Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on December 11th, 2023
As I have mentioned numerous times, I am not a fan of horror movies. In particular, my number one pet peeve is jump scares. Now, for certain scary movies, I'll allow one good jump scare; it almost goes with the territory. But if the director has to use one every fifteen minutes, my heart does not need that much of a workout, and I am going to avoid it very quickly. This is mostly reserved for American movies, quite often on their fifth sequel. However, Korean horror flicks know how not to use the jump scare and instead focus on making things as gruesome and disturbing as humanly possible. Or inhumanly, perhaps. Today, we take on a modern horror classic in the 2016 film, The Wailing as it makes its way on 4K UHD disc. Let's take a look and see if the ol' ticker can handle this one.
We get a Bible passage to start out this movie, it's from Luke 24:37-39 and basically describes the resurrection of Jesus. The important part of this passage is two fold, in that the people had doubts that he was resurrected and that he resurrected physically as opposed to as a spirit. Let's continue.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on December 5th, 2023
Most people, when asked to provide the best Korean film in modern times, would probably answer Oldboy or Parasite. Others might respond Memories of Murder or Train to Busan. Maybe A Tale of Two Sisters or The Wailing. I, on the other hand, always respond with the same title, The Man from Nowhere, which to this point in the US has only been released on Blu-ray from Well Go. That Blu-ray was also the victim of a bunch of discs from Well Go that came away with a quick dose of rot, infecting my copy as well as many others. For the last couple of years, I've been working with a bootleg, which I'm not exactly proud of, but felt necessary because I loved this film so much. However, that changed, as Well Go has released a 4Kcopy of this sensational film (and also of The Wailing, which I will get to later in the week). I thankfully received it a little bit earlier than expected and took it for a spin. Let's see how it does.
Kim Chi-Gon (played by Kim Tae-hoon) lights a cigarette and calls his squad into position. The crew of police detectives and squad members wake up and talk about their plan. They have been at this stakeout for two months and can't afford to mess this up.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on March 18th, 2014
OK, in case you didn’t know this about me, I’m a sucker for South Korean action cinema. Sure, the 90’s were ruled by Hong Kong, but for about a decade South Korea has been killing it by putting out some of the most visually stunning action films in years. For a quick crash course in how simply bad-ass and epic their cinema is, I highly recommend checking out The Chaser and A Bittersweet Life. With Commitment we get a new entry in the spy genre that hasn’t been explored stateside.
Myung-hoon (Choi Seung-Hyun, a Korean pop star also known as T.O.P) and his sister are stuck in a North Korean labor camp after their father is killed in South Korea working as a spy. Myung-hoon is offered a chance to protect his sister and stay alive, only it requires him to go into training as a spy and travel into South Korea and await word for his mission.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on March 4th, 2013
By the time we meet most big-screen hitmen, they’ve already attained the level of badass-ery required to be efficient killers. Far fewer movies take the time to examine the circumstances that result in a person becoming a murdering machine. Interview with a Hitman — a British action offering from first-time writer/director Perry Bhandal — stands out from the pack because it’s a surprisingly thoughtful meditation on the consequences of killing.
After a dialogue-free first 10 minutes, we meet Viktor (Luke Goss), a highly-skilled hitman who agrees to sit down for a videotaped chat with down-on-his-luck movie producer Xavier (Patrick Lyster). The interview format is a convenient device that allows Viktor to tell Xavier (and us) about his rough upbringing in the Outlying District of Bucharest in Romania. Even as a kid (an effective, chilling turn by young Elliot Greene), Viktor never backed down from a fight. So after local tough guy Sergei (Danny Midwinter) comes to collect a debt from Viktor’s scumbag father, the boy asks Sergei for a job. Sergei teaches Viktor’s the tricks of the killing trade until an unfortunate incident puts them at odds, and Viktor has to flee the country.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on January 2nd, 2013
It’s hard to not appreciate a film that wastes no time jumping into the action, and with a title like Kill’em All you go in expecting the action to be piled on and non-stop. I have to say I’m a little surprised this little film lived up to the title; after all most straight-to-DVD titles seem to be lackluster if not simply awful. I’m also not saying this is a film that’ll be remembered too long either, but it is a B movie that delivers on the action and has Gordon Liu doing what he does best. After watching several of Bangkok’s elite assassins go about doing their dirty work and leaving a trail of bodies in their wake it is quickly followed by their capture. At first when watching this I had thought they were being killed until we get to see them all gathered together in a massive concrete cell. None of the professional killers seem to know one another; only a handful seem to know of one another which I found strange, after all how many elite assassins can one country have? Well, it doesn’t take long till they discover they are all trapped in “the Killing Chamber”, a place where assassins and other people are brought to die. What’s kind of cool is they are given a chance at freedom, but that chance only comes if they are the sole survivor of their captors’ game.
What follows are a series of duels to the death; as the survivors are whittled down, the desperation to survive becomes more intense. The key three assassins Gabriel (Johnny Messner), Som (Ammara Siripong), and The Kid (Tim Man) are the only memorable survivors as they escape beyond the chamber and into a hellish warehouse filled with ninjas and numerous other bloodthirsty killers. The fight choreography is fairly standard but is still fun, especially for those like me who pretty much get excited any time a ninja shows up.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on October 13th, 2012
Ever wonder what a martial arts epic directed by Baz “Moulin Rouge” Luhrmann would look like? Me neither. But that’s pretty much what we get with Legendary Amazons, (loosely) based on the exploits of the Yang family during the Song Dynasty. The story has an intriguing hook — the men of the Yang clan are massacred in battle, leaving their women to throw on armor and take to the battlefield — but is ultimately bogged down by its cartoonish tone and embarrassingly bad production values.
For the cartoonish tone, we can probably thank/blame producer Jackie Chan since the Hong Kong superstar has crafted a wildly successful career out of injecting comedy into the martial arts genre. (Legendary Amazons even has Chan’s signature bloopers during the end credits; although the actress who fell off a horse and hit the ground hard didn’t seem to be laughing.)
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on October 10th, 2012
Direct to Video movies is usually just a clever term to mean “We have a small budget and B-List stars so we are going to skip the theater and go straight to video and hope to capitalize on the people who might pick this up on a very slow Friday night.” Today’s review is about a man simply known as the “Courier”. It could be a ripoff of the Transporter. It might be a mailman who handles packages by day and the ladies by night.
Bad B-Movies aside, let’s see how this one plays out.
We start this bright day with an amusement park. A wristwatch shows six minutes left. Let’s go over the cast of characters shall we? We have a grieving woman in peril, a deadbeat carnival owner and a gunman sitting on top of a rollercoaster. Wait, who’s down there? Why, it is the Courier (played by Jeffery Dean Morgan), he is here to deliver the goods for the banker’s daughter. What, are they not allowed to use train tracks anymore (federal regulations and all)?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on October 7th, 2012
When I started to review this film, I thought I would come up with a hokey beginning to celebrate the 31 Nights of Terror. That might have worked if I had reviewed It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown or a Lindsey Lohan movie, but to be truthful there is not much humor in this movie to be had. So let us skip the theatrics for at least one review and go straight into reviewing Bedevilled.
The movie starts with a story when vegetarianism was the way to go and the narrator went to camp for four days. The first day, they decided to talk a walk and they were showed various plants and told they could eat them. Some did, some did not. Later at night when they asked where the food was, the instructor said “Did you not get your fill during the walk?” The people laugh. They pull up to a scene where they see two thugs beat up a young girl and then chase her. The girl runs up to the car where the group of people is to ask for help. Unfortunately, they roll up the window and we fade to black.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on September 27th, 2012
When you pick up a movie with the title Strippers vs. Werewolves, to expect anything more than schlocky B-movie horror is a mistake by the viewer and the viewer alone. This foray into cheesy cinema is best viewed after a few drinks or just as random fun late at night when you can’t sleep. It’s never a movie trying to change the way we view cinema but instead just something to have some fun with, a simple escape where our brains can shut off and simply enjoy the show.
While giving a private dance, Justice (Adele Silva) kills a well-dressed gentleman who changes into a werewolf. Little does Justice know that he is connected to a powerful pack of werewolves that will stop at nothing to avenge their fallen pack member. But this isn’t the first run-in with werewolves by Jeanette (Sarah Douglas), the owner of the Vixens strip club; she’s fought and killed werewolves before and is ready to do it again to protect her club and the girls.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on September 3rd, 2012
"A military mystery that lasted 2,000 years."
White Vengeance assumes a certain level of knowledge about ancient Chinese history that, except for all you ancient Chinese history scholars reading this review, most of us don’t have. As a result, the film’s disorienting opening act had me constantly backtracking to figure out who was who, and why they were betraying or trying to assassinate each other. In other words, I started to feel like getting to the end of this ambitious movie might take a little under 2,000 years.
