EvaGeeks' Most Watched Movies of 2011

[C.A.P.]

Running hard and running fast/
To meet my future and away from my past/
Taking that gamble that cannot last/
Night train to the eeeeeend!

[Tarnsman]

^Night Train to Mundo Fine is all kinds of cheesy awesomeness.

[Gendo'sPapa]

Paths of Glory on Criterion Bluray. 88 minutes of utter perfection.

[Twin Drive Sigma Aquarion]

Creature, the one that's playing in movie theaters right now. Good but not great. The technical parts of the movie were nice and well done and Grimly Beautin was a work of art, but good lord did the gratuitous nudity shots get annoying. At first I wondered how the hell the movie did poorly at the box office, then the opening scene occurred and you could see some nameless broad's genitals (surprisingly hairy) and I'm like "Really? Why the hell is junk like this in monster movies so often?" There are crazy townie folks, Mortal Kombat fatalities, slasher movie maiming to a hostage, townies worship the monster, he bears offspring, blah blah you get the idea. I have to give credit to Mehcad Brooks for his part as Niles because he kicked serious balls in this movie.

[Mr. Tines]

(surprisingly hairy)

Merkins are usually employed.

[Xard]

So some films I've watched as of late:

Porco Rosso
Howl's Moving Castle
My Neighbor Totoro

and today

Chaplin's Modern Times

It's been years since I last saw this film and all I gotta say is once again this: goddamn Chaplin was a genius

[C.A.P.]

^Western Animation back in the 30s and 40s was influenced by him for a reason.

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

Films I've watched this week: AKIRA, Gojira, 2001: A Space Odyssey, WALL-E.

I keep realizing new ways in just how perfect 2001: ASO really is. I'm gonna have to write a follow-up review to the last one I wrote. I saw it on BD with a friend of mine, this time it was plugged into my amazing sound system, and I was completely and utterly blown away. It really is something you have to have the best available sound and video quality in order to realize just how amazing this movie is.

[MugwumpHasNoLiver]

I caught most of Frida on Encore this afternoon. I walked in right when Frida first meets Diego, so that's still the meat of the film.

I enjoyed it a lot. Solid acting and writing, and Taymor's stylistic indulgences are as hit or miss as they always are. The scene where Diego Riviera climbs a grainy black and white Empire State Building while doing his best King Kong impersonation was astronomically silly, but other scenes were simply stunning, especially Trotsky's murder and anything involving Kahlo's paintings coming to life.

[symbv]

SEEDIQ BALE, a Taiwanese movie that has not a single dialogue in Chinese, be it Mandarin or Taiwanese. It is a movie about a chapter in Taiwan history in 1930 when Taiwan had been under Japanese colonial rule for 35 years and is about "Wushe Incident" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wushe_Incident ) a very bloody and brutal aboriginal rebellion against the Japanese. I knew about this for years but I never know how terrible things happened historically until I read the manga on the incident (written by an artist from Taiwan) a few weeks ago. The movie is not an adaptation of the manga though but is a reasonably faithful account of the history. It is the first installment (with the second and final installment to be released later this year) is breaking box office record in Taiwan.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/warriors-rainbow-seediq-bale-venice-230239

http://benefits.economistasia.com/cgi-bin16/DM/t/hCOEN0eNBBS0BJrZ0H8HF0EC

There is one reader's comment written in website above which may be worth sharing with everybody:

SPOILER: Show

@Sebastianin

I've actually seen this movie and will probably be one of the only commenters who can say that. So let me clear up some misconceptions.

The movie is remarkably fair to the Japanese. Especially when compared to Hollywood crap like the Patriot.

I walked into it with only a vague idea of the subject matter and expected a sanitized uprising. I was not expecting a movie of this courage, quality or ability to make me say, "Did that just happen?"

It takes every canned sappy stereotype of native people as hapless hippy flower children and throws them away.

Check that, it doesn't throw them away as much as hunt them down in the woods, cut off their heads with a machete, stuff them in a leather sack and then get a tattoo because cutting off a head is how you become a man.

As an American, because the primary audience is Chinese, I'd expect the movie to be filmed in Chines. (like how America made Memoirs of a Geisha about Japan in English) but the director had the integrity to film the whole thing in Ayatal and Japanese.

If this were an American movie, it would have some evil Japanese colonel who murders a whole bunch of sleeping infants and the protagonist's wife just to make sure that the audience knew that the Japanese were the BAD! guys and that they all definitely deserved to die. (Which seems to be the thrust of your comment)

This movie doesn't do that. It accurately shows the Japanese crushing the mountain tribes when they take the island in 1895 but the main film takes place in 1930. Instead of showing the cackling ridiculous evil that Hollywood insist on putting in historical epics the crimes of the Japanese are mundane and historical. They force the natives to work for little or no pay, they push them towards alcoholism, they forbid tattooing and tear down their shrines (an American movie wouldn't dare accurately portray that the shrine in question is stacked with hundreds of skulls.)

At the same time, it also shows the Japanese building schools and bridges and educating the children. A main character is a policeman who is native born but educated and working for the Japanese. The conflict is portrayed as a clash of cultures.

So this movie must be like Avatar or Dances with Wolves and make the Seediq noble people who live in harmony with nature, each other and all of God's creatures, right?

Not a chance. The movie opens with two bands from different villages getting into a skirmish while hunting. People die and 3 heads are taken. This movie makes no apologies for and no attempt to excuse the headhunting. It has the courage to say what the native beliefs were, not what modern guilt ridden audiences would prefer them to be.

This mentality of showing the actual ugliness and bloodiness of this kind of uprising extends to the final scene of the first half. As you can imagine for a primary school, there's Japanese soldiers and officials, but also Japanese farmers, wives and kids.

In an American movie (or the kind of movie that cheaply demonizes the Japanese,) all of the Japanese civilians would somehow disappear or be herded off screen somewhere while the audience watched the hero kill a bunch of armed soldiers (and maybe an evil antagonist who has been built up from the first act)and then later heroically spare the civilians after the battle and show that the natives are civilized and that it is the imperialists who are the true barbarians. This movie doesn't do that. This movie shows that the natives went through with machetes and flintlock rifles and killed 124 Japanese men, women, and children and injured 215 others.

But the weird thing is that after two hours of watching the Japanese alternate between treating the natives as savages or stupid children, you understand why they rose. The movie isn't asking you to condemn or condone it. It's just saying, this is what happened. It's honest and absolutely brutal. It has the courage to show the beliefs of the natives and of the Japanese as it was at the time instead of trying to make the Seediq saints and the Japanese devils.

All of that courage and frankness wouldn't mean squat if the movie was poorly made. Fortunately, It is beautiful and the skill in crafting the tension is amazing. I really hope someone posts the clip of the singing of the Japanese anthem at the school because that scene made my jaw hit the floor. The movie builds up and you think you're prepared for what's coming but when it happens... you will be surprised, as the Japanese were. The fight scenes are intense and chief Mouna is compelling. You can see why he decides to fight a war he knows he's going to lose and how he gets his people to follow him into what they know is suicide.

In the end, Sebastianin, I agree and I wish more Western filmmakers had the same courage to depict native resistance without whitewashing or demonizing. Though, in this case, you are accusing this film of a sin it does not commit.

I plan to catch this movie later.

You can watch the trailer at the unofficial website
http://www.seediqbale.tw/

[Xard]

Hobo with a Shotgun


uuuhhhh yeah

it made me squirm at parts, I guess

[Twin Drive Sigma Aquarion]

Lightning Strikes, yet ANOTHER fantastic movie from the Syfy Channel and The Defuser finally made a cameo!

[Defectron]

Hobo with a Shotgun


uuuhhhh yeah

it made me squirm at parts, I guess

I saw this too recently, if you liked this you should watch machine girl, its like hobo with a shotgun with 10X the crazy.

[Oz]

I'm in Helsinki right now to attend Helsinki International Film Festival. Started with a rewatch of Sion Sono's Cold Fish - it was a blast to see it on the big screen. The audience reaction was somewhat hilarious although it hardly compares with last year's audience for Love Exposure. Sono sure knows how to direct films that deal with dysfunctional families committing gruesome crimes. The downside to Cold Fish is that it's a bit all over the place and has very little to say in the end.

[Trajan]

Lady Vengeance.

There's just something off about the film, it just feels kind of soulless to me. I like the other two parts of the Vengeance Trilogy better.

Scarface

So iconic, so over-the-top, so much fun.

[child of Lilith]

Hobo with a Shotgun


uuuhhhh yeah

it made me squirm at parts, I guess

Good or bad?

[Twin Drive Sigma Aquarion]

Split Second, a movie about a serial killer demon and hard cop Harley Stone. It was excellent, it would have been fantastic, but the pacing slowed down a couple of times.

[Oz]

Saw S. Shankar's Robot with Xard and Dr. Nick today. An impressive ... mess. The elements on their own sound like a bad idea, but the whole thing is directed with such passion and vision that it ends up being a highly entertaining flick. The action scenes are amazing even though the form is sloppy, the comedy is brilliant due to the great cast and the OST was very fitting. At 3 hours it's a tad too long and some of the musical scenes were unnecessarily long.

[InstrumentalityOne]

SEEDIQ BALE, a Taiwanese movie that has not a single dialogue in Chinese, be it Mandarin or Taiwanese. It is a movie about a chapter in Taiwan history in 1930 when Taiwan had been under Japanese colonial rule for 35 years and is about "Wushe Incident" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wushe_Incident ) a very bloody and brutal aboriginal rebellion against the Japanese. I knew about this for years but I never know how terrible things happened historically until I read the manga on the incident (written by an artist from Taiwan) a few weeks ago. The movie is not an adaptation of the manga though but is a reasonably faithful account of the history. It is the first installment (with the second and final installment to be released later this year) is breaking box office record in Taiwan.

Home video release when?

[symbv]

Home video release when?

The first part of the movie is still running in Taiwan and the second part will be release on Sep 30. I am sure Taiwan will release DVD within a few months, probably even before end of the year. It will come to HK in Oct/Nov BTW. There are now tons of books published related to Seediq Bale. In fact the manga I read turned out to be part of the Seediq Bale project (although neither the movie nor the manga is adaptation of the other).