I return to the War section of the Great Movies – 100 Years of Film book, and settle in for Ran, Kurosawa’s epic opus. Taking its inspiration from Shakespeare’s King Lear, the film is a visual masterpiece delving into tragedy, drama and action. It is also one of the top recommendations on the What Else…
Tag: japan
The Lego Ninjago Movie (2017) – Charles Fisher, Bob Logan, and Charlie Bean
Opening like a Shaw Brothers movie, The Lego Ninjago Movie is from some of the creative minds that were behind The Lego Movie, and The Lego Batman Movie. It hits blu-ray and DVD today from Warner Brothers, and may find a measure of success that it didn’t quite gain at the theatres. Dealing with a…
The Conquest of the Pole (1912) – Georges Melies
Using Jules Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires series as its inspiration, the next stop in DK Books’ The Movie Book is the highly enjoyable The Conquest of the Pole from the brilliant French showman, Georges Melies. The film follows a muktin-national team of explorers, occasionally interferered with by a group of Suffragettes who are planning on exploring…
Silence (2016) – Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese’s beautifully shot passion project, Silence, is unveiled on blu-ray from Paramount Pictures today. Based on the novel by Shusako Endo the film is vibrant and gorgeous, while it plays with some tough questions about religion, faith, cultures and beliefs. Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver and Liam Neeson share top billing in this film, but…
Batman: The Animated Series (1992) – Night of the Ninja, The Strange Secret of Bruce Wayne and Tyger, Tyger
Bad things continue to be afoot this week in Gotham City, and it’s up to the Dark Knight, Batman (Kevin Conroy) to serve justice. Fist up is Night of the Ninja, which aired, 26 October, 1992. Bruce Wayne is being stalked by a ninja, Kyodai Ken (Robert Ito), who is also a former student…
Cloverfield (2008) – Matt Reeves
Those big, city destroying monsters seem to be everywhere (may be time to watch Pacific Rim again – I like it, so there)… The final recommendation from the Great Movies – 100 Years of Film book from my screening of King Kong, is this take on the kaiju genre that marries it with the…
Godzilla 1985 (1984) – Koji Hashimoto & R.J. Kizer
I continue my time with that man-in-a-suit monster, Godzilla, as the Sci-Fi Chronicles jumps forward a couple of decades and introduces me to the revitalized version of the monster, that screened in 1984, some thirty years after the original film. For the most part, it disregards any of the previous films, but for the…
Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964) – Ishiro Honda
The Sci-Fi Chronicles book continues to pay off as I now get to spend some time with that kaiju known the world round as Godzilla. I’ve previously reviewed the original film here. His competition in this film, Mothra, had a film of its own, but in this one, the two beasts go head to…
King Kong Vs. Godzilla (1962) – Ishiro Honda
The Sci-Fi Chronicles book has proven itself to be an absolute joy so far, and I am loving diving deeper into things I only knew peripherally. For instance… King Kong! This installment sees the colossal ape (much bigger in this version than he’s been in the American films to date, but his size seems…
Magnum, p.i. (1982) – Ki’Is Don’t Lie and The Eighth Part of the Village
More fun on the island this week as Thomas Magnum (Tom Selleck) gets involved in an interesting pair of cases… First up is Ki’I’s Don’t Lie, a crossover episode featuring a pair of mainland detectives (and another series I may have to hunt down and add to my list of things to revisit), Rick…
The Mind Reels 