Agreement:0% of 2 voters agree with JT York's reviews Location: HKFlix, CA Web Site:http://www.hkflix.com
Bio: It is a scientific fact that JT York's tears can cure cancer - too bad he has never cried. Once he did get sniffy during a screening of "Citizen Kane" and the polio vaccine was developed as a result.
Even with an Uzi this movie couldn't move me. There is a vampire here but he is not really that threatening or believable as one. Hoping isn’t in the plans, he moves around like a jogger trying to change tracks on his music player without stopping. He becomes even more Ben Affleck in "Shakespeare in Love" when we learn that a certain melody can distract him enough so that everyone can run away. Which is reminiscent of the leaf-flute in "Story of Ricky" because both scenes are ridiculous in its use as plot devices. There are a few death scenes but those are caused by his really long fingernails which are as scary as realizing that Julia Stiles and Erika Christensen are two different people. There is some build-up where you think some scary hopping madness will occur, such as at the funeral and police station, but those are giant letdowns. The only good and funny scene involves the development of an anti-vampire vest which resembles a football outfit. Nothing else to recommend here.
This movie is a few pretzels short of a bag of pub mix. Be prepared, 90 percent of the movie happens inside the same restaurant where the go-con occurs. The guys do the same party tricks to get the girls' attention but the only things that change are the type of girls (stewardesses, college girls, housewives) and that's it. One guy takes out his Olympic gold medal, one guy gets the girl's phone number, and another dude does a trick with chopsticks to kiss a girl. Over and over again.
It reminds me of "Kissing Jessica Stein" where they show Jessica on different dates in the same restaurant with different losers. Imagine that five minute montage stretched out for a whole movie. You would never feel like going on a group date again. One scene later everyone is fast forwarded two years into the future and they're still at it. Meaning each week these guys have been doing the same tricks on the dot like a Las Vegas lounge act. The restaurant's staff actually has a pool to see who's going to end up with whom at the end of the night.
Eventually there's a message about how go-con's are perfect for people who can't handle a regular one-on-one date so they feel the need to involve a group of friends to lighten up the pressure. At least I think that's the point. The unseen narrator actually said that but that could just be a red herring. Good for people who want to learn a few tricks and have always wondered why that table over in the middle of the restaurant is so happy and loud. Bad for everyone else.
Stacy (product link) Horror / Thriller Stacy is bad. When you describe the plot to people and the Bruce Campbell chainsaw that goes over your hand to dispatch zombies, it sounds something worth watching, but it's just bad 50's Sci-Fi with a ton more blood. Between this or "Junk," which was also bad, I'd recommend "Junk." The zombies aren't entertaining. Seeing zombies in school girls is surprisingly not as enjoyable as it could be because they act like ravers. The special effects was bad. The blood looked like Fruit Roll-Up strips laid out on the victim's faces. It tries to have a message about people being happy when dying or remembering to recycle or some junk. It is not misunderstood. People expecting "Clerks 2" in Kevin Smith's "Mallrats," causes it to be misunderstood, not this movie. Stay away.
Bad. The race matchups are ludicrous. A Camaro for hill driving? That is as hard to believe as Billy Crystal playing Scarface. In theory seeing a Camaro race in Japan seems intriguing, until the owner mentions that the only mods he has done is weight loss. It doesn't help his cause when visually you can see his car is a convertible, automatic and has three spoke rims. Not the mountain racer look at all and it still doesn't explain why he needs to trailer it to the races. Things get funnier when he always wears his sunglasses to challenge people but once the race starts then he takes off his shades and is all business. Watch out for his passing technique; he doesn't drift past people but rather slams his automatic down to the lowest gear and mashes on it.
Watching the races got as boring as “Grenadier” eventually became. Worst part about a straight to DVD movie about racing is when the racing is bad, as is the case here. It seems like they only filmed on one S curve, so each time the cars are side by the side, the road looks awfully familiar. It doesn't help the cause when the races are sped up, like the way "Just Follow Law" sped up its scenes for comedic value.
There are a couple of cool shots such as when the Silvia is punking a Civic in front of him so hard that he drifts around the Civic to pass him up and the Civic spins out. That also happens to a Skyline R32. The other cruising scenes where it is not sped up gives a good shine to the cars. But my favorite scene is when the Camaro driver unloads his Camaro and it shows him going through all the steps: hitting a lever, unhooking a latch and watching the car be lowered. All of this takes five minutes and you are thinking, why are you wasting my time? In fact, this scene pretty much sums up the entire movie.
The cover of Ha Ji-Won having dorky dude in a headlock is a very misleading image. This movie is as depressing as "Calla." It feels like when they tried to market "The Pallbearer" as a romance comedy by showing the only one funny scene in the movie where David Schwimmer falls into an open grave.
This is not helped by the fact that this is not a good movie. A depressing movie can be effective if you care about the characters, but the people presented are very dislikeable. Ha Ji-Won as a boxer who saw her daddy get beat down as a little girl and now wants to be a professional boxer, not as hot as two girls fighting might suggest. The dorky guy is a gangster sent to punk out the poor villagers out of their homes; he is as pathetic as the suits he wears. There are also the poor siblings who have to collect cardboard at the market so that their roofs won't leak onto their heads. This is some heartbreaking subject matter which doesn't lend itself to be something enjoyed. Even people who read tabloids just to revel in other people's misery will not feel this. Briefly it tries to have gangster guy and boxer girl have some romance comedy feelings going on, but it is quickly dashed away when gangster guy's mob family comes by and literally steps on people's fingers just so that they will sign over their property. The depression never ends when this is a story about poor people and their daily struggles to survive. There are some comedic bits about being in the country and trying to adjust when you are from the city (no internet, sharing one toilet with the neighborhood, no gas stations). But mostly it fails.
For a movie targeted towards children, this contains some misguided morals. On a happy note, you get to see a puppy in the beginning. Guess what happens next? The resulting talking poo is whiny and confused. He does not know why he is created and is searching for his meaning in life. Some birds and chickens walk by and insult him over factors he can't control that further depresses him. He befriends another poo that fell off a cart on its way to be fertilizer; the cart poo’s creation sequence is almost as magical as the main character’s. Eventually they part ways but not before learning that if you do nothing, someone will come by and save you.
As the main poo, he does not move so he has to wait for events to happen to him instead of creating chances. The resulting lessons about sacrifice and accepting who you are is more schmaltzy than the ending of "In and Out." There are some inadvertent chuckles, and a lot where nothing happens due to the poo complaining about not having an agenda or a day planner like those kids profiled in "Born Rich."
This is one insulting vampire movie. There is one main vampire bad guy and his moment to be evil culminates in the last twenty minutes where he chases the cast around a house.
The least he could do is hop once or twice ominously. Instead he takes off running as if he forgot his car keys and his piano recital is about to begin; overturning tables, cushions, going from one room to another. Everything preceding it is lame humor, worse than the jokes attempted in “Mr. Vampire 2” and “Mr. Vampire 4.” The famous scene where the girl ghost mimics one of the cast is funny, not as funny as when Sammo Hung did it in “Spooky Encounters,” but if the movie should be remembered for only one thing, then that scene must be it. Sadly the girl ghost does not add anything to the plot; her role seems as lost and confused as a wall of photos of celebrities in a fried chicken shop. The unexpected and abrupt ending is the most bogus copout since "The Devil's Advocate" or “The 40 Year Old Virgin." Not happy at all.
This is as painful to watch as "Summer Catch". Faye Wong stays in one costume while the camera never switches from its position from the front-center audience. The camera is always shooting up as if you're craning your neck upwards to watch the performance. It makes you feel as if you are there, but its limited range makes you wish that there were more coverage. Some of the crowd and overhead shots would have added more life to this. Faye does not really move or dance, so it is always an above the waist/thigh shot that feels like a painting more than a concert. She is the lone member of stage; there are no background singers or visible band members. There are solid song choices if you are a fan, but her voice starts going into weird places in the Illeana Douglas way that I could not stand. The whole minimal approach might have been Faye's intent of a somber, close knit, one-on-one unplugged session, but it adds up to one stale video.
The First Amendment (product link) Comedy / Action/Adventure Much like Elle Woods in "Legally Blonde 2," a seemingly dim-witted but driven woman runs for senate to stop legislation that would harm her friends. In the case of Woods, it was her puppy. In “First Amendment,” that means her prostitute friends. For a sex-comedy, there is not much of either in this movie. There are some laughs where in one scene, before the night club girls get to their real jobs, they ask the johns to sign a petition. The johns of course sign them and we get to see the “Oppa” teaching girl from "My Wife Is A Gangster” take her top off. There are some sex scenes, but they are as subdued as make-out scenes from "Beverly Hills 90210." No one gets tested in this movie, everything meanders along and there is nothing really to hold your interest over.
Something must have gotten lost in translation, because the title is as misleading as "Does Not Soak Woman" and "How to Pick Girls Up!" There is not a lot of romance, just the usual first love jokes and misunderstandings between their friends and her parents. There is only one memorable joke when the doctor mixes up his test results, so now she is pregnant with his phantom sperm and he suspects her of cheating on him. He treats her like a maid while she is visibly pregnant until the doctor gets new glasses and he starts making it up to her. Somehow you wish there was a love triangle or a long lost twin to flavor up this movie.
Some relationships do contain a lot of bad jokes and awkward situations no one but the couple could understand why they cannot move past. Often those make for good movies. Not here. Here it felt like they just needed to throw in problems to see how the characters would react. No one grows from the previous mistake or shows anything worth identifying with. You never get anxious over what is going to happen because you realize that the director isn't crazy enough to do something drastic to change the character's lives, so you know that eventually the kids will end up all right.
You get to see "My Lovely Sam Soon" star herself, Kim Seon-Ah, before she packed on the weight for the epic TV show. She is still chubby, but in the appropriate hot teacher role. Things that are funny in this movie: the way the kids obsess with anything involving girls reminds you of the pool scene in "The Sandlot" where the guy drowns on purpose just so he could kiss the lifeguard. Lots of awkward scenes involve trying sneak in porn and crushing on the teacher. The main character's goal is to get the teacher to kiss them to win a bet. Out of this is the whole movie with a subplot about an older teacher that used to be Kim Seon-Ah's tutor. Things are awkward in a "Wonder Years" sort of way but not as rewarding.
With a title like this, you'd expect some raunchy jokes or some tasteful nudity, but there was only one naughty joke and it involved Whiteout. The title is as misleading as the Japanese movie "Swing Girls" which was about a jazz band. It is even harder to believe the story because the kids actually look like kids, not adults playing kids. You can't even believe that the teacher would bat an eye at them, although there was one scene where she looks away from the camera and you start to wonder, but that scene quickly passes. There are no major hook ups shown or cared about. If you need a korean "American Pie", go for "Sex Is Zero."
Worse than part one, which is a hard thing to accomplish. Instead of a group of four pervy friends, you get four sexually curious girls, and not in the "Kissing Jessica Stein" type of way. Most of their focus is on the new teacher-in-training, whose downfall is that he farts whenever he gets excited about a girl. It is less funny played out onscreen. The fact that he's a pretty boy with an afro that would make Sideshow Bob look bald doesn't help his case.
He can't express how he feels towards his students because they're students; and his uncontrollable flatulence: he even goes to a doctor to try to cure it. There are two girls competing for his attention: the plain girl of the group and a classmate who is a model/actress, as you get to see in her glamourized take on the schoolgirl outfit. The other girls in plain girl's group try to jazz her up to make her noticeable to the teacher. These scenes are as creepy as the dress-up scenes in "Leon." One scene had them send her up to his apartment liquored up with too much make-up. You can guess what happens. That's right, he lets her sleep on the bed while he stays on the couch trying not to fart. The whole movie is like this: barely a setup and no payout.
The movie doesn't deliver on its promises to be a sex comedy. It has no parts of either. The only funny bits were the flasher who would come to the school weekly. You really hope that the teacher doesn't get with either student and hope the girls can find someone their own age. People who come to see girls in schoolgirl outfits might come out happy, but there are other movies that can fill that niche too easily.
Full Throttle [2005] (product link) TV Shows/Movies / Action/Adventure
Do not confuse this with the semi-classic Andy Lau biker movie. This one is marketed as an overseas "Speed." However instead of a bus with 20 different characters, you have a two door German car and two main characters you don't particularly like. It starts off nicely with an ambulance whipping it through some crowded streets to deliver what the driver thinks is an organ but is instead a bottle of champagne for a party. He promptly quits in disgust. About ten minutes later the driver and his boss' wife is trapped inside said coupe until the end of the movie. There's a voice on the phone telling them that if they try to get out of the car, a bomb will explode but about five minutes inside the car you've already figured out a way without endangering anyone but the characters still stay trapped inside. So literally nothing happens after that. There's some driving, some unexciting car chases, some bonding, but nothing to really keep you interested because you've already figured a way out and everyone's problems doesn't seem that interesting to be kept updated on. If they had more car chases similar to the one in the beginning then it would have succeeded. Instead it is worse than Taxi 3.
Hi, Dharma 2: Showdown In Seoul (product link) Comedy / Crime Cheap cash-in on a previously hot movie. Not as guilty as "My Wife Is A Gangster", but still a case for a lot of fingerpointing. This can all be traced back to lazy scriptwriting. You know it's going to be bad when a major plot device involves a lotto ticket to solve the monk's problems. And the winning numbers were based on the monk's, Buddha's and Jesus' birthdays combined. There are some bright spots, such as the competitions between the gangsters and monks that are a holdover from the previous film. Some of them are entertaining, such as the karaoke duel, but most just don't reach the same heights as before. The absolute worst is when you think back to where you could have stopped it to not ruin the memory of the previous movie. There is no place to bookmark it. Pretty much every scene is just bad.
Street Life (product link) Documentary / Crime "Street Life" is bad. Reminded me of why I hated "Groove," a movie about raving also described as really real, it's realistic because in both instances I'm immensely bored. The segment where Killa introduce us to the streets feels fake, like he's overacting deliberately for the camera or sadly he acts like that in real life. Watching crack being cooked in the kitchen seemed too planned, if someone turned on a camera when I conveniently had a bandana covering my face, someone is getting blasted. That's why guns are needed in high risk jobs. It's nice to spot rappers all over the video giving their little bits about pimping or how being poor sucks. Hearing Trick recounting his story involving Trick Daddy was nice but seeing him drive around with no seatbelt made me too nervous.
First Kiss [1998] (product link) Romance / Comedy "First Kiss" doesn't contain much of a romance comedy. Just a set up and a long wait where nothing happens. Choi Ji-Woo wears glasses and men's clothing for 99% of the movie and you're never sure whether Ahn Jae-Wuk is really gay, borderline, bi, switching teams, you just don't know why he doesn't pull the trigger when it comes to Ji-Woo. Some mild diversions arise when they interview a bunch of actresses with too much makeup on but those are fleeting and don't flesh out the plot. Basically they've both never kissed and Jae-Wuk thinks Ji-Woo would look better without her glasses but "She's All That," this is not. Both their problems could have been easily solved in 30 minutes by playing "Truth or Dare" or "Twister."
Electrical Girl (product link) Erotica The beginning joke in the elevator that was ripped off of "Tricky Brains" shows promise, but quickly devolves into a series of sketches where guys who want to get it on with Sophie Ngan aren't able to for various reasons. However, if you're a cuckoo bananas fan of Sophie and just want to see her naked in four or five different scenes, shazam.
You know a movie is bad when the best scene is a musical performance by a current K-Pop artist. “Quick Man” tries to have all the right elements of fighting, kidnappings, nudity and action scenes, but it just doesn't click. Thanks to a "Saved by the Bell" special I learned that in dance scenes, no music is played. That explains why the club scene is so lifeless, but what about the rest of the movie?
There is a plot about finding a girl who is the supposed heir to a fortune, but the bad guys want the girl to sign away those fortunes to them. However in order for that to happen they have to find the chick. But let us forget about that and talk about the musical performance. So the chick is found and she takes her boyfriend of sorts to a club. Usually when a club scene happens, a fight breaks out or some meaningful dialogue is exchanged inside or outside. Instead, they pop inside, hear J perform "Timeout" then he drops her home. The whole purpose then of the club scene was to see J sing and do that weird punching hands dance. Which is enough for me.
There are some fights involving killing the rich guy, rescuing girls and having the girls snatched away again. It seems interesting at first but gets dragged down by lack of emotion from the fighters. Sure someone falls off a car but no one is having fun and the story line has a few holes or two, so it is like "China Strike Force." However things end on a bright note when another song by J is played in the credits.
Despite the lurid cover photo picture of the high school teacher and student shot in soft light that would make “Yentl†look realistic, "A High School Teacher" is not an exploitive picture at all, there is one attempted rape scene but no nudity. Instead it is like "Swimfan" or "The Crush." The girl looks crazy but doesn't give you a reason to be fearful of her until the very end. The teacher seems nice enough, but has that loser aura usually seen in teachers who date their students. The teacher has a secret he is hiding from the world while the girl has an even bigger secret. It does not help that the school's warden has the school locked down with security cameras everywhere "Sliver" style. The school warden is abusive and is especially hard against school girl when school girl does not go home for the holidays.
Events unfold when the school teacher can't stop moping from accidentally killing a guy on a rugby field while the school girl comes around his apartment and they have a make believe husband/wife life together on an abandoned boat. Then the chick goes crazy not to "Bittersweet Life" proportions but which almost makes up for its lack of excitement during the first half of the movie. The twist at the end is nice and explains why she is so distant and guarded about her home life. But you have to waddle through a lot of boring seduction scenes and wanting to tell the school teacher to get over killing that one guy years ago and to quit hiding out at a private school.
Overall this is a move that is based on lies and secrets to hides its basic flaw of not having a noteworthy story to tell. The teacher/student relationship angle is taboo in a way but it feels like that they deserve each other due to how they behave.
Up until the middle part where it morphs into a road trip movie, this film was going along at a semi-nice pace. The main character is some weird dude whose only explanation for his odd behavior is being Korean in Japan. Of course he is supported by weird supporting characters, including Mika Nakashima, who does an air kick at people to say goodbye. There is one bizarre scene where Korean Kid is having a conversation with his sister in his room when the camera fades in and out and they are still talking, however now both of them are in their underwear. Some time later the sister commits suicide. It is never told what caused it, but the brother decides to take his sister's body to see Korea as his last present for her. Obviously, he has to bring along his crew of strange friends he barely knows...
This is where the possible entertainment grinds to a halt. Unlike other similar movies with dead bodies as supporting characters, ("Little Miss Sunshine" or "Weekend at Bernie’s"--actually, anything starring Andrew McCarthy), there are not many laugh out loud hijinks involving the body or anyone in the car. Everyone doesn't act the least bit freaked out by the corpse. Mika actually starts to bond with it, she picks out her coffin dress and does her makeup. There is a long scene involving running out of money and trying to rob people. It gets boring and dragged out, these things happen. Sometimes the assistant director takes over or the director loses enthusiasm for filming. All Mika Nakashima fans should be happy because she looks prettier here than in "Nana." She is still very goth and skinny looking, but better than the drag queen makeup "Nana" had her in. A tradeoff would be that she is not in as many tank tops and short shorts. As a real kicker you get a sense of how short she is. Not just to her co-stars, but also to the extras and possibly those five pound bags of tortilla chips from Costco.
It's hard because this movie really tries to be a satire of obsessive collectors but really ends up empty. The whole movie is about how main dude tries to collect this rare figurine where only three or five of them were ever made. An easy comparison would be everyone in "Trekkies." His friends are just other people who have the same OCD problem. The hunt for the figurine gives him more thrill than actually possessing it. Once he gets rare figurines he just keeps them stored away or hung above his bed for display. It's a really sad look at their lives and how every moment is devoted to the hunt. Knowing that they possess something that is rarest of the rare fills a part of their life that nothing else can give them. What is even wilder is that main guy has a girlfriend, but it takes a while to sink in, she is always barging in his room so you think it's his sister. It is not an upbeat view of collectors like in "40 Year Old Virgin" at all.
This movie is so depressing and boring that afterwards you'll feel like selling your Morning Musume and Ayupan figures because you don't want to end up like them. It is not "The Amazing Race" where he dashes from one clue to another. It's a slow scavenger hunt for hints. During that journey we get to meet other collectors such as the guy who is so devoted to Sci-Fi that he buys a Delorean. Or the guy who collects rare items just to destroy them. In the end it tries to speak its peace about materialism but gets nowhere. The collectors aren't happy when they get the items, the movie watchers are sad that there’s no payoff, the writers felt like the director could have done better, the director hopes that it can find a cult following on video. It is a series of setbacks.
This contains more drama than I'd like in a movie. Throughout the first 20 minutes there's a glimmer that it could be good, but it's dashed away when you realize that the rest of the movie is going to stay this tone. In the beginning the story arc is whether the guy will propose to his girlfriend of 7 years. Later it becomes whether he chooses the girlfriend or the actress he became stuck in an elevator with. Amazingly no one has a terminal disease to force a decision so you see the guy swaying back and forth on the idea. To make matters more confusing, the actress is about to star in a movie where her character is an actress who falls in love with a regular guy, so you're not sure if she's playing him just for research material.
People who fall for this "Little Women" type of drama might care, but I didn't. Lots of unfunnies include the "Sex and the City" batch of friends who have their own love problems and become their own sad sack support group. The way everyone falls over the actress when she looks just alright pretty confuses me--she's no Ha Ji-Won, that's for sure. The guy is a pest specialist so a continuing running joke is how he finds cockroaches everywhere, including restaurants. These scenes felt more creepy than funny. Credit must be given to the director for making us care which girl is ultimately going to win his heart, but then again that's the only reason to stick around and here that's just not enough. In that respect, this is similar to "Ever After: A Cinderella Story": you already know the story but you stick around to find out which ending the director chooses, the one where the evil step-mother is banished from the kingdom or is forgiven. Or in this case, girl A or girl B. And that's all the movie gives you.
The trailer of "Ichigo No Kakera" fooled me much like the trailer for "Date Movie" misled me into thinking that the movie was more interesting than what it turned out to be.
So the main chick is a manga artist who had only one hit series and it concerned a guy on a motorcycle. However her following creations were not on the same level of awesomeness, consequently her near bankrupt book publisher asks her to write a sequel to her hit from 12 years ago. She believes that she can not because the guy who was the basis of the story died a few weeks after the last issue hit. While this is happening she leaves a party and gets struck by a truck while crossing the street. The manga chick wakes up as if she has been transported to a real-life sequel of her series where the motorcycle guy is living and takes care of her. We are not sure if it is a dream or if it is a ghost world. It's reminiscent of the moment right after the baby is born in "Rosemary's Baby" or the scene where the girl revisits the boardwalk in "Carnival of Souls." After three days spent on the beach with motorcycle guy she wakes up in a hospital matching the three days which has eclipsed since she was hit by the truck.
What exactly it all means is left up to the viewer. If you want it to be a ghost movie or some delusional coma dream, then that is what it means. It stops being interesting after she wakes up and tries to deal with the real world. At any point you expect her to go Eric Stoltz in "Some Kind of Wonderful" crazy and commit suicide to rejoin him. But the movie never capitalizes on her three day excursion and it is as unused as a plot device as Bae Doo-Na in "Tube." There are a few arty scenes which will stay with you because of the way it is framed: when her autograph to an enthusiastic fan is left used as a coaster, the overturned motorcycle on the road with its wheels still spinning and when manga chick picks up her giant manga brush because it just reminds me of an episode of "School Rumble" too much. This movie is a very esoteric movie that might reach people who have love and lost and don't believe that they can recapture that moment again. But for people who know how to move on, it does not reach its goal of being a pure love drama.
Bland story about a comic book store where people can spend the night reading mangas and watching TV. This is also a place where vagabonds can sleep for the night and hide from the police. Everyone there has something they are running away from; one guy is wanted for murder, another guy is a political activist, someone else is wanted by the government, actually everyone there is on the run from the law. But this story is even more poignant because it takes place during the student revolts in Korea that was the turning point in "Peppermint Candy."
Slowly the stories of why each guy is there unfold, much like "Clue." However "Clue" had more actresses while the only girl in this movie is the comic book store owner. Eventually she dates "wanted for murder" guy and tries to make the store more prosperous. However the main point of the store film-speaking wise is to gather a group of people who have wronged the government by speaking their minds and to vocalize why their arrest warrants would be fruitless if they had true freedom of speech. Their stories are heartfelt because they were doing what would be considered just but are singled out by the government so that they could be made an example for others. But the way it is presented is rather dull and you hope for a police raid or two to kick it up a notch.
Okul wishes that one day it can grow up into a horror movie. Instead it is a teen movie involving some geeky guy's unwanted affection for the hot chick in the "Can't Hardly Wait" way. Besides an interesting beginning that culminates in the geeky guy's suicide, it commits the rather sad act of being dull.
It is now a year's anniversary after "one-sided love" guy's death, now the people involved in the tragedy see ghosts, not his ghost, but spooky things happen to them. The guy used to write stories leave them in places where the hot chick can read them. It is barely one step up from leaving crumpled messages in someone's locker. Ultimately the stories are fantasies of him and her doing anything together besides reading and writing but she doesn't find it disturbing the least but rather cute. Because she has a boyfriend and waves to geeky guy from time to time. The movie would be better if more ghosts or scares popped up. Instead, it is a normal teenage movie where they go to class and worry about upcoming entrance exams but adding to that stress worries about seeing ghosts in mirrors or picking up haunted cell phones. There is even a few musical asides where we find hot chick fronting a band that is as out of place as Andrew Shue on "Melrose Place."
Weird flashbacks of the dead guy and hot girl's times together keeps the movie flowing, although most of those moments involve guy telling girl where the story he just wrote is hidden and the girl reading it. Much like "Happy Ghost," the guy seems like such a loser when living and as a ghost. There is one out of the blue joke where a porn movie gets played in front of hundreds of stunned students in an auditorium that is absolutely out of place and brilliantly setup. Other than that, this is a teen movie hiding out as a ghost movie. "Whispering Corridors" this is not. But the lead actresses are pretty and fun to look at.
This movie casts a disapproving eye at AV life and the circumstances which drives girls into the business. Somehow this comes off as not interesting. The rape scene is shocking along with her parents’ reaction to it. Then it is one depressing scene after another. From hanging out on the streets, to working at a bar, to finally meeting her savior who happens to be a DJ. Will he find out about her previous life and can he get over it if he finds out?
Good if you like your girls as sad looking as the chick from "1 Litre of Tears" but with more makeup. Through it all there is some guidance if you are looking to pimp out a troubled girl, not a lot, but some that "Lilya-4-Ever" glanced over. This is easy to accomplish because the girls are morally lost and will take any advice, even if it comes in the form of a slick producer, mark, trick, supposed friend or co-worker. For a movie about an AV star, there is no nudity, just some implied sex. There is not much of an AV life to speak of. She is on two video covers, goes shopping a lot and is recognized inside the bar she works at, but ignored elsewhere. Those film credits do not boost her clientele since every other girl working there apparently has a film record. A couple of lessons to be learned here: Don't sign contracts without a lawyer or really thinking through them. Don't believe the guy with a big man-purse, even if it is filled with money. And if you are alone and your guy friends try to get you inside a van containing two other guys, run.
Oh look it's the girl from "Lost". Mainly this movie is about a lovesick guy whose English name is Iron Palm that just can't get over his ex-girlfriend. She went to America just to get away from him and he still can't take a hint. So instead he saved his money and flew to America to find out that his girl pretty much forgot about him and has taken up with a new guy. Somehow she breaks her arm or leg and has the two guys competing for her affection. It's not much of a competition since both of these guys don’t seem like the right type for her, but somehow the movie makes you care.
This movie is borderline passable. The English spoken by Iron Palm will bother you like Sarah Jessica Parker's constant narration in "Sex and the City." We don't really get why the girl would even think that it's a hard decision between those two guys unless she was about to flip her current boyfriend and was looking for an excuse to do it. Iron Palm's devotion for the chick is as unrelenting as Emilio Estevez's character in "St. Elmo's Fire." It is like every other Korean romance movie ever except that the setting is in America. Unlike "Rush Hour" there some but no constant comic misgivings about clashing cultures. Everything is pretty much the same as if it was set in Korea. A lot more English is spoken and more foreign extras, but that's about it. There aren’t any big racist showdowns like in "Pedicab Driver" or "Better Luck Tomorrow." If you like your romance movies tepid with pleasant surprises that will please but won't fulfill you, then here you go.
SARS Wars: Bangkok Zombie Crisis (product link) Comedy / Action/Adventure Pretty bad while entertaining. A lot of forced humor and situations. Overall the crew seemed like it had a good time. But does that make it movie worth watching? Hard to say. It delivers more on its potential, but it's so unabashedly cheesy, it makes "American Idol" look like "M.A.S.H.". For instance: one scientist happens to wear a leather outfit underneath her radioactive garb; a schoolgirl killing zombies; a lightsaber that runs on D batteries; a giant snake eating random people... The movie actually delivers on some of these promises, and that's what makes it good if you can handle the ridiculous setups.
Eko Eko Azarak: Wizard Of Darkness (product link) Horror / Thriller "Eko Eko Azarak" is not "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" at all. As a slasher, it's effective, but it's okay, in the way seeing Ted Danson guest star on "Frasier" as the same character from "Cheers" is okay. Main problem would be the idea of the supernatural killing people, that's just not scary. The chalkboard with numbers counting down deaths was the peanut butter jelly time. Feels pretty campy but with the actors sadly believing it's something more than that.
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Who the hell ever said this was anything at all like Buffy? By the way, your references are not clever, they're annoying like sand in the vaseline. This dvd was good, scary, lighthearted fun - unlike your reviews. Hugs and kisses, The Bottle Kids.
Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs (product link) Thriller / Crime "Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs" is crazy bad, the motives don't match up to what's gets accomplished. Like in "Sex and the City" when Carrie keeps on picking Mr. Big when everyone knows Aidan is the right match for her. The plot is as deficient as a diet candy bar. The action comes and goes, but mostly goes. Most of the violence are the rape scenes in the beginning. The red handcuffs come out a few times, but they're as effective as Halle Berry in the first two "X-Men" movies. If you just want to watch the main female lead naked, I refer you to "Terrifying Girls' High School: Lynch's Law Classroom", a crazy delicious movie in comparison.
Versus (product link) Martial Arts / Horror "Versus" doesn't take itself seriously. Some people really dig it and they're not even zombie fans. The scene where the zombies can pick up guns and start firing is enough for them. Ninety eight percent of the movie is shot in the forest. There's no real plot, something about crosses and double crosses. If you enjoy watching people getting shot without having the need to feel guilty because they're in zombie form, this is for you.
Junk (product link) Horror / Thriller "Junk" is trash cinema. It's pretty self evident when the a zombie attacks a scientist, but this twist is the zombie is topless. That's all the nudity in the film but the rest of the movie isn't any better. For some good quality zombie killing, this movie has a warehouse full. The often bad but sometimes inspired "Versus" is better than "Junk" but just marginally.
Weather Woman (product link) Comedy / Erotica Weather Woman starts off as a parody of a television station much like "Network" accomplished but ends up just being full of S&M, musical numbers, torture, nudity and anything else nonsensical. That's the appeal to most people, at least that got me through it. It's nice to see a movie have such a lofty goal of being a cult favorite. It seems as if the director planned for people to only appreciate it later in a "This is Spinal Tap" type of way. It's bizarre and fun at times, but that doesn't mean it's interesting.
"Gun Crazy: The Magnificent Five Strike" is bad. When the theme song for "The A-Team" mixed with the theme song for the NFL Pre-game show is played in the background, you know that it's going to be bad. The plot is a mix of "American Ninja 2" and "Born To Fight". Surprisingly, no one overacts as in typical action movies, but no one really acts either. It's not summer camp acting, more like dress rehearsal acting. People who dub in voices in cartoons probably give livelier performances. There's not enough action to help out the plot that tries to be a thriller, but without the pacing or reveals. The gunfights are unimpressive and uninspired. Watch for the kung fu that happens in the parking lot. In previous editions of "Gun Crazy", such problems would have been settled with someone whipping out a gun and people getting clapped, not here. If you go in hoping to see girls with guns, you're going to be disappointed.
Drift [Japan] (product link) Action/Adventure / Drama
Faster than you can say "God of Hands" it turns out that the reason why the main dude is such a good driver is due to his former career as a boxer which gives him quick steering moves. The races and why he feels like he needs to race every black colored car is exciting until halfway when it becomes more repetitive than Shu Qi waking up in the hospital in "The Eye 2." Former boxer guy is too intense and his idea of revenge is too skewed towards racing which makes sense from his point of view but leaves the audience as confused as Halle Berry winning an Oscar. The flashback moments feel forced but yet are crucial to understanding the guy's struggles.
It doesn't succeed much as a racing movie, the beginning and last race contains the most heart pumping moments. The rest are so blah that you don't care that a girl is his mechanic and he seemingly has no day job besides brooding over his vengeance. Slightly more believable than gangsters playing soccer as an alternative to fighting in “Mongkok Story.”
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Agreeing with this review is as easy as the opposite of eating a cream filled bagel while wearing a bow tie.
"Desperately Seeking Seka" starts off nicely with the narrator looking for this porn actress he grew up watching. Neglecting the high turnover rate of performers in that industry, he sets out looking for the real story of what happened to her along the way interviewing people she worked with. Those industry people are interesting because they tell this story of Seka who had everything going for her and could not figure out why she would leave at the height of her popularity. To fill in these doubts they repeat rumors of how she married some rich guy and moved out to a farm somewhere. Wild stories to please their curiousity and to soothe their non-spoken belief that something bad has happened to her after all these years. It is interesting to hear these stories and watch vintage clips of her with big “Sopranos” hair and crazy "Purple Rain" makeup.
Until the middle part when the guy finally meets Seka at her house and all the fantasies are dashed much like in "Maid in Manhatten" when the rich guy finds out Jennifer Lopez was just pretending to be rich. That part was such a let down compared to the previous nostalgic view of the adult industry and how it was all better in the golden age. The narrator seemed to like the fantasy Seka more than the actual Seka, much like in "American Psycho" where Christian Bale flexed his muscles in front of a mirror for his own entertainment even when he was with those two hookers. That part is rather apparent when he visits Seka and the rooms are dim and she talks about her rather normal life after leaving the scene and the usual cases of what caused her departure. It is anti-climatic but it does tell the story of the industry through the journey of a search. There are some rather hardcore nudity scenes which are brief but are very telling.
“A Day for An Affair” is a lightweight movie about bored housewives committing adultery. Lessons for husbands is to not let your spouse become idle, get her involved in luncheons or charities, don't let her have access to chat rooms and hire private investigators.
There is a housewife's first time searching for an online hook up and another chick who probably had a few already. They see each other from time to time exiting their motel rooms with guys who are definitely not their husbands and eventually come to bond after a too close call of almost being caught in the motel. The beginning contains a lot of getting it on scenes and the awkwardness of meeting people online for the sole purpose of dirtying sheets. After a mad-cap chase scene away from one girl's husband, it becomes a comedy of sorts where the cheating couples continuingly try to elude capture and the husbands attempting to forgive while playing dumb to the past.
The short haired chick captures the screen as much as she did in "The War of Flowers." My favorite scene is when she is running away from the motel and doesn't know what to do or where to go. It is not at all like the scene where the Xavier talks about the perfect woman in "Les Poupees Russes," but it gets my vote. Her voice is deep but she speaks in the high pitched Korean way, so it gets really conflicting at times.
In a way you see why the wives would cheat and continue to cheat while their husbands proceed as if everything is fine, but the film does not delve further than that. All that could be forgiven if more of the movie was focused on the comedy aspects of trying to cheat on the sly, but instead it tries to have a serious beginning and end and that is where it’s not really successful. A better movie about affairs would be "Marriage is a Crazy Thing."
The cover of two guys on a beach with a bikini-clad girl is very misleading. The chick only shows up for five minutes and she is not in a bikini. In fact, there is not one beach scene in the whole movie. The closest is a sauna room where they hide out from gangsters. When they are found, a wacky sauna chase ensues that is reminiscent of other sauna chases made famous in the following Jackie Chan films: "Thunderbolt," "Rush Hour 2" and probably "The Accidental Spy."
The plot does have two guys picking up a briefcase filled with a fancy self-contained computer that is capable of world domination or something to that effect. Figuring out how to break into the suitcase is how they meet the chick because all pretty girls have a hidden talent in the movies that is never immediately obvious. There is a loan shark collecting payment on the guy from "My Sassy Girl" and they hate each other in the "Another 48 Hrs" way. They come upon a briefcase held by a dead foreigner; afterwards neither wants to part with it before they know how much they can pawn it for. So it is a series of escapes, deaths and wondering where else they can hide from the real bad guys. This movie is sort of fun, but really rambles on from one scene to another in the "Barbershop" sort of way with the only focal point being the briefcase and the mutual hate between the two main guys.
Includes the famous slow motion drift around a mountain corner that has been downloaded by some car fanatic at one time or another which is magical in the way it stayed in one lane throughout the drift except for the exit. Overall entertaining. Finally shows a FD Rx7 instead of the same white FC used in the other movies, unfortunately the driver starts to learn drifts by driving around on dirt roads. Very harsh on the car. I derived some "Napoleon Dynamite" type of humor when there are little flashes of their gauges and corrected to mph standards, it shows they're only going 70 mph on the freeway. After watching all these movies, I have to conclude that all the racing is real, it's just too raw, the honks on the freeway from taxi cabs seem like they were real honks recorded during the racing scenes. You see giant radio antennas on the top of the car and I know they're not because they're hauling Legos or tofu. The races drag after a while like the 30 minute car chase in "Hollywood Homicide," but I wouldn't have it any other way.
Freeway Speedway 2 (product link) Action/Adventure The initial fifteen minutes of "Freeway Speedway 2" with Keiichi Tsuchiya appears to be an public service announcement to not purchase bad brakes. The racing as usual is spectacular. All the battles seem long and dragged out after a while even after being visually interesting because it's giving you what you want. The main car crash and the ending race seems to condone street racing while at the same time exploiting it in the middle, like drug use in "Requiem for a Dream". The sums are greater than the whole. It's so funny watching car wrenching scenes in this and other movies where the mechanic is always grabbing a wrench or asking for a wrench, as if that's the only recognizable tool in car repair.
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