From Beijing with Love (1994)

Since melatonin causes nightmares more intense than the usual, the potential of Xanax as sleeping pill is overrated, and I prefer to keep my Stilnox supplies for situations when I know that's critical to fall asleep before 4 AM, I moved back to another version of "sleeping pill": old Hong Kong movies. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It depends on how bad the movie is, or its translation, because I didn't see enough yet to catch on a bit of Cantonese. "From Beijing with Love" is a so & so example, but enough of more "so" to deserve a blog entry - especially since I don't have anything more "fresh" to talk about.

The intro sequence copies the typical themes in Bond movies, having though an ending that's more out of norm, which already tells you that what we have here is a parody. A low budget one, but you can appreciate that it's acknowledging it and makes fun of this too. The completely stupid intrigue is intentionally so, and only serves as support for the comic part: the head of a dinosaur is stolen by a mysterious villain dressed in an impenetrable armor and equipped with a golden gun, which again references the 007 series. We quickly find out that under the bad guy's mask is actually the army general who's supposed to figure out the robbery, and to show that he's doing something for this he reinstates in function a retired agent. A guy who currently struggles as a pork meat seller complaining that the vegetarian trend is bad for business, and who seems to resemble more a sort of inspector Clouseau, but who obviously finally solves the case, gets the girl, and delivers us a predictable happy end. But the movie's not in the story, it's in the absolutely hilarious scenes that offers along the way, starting with the gadgets prepared for the secret agents (e.g., a torchlight functioning exclusively with solar energy), up to how you can escape an execution platoon that's so zealous to not allow getting away not even to a blind man who got there based on his own written declaration...

If you're old enough to have be nostalgic for the slapstick comedies during the '80s-'90s, made by Zucker/Abrahams or Mel Brooks: Airplane, Spaceballs, The Naked Gun, Hot Shots or Top Secret, then there are big chances to also enjoy the Chinese James Bond. I've never liked the genre much, but it really depends on how well the comic part is integrated with the parody (e.g., Top Secret is probably a different class than Hot Shots). Even though the Far East 007 seems cheaper than anything made in China, if you can get over "the typical silliness", which you can find in most HK movies before 2000, then it's probably enjoyable enough to not put you to sleep.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Meek's Cutoff (2010)

It seems that my attempts to find a good movie are as successful as the search for water in "Meek's Cutoff". That's pretty much the story here. We have a western (with an outrageously high rating both on RT as well as on Metacritic), where three families of colonists, with three wagons strive to get to California sometime around the mid of the 19th century. And they're getting out of water. With a tracker who seems lost in space (literally), whose name in the movie title is not really justified, and an Indian they're finding on their way, who they can't really decide either to lynch or to promote as water guide. Where the logic for the second option starts fading when two-three more days pass by and the H2O reserves move close to zero. And we start wondering what super-powers the Indians had in the 19th century to resist thirst for so long. Because, if we do some simple math, if the guy was solo wandering in the desert so far from a river... Well, the screenwriter probably had more deep stuff to take care of. So deep, that it gets lost along the movie ending, which is cut abruptly when the first tree shows up in their path. Probably around Area 51, if we're anyway getting close to that place...

Rating: 2 out of 5

Dark Shadows (2012)

Yet another blog entry just to check something for this week... Unfortunately, the decision to avoid "Dark Shadows" almost 7 years ago ( OMG... 7 years :| ) was a good one. I didn't think that much now, and missing another option I decided to give it a chance.

I have to admit that the movie starts well, with a Tim Burton-ish intro like in the good old days (more than 7 years ago), where somewhere around 1770 the life of Barnabas Collins, a young entrepreneur in the fishing industry of Maine, is messed up by Angelique, a maid with sorcery abilities. In brief, the parents are crushed in an accident, his lover jumps over a cliff into the ocean, and Barnabas is transformed into a vampire and locked alive and buried in a coffin. We find Angelique 200 years later, still young, as a small mogul in the same fishing industry, where the Collins descendants struggle to survive. Barnabas to the rescue = the vampire is set free, and things start to look positive... until Angelique gets into it & the war begins again.

Up to half of its time the only part that's really questionable is the sound mixing. Despite a score, which is quite ok in terms of individual tracks, the mixing is so bad that's getting at some point effectively annoying. Besides that the action starts with an interesting premise, and gives you some hope... Unfortunately everything turns into a senseless salad a la Alice in Wonderland, where you don't really know why you're seeing what you see there. From the ephemeral (no pun intended) apparition of a ghost that saves the the Collins family, up to the completely random presence of a werewolf, which probably doesn't spend more than 3 minutes on the screen (and has zero impact in the plot development), everything seems like a "let's also quickly add this stuff too". Too bad about the potential it had.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 (luckily we had the intro, otherwise...)

Shoplifters (2018)

There are many shades of right and wrong... That's "Shoplifters" in 8 words. And it's hard to describe it in more. I always found Cannes winners too pretentious for their real value and I keep saying that I'm fed up with social drama on the big screen, because you already have enough in everyday life. Well, now I'm gonna contradict myself, but that's probably the exception that strengthens the rule.

A rather colorful group of 5 people, of different ages, without any clear family connections between them but referring to each other as so, are getting through the days mostly of shoplifting, crammed together in some tiny house in Japan. Yup, not really the typical image of a country with a superior HDI where milk and honey's pouring for everybody. One night the group gets an extra member, a girl of 5 years old, picked up from a balcony, where she was often locked and left unfed by her not very responsible mother. Apparently the child doesn't want to return to her natural parents, finding more warmth in the new family. What follows is a pretty dense character study of each of the group's members, and the action evolves in a way, which, as usual, I'd rather not divulge...

...but still, allow me a spoiler, this is not a happy movie. However, it's a very warm one. Quite bitter, but warm. As I said, it's quite complicated to describe it more, or I can't find the words this time. The only thing I've to say more is that it seems that in Japan too the baby teeth are thrown over the house :)

Rating: 4 out of 5