Last movie you watched

[Moh]

Over the past three days, I saw The Help, second Sherlock Holmes, and Bridesmaids. I actually enjoyed The Help a lot more than I thought I would.

[rikkikow]

^ Seeing good samurai films is never a waste of time! Speaking of which, I need to see Miike's new one, Hara-kiri: Death of a Samurai (a.k.a. Ichimei), ideally on the big screen. I missed it during the week it played in San Francisco.

You wouldn't want to see a movie of that caliber in the tiny 4-Star Theater anyway. After it's nominated for Academy Award it will surely be shown in a wider circuit with big screen maybe even in 3D somewhere. Am I too Optimistic?

[erilaz]

^ Better at the 4-Star than on my MacBook! But yeah, we can hope for a wider theatrical release. Tsui Hark's new one, Flying Swords of Dragon Gate, is playing in IMAX 3D at the AMC Bay Street in Emeryville right now, so ya never know....

Last night at the Pacific Film Archive:

Kawashima Yūzō's Suzaki Paradise: Red Light District (Suzaki paradaisu: Akashingō, 1956), a postwar melodrama about a young couple searching for jobs and a place to live, who end up working at a bar and a noodle shop just across the bridge from the brothel district. One scene gives us a view of Electric Town as it was in the 1950s, on its way to becoming the Akihabara we know today:

[youtube]9atKRuNSROs[/youtube]

I also saw Nomura Takashi's A Colt Is My Passport (Koruto wa ore no pasupōto, 1967), a stylish blend of film noir and spaghetti western, complete with faux Morricone theme music.

[youtube]IuQ4b_fI0Ro[/youtube]

[erilaz]

Continuing my Kurosawa series:

Drunken Angel (Yoidore tenshi, 1948), starring Shimura Takashi as an alcoholic physician and Mifune Toshirō (in his first Kurosawa film) as a yakuza with tuberculosis.

[erilaz]

Tsui Hark's Flying Sword of Dragon Gate, starring Jet Li. The combination of 3D, a huge IMAX screen, and subtitles took some getting used to. It was an enjoyable movie, but I still prefer Dragon Inn from 1992.

And more Nikkatsu at the Pacific Film Archive:

Capricious Young Man (赤西蠣太 Akanishi Kakita, 1936) — A funny samurai comedy with failed plots and intrigue and a dumpy, unattractive hero with a big wart on his nose. (Incidentally, an actress in one of the smaller roles looked very much like Ishikawa Rika.)

The Warped Ones (狂熱の季節 Kyōnetsu no kisetsu, 1960) — A manic, jazz-filled film about a gang of juvenile delinquents. The lead actor must have worn down his teeth from chewing so much scenery.

[youtube]SbiKS3nlIlQ[/youtube]

[Moh]

I watched The Lost Tribe last week. I laughed and laughed at it. Johnny Weissmuller was a babe, though.

[erilaz]

TNT Jackson (1974) — Blaxploitation meets chop-socky as Jeannie Bell (Playboy's Miss October 1969) stars in this low-budget turkey from Filipino schlockmeister Cirio H. Santiago.

[erilaz]

Screaming in High Heels (2011) — An entertaining and informative documentary about the three supreme "Scream Queens" of 1980s low-budget direct-to-video horror films: Michelle Bauer, Linnea Quigley, and Brinke Stevens

EDIT:

And at a Studio Ghibli retrospective at the California Theater in Berkeley I saw Only Yesterday (おもひでぽろぽろ), a 1991 anime directed by Takahata Isao, about a young woman in the early 1980s reflecting on her life as a fifth-grader back in 1966. I was happily surprised when one of the 1966 scenes featured the original version of the theme song from "Hyokkori Hyoutan Jima"!

[Zunu]

Got around to seeing Himalaya Singh (2005), a pretty bad HK comedy. Part of the plot involves various people losing their memories over and over again, and in the midst of all that somebody forgot to give Cecilia Cheung more scenes. FWIW, it can be watched in full on YouTube (turn on closed captions if you need them):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw1Cr0HwPac

[erilaz]

Speaking of HK films, I saw a couple today at the San Francisco Film Society's Hong Kong Cinema showcase: Comrades, Almost a Love Story (1996), a wonderful film starring Maggie Cheung and Leon Lai, and The Great Magician (2011), an action-packed period comedy starring Tony Leung.