I'll try to keep my reviews mainly to lesser-known movies instead of mainstream stuff you can find reviews for anywhere. Of course you guys can do anything you want. I'm on an Asian kick recently so I'll try to do a bunch of those. Ok here's my first review.
Lady Snowblood (1973)
This is a classic Japanese chanbara, or swordplay movie. It also had one of the biggest influences on Kill Bill. The "woman's revenge" them came from this movie, and the character O-ren Ishii was directly based on Kashima Yuki. We see fountains of spraying blood every time someone gets stabbed. Of course, you could also argue that Tarantino got the spraying blood idea from the Lone Wolf and Cub series since they were made earlier. The movie is broken into chapters much like Kill Bill, and she also has a list of people she wants to kill. The theme song for this movie, "The Flower of Carnage" is also in Kill Bill.
A girl is orphaned at birth when her mother dies in a prison after delivering her. Her mother says "This is a child born for revenge. A child of the netherworlds." This seals her fate for life. She is raised by her mother's midwife and her husband, a priest, who trains her brutally in martial arts so she can take revenge on the people who murdered her father and raped her mother. The entire movie is devoted to her hunting down and killing them, and she is helped along by a writer who publishes her story in an attempt to lure the "bad guys" out of hiding.
It's easy to see why this movie became a classic. The acting is good, the music is good, and the action is spectacular. The story isn't incredibly complex, but it isn't meant to be. You watch this movie for the fighting and the spurting blood, and it delivers. The only thing I didn't like about the movie is that it was only 97 minutes.
The best edition to get is the one from
www.animeigo.com but you can also find this version in big stores like Virgin Megastore, specialty shops that have a big Asian movie section, or on Ebay. The AnimEigo team digitally remastered the movie, so it looks great and sounds great. The transfer is wonderful, you wouldn't think the movie was over 30 years old by looking at it. They've also added great subtitles and they even have some "subtitles" to explain some words and events that are mentioned that you may not know about. There are trailers for other movies that AnimEigo has presented, such as the Lone Wolf and Cub series, and Zatoichi.
Anyway, if you like violent movies, you'll like this. If you liked Kill Bill, you'll definitely like it. All in all it's just a good movie, and I highly recommend it.
) and Constantine. Not too bad if you're into that sort of thing. I know people tend to run down certain types of movies for various reasons but I like to go see them for my own entertainment not because someone said it was good.
