VierasTalo voted for list
Watched in 2019 - 10th anniversary edition (45 movies items)
5 years, 10 months ago
VierasTalo added 1 item to VT's episodemeter list
Complete
Episodes: 8
Seasons: 1
Takes a weird turn for the last two episodes. One of those cases where there's clearly been heart in making and laying out the groundwork for this thing but it's betrayed by either not having enough time or just not knowing how to write itself out of the predicaments those last two eps have. Before that it's a lot of fun though. Very wholesome.
5 years, 10 months ago
VierasTalo commented on a list
Film Journal 2019 (225 movies items)
"I'll say I think me undergoing therapy for the past however-many months and getting something of an active grasp on what things make me feel like all the time has really helped me be able to watch stu"
5 years, 10 months ago
VierasTalo added 7 items to their collection
5 years, 10 months ago
VierasTalo added 1 item to Film Journal 2019 list
Abraham Lincoln gets captured by the Japanese during World War 2, along with other notable world leaders. Fear not, despite Rocky Balboa, Snake Plissken, 007, Karl Maka and the like being unavailable, because Jimmy Wang Yu is on the job. He's a good guy, even though he rides into the meeting where he's briefed killing around 30 people guarding said meeting. He rounds up a hell of a mission force, consisting of two comic relief soldiers, a playboy, his incredibly talented and persistent ladyfriend, an old drunk and an escape artist.
What you might be expecting is an action thrill ride as the group heads to Luxembourg to save the generals, but it's... a bit more than that. Fantasy Mission Force is, at turns, a post-apocalyptic nazi fantasy, a low-rent version of Hausu, an absolutely killer western starring Brigitte Lin the most kick-ass femme fatale this side of Maggie Cheung, a 50s amazon women of the wild -genre picture, and, eventually, heroic bloodshed. It has a few flubs along the way (primarily the around 2 minutes worth of sped-up Benny Hill -esque footage), but remains remarkably intact despite the ever-changing milieu and the consistently goofy tone. Quite a number of people couldn't pull this off, but Chu Yen-ping makes it look easy. It's a hell of a feat to transition from an extended Jackie Chan wrestling match that ends with a gong being used as a foreign object to Lin conning a bar by having a drinking/shoot-clothes-off-a-lady contest with her friend that's performed almost without dialogue and keep it all equally interesting and, in a sense, very vivid and lively.
Bonus points for:
- Liberal use of Halloween and Halloween III -music, remixed with often gnarly results.
- Ghosts cheating in Mah Jong.
- The shot of Sun Yueh running away from a spooky shitter through a hallway of bloody ghost hands handing him toilet paper.
- The sequence of Brigitte Lin suiting up for battle, walking her horse away from her house, only to turn around and blow the house up with a bazooka. Her own house!
- A katana in the butt.
- Snake Plissken being declared dead in 1944.
- Sun Yueh's opening musical number that makes me, a die-hard teetotaler, want to drink a very foamy beer.
- The incredible revelation that around a third of the Japanese nazis in Luxembourg are leather daddies with chrome-painted skull masks literally riding cars that have been painted with various nazi symbols.
I love it.
5 years, 10 months ago
VierasTalo added 1 item to Film Journal 2019 list
The Star Witness is an inspiring film. You can see every post-Taken Liam Neeson performance in Walter Huston's hardass D.A. in this movie. You can see the beginning of a lot of gangster clichรฉs as the speaking-through-the-nose gangsters in this film end each sentence with a "see?". You can see Abraham Simpson as a live-action version in Chic Sales grandpa. This movie effectively starts as an ensemble picture, with a big slideshow introducing all the characters. The last 30 minutes are Sales show though, as he absolutely kills it as a no-nonsense old-timey drunken grandpa who wisecracks and talks about the good old times alot. It's a significant improvement, as before that the only highlight in the film is a gangster roughing up the dad of our nuclear family by grabbing him by his ankles and swinging him into a wall several times. By the time Sale is in full swing I almost wanted them to cut away when they throw a small child into a closet by the waist in some very painful shots because he was more fun than this proof of pre-code Hollywood brutality. By the time he grabs a gun and shoots a gangster you just wish this was a Death Wish movie. It's a hell of a lot of fun and it is absurd he isn't touted as the lead of this film.
5 years, 10 months ago
VierasTalo added 1 item to Film Journal 2019 list
This is a two-star movie, through and through. It's basically Richard Harrison: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. as the man takes on every criminal in this unnamed metropolis, and the entirety of the film consists of scenes of robbery, rape and murder, followed by scenes of Harrison murdering those who committed said crimes. Unfortunately it's a bit slow and uninspired in execution, which ruins some of the totally fine premise (also it gets kind of gross in a sexual violence way in one totally pointless B-plot in the end).
But it has one of the best endings in film history so I will give it three stars.
5 years, 10 months ago
VierasTalo added 7 items to their collection
5 years, 11 months ago
VierasTalo voted for list
Movies the giraffe watched in 2019: February (23 movies items)
5 years, 11 months ago
VierasTalo added 1 item to Film Journal 2019 list
In what can only be described as a leftover Fulci, a killer stabs ladies in the boob with a hairpin. We also see a lot of dancing where the would-be victims moan like they're having orgasms. It's all a bit uncomfortable, which makes it very hard to enjoy Fulci and DP Giuseppe Pinori's occasionally bonkers camera work and Keith Emerson's excellently trashy soundtrack. It isn't helped by having very little kills in relation to the other content in the film, and even one of those is a total whiff. The story attempts to be an intrigue-filled mystery but the lack of exposition at the start ensures that you will not be able to follow any of it as people just start talking about other people by name and you have no idea who any of them are. At one point the killer is caught but I guess it was the wrong killer because the kills continue. Then we find out one person is trying to be a copycat killer but can't do it. Then we find out who the real killer was all along and the movie ends on a quote like it had something important to say about criminal psychology.
It's quite dumb and offensive.
5 years, 11 months ago
VierasTalo added 1 item to Film Journal 2019 list
Mortuary Academy is probably funnier than all the Police Academy movies it apes combined, but by god does it cancel itself out with constant offensive, lazy, unfunny stereotypes and a feature-length sideplot about Paul Bartel fucking a virgin corpse across the seven seas.
5 years, 11 months ago
VierasTalo added 1 item to VT's episodemeter list
Complete
Episodes: 4
Seasons: 1
A deep and deeply funny satire about a cruise. As insightful as it is painful. Slightly let down by the fact that it has a slightly too saccharine ending.
5 years, 11 months ago
VierasTalo added 27 items to their collection
5 years, 11 months ago
VierasTalo added 1 item to VT's episodemeter list
Episodes: 8
Seasons: 1
A thoroughly entertaining mystery with a surprisingly satisfying and harrowing climax.
5 years, 12 months ago
VierasTalo added 1 item to VT's episodemeter list
Episodes: 24
Seasons: 3
watching insecure characters be insecure and occasionally acknowledge that makes for a super insecure experience watching it. You can see the seeds of future discord so clearly and it hurts. But it's still really funny so it doesn't feel like a pity party.
6 years ago
VierasTalo added 1 item to VT's episodemeter list
Episodes: 16
Seasons: 2
The most adorable romcom TV show. Slightly brought down by not having an actual ending but rather a cliffhanger.
EDIT after S2: I would legit pay money to see that musical
6 years ago