Change Your Image
xenodolf
Reviews
Sei mong se jun (2004)
pretty, but somewhat uneven
the photography and the use of the music was very nice. i enjoyed the majority of the first half, and was expecting the movie to end when the second segment of the plot unfolded. i think the transgression was a bit awkward, and a certain person at the end of the film wasn't entirely flesh out. this is not the same kind of movie as The Eye, and if you are not interested in the earlier portion of the movie, fast.forward toward the end for all the gritty material. its nice to see, that even with the movie's flaws, it stands out from the influx of carbon-copy split-personality/long haired ghosts/technological entities gone evil. the violence isn't too harsh (although there is some animal-oriented slaughter, which i assume is simulated to maintain American film standards) and most people shouldn't get too overwhelmed to handle a viewing: my rating: seven out of ten stars.
The Stuff (1985)
lame movie with some interesting SFX
after seeing a few .gifs, i decided that renting The Stuff would be worth it. now, the movie itself is pretty crummy - strange bursts of acting from some familiar (in usually better movies) actors. on to the real reason i rented this, the special effects. there's a small part where a puppet of a dog is spasming as it belching up The Stuff. that part reminded me a bit of The Thing (which has amazing SFX, to this day). also, there is a tiny snippet of gore where two of the protagonists burst open some goon's heads (pretty fake looking, but kind of entertaining). the stuff itself is animated with computers, i think, and is enjoyable to watch it slide around. lastly, and probably the best of the SFX moments, is when one of the main characters starts twisting about and pukes up the evil ooze before exploding. if you can stomach some weak performances, this is worth a cheap (cost me 50 cents) rental to watch the SFX. otherwise, see the much superior "melting" movie Street Trash. I ordered another melting movie called "Body Melt", which will probably turn out better than this. overall rating: four out of ten possible stars.
Tokyo 10+01 (2003)
a battle royale parody that becomes a joke itself.
i bought this expecting a modestly done BR clone. what i received was a parody that basically ignored its source material about 15 minutes into the film. the points i alloted it go toward a kind of amusing introduction (the entire forrest gump analogy and whatnot) and a few scenes with interesting CGI backgrounds. here is what kills the film: the characters becoming annoying very quickly, a character is killed off almost immediately (without the viewer even getting to see!), and unlike BR - the bad guys have a legion of soldiers that attack the contestants. so basically, aside from maybe two or so instances, there is no contestant versus contestant bloodshed. if i rented this from a store, i wouldn't have been as disappointed with the results. unfortunately, i paid $13 for the DVD off ebay and was only able to recoup about $4 selling it to a video store. unless you have a pocket full of money that has no other potential purpose, and you're absolutely obsessed with anything REMOTELY related to Battle Royale...i recommend you avoid.