impressing movies

revenge of the dragon  greeene

It was a pretty ordinary movie.  Ordinary in the sense that it is a very much what I expected what it should be, a gangster movie, where a group of young people doing gang things...  fighting, drugging, sex...  The movie did success on making the protagonist more  human. I was unhappy with rape scene towards the end.  It was horrible.  The twist at the ending was also a big let down.  For it really reminded me of wu jian dao...   The movie was based on real events, so the rape probably was unavoidable.  but the ending was superfluous.
It was interesting to watch this movie purely just because the  background was not about AA or italian, there were something uniquely asian. 


---------------------------------

lucy

The bad guys in the movie could already be dealt with.  And yet, they stayed, and tried to act as something that could matter the outcome...  Johansson's performance was tight, so was the taipei sequence.  The ending was not really well thought out.  It was an barely okay movie, simply because only the half was decent, the ending was spoiled, and bad guys were stupid.

------------------------------


the drop

It was a really good movie.  I don't remember tomhady much besides bane, but he did not showed his face, so I would count much into that.  So this is the movie I truly learned who tomhardy is, an amazing actor.  The story was really good as well.  As I looked back now, there were few subtle setups to tie the film from the beginning.  That was cool.  The movie was also surrounded with very strong actors, including noomirapace, and jamesgandolfini.  the conversation between tomhardy and jamesgandolfini towards the end was awesome, the subtle change of tomhardy in the major showdown was so creepy and yet powerful.  i can't say enough how much fun it was. 

------------------------------


rudderless

it's an okay movie.  the performace of billycrudrup was as always excellent.  but i was as touched by the music.  the story was however, worth knowing.

-------------------------------


the judge

a friend of mine compared this movie the August: Osage County.  I think it was because both movies had weird parents.  my friend think the judge was better.  But to me, it's different.  the judge was however warmer in many ways.  the mother in august was not at all!

I felt the judge was a movie with too many complicated story lines, and could not really settle on one of the story lines.  The grand daughter scenes did not seemed necessary at all.  The only purpose it served was so the audience won't be too disgusted by the old man.

The court room drama could also be tweaked and concentrated, but it was my personal preference.

The relationship between father and son was not bad in the movie at all. I liked it very much.  Both actors were equally capable to bring strong and complicated emotion out which was why the movie was decent.

---------------------------

nightcrawler

a very scary movie.  some scary movies use ghost, killers, spirit, myth, monster, weird dude.  This one used a weird dude.  The acting was incredible, not just the main actor, but all the supporting actors.    This is one scary movie. 

-------------------------------

beyond the lights

it's an okay movie.  some of the scenes were pretty good.  I like the scene in mexico where the female protagonist sang.