 yesterday. It’s based on semi historical collection of Chinese legends and there are a very popular and well made TV shows based on it.
The movie was low key disturbing. I guess China wanted to show off new special effects abilities because they cut out a lot of plot and focused on gratuitous violence. Imagine if Marvel heroes were using cold weapons and the camera zoomed in on killing/the dead. The actual legend features a lot of shenanigans between the heavenly actors (sky kings, fairies, immortal wisemen….). This was basically glossed over and the movie assumed that viewers know all of this, so hey, why not do close ups of ppl getting decapitated?
I think this is one reason Chinese movies do not do well overseas . They require,sometimes quite deep, knowledge of Chinese history/culture to appreciate the plot and assume that viewers hold this knowledge.
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Are you sure you want to get me started on HK and China movies lol?
Ok, you asked for it…
To be honest, China’s depictions of these legends aren’t really accurate when they are making one of those over-the-top movies trying to mimick HK movies so I steer clear of them lol. It’s interesting that even when they get HK directors to direct them - Gordon Chan, Ching Siu Tung (A Chinese Ghost Story, 东方不败，all the cool fight scenes in Hero, shit this man is a legend and no one even fucking mentions him fuck), Andrew Lau (The Young and Dangerous Series, Infernal Affairs 2 etc, they don’t resemble anything like what they would make in HK. Tsui Hark’s China movies BLOW. Stephen Chow makes SHIT. Then Stephen Chow produced another fucking Monkey God movie directed by Tsui Hark and I wanted to go choke out the projectionist or whatever the fucker up there playing the movie is called now. Donnie Yen and the Monkey God movies… I had NO FUCKING IDEA WHAT WAS GOING ON lol.
OKOK, the thing is the writers take lots of liberties with the scripts and they don’t resemble the original legends in the first place. I don’t really blame them since the China TV companies were making all TV shows following the actual legends really closely but that was in the 80s and everyone had already seen them.
Don’t get me started on today’s nonsensical TV dramas lol. They fucking bastardized BOOKS by Jin Yong, a pulp novelist, not even historical legends.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this since I don’t want to diss the filmmakers too much. China movies have a severe issue with identity. HK movies could depict all these legends and historical stuff and people from the West bloody searched for VHS tapes in early 90s just to catch them.
But I’ll say this. When China directors focus on making movies about everyday lives instead trying to concoct some funny mixture between Hollywood, Bollywood, HK and Korean flicks, you can’t beat them. Check out Zhao Benshan’s 落叶归根 (Getting Home) starring Song Dandan if you’re interested.
PS:
Seriously have you heard of Zhang Yimou’s The Great Wall starring Matt Damon? This is the kind of crap they make when trying to break into Hollywood. WHAT THE FUCK IS A TAO TIE LMAO??? It may exist in some form that’s nothing like what was in the movie or they made up some absurd legendary creature to fool the Western audience. But why name it TAO TIE? I can’t fucking pronounce it lol. How’s someone from the West going to understand what the fuck that is???
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Watched Raging Fire with Donnie Yen on Amazon. The Nicholas Tse dude was pretty dynamic; he and Yen had a great fight scene. Total rip off of stuff from Heat (DeNiro & Pacino) LOL.
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Shit, it’s on Amazon? I’ll go catch it. Not sure if you follow old HK films or TV shows but Nic is Patrick Tse Yin’s son.
The kid was primmed to be the new waves of start along with Stephen Fung who made Wu Warriors. Not a great actor but puts a hell lot effort into his roles.
Binge watched almost all of the seasons of Warrior. If you like some fighting, naked scenes and bad shit crazyness with a decent plot and drama, this is for you. I was like a child that has unlimited access to candy.
Watched an early '90s Pierce Brosnan movie called Live Wire that’s about exploding water. It was cheesy and hilarious, especially one scene at a fair where the bad guy dressed-up like a clown to assassinate someone with said exploding water but he ended up exploding instead.
I watched The Meg 2 and it sucked. I watched the damn movie because Jason Statham and Wu Jing were the bloody stars and they made Wu Jing play the brainy engineer dude who can’t fight when Wu Jing is a kungfu dude who only played action roles in HK movies which were direct influences on even the fight scenes in The Winter Soldier. FFS the dude directed and starred in like the 2nd highest grossing movie of all time in China (Wolf Warrior 2) which ripped off Fury Road but had fucking flying tanks and shit that only HK movies could come up with even though it was a China production.
The movie itself was all over the place. The filmmakers couldn’t fucking decide if they were making a comedy or a serious action flick, which shouldn’t have been a hard call to make given the premise revolves around JASON STATHAM VS A FUCKING BIGASS SHARK. 3 OF THEM.
4/10
I sat through this with my wife and girls.
Literally would rather do burpees for an hour. At least that would produce results.
2/10 simply for the fact it didn’t look terrible from a VFX standpoint (aside from the bad CGI muscle on the dudes).
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On the bright side you spent time with your beautiful family 
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Just finished watched Come and See today
It was pretty well made and got a lot of ideas across w/ nice details and great use of historical footage; however, I felt that it jumped around a lot w/ some very large “plot holes” so to speak. They just kind of… forgot to shoot the protagonist???
Maybe it was intentional to convey chaos?
Definitely better than some of the more recent WWII movies like Stalingrad (2013) but the german Stalingrad movie Stalingrad (1993) and Brest Fortress (2010) are better IMO
My recent family bonding activity is watching WWII movies with my dad.
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I watched the unbearable weight of massive talent yesterday. I didn’t know what this movie was about, just decided to watch it. It was a fun movie. It had kinda a true lies vibe to it. Action, adventure, comedy, feel good moments.
Both Nick Cage and Pedro Pacal were awesome. Nick plays himself and Pedro is his super fan, but also involved in crime family. Nick gets invited to Pedro’s birthday and attends for a 1 million dollar payout. They become genuine friends. The feds get Nick to do a bit of spying on Pedro and his family. I won’t give the whole synopsis, but I will say I enjoyed it and laughed multiple times. Nick and Pedro worked really well for this odd buddy movie. I’ll give it 8/10.
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The Northman - Directed by Robert Eggers
It was a good movie.
Watched Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears
Was shitty- basically a chick flick
Watched 300. Great action movie
This is how 封神榜 should have been made. The plot was as vacuous, but I really appreciated the battle scenes and could follow even though I have little knowledge of greek history/culture
It was still quite well made even after watching multiple videos on how inaccurate it is.
Also, their depiction of Gorgo was great. She wasn’t presented as a boss babe, whore or damsel in distress
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This one?
Definitely a good film. Artsy enough that the over the top sequences fit right in, but not so insane it dives off into absurdity.
“Then we shall fight in the shade”
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