Logs

For a thriller movie its good to make sure the viewer doesn’t exactly know where you’re gonna go next. This movie does that fine, but I felt like it kind of left behind the opening premise of the movie in the process. Did the first half of the movie really matter plot wise? It matters for the characters of course, but it feels like an afterthought. This could be intentional, with the movie using it to say that the character doesn’t care about what happened anymore, but like… that’s too wasteful.

Its a Park Chan-wook movie so of course its got good editing, cinematography, the whole 27 feet.

sallright

p good

real good

forever haunted. ¹⁰⁄₁₀

Absurdly violent with real animal cruelty. Its no wonder this got banned and had to be recut. But after stomaching that, the movie will go from the quality you’d expect from a Hong Kong New Wave film, to bordering on b-movie level plot intermittently. It was pretty succinct with its messaging, but then it did a “ok we’re going to repeat that just to make sure you understand what we’re saying” kind of ending, which was a little annoying.

I usually get some ice cream at the half-way point in a movie, but after the first 10 minutes I decided not to. I’m glad I did.

Pretty drawn out and slow. There were lots of scenes that really dragged. The fight scenes were just OK for 1970, but the last one was good.

For a wuxia movie you’ve gotta have people jumping really high. This movie solves that problem by cutting to a performer doing flips off the ground. But it was done in a very drastic way that didn’t feel like it had much lead-up.

I remember seeing reviews for this movie that described it as ‘dreamy’. Which, like… huh? To me something being dreamy is when characters in a story just go along with whatever is happening to them, regardless if it makes sense. Which doesn’t happen at all. Aesthetically this also didn’t feel very ‘dreamy’ either. It doesn’t help that this is a /very/ common descriptor for movies, to the point of being overused. Maybe other peoples dreams are just really boring.

I might’ve liked the movie more if I learned more about Buddhism, which this movie clearly has lots of themes of.

Each film feels pretty disconnected from one a other. This maybe makes sense considering how it would’ve been been when it released. Like maybe it was meant to be a shotgun blast of different animation for eager theater goers, with as much range as possible.

Labyrinth was easily the best, presenting all of its interesting ideas very plainly and clearly

Running Man felt like an excuse to have cool car exploding stuff

Cancellation order had a very “you’re ending it there?” kind of ending

I ended up procrastinating on writing the log for this movie which I think is telling. Usually after I watch a movie that I like I keep thinking about it the whole weekend, but with this I mostly forgot about it. Sure it was neat compositionally at times, but mostly? Eh. I feel like the other characters didn’t react strongly enough to the fact this dude literally has an atomic bomb. With some of the characters that makes sense, since they’re intended to be nonchalant about it. But the police REALLY did not seem as worried as they should be. The bomb guy also fucking with police during the 2nd Act was also dragging a bit.

I’m sure it says interesting things about Japan and its relationship with atomic bombs, but again. They way the movie went about it left me going. Eh.

It did start playing some Masayoshi Takanaka at one point so that’s cool.

This movie is very neat and tight visually. Looking back Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s other movies are also this way, but I haven’t really fully processed that until now. A lot of times directors will shift their visual styles, either slowly over time or instantly to fit the movie. But Kurosawa hasn’t so far with what I’ve seen. Everything is meticulously intentional.

The premise is laid out very early, and I was worried that the movie would take the usual approach with a story like this, but it didn’t. I guess I shouldn’t question the GOAT of all time.

rot13 spoilers: trahvaryl urnegoernxvat raqvat, vgf abg whfg gung fbzrguvat urnegoernxvat unccrarq, ohg gur ohvyq hc gb jung pbhyq or, gura gur hggre qrfgehpgvba bs vg

On the surface its a coming of age story, but its more than that. Its looking back on your young self and old times with not only a bit of nostalgia, but also stating it as a fact of your past.

The cinematography is great, I love the warm yellow glow cast on everything

The movie is also very communist, which is cool to watch from a red-blooded-bald-eagle-screeching-gun-toting-dictatorship american perspective.

A Spring Fling https://tilde.town/~lateen/spring-fling.html

The fly sitting on my monitor really added to the viewing experience.

Just great. What else could you expect from Leone. I especially really like the introduction of Cheyenne. It’s a slow build up then he takes a swig from a bottle, lifting his hands up to reveal he’s in handcuffs… like 3 minutes after we were introduced to him. I think that one moment explains the intentionality with details that older filmmakers were really keen on.

UNITARY

The dialogue in this is fantastic, you can tell the writer really cared about these characters.

While the movie is quite modern (it even does a phone camera overlay), it reminds me a little of Wong Kar-wai. I don’t know if that’s due to cultural similarities, or if it really was inspired by his work.

Its in black and white, which is always great. I think this movie benefits from it greatly. I really wish other movies were in black and white more often, not everything needs color.

THE CONNECTED EMPTY

I’m not gonna put another wall of text so here’s a link with it: https://tilde.town/~lateen/2026-03-06.html

UNITARY

Very similar to Serpent’s Path (they were made as diptych after all). I really like the green landscapes shown, it was present a little in Sperent’s Path but its more present here. I don’t really think I’ve seen parts of Japan that look like this, which is odd considering how obsessed people are with Japan online. The cinematography is great, especially the camera movements. Its quite noticeable when the camera moves, the movie wants you to know its moving, but it still feels very restrained.

The almost-random horror sequence was also great.

Some of the soundtrack is like actually just vaporwave. I’m not just saying that because it uses synths, it like actually sounds like vaporwave. Which is very cool considering this movie released in 1998.

THE CONNECTED EMPTY

I’m not gonna put another wall of text so here’s a link with it: https://tilde.town/~lateen/2026-03-06.html

From the other Kitano films I’ve seen, it seems he really likes to show the mundanity of things, but with this he really went all out. Its not just slow dialogue, its the dead expressions people make while waiting for the other to stop talking. There wasn’t even any music.

While the film is overall much more mundane, Kitano’s character is a lot more active than in other films. He does a great job at making you feel as uncomfortable as possible in every scene he’s in.

For Chan’s directorial debut it was better than I expected, although it really wasn’t that great. Its pretty similar to Drunken Master, but I don’t know if that’s because the movie is falling into tropes of the genre or actually emulating that movie. Every martial arts movie needs to give a reason for why people are fighting. Drunken Master while forced, felt somewhat reasonable. Whereas with this movie it felt a lot more forced, which is probably due to Chan’s inexperience. Some of the fight scenes do go wayyy longer than they really should, too.

In the first couple scenes there was some strange decisions with swapping to a weird fisheye lens, and stretching the frame… which the movie promptly stopped doing. If you’re gonna do some weird stuff, you can’t just give up on it!