Chorus.Fm Weekly Movie Club • Page 14

We can. It confused people last time though. For the record, I'm just going off the list on the front page in order.

Tomorrow: @devenstonow
Next Monday: @I Am Mick (you can't pick Tenet)

 

I won’t even allow someone to joke that i would suggest such a boring piece of shit.

my pick might suck, but it’s not dull

 

Anyone rocking a Rockwell avatar ain't gonna pick anything that sucks

 

Transit was really good. Setting it in the modern day made it all the more chilling. As I was watching, I kept forgetting that this is an adaptation of a WW2 story because the use of modern-day tech and dress (especially for the police) just brought my mind to the rise of the far right across the globe today. It's a very simple directorial choice that goes a long way.

 

Also PSA for those who haven't watched it yet, don't accidentally click on Transit from 2012 starring Jim Caviezel. I caught my error quickly, but I have a feeling that would be a very different experience.

 

I was busy this week and didn’t catch up, my bad.

my original pick isn’t free anywhere anymore, so I’m making a last minute audible and going with the batshit 1983 wuxia masterpiece Duel to the Death. The Blu-ray dub is currently on YouTube (which I initially saw as a kid and enjoy for nostalgia reasons) but I’m sure you could track down a subtitled version.

 

@TSLROCKS is next Monday.

 

On Tubi as well, unfortunately the dubbed version too.

 

The Death of Mr Lazarescu/Transit. Love in hostile systems. In transit we see love entangling people trying to escape an extremely oppressive system designed to destroy them and in Mr Laz we see love try and save a man within a system originally designed to do that, but has since been corrupted.

 

We are getting near the end of the roster of users so we will start from the top again. I was thinking of making it a theme this time, like movies from the 90s or comedies or movies about the end of the world or movies about love triangles. Would this be more or less interesting?

 

I like that idea.

 

I liked the variety, i dont want to watch 20 comedies or 90s films in a row

 

I also like how varied the picks have been. We should try to encourage even more wild variations. Try to pick something that is the total opposite of the previous pick.

one week someone picks The Tree of Life, next week is The Greasy Strangler.

 

I’m for varied picks, too.

 

Yes, I’m all for variety and no restrictions on the user’s choice.

Duel to Death looks absolutely my sort of thing, so I’ve got a Cantonese download of that, which I’ll try and watch with my wife this week.

 

im sorry I haven’t been as active in this thread as I had hoped. Can you please skip me?

 

Sure, but you would have six days to pick a movie.

 

Duel to the death rules. Picked up the Blu-ray at the beginning of this year.

 

@michael_gatto will be next week and then we will start again from the top.

 

Have I been skipped here? I don’t think I’ve had a turn to select something, unless I’ve missed a notification or something.

 

I must have missed you when I made the roster. Your pick will be two weeks from yesterday.

 

Sweet. I'll find something good. Also sorry I'm fairly new in here so I don't mean to skip anyone

 

Watched Duel to the Death tonight.

When it comes to this period of Hong Kong martial arts cinema, I generally prefer the Jackie Chan / Sammo Hung style choreography to classic Wuxia stuff like this, but the fights here are mostly fantastic and ludicrous, full of flips and over the top wire work. The laws of physics emphatically do not exist in a film like this, which is great fun to watch.

There's not enough ninjas in classic Hong Kong kung fu films, and this seeks to correct that record single-handedly. There's a scene here where a monk comes upon a massive ninja, who then splits into half a dozen regular ninjas, who then explode into a cloud of purple smoke, revealing themselves to be nude women ninjas. Ninjas fly in on massive kites, float across forests, or use themselves as kamikaze weapons, basically we're never more than 5 minutes from ninjas turning up, and that's all the better for it.

It also contains one of the least plausible "woman dresses as a man in order to fight with the men" tropes in history.

Good, silly fun.

 

The last fight has moments where it's truly incomprehensible what's happening. They're flying in the air, jumping while flying in the air, jumping off their swords while flying in the air, doing flips and spinning around and you can't really even tell what's going on but you can tell it rules.

 

Duel to the Death was such as good time. The fight choreography is so ridiculous, filled with endless flips, using swords as leverage mid-air, and exploding ninjas. What's not to love?

I also found the cinematography to be beautiful. There are so many well-composed, beautifully lit shots. Based on everyone's posts, I was just expecting a fun, but silly martial arts movie, but there's actually a good amount to chew on here. The film takes aim at the wasteful idea of fighting for nationalism and blind notions of honor and does so pretty effectively.