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AKB48Fan added 2 items to A New Decade! A New Year! Movies Watched In 2020 list

4 years, 7 months ago

AKB48Fan added 1 item to A New Decade! A New Year! Movies Watched In 2020 list

A Japanese salaryman is attacked by a robot woman who is under the control of a psychopath. The man slowly begins turning into a monster. Anybody who has seen any of the Tetsuo The Iron Man movies should take a look at this short movie. It's by the same director Shinya Tsukamoto and what he took out of this one he would create a full length remake out of it. Don't expect a slick movie, it's more like a student movie filmed on Super 8. It's the type of movie that looks like a bad trip and there's no point trying to make sense out of any of it. Basically it's Tsukamoto showing off some creative film-making skills, not only with its style but also its look. Interesting to watch if you want to know where Tetsuo came from but otherwise it's just being an odd, unique, creative, visual experience, that in no way is a must-see for just everyone.

4 years, 7 months ago

AKB48Fan added 2 items to their collection

4 years, 7 months ago

AKB48Fan added 1 item to A New Decade! A New Year! Movies Watched In 2020 list

Franco Arno, a blind man and ex-newspaper investigator, investigates a break-in at a medical institute with the help of reporter Carlo Giordani. The 2nd movie that Dario Argento made is a lengthy but enjoyable thriller. While this movie rarely comes up as one of Argento's best, it is still an atmospheric and well-made giallo thriller that is worth a look. The mystery is a well-mounted one with some nice twists to be had. The roof-top climax and shocking conclusion is quite worth the wait as well! The direction is sleek and the music score of Ennio Morricone is beautiful. Cast-wise the movie is good as well, James Franciscus and Karl Malden steal the show though as an unlikely pair of investigators. For Argento fans, this is a movie worth catching.

4 years, 7 months ago

AKB48Fan added 1 item to A New Decade! A New Year! Movies Watched In 2020 list

When on-the-run crook Richard and his injured partner-in-crime, Albie, seek shelter in a remote castle by the sea, they find themselves confronted by the owners - George, an eccentric and weak retiree, and his oversexed wife, Teresa. Richard seizes control of the castle, but, as the criminals are pulled further into the isolated world of the strange couple, a volatile test of wills ensues. This was the 2nd English language movie from director Roman Polanski. It's an oddball effort for sure, sometimes a thriller, sometimes a surreal comedy, very 60's in tone and feel, and acted interestingly enough to keep you watching. It's a small-scale, single location movie in which various characters interact in intriguing ways. Here, it's a couple of criminals who end up at the home of a British eccentric and his wife. The performances of Donald Pleasence as the cross-dressing husband and Lionel Stander as the criminal are very good but the plotting is merely so-so. Françoise Dorléac is very pleasing on the eye. This was a bit too odd for me.

4 years, 7 months ago

AKB48Fan added 2 items to their collection

4 years, 7 months ago

AKB48Fan added 1 item to The 2020 TV Show List list

4 years, 7 months ago

AKB48Fan rated Combat Shock (1984)

 Combat Shock (1984) 6/10

4 years, 7 months ago

AKB48Fan added 1 item to A New Decade! A New Year! Movies Watched In 2020 list

A dangerously disturbed Vietnam veteran struggles with life 15 years after his return home, and slowly falls into insanity from his gritty urban lifestyle. Bleak, uncomfortable and shocking come to mind when describing this exploitation movie. Everything in this movie seems to exist under a layer of filth and grime. There is no saviour, no guiding light that comes to help the lead character. You just sit there and watch as he slowly loses the only thing he can still hold on to...his sanity. He suffers from PTSD flashbacks to his time in 'Nam, lives in poverty, he has a fed up wife and mutant baby (thanks to his exposure to Agent Orange) and from the beginning of the day things go badly wrong for him. From then on out, multiple segments play out, each more bleak than the last, until the ex-soldier is pushed past his breaking point leading to one of the most disturbing and shocking climaxes put on movie. Don't expect to see a happy ending with this movie!

4 years, 7 months ago

AKB48Fan added 1 item to The 2020 TV Show List list

Watched Series 1 to 3 - 2020

4 years, 7 months ago

AKB48Fan added 1 item to The 2020 TV Show List list

4 years, 7 months ago

AKB48Fan added 2 items to their collection

4 years, 7 months ago

AKB48Fan posted a image

4 years, 7 months ago

AKB48Fan rated Mill of the Stone Women

 Mill of the Stone Women 6/10

4 years, 7 months ago

AKB48Fan added 1 item to A New Decade! A New Year! Movies Watched In 2020 list

A reporter travels to a small town in Holland on a story about a local sculptor and quickly realises he has a deadly habit of turning local women into his 'art'. This is an Italian slow-burning but often effective creep-fest which makes fine use of the almost expressionistic sets of the interior of the windmill, filled with odd angles and bits of female dummies and skulls littered all over, making for a highly distinctive visual look. The brief shots of the flat countryside which surrounds the windmill help to give it an authentic look and a chilly atmosphere. The plot itself, when it comes down to it, is nothing particularly new. The idea of a doctor forced to kill young women to sustain the life of his ill daughter was very popular in the period this was made. Good acting from the cast especially Robert Boehme as the Professor. The pacing is rather slow for the first hour but things do pick up for the final third. In the end, this is a perfectly watchable Gothic horror movie with spot-on visuals and sets. Well worth tracking down.

4 years, 7 months ago

AKB48Fan added 1 item to A New Decade! A New Year! Movies Watched In 2020 list

A band's sudden rise to fame is beset with internal bickering and the double dealings of the music industry. This is the movie in which 70's glam rockers Slade play thinly-veiled versions of themselves in this gritty rise-and-fall tale which follows a band from its formation and humble beginnings to its disillusioned end after hitting the big time. Giving the band bio-pic genre a downbeat, kitchen-sink drama spin was a brave decision for a good-time rock band like Slade to take, and one they claimed hurt their career. The band members themselves aren't above gamely sending themselves up, and do a more than a passable job acting wise. The movie is a bitter, rueful commentary on the music business and the underhand and occasionally violent tactics displayed by management figures playing tug-of-war over bands with each other when they smell a big profit leaving the musicians slap bang in the middle of it all. The numbers that the band perform on stage are great to listen to. Overall, it may be a rather downbeat movie to watch but it's very enjoyable and Slade are fantastic in it.

4 years, 7 months ago

AKB48Fan added 2 items to their collection

4 years, 7 months ago

AKB48Fan added 1 item to A New Decade! A New Year! Movies Watched In 2020 list

Recently released from jail, thieves Jelly, Lenny and Scapa want to find their old boss, the Duke, who is holding their share of the loot from the heist that landed them in prison. Duke's lady friend, Sara, claims that he's dead and gone along with the cash. But the trio discovers that the Duke is alive and planning another elaborate heist. The Duke puts them on the job, but can they outwit their old boss? This is an amusing enough comedy with some decent laughs though it is essentially an ordinary, old-fashioned heist-thriller comedy from the Boulting Bothers greatly helped out by its fine cast. The movie is funny when it sticks to the robbery, but the contrived plot has The Duke establishing a fake health clinic as a cover for the local villains and that part of the movie is rather dull. The cast features a young Anton Rodgers as the criminal mastermind The Duke who replaced Peter Sellers. Rodgers even plays the role as Sellers might have done. Dudley Sutton, Eric Sykes and a sexy young Charlotte Rampling also appear in the movie. Overall, it's an average comedy in the end and I don't think there was enough laughs to be honest.

4 years, 7 months ago

AKB48Fan rated A Taxi Driver

 A Taxi Driver 8/10

4 years, 7 months ago

AKB48Fan added 1 item to A New Decade! A New Year! Movies Watched In 2020 list

In 1980, a foreign journalist hires a down-on-his-luck taxi driver to take him to Gwangju, South Korea. They soon arrive to find a city under siege by student protesters and the military. Based on a true story of what happened when South Korea was still under a military dictatorship. Don't get lulled into a false sense of thinking this is a bit of a comedy near the beginning as the taxi driver uses every way to make ends meet. Once the driver and his German journalist customer arrive in Gwangju and the scenes of riot unfolds, you'll discover that this movie is no laughing matter. It really engaged my attention from this point on as the journalist gets his cine camera out and starts filming the atrocities by the army so that the whole world is aware of what is taking place. The senseless massacre of civilians is very sad. It is a very powerful story that will drive many to tears. Excellent acting by Song Kang-ho. I have never seen this man in a bad movie yet. Everything he stars in is brilliant. All in all, this is a story of a man with little heroic virtues who unleashes his true self to become a nameless hero. Years later the German journalist tried to track down the taxi driver that risked his life for him but he was unable to do so. This movie is definitely as good as people say it is. Recommended.

4 years, 7 months ago

AKB48Fan added 1 item to A New Decade! A New Year! Movies Watched In 2020 list

In 1945, the firebombing of Tokyo buries what’s left of the Japanese army’s enhanced super soldier program, but not before they could create one metal encased cyborg warrior, which has remained buried beneath Tokyo for 45 years. Naturally, when it wakes up, it starts murdering everyone in the parking garage beneath a disco club. This is an interesting little cyborg movie with some nice touches. It's got a bit of a cult following to it as well. I liked the steampunk design to the killer cyborg and the constant squeaking sound it makes as it lumbers around. I was hoping for some more robokills than what was actually shown. The set design of the abandoned underground Japanese war base was impressive along with a giant supertank that sadly is never used in the movie. The backstory to the whole movie of 3 athletes used as experiments for the Japanese war machine is quite tragic and the ending is rather sad too. I thought it was an entertaining movie on the whole.

4 years, 7 months ago

AKB48Fan posted a image

4 years, 7 months ago

AKB48Fan added 2 items to their collection

4 years, 7 months ago

AKB48Fan added 1 item to A New Decade! A New Year! Movies Watched In 2020 list

Hundreds of years ago, the evil and powerful Nosferatu was narrowly defeated. When the Nosferatu returns, the warrior chosen by an ancient lance to defeat him is none other then the greedy and self-absorbed professional ghost sweeper Mikami Reiko. With Japan and the world on the brink of oblivion, can they depend on a woman who is more interested in her profit margin than heroism? I had never heard of Ghost Sweeper Mikami before and didn't know there was even an anime series back in the 80's. I can usually enjoy anime comedies but I just didn't like this one that much as the humour associated with the characters becomes stale pretty quickly. The plot is a fairly straight forward monster hunting feature and there are plenty of ghost sweeping (exorcism) scenes. There is one of Mikami's ghost sweeping team that is incredibly annoying. Every scene he's in he does something that's meant to be funny but comes across as an idiot instead. Perhaps I would have liked this movie more if he'd been completely cut out of the story. At the end of the day, I'm sure this movie and the series will have it's fans and however hard I tried to like this movie I just couldn't. A shame as the storyline was good and had they kept it all serious instead of needing to produce laughs in every damn scene it would have been great.

4 years, 7 months ago

AKB48Fan added 1 item to The 2020 TV Show List list

Watched Series 1 - 2017 Watched Series 2 - 2020

4 years, 7 months ago

AKB48Fan rated The Magic Serpent

 The Magic Serpent 5/10

4 years, 7 months ago

AKB48Fan added 1 item to A New Decade! A New Year! Movies Watched In 2020 list

The Oumi Kingdom, ruled peacefully by Lord Ogata, is raided by his corrupt general Daijo Yuki who kills the Lord and his wife. His young son escapes in a boat but is attacked by a giant serpent. He is rescued by a giant eagle. Years later, the son is now a man and has mastered the art of ninjitsu and toad-magic thanks to an old hermit. When his father's old enemies once again tries to kill him, the son must confront Daijo Yuki and defeat him. This Japanese kaiju fantasy movie is more in the vein of the Daimajin movies than with the Godzilla/Gamera movies; it’s a period piece in which the monsters play roles in the final battle between good and evil. We have a giant serpent, a giant frog, and a giant spider before it’s all through; the giant serpent also appears early in the movie. There’s a lot of content involving magic, including a rather memorable sequence involving swirling doors. The special effects aren’t always quite up to par, but the movie moves along at a nice pace. Viewers will notice that 2 of the kaijus have familiar roars that have been copied from Godzilla and Mothra. Somehow I didn't find this to be as good as I thought it would be. Perhaps I was expecting more kaiju action than I thought would take place. It's still an interesting piece and kaiju fans will obviously want to check it out.

4 years, 7 months ago

AKB48Fan rated They were eleven

 They were eleven 7/10

4 years, 7 months ago

AKB48Fan added 1 item to A New Decade! A New Year! Movies Watched In 2020 list

10 young space cadets are put onto a decommissioned spaceship as their final test. If they pass this test, their lifelong dreams of being valued people in their respective societies will come true. Their orders are to survive as long as they can with what they have. However, once they arrive at the ship, they find that their crew has gained an eleventh member and no one can remember the original lineup well enough to recognise which of them is the newcomer. Then they start to become suspicious of each other even as the ship's orbit begins to decay around a blue sun with the temperature rising onboard. A great anime movie from the 80's. It looks different from modern anime and I suppose that's one of the charms of watching this movie. It’s a simple 90 minute story with a lot of characters in a simple chaotic situation, but it’s really engaging and well directed. The story is based on a manga by Hagio Moto. For some reason this isn't an anime that many know about and it seems forgotten by many anime fans these days. The pacing of the story is fine and it's interesting in trying to find out who the mysterious 11th crew member is. That person is revealed right near the end. I very much enjoyed this underrated anime movie.

4 years, 7 months ago

AKB48Fan posted a image

4 years, 7 months ago