zoelat

When I'm feeling grumpy, I like to relax at a movie....today's choice, this one, was a poor choice. "z grade" movies are often fun, in their awfulness; This was just plain bad without the fun. See it by all means, and everything you guess is just about to happen, really DOES happen. Not one unexpected twist or turn in the whole piece. Samuel L Jackson needs a better agent, because his current adviser should have talked him out of this movie! The opening sequence is striking, in more ways than one. The best actor is a little dog...be afraid, be very afraid (not of the dog, but of the movie and its other actors). There was an item on our radios in New Zealand that some "prankster" had released two live snakes -- diamond-backed rattlesnakes -- in the theatre at Phoenix, Arizona, during a screening on the opening weekend, This was, perhaps, a novel idea but certainly a stupid and very dangerous one. By some miracle, no one in the theatre was injured and both snakes were captured and later released in the desert. One was captured in the car park, so it can be assumed that the snake was just appalled at the standard of the movie his or her cousins were acting in, and just couldn't stay long enough to bite anyone!

This is a movie which will go straight into "best monster movies" lists; it is ground-breaking in the way humorous and horror content has been intertwined by a master film director. It was the closing film, shown last night (July 30) in the Auckland International Film Festival. There was a packed house of which about 60% were Korean people living in New Zealand. The audience was very attentive and the reception given to the movie was justly big applause. The animatronic effects have been done scrupulously well and viewers can look forward to being enthralled by the skills of those who "made the monster". We got the print which had come straight from Cannes and apparently the film opened just two days before we saw it in Auckland. There is no doubt that this movie will go on to do very big business wherever people appreciate great horror films. My inclination to rate it 10/10 was tempered only by a little doubt about the pacing of some sequences, but it is certainly worth 9/10. Look out for when it comes to a theater near you.

At the heart of a "sixty-somethings" man's life, there is often a yearning for a return to those places which pleased or fascinated him in earlier years (believe me, I know!). This Chinese gentle man (gentleman, too) is determined to go back to his early workplace, while his daughter has wished him to accept the stodgy anonymity of early old age. His odyssey leads him into complications which are never less than fascinating and the director, Zhu Wen, has captured the frustrations and acceptance of the barriers which surround the lead actor. This is a movie which will never feature on most people's "top twenty", but it is an engaging and enthralling look at what most men and women will encounter as they progress through middle age, even if the demands shown on this character are more than the average person will need to cope with!