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- Godzilla Minus One (2023)
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- Magnificent Warriors (1987)
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Elsewhere on the Web
The New Option (2002)
With Hong Kong, until recently, being a self governed province, there’s really little call for them to have a standing army. Which makes it a shame as it limits Hong Kong’s film industries ability to make films about the military… or so one would think. Fortunately we have the SDU to save us from such a glaring whole in their cultural fabric.
The SDU is basically a paramilitary group that specialises in urban operations involving small squads of well trained, … (read more)
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New Fist of the North Star (2004)
Fist of the North Star takes me back. I saw it in a Los Angeles cinema in 1992 where I marvelled at the mango-sized heads atop bodies of Arnold Schwarzenegger proportions. The plot unfortuntely is lost to me behind a veil of crimson spray and body dismemberment. I exited the theatre feeling like an extra caught standing too close to Sissy Spacek in Carrie.
Hero Kenshiro (well, in the movie anyway), was in fact left wandering the wastes searching … (read more)
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New Dragon Gate Inn (1992)
They say you can’t have it all and in Ming Dynasty China the eunuchs certainly didn’t! OK, I must apologise for that lapse in comedic judgement. But the ball is in my court. Oh, please make me stop. Anyway this lack of a certain, um, something may explain why they were mad for power and painted Evil Eyebrows on their noggins to give them that extra mad-as-a-cut-snake villain look. Certainly works here for Donnie Yen’s character!
Yen is part of … (read more)
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Neon Genesis Evangelion: Resurrection (1995)
Forget Mel Gibson’s The Passion. For true Easter spirit check out Neon Genesis Evangelion: Resurrection. This is the first of the two ‘directors cut’ volumes featuring brand new, never-before-seen footage. Resurrection, the first of the two volumes, hosts episodes 21-23.
This is Hideako Anno’s third go at finishing the Evangelion series, after two post-series movies; Evangelion: Death & Rebirth and End of Evangelion he’s still at it.
Up front I want to get off my chest that … (read more)
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Neighbour No. 13 (2005)
Usually something that walks like a duck and quacks like a duck can pretty much be considered a duck. The same can be said for genre films. Neighbour No.13 walks and talks like a horror movie, but in this case I suspect it’s actually a psychological thriller in disguise. There’s just too much symbolism in it – right from the outset – to be a conventional horror flick, even a Japanese one, and lonely houses on hills with one door … (read more)
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Negotiator Mashita Masayoshi (2005)
Surprisingly perhaps, Negotiator Mashita Masayoshi is a good film. I say surprisingly, because I am of the long held and regularly confirmed opinion that Japanese action films don’t really know how to be truly good. Cult, yes. Cool and crazy and somewhat quirky, sure. But there’s either too much comedy, or not enough. Or they take themselves too seriously, or they wouldn’t know serious if it hit them with a stick, or the characters are too one-dimensional, or the acting … (read more)
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Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
Miyazaki’s first creatively controlled project is based on his own hugely successful manga series, which itself was produced to prove to financiers that the project was viable as an anime. All this tends to suggest Miyazaki could have got cold fusion to work if he put his mind to it.
Nausicaä combines traditional elements of high fantasy: a war, a prophecy and a princess with a Japanese post-apocalyptic wasteland: a world being inexorably consumed by a poisonous forest spread by … (read more)
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Natural City (2003)
Well, I enjoyed it. It’s not Blade Runner, but then again, what is? What it is, is an action-packed dark Korean flick full of body armour and chunky weapons, powerful bad guys and determined or tormented good guys, rainy streets with obligatory noodle stalls, and of course a plethora of beautiful Korean women.
The sound will drive your ears out the other side of your head: the weapons go chunka-chunka-chunk or rat-at-at-at, the boots and gear make all sorts … (read more)
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