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AKB48Fan rated The Anonymous Heroes

 The Anonymous Heroes 6/10

4 years, 3 months ago

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

Two vagabond brothers, Meng Kang and Tieh who, in the search for fame and fortune, join in a rebellion against a provincial general. They are recruited by a local rebel leader who promises them a glorious adventure. The rebels plan is to steal a huge cache of new rifles set to be delivered to the barracks of the local army. This Shaw Brothers favourite is another collaboration between the two biggest Shaw Brothers stars of the era, Ti Lung and David Chiang, and director Chang Cheh, Shaw's number one action director. It's a typically action-packed adventure, filled with the brim with the frenetic fight scenes that Shaw are known and loved for, and a movie that's very easy to like. The movie's also got a surprising lightness of touch, with plenty of comedy and humour thrown in along the way, although of course things develop into a deadly serious climax which is inevitably the highlight of the whole movie. It's solid Shaw; not one of the studio's absolute classics, but a thoroughly entertaining movie nonetheless.

4 years, 3 months ago

AKB48Fan rated Her Sketchbook

 Her Sketchbook 7/10

4 years, 3 months ago

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

Masami Konuma has not left her home in 5 years. She is interested in otaku things like reading manga and drawing anime. Her father Eisuke has been worried about her and finds her a job that doesn't need much interaction with other people. Her job is debugging games at a gaming company. She also helps with illustrations that Ryotaro Yabe is in charge of. Eventually, her drawings get noticed and she is tasked with illustrating a character. This is a pleasant but relatively ordinary drama about a young woman who has no social skills due to her being a shut-in for years. Mami is an easy character to like, because while she struggles terribly with social situations she continues to put effort into it anyway. Mugi Kadowaki does a great job with a difficult role as Mami. It’s a wonderful subtle and gently powerful performance. The supporting cast are all solid, but no individual really stands out from the crowd. I enjoyed it mostly to see Mami start to come out of her shell as a person and even though you don't see a massive transformation by the end, she's definitely changed a little bit for the better. It’s a rather charming movie I felt.

4 years, 3 months ago

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4 years, 3 months ago

AKB48Fan rated The Angry Dragon

 The Angry Dragon 6/10

4 years, 3 months ago

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

A man who just happens to be great at Kung-Fu, is traveling the countryside in the Hong Kong of old. He has to negotiate a treacherous landscape filled with tricksters and tough guys, and fight a lot of battles in hand-to-hand martial arts combat, in order to be reunited with his lost love, a princess who is set to be married to the King of Mongolia. A decent martial arts movie. You won't find anything new in the storyline as these kind of movies have more or less the same plot. In this one, our hero teams up with a bunch of village thieves to tackle the bad guys who are a Japanese fighter, two Mongolian brothers and a tough bloke who carries with him a pair of steel balls! The fighting isn’t the best you’ll ever see but it sure ain’t bad and there’s plenty of it especially during the final 30 mins. A strictly by the numbers martial arts movie in the end.

4 years, 3 months ago

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4 years, 3 months ago

AKB48Fan posted a list

A New Decade! A New Year! Movies Watched In 2020 (641 movies items)

4 years, 3 months ago

AKB48Fan added 5 items to A New Decade! A New Year! Movies Watched In 2020 list

4 years, 3 months ago

AKB48Fan rated Night of the Devils

 Night of the Devils 7/10

4 years, 3 months ago

AKB48Fan rated Terra Formars

 Terra Formars 5/10

4 years, 3 months ago

AKB48Fan added 2 items to their collection

4 years, 3 months ago

AKB48Fan rated Rambo: Last Blood

 Rambo: Last Blood 6/10

4 years, 3 months ago

AKB48Fan added 5 items to Hit Or Miss? Good Or Bad? 2019 Movies Watched list

4 years, 3 months ago

AKB48Fan added 2 items to their collection

4 years, 3 months ago

AKB48Fan added 3 items to Hit Or Miss? Good Or Bad? 2019 Movies Watched list

4 years, 3 months ago

AKB48Fan added 2 items to Hit Or Miss? Good Or Bad? 2019 Movies Watched list

4 years, 3 months ago

AKB48Fan added 2 items to their collection

4 years, 3 months ago

AKB48Fan added 1 item to Hit Or Miss? Good Or Bad? 2019 Movies Watched list

aka Lady Godiva Rides Again. A small-town English girl Marjorie who wins a local beauty contest by appearing as Lady Godiva, then decides to pursue greater fame in a national beauty pageant and as an actress. This is a simple story with a multitude of locations and characters which result in a surprisingly complex narrative. The story follows Marjorie's misfortune as she is entangled by the trappings of success in the male dominated glamour industry, continually forced to compromise her ideals. The movie isn't particularly funny even though it's been classed as a comedy. Diana Dors might be the woman on the poster of the movie but she isn't the main lead - that went to Pauline Stroud. The main attraction of this movie is the number of cameos with Alistair Sim, Joan Collins, Sid James, Dora Bryant and George Cole appearing amongst others. It also has the reputation of having Ruth Ellis, the last woman hanged in Britain as one of the beauty queen contestants. In the end, I can only say this is an average movie and not really worth seeking out.

4 years, 3 months ago

AKB48Fan added 2 items to their collection

4 years, 3 months ago

AKB48Fan added 1 item to Hit Or Miss? Good Or Bad? 2019 Movies Watched list

This Australian documentary tries to chart the history of martial arts movies in Hong Kong from the 60's onwards. There is a lot to enjoy in this documentary and the interviews are entertaining but it does feel a little over the place in terms of what it’s trying to say, going back and forth with some odd editing choices. It covers the Shaw Brothers, Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee eras of kung fu as well as the influence on American audiences especially the African American community. However, it does gloss over a lot and there's nothing on female action stars such as Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima. Stars such as Donnie Yen and Jet Li are barely mentioned which was disappointing. You do get clips from many classic martial arts/action movies with some I haven't even seen yet. Overall, it's an entertaining and informative documentary but it could have been so much better.

4 years, 3 months ago

AKB48Fan added 1 item to Hit Or Miss? Good Or Bad? 2019 Movies Watched list

When salaryman Jun gets home, he finds his wife Chie bleeding from her mouth and lying on the floor. He is shocked by the scene, but it turns out the blood is just ketchup and she is pretending to be dead. Without telling him why, Chie pretends to be dead everyday. Jun is dumbfounded by his wife's behaviour, and he begins to feel uneasy with her. Most romantic comedy stories have marriage as a goal but I wonder how those characters do after they actually get married. This movie is about a married couple so we pass through the chasing phase and cut to how they interact when the initial fierce burn of romance has died down. It approaches different aspect of a marriage and the importance of communication and understanding. I loved Nana Eikura's character and the various imaginative deaths she comes up with in her home. Ken Yasuda handles the role of her husband well and the two display plenty of on-screen chemistry. All in all, this movie is really about the difficulties of modern marriage and how to make it work.

4 years, 3 months ago

AKB48Fan added 2 items to their collection

4 years, 3 months ago

AKB48Fan added 1 item to Hit Or Miss? Good Or Bad? 2019 Movies Watched list

One day, Haruna Wakakusa sets out to look for Ichiro Yamada, a student who is bullied. She ultimately finds him naked and tied up in an abandoned school building. The person responsible for this cruel act is no one other than her boyfriend Kannonzaki. After another rescue by Haruna, Ichiro invites her to share two secrets with her, he’s actually gay, even though he has a girlfriend, Kanna, and a year ago he found a dead body along the edge of the river. The only other person who knows of this body is Kozue Yoshikawa, a bulimic model. This is a fascinating period piece set in Tokyo during the mid 1990's about the inner turmoil of a group of characters. Kannonzaki can’t express himself short of sex or violence, Kozue binge-eats and then vomits it all back up and Yamada hides who he really is, stringing along the poor Kanna who really gets the short straw during this entire movie. The story goes deep into looking at the coping methods the characters adopt, and what happens when things are taken too far. Everyone has something they’re keeping secret. I'm not sure if the occasional interviews when the characters talk to an unknown person off-screen really works. It just seems odd and distracting from the actual story. This movie isn't your typical teen drama. There's solid acting from the whole cast. Despite the dark storyline, I really liked this movie.

4 years, 3 months ago

AKB48Fan added 1 item to Hit Or Miss? Good Or Bad? 2019 Movies Watched list

As the aging Ching Emperor approaches death, his will that names his successor lies hidden in a special room full of deadly traps and even deadlier guards. To gain the throne, Wang, the Emperor's fourth son, must learn Shaolin kung fu from the monks so he can conquer the guards, who want the crown for themselves. This is a cheap Taiwanese kung fu effort that nonetheless gets by thanks to the predominance of plotting and lavish attention to period detail. Like many Taiwanese kung fu movies, this one amasses a cast of Shaw Brothers veterans to give it some credibility. The movie is dominated by story rather than by action, with the requisite comedy scenes and goofy supporting characters to see it through, although the action when it does occur is fine. It's watchable enough but don't expect it to be a classic martial arts flick.

4 years, 4 months ago

AKB48Fan added 2 items to their collection

4 years, 4 months ago

AKB48Fan added 1 item to Hit Or Miss? Good Or Bad? 2019 Movies Watched list

The shadow of the Bellows family has loomed large in the small town of Mill Valley for generations. It's in a mansion that young Sarah Bellows turns her tortured life and horrible secrets into a series of scary stories. These terrifying tales soon have a way of becoming all too real for a group of unsuspecting teens who stumble inside Sarah's spooky home. As a kind of anthology sort of feature, Scary Stories wasn't actually a bad movie but it didn't fulfill my expectations, specially in terms of scare factors. I expected it bit more twisted and eerily creepy particularly around the different monster/entity encounters at different segments. Among the ghostly entities, The Jangly Man and The Pale Lady were the most interesting. The movie benefits from an efficient Halloween atmosphere, excellent photography, the nostalgic 60's dress code, impressive old cars and talented young actors. However, it had the potential to be more darker and scarier. Still, it was entertaining enough.

4 years, 4 months ago

AKB48Fan added 1 item to Hit Or Miss? Good Or Bad? 2019 Movies Watched list

In Tokyo, a young man named Ryo is lamenting the apparent suicide of his beautiful girlfriend Yuri. She left behind a memory box of former possessions which includes an audiotape. The familiar recorded voice reveals the existence of a woman who looks exactly like Yuri in another part of the country. Ryo follows the clues in the tape and travels to Hokkaido where he meets Aya and she does indeed look like Yuri. Unless you're a person that likes seeing magic tricks or an old fashioned romantic, this movie will not really appeal to you. The story tries to say in it's own unique way that love is like a magic trick but in reality it's more about a pair of mourning lovers seeking solace in the arms of strangers who resemble their lost partners. There's a bizarre extended homage to Luc Besson’s classic movie Leon as well. I found the movie to be boring despite the great magic tricks shown by Ryo's doppelganger Ryu who has disappeared after a dangerous stunt. The performances from the two main leads didn't do anything for me either. I found them to be bland, cold with little chemistry. I expected better things from the Korean director Jae-young Kwak seeing as he did the excellent My Sassy Girl many years ago.

4 years, 4 months ago

AKB48Fan added 2 items to their collection

4 years, 4 months ago