DETROIT METAL CITY (2008)

[Update 02/21/2021: need to redo this entire review and fix the screenshots.]

I rented this solely because the cover looked cool and I like metal. I kinda figured it was going to be lame, but I ended up really enjoying myself. The "metal" I wouldn't consider true metal, but that's my only complaint. That and the fact that Rosa Kato didn't have a 666-second nude scene, but oh well.

The story is pretty funny: a dorky country boy moves to Tokyo and has dreams of singing really goofy love songs, but he accidentally ends up as the lead singer/ guitarist for a Satanic glam metal band called Detroit Metal City. He does it just to pay the bills, but then his worst nightmare comes true: they become famous! To make matters even worse, the girl that he's in love with hates DMC, so naturally this leads to all kinds of mistaken identity hijinks that were pretty goddamn funny. Including one where he has a concert right next door to where he's suppose to meet her for a date, so he ends up running back and forth between the two! There's also a surprisingly sweet moment concerning his mother that I thought really pushed the movie past being funny to actually having a soul and a good message.

The best part of the movie was Ken'ichi Matsuyama's performance. He had me giggling the entire movie. His nerd guy character was so fucking stupid and over the top that I couldn't stop laughing. But then his glam metal guy was completely different to the point that I kept forgetting that it was the nerd guy in makeup. Outstanding performance. I think that if anybody else had been in the role the entire movie would have just ended up stupid.

THE HIDDEN BLADE (2004)

[Update 02/21/2021: need to redo this entire review and fix the screenshots.]

A samurai lives with his elderly mother. They once had a servant girl that he secretly (even to himself?) loved, but she (at the beginning of the film) was married into a merchant family. Fast forward three years and his mother is dead and by chance the samurai bumps in the ex-servant girl in the market. She tries to put on a happy face, but you can see she's hurting inside. Months go by and he continues his day-to-day activities as a lower samurai, which includes learning modern Western weaponry, then while hanging out with his sister he overhears her talking about how the ex-servant girl has be mistreated by her family and sick for two months. Infuriated by this news he goes to her home and finds her suffering from malnutrition and neglected. He takes her home and nurses her back to health. This doesn't sit well with the higher ups, so when an childhood friend of the samurai is found to be secretly plotting against the shogunate our hero is ordered to go kill him.

Anyway, this movie's great, almost as good as THE TWILIGHT SAMURAI, but not quite. I think Hiroyuki Sanada's performance in that film was so perfect that it was impossible for Masatoshi Nagase to match it. Also, the samurai in TTS had two adorable daughter's that would have been orphaned if he died, so that really ratcheted up the tension. All said and done THE HIDDEN BLADE is a excellent film.

I'M A CYBORG, BUT THAT'S OK (2006)

[Update 01/05/2022: Need to redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

A young woman who secretly thinks that she's a cyborg is committed to a psychiatric hospital after she slits her wrist, inserts some wires and plugs the wires into a wall outlet. Once inside she meets a whole slew of bizarre people and...well, that's pretty much the entire movie.

IACBTOK is a good movie and it had some charming moments - my favorite being the rice eating scene - but it's way, way too long. It would have an magical short film, but there's nowhere near enough story to justify this being a full-length movie. Good movie with interesting visuals, but I expected more from Chan-wook Park.

Sorry for the short review, but there's really nothing more to say, besides: what's up with that ending?! What even happened?

BRONSON (2008)

You ever wondered what would happen if Mr. Bean gained a 100 lbs. of muscle and turned into a violent psychopath? Yea, me neither, but BRONSON answers the question anyway.

Human punching machine, Michael Peterson, who, later in life, would call himself Charles Bronson, is a punch-drunk loser who goes around punching everything while screaming "You cunts!!!". Eventually all that punching catches up to him and he's thrown in prison. In prison, he continues punching things until they get tired of his punching and send him to an insane asylum. Finally he runs out of stuff to punch so they let him go. As a free man he punches things like gypsies, humans and dogs for money. Naturally, "the Man" is jealous of Bronson's punching abilities so he's thrown back in prison where the guards continue the mind-boggling habit of allowing him to repeatedly take hostages. They also, for whatever reason, only confront him right in the punching region. You would think they would just tear gas him, but I guess it's more fun getting punched. The End.

You would hope a story about the "most violent prisoner in Britain" would be interesting, but I found the whole thing to be a mess. There was zero character development to this guy. He just ran around nonstop bashing shit like the caveman on Aqua Teen Hunger Force when he sees fire. Even worse is the fight scenes were all really short and completely unconvincing, by that, I mean tons of non-connecting punches and pulled punches. Also, there were times before the main character started calling himself Charlie that people were already calling him Charlie. I found that confusing. Overall, the entire thing looked very low-budget...I don't mind low-budget movies, but I do mind when movies look like shit because of it.

There was material here for a good film, but it didn't happen. The whole thing was weak and nowhere as violent as I had hoped it would be. Outside of the language and multiple shots of the dude's tallywacker, this movie could probably air on network TV. Also, I have absolutely no idea what the quote "A CLOCKWORK ORANGE for the 21 Century" on the poster means. That makes zero sense.

EDIT: Well, I guess I'm going to have to have to backpedal on my review a little. I just read some stuff on Wikipedia about the real life "Charles Bronson" (Michael Peterson) and he's taken hostages at least 6 times. So it appears that some of the stupid shit that happened in the movie actually happened in real life. It also said that he was released from prison not once, but twice! Brilliant!