Showing posts with label Kill Bill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kill Bill. Show all posts

Thursday, September 17, 2009

The WTF List: Inglourious Basterds

I'm a big Quentin Tarantino fan. I just appreciate the fact that his movies are combinations of different grindhouse subgenres (crime thriller, kung fu mania, spaghetti western, war machine, etc.) The argument for the anti Tarantino fans is that he "steals" from other movies. To this I say, all films steal from other sources be it other movies or novels or TV or whatever.

So Inglourious Basterds is a mix of spaghetti western and that 70s-80s war machine shootapalooza (the soundtrack had that old 70s war music feel). And it works even as a "what if" alternate timeline flick. Movies are suppose to take you to a place which warps the real world. Where the impossible becomes possible. And I love those "What if the South won the civil war?" premises that sci fi authors like Harry Turtledove have created. Or what if we Germany did take over the world. And QT says what would happen if we had some Jewish soldiers slaughter dem Nazi bastards and try to take down Hitler.

What we get is just pure, relentless awesomeness. So much pure war brutality and harmonic dialogue that you've come to expect from Tarantino.

So let's get to the WTF list shall we? (spoilers obviously)

1.) The fact the switch from French to English is commented on
2.) Jew Bear
3.) The guy who played Hitler is hilarious
4.) QT's dialogue machine is very much butchered in the fact that most of it is done in French or German and it just doesn't feel the same
5.) STIGLITZ!!! (the Vincent character of IB)
6.) It's Ryan from the Office
7.) Was that Austin Powers undercover?
8.) So Eddie Murphy was potentially gonna play the black guy? (see IMDB trivia)
9.) I-talians
10.) People you thought would live, didn't. You're never safe in a QT flick
11.) Poor Wilhelm (he screamed)
12.) A Mexican standoff never gets old
13.) The scalping is so gore-ific
14.) The branding is painfully knife-tastic
15.) Hans Landa is probably one of the best villains....ever
16.) Pipe vs Pipe
17.) "You don't got to be Stonewall Jackson to know you don't want to fight in a basement."
18.) The bumrush to kill Hitler by Donowitz and Ulmer
19.) The slaughter in the theater
20.) Hitler's bullet ridden body bulleted again and again and again

21.) My random rant. Having seen this flick with mostly jabronis and a few geeks, you knew that the obvious fact that QT had to visually point out the Nazi authority baddies is brilliant. Goebbels, Goering... Not many know of the famous SS Nazis and 2nd in command other than Hitler.

I've seen all of Tarantino's movies and if I had to put a quick ranking it would go like this.

1.) Pulp Fiction
2.) Kill Bill Vol 1 and 2
3.) Inglourious Basterds
4.) Reservoir Dogs
5.) Jackie Brown
6.) Death Proof

Inglourious Basterds is a great flick, thru and thru written for the intellectuals, the fan boys and the masses. I mean it's rather talky, but the dialogue always builds up to a payoff and boy the payoffs just scream yay. I'm going to have to watch this again.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

The Machine Girl (Review)

The Machine Girl

The Machine Girl (2008) (Kataude mashin gâru)

Directed by Noburu Iguchi

It's sad that the YouTube millenials made the Machine Girl's trailer go viral. Why? Because it just seems that a movie like this was condensed into 2-3 minutes. It should be viewed as 90 minutes of fun, splatter and gore that catches you surprised and shocked and LOLing. Because you watched the trailer, those parts are now not as much fun.

Damn millenials.

Tokyo Shock funded this little endeavor of Noburu Iguchi, and the Japanese creativity spews chunks of sly humor, CGI lunacy and more arterial spraying than all of Kill Bill combined.

It's as fun as advertised depsite the leak of prime slices in the trailer. The cheesiness comes out in full effect, the violence is manga-ish and the dialogue (subtitled as is) is ready for Mike Nelson and Tom Servo to go nuts on.

What the millenials don't understand is that Japanese filmmakers have been making these flicks for a while now. Stacy, Wild Zero and Junk are zombie flicks with vicious arterial carnage but campy. Miike's Ichi the Killer is the male equivelant of a flick like this. His Dead or Alive is classic in this genre as well. But don't tell this to Generation Y. To them this is the best thing since sliced Pzones.
Boring Plot-O-Matic

Ami (Minase Yashiro) is a basketball loving school girl. When her brother Yu gets killed by the local Ninja Yakuza "Hattori Hanzo" yumi (aka family), she gets revenged. Obviously from the trailer, her hand gets cut off and is replaced with an uber machine girl. Fuck it. She wants revenge and carnage ensues.


Awesome Review-O-Matic

Minase Yashiro is fuckin hot. And in her Sailor Moon uniform and a chainsaw arm thats ripping apart a poor Yakuza, you've just put sex and violence together which is every boy's wet dream. And that's just the opening scene.

I love when social problems evident in Japanese culture (in this case bullying) are made into a manga and then go live action. That's been happening alot. Basically Machine Girl is a revenge flick, pure and simple. But its a horror-omedy and it's that opposite approach from say a Kill Bill that makes it glorious fun.

Ami's search to kill all who wronged her brother (especially Sho Kimura, the mobster's son) takes us to scene after scene of pure arterial spraying set on insane. From an unfortunate family's dinner demise to her own torture at the hands of the evil Yakuza boss, its non stop splatter at its best.

Some of the best parts of the movie are not Ami in action but the Yakuza "Hattori Hanzo" clan (a wink to Sonny Chiba) and their utter disregard for life. A poor chef has to eat some special sushi, a maid is discarded and henchman become disposable. In one scene, a poor girl's death is not the end of her torture.

It's the Hanzo ninja yakuza clan that makes this movie work. The dad is ruthless, the son cowardly but sly but the wife is outright brutal. They are sooooooooo evil, your hoping Ami goes medieval on them.

After Ami's escape, she meets Yu's friend's parents who are mourning as well. They are the ones who can rebuild her. They have the technology. The husband is a tech genius who invents the machine gun and the wife is a survivalist gone awry. A gratuitous montage scene later, they're ready to do battle

And that's when the most ridiculous battle scene takes place between our heroes and the Junior High Shuriken Gang, one of the most splatterific scenes in the movie.

As the trailer suggests, there is a flying guillotine and the ending is so over the top, you can't help but cheer.

Machine Girl accomplishes what it sets out to do. Be funny, be gore-tacular and totally be something that makes you laugh and wince at the same time.

I've seen movies like this before, but Machine Girl is packaged perfectly, you're going to have an awesome time YouTubing your favorite clips afterwards.

Influences

Anything from Takashi Miike, Stacey, Junk, etc.

Gore-ipedia (if you want to be shocked don't read)

Machine girl bullet arterial spraying

Machine girl bullet carnage

Tempura oil scarring

Throat slicing

Massive beheadings

Knife mouth trauma

Finger slicing (with added finger sushi yum yum!)

Shuriken slicing

Nails in the head

Chainsaw splatter

Executioner's Blade carnage

Drill Bra brutality

Yada Yada Yada

WTF moment

The Bra. Nuff said.

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

You're going to like this film.

Trust me.

It's got a hot schoolgirl amputee, a kickass evil Yakuza boss and more blood and guts than a slaughterhouse.

Yes the trailer does seem to give away a couple of good scenes. Watching the trailer is equivelant to having only eaten the appetizer and dessert. Now go enjoy the main course.

Rating:


The Trailer:




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