blunt rapture

Read the comments from the people who live with these legends. I'm just a dumb guy from the USA. I found this movie to be better than most. Never boring (except maybe a moment at the beginning), the action is very satisfying. The choreography of the fights is superior. The fists hit hard and the bullets blow away, all within a well-designed dance seen from all angles. Good acting. Seamless. The kid may be the best actor. Plus, the superhero costumes actually looked cool for a change.

Looking for a little whiz bang wow? Here's some. My sensors really enjoyed this.

Sometimes a horror movie is actually horrifying. Not that many of them are. John Carpenter's The Thing was. Ricky-O. Braindead (Dead Alive). Maybe Trey Parker and Matt Stone's Cannibal: the Musical. You ever watch an MMA match where a guy was being pummeled on the ground over and over and you thought the referee should hurry and stop the fight? That's this whole movie. People didn't just get beat up --- they got beat down, beat sideways, and beaten to a pulp. This movie was horrifying. Relentless, ruthless, gory, gruesome, bloody. So bloody. People shot to shreds, vicious fights, throats slashed, and bones broken. Faces torn off, chests punched through, knees ripped out, and skulls caved in. I loved it.

MAGNIFICENT FIGHT CHOREOGRAPHY. CLEVER DIRECTION. A VISUAL FEAST. Good, great, excellent movie. But even bad Chinese movies are often better than a lot of our cinema. At least, Chinese movies just look good. And the credits are usually works of art themselves. I've seen this already with subtitles and was blown away, but I was blown away again by this dubbed version. Well done with high-quality voice actors, the dub also frees your eyeballs to watch the violent ballet and passionate melodrama without having to read. Eddie Peng looks exactly how a lead actor SHOULD look, and performs even better. The fight sequences are inventive and magnificently choreographed. And if they had blown anything up, it certainly would have blown up real good. BUY BORROW or BURN? BUY

YEARS OF PRACTICE IN MARTIAL ARTS WILL PREPARE YOU TO CHANGE A LIGHTBULB FLAWLESSLY Around 1960, the Chinese government gathered together some kung fu masters of various styles with the objective of synthesizing the various styles into one uniform style, resulting in today's modern wushu. The movie was fun and captivating right from the start, with unusually talented child actors who caught my attention and wrestled it to the ground. The actors that played them as young adults were good, too. Peppered with excellent fight scenes, funny verbal sparring, and really good bad guys who are really good at being bad and made me really good and mad. The storyline wandered a bit, but the journey was fun. The peak climax of the movie wasn't when they saved a bunch of kidnapped kids from being sold into sex slavery --- it was finally learning to execute a fight move correctly to win a rival school competition. And he did the move, perfectly--- which made the sun come out, birds perch on his shoulders and sing, and wild lions lick his hand. The crowd went wild at the wild getting wild, and as we all know, wild is the wind. The movie broke only ONE of my MANDATORY MOVIE MANDATES: 1) "After beating up a bad guy, never get closer to see if he's actually unconscious." But besides breaking that important commandment, it was very a light-hearted violent pleasure to watch. If you can handle a few clichéd moments of banal overworked platitudes, then you are tall enough to go on this ride. BUY BORROW or BURN? BORROW

RELAX, GRAB A BUCKET OF FREEDOM FRIES, AND ENJOY THIS FRENCH HORROR FILM You may have seen similar tropes or plots before, but the unique and skillful way in which this movie plays out is pretty --- pretty --- pretty --- pretty good. And better. Nice juxtaposition of horrific violence and the smoothly moist French language. Good actors saying good words in a good order make this movie stand out and lodge itself satisfyingly in your film craw. The subtitles worked well and actually made sense. The soundtrack was eerie and well-done, as were the demon voice and explosive violence. It's one of those movies that I assumed was going to be the usual vacuous nonsense but instead turned out to be a wunnerful, wunnerful surprise. Scary, intriguing, suspenseful, and gory. No boring parts. BUY, BORROW, or BURN? (っ◔◡◔)っ ♥ BORROW ♥

HORRIBLY BEAUTIFUL! AN EXHAUSTINGLY EPIC SWEATFEST OF JAPANESE CUTLERY Most of the negative criticisms are from complaints that it doesn't exactly match the source. I know nothing of the manga. So there's no comparison and therefore no disappointment. I love Samurai movies and I loved THIS movie. It's a great movie --- a horribly beautiful masterpiece! Movies have never done a book justice, although a rare few have outshone their source. Been that way since day one. This is one shiny movie. It's best to view each on its own, a stand-alone. Really, the only way to combat unwanted mind explosions is to understand and accept that. Welcome to movies, grasshoppers. This movie made my sensors tremble with satisfaction! The gore, the violence, the pain, and the emotion checked every box. Entertained the hell out of me. No boring scenes. Takashi Miike is brilliant. Blade of the Immortal is one of his best. Takyua Kimura is now one of my most favorite actors. Sota Fukushi is straight out of Tiger Beat magazine. Hana Sugisaki is incredibly annoying. Just shows she nails her character, I guess. BUY BORROW or BURN? BUY

I need to warn anyone who wants to watch or is thinking about watching this movie, please do. This was one of the most interesting films I have seen. The acting was good, the story was intriguing, and the ghosts were creepy. And it won't waste 2 hours of your time, mostly because it's only one hour and 48 minutes. Not so much a jump-scare gorefest as it's more an atmospheric, slightly artsy mystery spiced with bizarre, horrific moments. Though a bit low-key, it smolders dangerously. You've seen parts of this before: psychologically disturbed kid, demonic entities, an adult slowly realizing the horror around her. But they're done well and in a slightly understated style. There many more redeemable things than just one --- and it's disturbingly pleasant. Don't be discouraged by negative reviews.