Not as good as Knives Out but it’s fairly entertaining. I wasn’t a fan of the hyper-unrealistic setting and it, again, is not much of a mystery, but weird characters abound and there’s much more focus on Detective Blanc and his thinking.
I’ve finally gotten around to watching this and it’s pretty good. It’s a murder mystery where you know very early on who the real killer is, but then something is off. Detective Blanc is a decent character without the weird super-sleuth quirks of Monk or Perot. In fact, he comes off as a little bumbling at times. The mystery isn’t the real focus, it’s all the strange characters that surround the victim.
A perfectly serviceable Charlie Chan movie that’s less goofy than the last one I watched. There is a pretty neat seance sequence with some spooky visuals. Not much else to say.
Gordon Liu bamboozles two petty crooks into helping him track down the “housekeeper” who stole his family treasure. This housekeeper also happens to be a master of disguise and Kung-Fu expert. What follows is several loosely tied together capers that always result in the wrong target. Most of this is cringey attempts at comedy but there are a couple of fights that are reminiscent of Dirty Ho as they are played more for novelty than action.
This was a 1945 Charlie Chan movie whose plot revolves a bank and several mysterious deaths of bank employees. I don’t really understand why Charlie Chan was selected as the man for this case; something about a failed arrest of a Shanghai criminal. The plot and the solution to the mystery revolves around a video jukebox thing in which you talk to a live representative who can see the patron on a video screen. I highly doubt this was possible in 1945.
I never realized how much of Charlie Chan movies were actually played for comedy. Some of the humor comes from the obviously culturally insensitive stereotypes, but there is a lot of genuine slapstick gags and Number Three Son and Birmingham get an ample amount of important screen time (played by actual ethnic minorities!).
I don’t know the actor who is playing Charlie in this installment, but he is (of course) an elderly white man who talks in a not-really Chinese accent. It’s more of the Tonto, Tarzan and Frankenstein variety.
I think this 60s Gothic horror is a re-imagining of Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum. Unfortunately, the story and direction is pretty flat and dull. Everything feels restrained. The first thirty minutes are a boring carriage ride to the castle where we are slowly introduced to the characters. The stand-out here is Vladimir Medar energetic portrayal of the not-so-honest priest. When they finally get to the castle the art direction kicks into gear. There are Bosch inspired murals, torture devices and colored gels galore. It’s too bad that they couldn’t make more of the inspired visuals. Christopher Lee shows up at the end as the main villain and does his best to salvage things. I have a feeling this one might improve with repeated viewings.
Joe Spinell and Caroline Munro are reunited in this ultra-low budget slasher film about a creepy cab driver who fantasizes about creating a movie starring Munro. So much so he follows her to Cannes where all the murdering begins. About a third of the movie is B-roll footage of the actual Cannes Film Festival or guerilla film making where they just shoot their scenes in front of real stars. There is a certain amount of cheesy 80s comic charm to it but it’s barely a movie.
Barely anything happens in this film but it manages to feel tense and action-packed throughout. It’s carried mostly by its performances and the occasional comic beats. It also serves as a nice time capsule of 70s New York.
I picked up this 3DS JRPG because of one novel feature: the ability to turn off random encounters. For the most part, I find Japanese RPGs to be fair to middling at best and the constant random battles and grinding everywhere has not endeared me to the genre. Being able to turn them off is a blessing. There’s nothing worse than conquering a dungeon only to have to keep fighting random grunts over and over just to pass through that area again.
Bravely Default does actually have some interesting combat mechanics in which you can bank turns in order to attack in bulk later on. I really didn’t mind the random battles that much as I was leveling up and learning new class skills. That said, there’s a point about halfway through the game where there is a time/multi-verse shift and you are forced to play through everything all over again… and again… and again. I very quickly got tired of it and turned down the difficulty and the encounter rate. A more clever game would have done a better job of making each world reset seem different than the last in some meaningful way, but Bravely Default is not that game.
The story eventually does make a turn and leads to a fairly satisfying ending with a nice, albeit predictable twist. Most of the plot is your standard “stop the evil that is corrupting the world” that feels like it was written for immature 10-year-olds (and Gen Z’ers… but I repeat myself). You’re often forced to read intra-character “party chats” that are just time-wasting filler. Your party’s characters are established in the opening cinematic and never really grow beyond that. But it’s a JRPG, what did I expect? Ultima?
A sci-fi story about a changeling who fights on behalf of the non-human species in a galactic war. He gets in with a bunch of mercenaries and space hijinx ensues. I felt like it was way too long and went on tangents that had nothing to do with advancing the characters or story. It eventually got back on track but it took a while.
