Film & TV
I have a collection of over 3000 films now, and I have watched every one of them, most you may have seen, so with this in mind I thought I would list a few you may have missed, some great, some not so great, you decide.
I do have a large number of Japanese, Chinese and Korean films, most are Samurai action movies as I trained and became a Samurai/Ronin, the rest are Horror, no one does horror better, I think they invented the genre? Anyway check out the films below, I think you may be surprised.
Films
I do have a large number of Japanese, Chinese and Korean films, most are Samurai action movies as I trained and became a Samurai/Ronin, the rest are Horror, no one does horror better, I think they invented the genre? Anyway check out the films below, I think you may be surprised.
Films
The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi
The blind masseur/swordsman comes to a town in control of warring gangs, and while bunking with a farming family, he meets two women with their own agenda. What a great film, love the sword choreography and the humour, although it has sub titles its still one not to miss. |
Seven Samurai
As you have probably gathered by now I am a sword freak, and this is the film that introduced me to the Japanese film genre. A poor village is under attack by bandits so they recruit seven unemployed Samurai (Ronin) to help defend the village. This is the film 'The Magnificent Seven' was based on. |
The Man from Earth
An impromptu goodbye party for Professor John Oldman becomes a mysterious interrogation after the retiring scholar reveals to his colleagues he never ages and has walked the earth for 14,000 years. This is one of my favorite films, staring no one of any note this film kept my interest from start to finish, well worth a watch. |
Tombstone
A successful lawman's plans to retire anonymously in Tombstone, Arizona, are disrupted by the kind of outlaws he was famous for eliminating. Staring Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer and Sam Elliot, this is probably the best western made since John Wayne died, great performances and Kilmer shines in this movie as Doc Holliday, historically correct its great entertainment too. |
Serenity
I do love Joss Whedon's films and TV, the guy really knows how to make something interesting and different, this was made as an end the the great series Firefly, well worth getting on DVD. Epic sci-fi adventure from writer-director Joss Whedon, based on his short-lived television series 'Firefly'. 500 years in the future, after a galactic civil war has united all the space colonies under the repressive Alliance, former rebel soldier Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) captains the Firefly class cargo ship 'Serenity', taking on odd jobs and scoring heists where he can to keep his ship and his crew in the air, all the while trying to avoid the attentions of the authorities. When he picks up Simon Tam (Sean Maher) and his disturbed sister River (Summer Glau), Mal ends up with more trouble than he could have bargained for. On the run from the Alliance, River has been the subject of horrific government experiments to develope her latent psychic powers. Determined to get her back, the Alliance dispatches ruthless assassin The Operative (Chiwetel Ejiofor), and Mal and his crew find themselves hunted throughout the galaxy. But when they discover an even darker secret the Alliance would like to keep hidden, they finally have their chance to hit back. Starring: Nathan Fillion, Summer Glau, David Krumholtz, Michael Hitchcock |
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
As an ex BUFORA investigator, check out my new website http://alienfox.weebly.com I remember reading about this being filmed and all the research that Spielberg had done including Project Blue Book, this was based on real encounters, he made a great film, one of my favourites. Steven Spielberg presents the definitive collection of his classic movie. Power line repairman Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) has a 'close encounter' with an alien spacecraft when he is sent out to investigate a mysterious power surge one night. Roy then becomes obsessed with five musical notes and a strange image in his head, estranging himself from his wife (Teri Garr) in the process. He also discovers that he is not alone in his experiences, and joins others as they are drawn to the site of a visitation by an alien ship. Starring: Francois Truffaut, Richard Dreyfuss |
Equilibrium
Cool Sci-Fi movie starring a very young Christen Bale. Cleric John Preston (Christian Bale) is a top government agent responsible for enforcing the law that bans emotion in the futuristic state of Libria. This is a world at peace, where war is a distant memory, and so is music, art and poetry. Here, emotion is illegal and is punishable by death. But when Preston is forced to kill one of his fellow agents he begins, however, to question the system and decides to fight against these cruel new laws. Starring: Christen Bale, Emily Watson, Sean Bean |
The Abyss
This film started a load of reproductions of underwater alien movies, this is the original and still the best. a great performance fron Ed Harris, great actor. The crew of an experimental, high-tech submersible is called into action to investigate a mysterious nuclear submarine crash. A series of strange encounters leads the crew to suspect the accident was caused by an extraterrestrial craft, and that they may be participating in an encounter with an alien species. However, in order to make contact, they must not only brave the abyss, an exceedingly deep underwater canyon, but also deal with the violent actions of one of their own crew members, an increasingly paranoid Navy SEAL officer. Approved by director James Cameron, The Abyss: Special Edition is an extended director's cut of the 1989 underwater science fiction epic, reinstating nearly a half hour of footage removed from the original release under studio pressure. Much of the restored footage places the film's events in a grander political context, as the crew's mission becomes a factor in the dangerous escalation of nuclear tension between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The largest change involves the film's ending, which provides further information on the aliens' mission on Earth, bringing the film to closer to Cameron's intention: a modern remake of Robert Wise's The Day the Earth Stood Still.~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide Starring: Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio |
Planet of the Apes
Forget all the remakes, this is the best, I remember watching this in the West End of London at the Premier, what a great ending. A group of astronauts, led by George Taylor (Charlton Heston), crash land on a strange planet where mute humans are treated as slaves by intelligent apes. Taylor is hunted down and captured by horse-riding gorillas, and then taken for experimentation by sympathetic chimpanzee Dr Zira (Kim Hunter). When Zira discovers Taylor's intelligence, she and her fiancé Cornelius (Roddy McDowall) appeal to the governing council on his behalf, but the appeal fails, leaving the astronaut no choice but to go on the run. Fleeing for his freedom, Taylor soon makes a shocking discovery about the provenance of this strange planet. Starring: Charlton Heston, James Whitmore, James Daly. |
The Box
A really good Thriller, Suspense movie, acting's crap but a good film worth seeing all the same. Norma and Arthur Lewis, a suburban couple with a young child, receive a simple wooden box as a gift, which bears fatal and irrevocable consequences. A mysterious stranger, delivers the message that the box promises to bestow upon its owner $1 million with the press of a button. But, pressing this button will simultaneously cause the death of another human being somewhere in the world; someone they don't know. With just 24 hours to have the box in their possession, Norma and Arthur find themselves in the cross-hairs of a startling moral dilemma and must face the true nature of their humanity. Starring: Cameron Diaz, James Marsden. |
Audition
A great movie by one of my favourite Japanese Directords, Takashi Miike, nuf said. Controversial Japanese director Takashi Miike creates this unnerving horror film about a widowed TV producer auditioning prospective wives. In his search, one candidate particularly stands out, a lovely ex-ballerina dressed in white. The widower cannot believe his good fortune, until he starts looking more closely at his potential bride-to-be: her autobiographical details don't quite check out, she has a number of ugly scars on her legs, and he learns that people in her life have a habit of disappearing. When he discovers a man trussed up in her living room with his tongue and feet lopped off, he concludes that she is perhaps not the woman of his dreams. Audition was screened at the 1999 Vancouver Film Festival.~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide Starring: Ryo Ishibashi, Renji Ishibashi |
Ring
HOLY SHIT, as Batman would say, the original and the best, forget the Hollywood crap, this is how you make a horror movie. In this psychological horror story from Japan, a legend circulates among teenagers that if one watches a certain video at a certain time of the night, the telephone will ring right afterward, and one week later, you will die. When Masami (Hitomi Sato) tells her friend Imako this story, she scoffs -- but a week later, Imako dies in an auto accident. Imako's aunt, a television journalist named Reiko (Nanako Matsushima), hears that not long before she died, Imako was watching a strange video with her friends -- all of whom have turned up dead. Reiko tracks down a copy of the video, and as she watches its strange, spectral images, the telephone begins to ring....The next morning, Reiko begins a desperate search to solve the mystery of the video, convinced she has only seven days to live; assisting her is Ryuji (Hiroyuki Sanada), a mathematics expert and her former husband. Ringu was a box-office success in its native Japan, and a surprise blockbuster in Hong Kong, where it became the biggest grossing film of the first half of 1999.~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide. Starring: Sato Hitomi, Nanako Matsushima |
The Twilight Samurai
The more gentle side of Samurai movies. Veteran filmmaker Yoji Yamada -- who is perhaps most famous for cranking out most of the 48 films of the Tora-san series -- directs this good-natured drama set in the waning years of the Edo period (1600-1867). Seibei (Hiroyuki Sanada) is a low-level samurai struggling to get by on stipend of 50 rice bales a year while working as a clerk at the clan office. While his co-workers spend their evenings sucking down sake at the local pub, Seibei, whose wife has passed away, heads straight home to care for his two young daughters and doddering mother. One day, his friend Michinojo (Mitsuru Fukikoshi) tells him that his boyhood friend Tomoe (Rie Miyazawa), is leaving her thuggish husband and returning home. Tomoe soon starts to frequent Seibei's house, taking care of his daughters, while Seibei quietly falls in love with the attractive young lass. After defeating Tomoe's husband in a duel, armed with only a pointed stick, Seibei is asked by Michinojo if he wants to marry Tomoe. Seibei declines, too embarrassed by his poverty to accept. Later, as he prepares to perform the distasteful task of killing a fellow samurai, he learns that Tomoe is engaged to another man.~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide Starring: Min Tanaka, Keiko Kishi |
Azumi
Hell yeah, great Samurai movie and a gorgeous Japanese actress to boot, one of my fav's. Orphaned in 19th century war-torn Tokugawa Shogun period of Japan, Azumi is found and raised along with other orphans by Ji, the mentor. The Shogun, commission Ji to cultivate assassins to eliminate warlords before they can strike. Burdened with the cruel mission to kill friends and enemies alike, Azumi begins to question her fate. Starring: Hiroki Narimiya, Aya Ueto |
Ghost in the Shell
I was an animator for a while, we are so far behind the Japanese when it comes to innovation, this is how its done, great manga movie. In a futuristic world where cyberspace, artificial intelligences and cyborg cops are the norm, only the Ghost (the indefinable element of human consciousness) exists to determine who is alive and who is purely a creation of the Net. Major Motoko Kusanagi is an elite officer in the Shell Squad who has been so heavily modified that little more than her Ghost remains. She is assigned to finding a computer criminal who is skilled enough to hack into the minds of his victims, and she finds that he uses humans as puppets to do his evil deeds. Things soon take on a more sinister twist. The special edition box set features the original subtitled version of the film and a documentary into the making of the piece. Starring: Michael Sorich, Christopher Joyce TV
DareDevil What a great series on Netflix, this is how superhero dramas should be made, not your usual hollywood over produced stuff, but good film making. Starring: Charlie Cox, Deborah Ann Woll, Elden Henson, Toby Leonard Moore, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Bob Gunton, Ayelet Zurer, Rosario Dawson, Vincent D'Onofrio. Fringe
This has to be my all time favourite TV series, topping the X-files my now second favourite. What can I say, the story line in imaginative and complex, stick with it and you will be rewarded by one of the greatest TV shows ever. A television drama centred around a female FBI agent who is forced to work with an institutionalised scientist in order to rationalise a brewing storm of unexplained phenomena. Starring: Anna Torv, Joshua Jackson, John Noble, Jasika Nicole, Lance Reddick, Blair Brown, Michael Cerveris, Kirk Acevedo, Seth Gabel, Leonard Nimoy, Most Haunted Live 31.10.2015
Emmmm yeah I actually made it through the whole show, what a lot of bollocks, great acting by the cast, Carl should get an oscar for his award winning performance, the being dragged up the stairs bit was great (not). Now I don't believe in ghosts or things that go bump in the night. but I do like these sort of programs where all those in them seem to be a little unhinged, they really do believe that ghost exist. This year I run some courses on how to be an UFO investigator, (no I have not seen one, but I do believe we are not alone, but I also believe they are not here yet), the reason for the course if for those who just want to find out more from people how claim they have seen one, anyway, also at that college was a guy who was a professional ghost hunter, all the gear, and a big van to put it all in, when I asked him if he believed in ghosts he said "No", he just run ghost hunts as a living, he also told me that he had been asked to appear on Most Haunted but he refused when they told him he would be required to fake some activity, not surprising to me but there you go. The new series started a couple of weeks ago, I will not be watching. Jessica Jones
A new series on Netflix made by the sand the same people involved as in the Dare Devil series. A former superhero decides to reboot her life by becoming a private investigator. Comic novel given a good treatment, Well done Netflix. Blindspot
Great new series on Sky, staring Jaimie Alexander, WOW she is gorgeous and an inked perfect 10 body to boot, worth watching just to see her, however, its a good storyline with sub plots everywhere, some good acting and good photography. A woman is left naked inside a duffel bag on Times Square, completely covered in recent tattoos, among which is the name of FBI Special Agent Kurt Weller. She suffers from a drug-induced amnesia. At the FBI laboratory, they can neither identify her, nor does Kurt know her, making her a Jane Doe. They also find an older Navy SEAL tattoo that was covered up. Agent Carter
The first season takes place in 1946, with Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) having to balance the routine office work she does for the Strategic Scientific Reserve (SSR) in New York City with secretly assisting Howard Stark, who finds himself framed for supplying deadly weapons to the top bidder. Carter is assisted by Stark's butler, Edwin Jarvis, to find those responsible and dispose of the weapons. In the second season, Carter moves from New York City to Los Angeles to deal with the threats of the new atomic age in the aftermath of World War II, gaining new friends, a new home, and a potential new love interest. |