Alphabetical Movie – Kung Fu Hustle
Imagine this. With Kung-fu.
I enjoy Kung-Fu Hustle a lot but I’ve always faced a bit of a dilemma about the film because it wasn’t quite the film that I wanted it to be.
The film itself is a Kung-Fu film set in a world that could best be described as the Warner Brothers cartoon version of a Kung Fu movie. There is even a chase scene that would appear to be straight out of a Road Runner cartoon.
Yet the name of the film and the opening scene made it seem like what was about to be shown was a King Fu musical. Thing about that for a minute. A kung-fu musical. By Stephen Chow. If the concept doesn’t make you salivate, you need to educate yourself on Stephen Chow. Go and watch Shaolin Soccer.
Alphabetical Movie – Knight & Day
I know a few people who really hate Tom Cruise.
Not Tom Cruise as an actor in a movie, mind you. They just fucking hate Tom Cruise.
They hate him so much that they don’t ever want to watch a movie starring him, featuring him or possibly even associated with him. I think that they would avoid movies with the word “cruise” in them. That’s cool, I guess. Everyone has their own opinions.
Alphabetical Movie – It Happened One Night
You can’t really escape sexism in most movies but the older the movie, the more likely that the sexism will be overt. Just like the racism in classic films, though, everyone involved in making the films was oblivious to what they were doing.
Nobody was trying to be sexist. They just were. The fact that women weren’t actually delicate flowers who would faint at the slightest provocation didn’t change the fact that women in film were that way. Easiest way to facilitate the monster carrying his victim? Have her faint!
That isn’t really sexism, right? It’s just practical.
Alphabetical Movie – Innerspace
Every generation has at least one comedian who ends up being popular in films in spite of the fact that they are almost universally despised. Or so it would seem.
Take Martin Short, who stars in Innerspace. At the time the film came out, he was a fairly popular comedian and most of the people I knew could never figure out why. His spastic characters grew tiresome very quickly and while he had the likable nerd thing going on, Rick Moranis did it way better.
Alphabetical Movie – The Hurt Locker
Francois Truffaut famously said it is impossible to make an anti-war film.
His meaning, I think, was to suggest that any film about war – no matter the perspective of the filmmaker – ends up glorifying war to some degree. I see what he meant although I don’t agree with him. One needs only watch Paths of Glory to see a film about war that doesn’t glorify it in the slightest.
Grail Diary 