House of Flying Daggers

House of Flying Daggers (Rented from Blockbuster)

Wonderful art house martial arts flick featuring truly stunning choreography, magnificent cinematography and the intoxicating presence of the breathtaking Ziyi Zhang.

Directed with his trademark style by Yimou Zhang, the Vincente Minnelli of Chinese historical epics, House of Flying Daggers is a gorgeous adventure that fails to reach masterpiece status only through a fairly predictable script and needlessly down ending.

Chop socky fans will have to twiddle their thumbs for the first 20 or so minutes before things start to get nasty but those opening minutes are some of the loveliest footage committed to celluloid in many a year.

House of Flying Daggers See details at Amazon by G-Tools

Dial D For Demons

Dial D For Demons (rented from Netflix)

One of the least entertaining horror films your likely to rent this year. Dial D For Demons lacks suspense, thrills, shocks, a coherent plot, talented actors, and a director who shows any understanding of the genre. This last point is perhaps most surprising since Billy Tang is a veteran with a number of hits in his wake. Here he seems lost helming a script that rips off a hodge podge of better films. The script is simply awful - it fails on every level and should have never been made. Even making broad allowances for cultural differences this Hong Kong production is a pointless mess.

If you want to see a laughably stupid horror film rent one of the Scary Movie franchise - they may be parodies but at least you won't hate yourself for wasting nearly two hours of your life on Dial D For Demons.

Dial D Demons Jordan Chan See details at Amazon by G-Tools

Saw (Widescreen)

Saw (Rented from Blockbuster)

Second and a half rate thriller (second rate direction from helmer James Wan who actually shows a great deal of promise with a fairly low budget / third rate story that liberally steals from a host of sources - most notably David Fincher's best work - especially Seven and The Game.) Most of Saw's flaws stem from a script that thinks it's thrice as clever as it is. The film also features the greatest number of brain dead performances in any feature film that wasn't actually about zombies. (Very) Bad acting and a (very) mediocre script equal a crap film no matter who is behind the camera.

Saw should have done straight to video where it's shortcomings would have been more forgivable. Go in with lowered expectations and you may not find yourself reaching to press the fast-forward button too often.

Saw (Widescreen Edition) Lions Gate Home Entertainment 2005-02-15 Sales Rank : 336 Average Review See details at Amazon by G-Tools

The Forgotten, The Grudge

Rented from Blockbuster: A pair of stylish horror flicks.

The Forgotten

I'll tell you what was "Forgotten" here - the friggin' third act. What an atrocious ending to a fairly promising chiller. Come to theink of it the second act was fairly pedestrian as well. So The Forgotten starts off well, stylish direction, teriffic NYC & Brooklyn locations, decent (for a genre flick) performances but then...

Not so much bad as very disappointing.

The Forgotten Julianne Moore, 　Dominic West, 　Joseph Ruben by G-Tools

The Grudge

Fairly good remake of the modern Japanese horror classic Ju-On - likely due to the masterstroke of having the original Japanese director helm it while keeping the film in Japan.

The original edges out the remake in most areas but for the subtitle phobic The Grudge is an excellent substitute and for the rerst of us a worthy re-imagining.

The Grudge
Sarah Michelle Gellar, 　Jason Behr, 　Clea DuVall, 　Takashi Shimizu



Columbia Tristar Hom 2005-02-01
Sales Rank : 613
Average Review

See details at Amazon by G-Tools

Netflix:: Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S

Queue Review Netflix

Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S

Nearly humorless, thrill deprived and directed with all the passion of an industrial film this 2003 entry in the original G's screen assualt will appeal mostly to hardcore fans and young kids with low expectations.

As astounding as this will sound; Godzilla is on his way to attack Tokyo again and there's virtually nothing the hapless government can do about it. Cutting edge stuff eh? They have Mecha-Godzilla but he's broken - luckily for citizen's of Japan Mothra is obsessed with burying at sea the 'Zilla bones that MechaG is built around. Whatever, at least we get a few scenes with those kawaii fairy chicks - the singing one's who rep Mothra - oh yeah.

The effects here are fairly mediocre - Mothra'a pretty cool though and there's nothing quite like seeing one of MothDaddie's kiddies sucking of Godzilla's tail. Priceless. The human's are barely adequate which does the turgid script no favors.

Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. at Netflix

Nicheflix : Memories of Murder, Ringu 2, The Stewardess

Queue Review Nicheflix

Memories of Murder

Fairly brilliant Korean police drama focusing on an actual unsolved series of murders in a provincial city. Women are being sexually assaulted and murdered and the local cops - vicious, stupid and corrupt and utterly ineffectual - can do little but attempt to frame whatever suspect is unlucky enough to catch their attention. Joined by a far more skilled detective from Seoul they chase one promising lead after another only to face a series of maddening dead ends.

Easily as good as anything Hollywood has turned out recently - powerful performances - lead by Kang-ho Song and truly masterful direction from Joon-ho Bong make Memories of Murder one of the most compelling cop dramas of the decade. Very highly recommended.

Memories of Murder at NicheFlix
Memories of Murder at IMDB

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Ringu 2

Disappointing sequel to the original Ringu - after the unique hook that made it predecessor such a stunning success Ringu2 reverts to more standard genre territory with undistinguished results. The original cast is back and Rikiya Otaka's Yoichi is one of the creepiest kids in horror cinema since Haley Joel stared seeing dead people. The direction has it's moments and there are some genuine chills to be had but the original is simply to tough an act to follow.

Ringu 2 at NicheFlix
Ringu 2 at IMBD

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The Stewardess

Awkward comedy/thriller from Hong Kong about a film "transcriber" who finds him self juggling unlikely relationships with a mob bosses daughter and a creepy/sexy Japanese stewardess. The frenetic genre melange never quite works and The Stewardess seems to be trying far too hard to be too many things and fails at all of them. Not recommended.

The Stewardess at Nicheflix