IN THE SHADOW OF KILIMANJARO (1986)

[Update 06/28/2022: Need rewatch this film and redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

I've heard some negative shit about this movie, but I watched it last night and thought it was pretty decent and we got some good laughs out of it.. The story is about a small village in a secluded area in Kenya and during a drought 90,000 baboons (looks more like a few hundred) go on a rampage and start killing humans for food. Timothy Bottoms plays an animal reserve dude who kinda acts as the leader of a band of people who are trying to prevent the slaughter of the entire village.

Naturally, a bunch of random dorks (telephone line workers, some dude in a truck, random people walking) get killed and one even has his leg ripped off. Also, I noticed that the baboons seemed to really go for the tender face meat.

Even though I own this movie I doubt I'll ever watch it again. It wasn't bad, I was just hoping for something more. A few of the action scenes were well shot and pretty exciting, but the overall story is kinda boring and I never cared for any of the characters. The baboons were awesome though, especially the shots of them running in slow-motion.

OK amount of action, no nudity, a little blood splattered around. Worth a watch if you like killer animal movies.

RUNNING TURTLE (2009)

I enjoyed Yun-seok Kim's energetic performance in THE CHASER so I decided check out his follow-up film and kinda like his character in THE CHASER he's once again chasing down a criminal on his own.

Kim is a cop. Everybody calls him Officer Jo. He takes bribes, entraps criminals and he spends a lot of time illegally gambling. One day while trying to make some money while on a 3 month suspension he's out gambling at a bullfight and he wins big. Later that night he goes to collect his winnings when he has a run in with a fugitive criminal, Song Gitae. Jo sees this as an opportunity to get off of suspension so he confronts the dude and the dude beats the shit out of him, steals his money and handcuffs his arm to his leg. That's the fist battle is a growing personal war between the down and out Officer Jo and Song Gitae.

The story is nothing original, but I enjoyed the film especially the small humorous touches thrown in occasionally to remind the viewer not to take things too seriously. The funniest was when in an act of desperation Jo grabs the microphone from a vendor to publicly declare a hand-to-hand fight challenge to Song and the entire time he's yelling threats into the mic there this horribly shitty rock music in the background. Small touches like that I find really funny.

It's not a great movie, but I was entertained and once again I was really impressed with Kim Yun-seok's range of emotion. I'm looking forward to seeing his other films.

Definitely worth a rent.

The lighting on the main fight scene was too dark.

YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1967)

When I first started reviewing the James Bond series I was pretty excited, but after the first few bored the shit out of me I started losing interest. It's been nine months since my last review on the series and after painfully trudging through this installment it might be nine more before the next one.

Something strange is going on: every time Russia or America send a spaceship up another larger craft comes along and gobbles it up. Sounds like a job for James Bond!  He fakes his death and travels undercover to Japan where he quickly infiltrates a building and steals some documents that lead him to a dormant volcano that's actually the lair for a bad guy who's trying to start a war between Russia and America. Naturally, Bond doesn't take kindly to this silly horseshit and punches a lot of people until peace is restored. He also bangs a few sluts.

As usual, everything looks very easy for James and the bad guys are ridiculously stupid. One time Bond is dead asleep and a dude sneaks in the house, crawls up in the ceiling then lowers a string down to drip poison into Bond's mouth! Why?!!!! If Bond is right there asleep just toss in like 20 hand grenades or something! Or maybe blow up the entire house with missiles from your army of helicopters. Jeez. Another time Bond is tied to a chair and instead of killing him they untie him, put him in a plane and then parachute out leaving the plane in a dive.  Naturally Bond karate chops his way over to the controls and lands the plane. I guess I'm over thinking the whole thing, but the film would have been much more enjoyable if the villains were actually competent.

Lots of James bond-style action, a few attractive hot chicks (especially Akiko Wakabayashi), way too little screen time for Donald Pleasence, beautiful Japanese scenery, a pool full of piranhas but we never see them...just their bubbles, helicopter dogfight, ninjas. The highlight of the movie for me, besides Dr. Loomis, was a short appearance by the legendary Tetsuro Tanba.

I say skip it.

One and a half Thunderballs out of five.

Part 1 - Dr. No (1962)
Part 2 - From Russia With Love (1963)
Part 3 - Goldfinger (1964)
Part 4 - Thunderball (1965)
Part 6 - On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)
Part 7 - Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
Part 8 - Live and Let Die (1973)
Part 9 - The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
Part 10 - The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
Part 11 - Moonraker (1979)
Part 12 - For Your Eyes Only (1981)
Part 13 - Octopussy (1983)
Part 14 - A View to a Kill (1985)
Part 15 - The Living Daylights (1987)
Part 16 - License to Kill (1989)
Part 17 - GoldenEye (1995)
Part 18 - Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
Part 19 - The World Is Not Enough (1999)
Part 20 - Die Another Day (2002)
Part 21 - Casino Royale (2006)
Part 22 - Quantum of Solace (2008)
Part 23 - Skyfall (2012)
Part 24 - Spectre (2015)
Part 25 - No Time to Die (2021)

Non-Eon James Bond films:
Casino Royale (1967)
Never Say Never (1983)