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Golden Ninja Warrior (1986)
A look into the minds of the creators?
This film is just so... weird. Ever since accidentally buying "Ninja Terminator", I've become somewhat of a fan of Godfrey Ho, because his movies are just so mind blowingly terrible and disjointed they cause hilarity, albeit unintentionally.
According to a short little recap at the start of this film, Gold Ninja Warrior is either the sequel or prequel to "Ninja Terminator" (or maybe a retelling of the same story or anything, it's kinda hard to tell). However, the tale of the titular statue is completely lost in the tale of a sex slave, drug dealing, gun trading ring of gangsters being taken down by a ninja.
Unfortunately, unlike Ninja Terminator, the fight scenes in this film are just terrible. Not only that, but I'm fairly sure that there is actually more time dedicated on screen to watching helpless women being beaten up and raped than there is ninjas fighting. I might be wrong on that, but this film has the only graphic sex scene which I actually felt *wrong* after seeing.
Speaking of the rape scene (and you'll know it immediately), it doesn't even make sense. So a fat business man can rape a ninja? The woman had previously killed about 50 bajillion armed gangsters single handedly, and now she has a small length of rope around her wrists (her legs are fine), she can't fight off an overweight, middle aged, unarmed business man? No. Doesn't make sense.
As the one line summary above suggests, I believe that this film is actually a look into the minds of the creators of this film more than anything else. There is an unnecessarily large amount of time dedicated to seeing nude women being hit, which considering the summary on the back of my DVD box says "...the Red Ninjas intend to steal the statue and send their best Ninja heroine to draw out the Golden Ninjas leader, Max." seems just wrong. Also, none of that blurb actually happens. The only time the statue appears is in the recap of events in "Ninja Terminator" right at the start.
This film just plain sucks, even for a Godfrey Ho film (and he is involved, albeit uncredited, and I'm not 100% convinced that Joseph Lai isn't another pseudonym of him anyway). The fight scenes are just plain boring. The only guy in the film who looks like he has any training only appears for about 2 minutes and then gets lamely knocked over by the lead character. The plot makes no sense and randomly jumps about. The editing is terrible (people will jump off a wall dressed as a ninja and land dressed regularly, then 4 seconds later be a ninja again, and so on).
Go buy Ninja Terminator instead. That is an amusingly bad film with surprisingly good fight scenes (even if Jaguar One is a complete and utter dick for no reason), and doesn't feel you leaving dirty like this film does.
Little Man (2006)
Meh....
When I first saw the trailers for this film, I didn't think much of it. I've just got back from the cinema, where I saw the film, and I've got to admit it was an enjoyable film.
I don't know why, though. Most of the humour in this film revolves around slapstick violence, which is in itself mainly based around the fact that one of the instigators of the violence is tiny. This sounds horrible, I know it does, but it is actually not that bad (barring a few parts).
This film does, for example, have the only *good* "repeatedly being hit in the balls" gag I've seen. Ever. Lots of movies try it, but this one does it well, even though it's fairly obvious what's going to happen.
This film also has some of the most annoying performances I've seen. Ever. I have no idea what John Witherspoon was on during the filming of this, but I have the feeling it'd put half of Holland to sleep. I realise the character he's playing is supposed to be a bit crazy, but I quite honestly felt like throwing my shoe through the screen whenever he was on it. Kerry Washington also annoyed me at some points, but that was mostly due to her character's lines rather than how she delivered them.
Shawn Wayans puts on a surprisingly (for me, at least) good performance. He's believable, you like him, and he plays the whole thing very well (whereas I've already mentioned that some of the actors seem to think they're rehearsing a wedding or something, rather than making a movie).
The actual plot (a stolen diamond) is pretty much forgotten throughout most of the film. Once Marlon pretends to be the baby, until the very end of the movie, the diamond is pretty much a useless part of the plot (other than it's involved in a very annoying fart / crap joke, as well as a fairly amusing scene in which a group of mothers beat up a guy). But with this kind of comedy, you know you're not going to get much of a plot-heavy movie anyway, and that should be taken into consideration.
All in all, this is a decent film. It's not perfect, but I honestly have no idea why it's in the bottom 100. It's honestly not that bad. But if you don't like slapstick involving midgets, this film really isn't for you.
Dreamcatcher (2003)
Rushed...(may contain spoilers)
The great thing about Stephen King's writing is, in my opinion, the way he gets into the heads of the characters. You know exactly what the score is with each of them, unless he doesn't want you to of course. This is why it's so hard to transfer his books into a decent film. There just isn't enough time to go into the detail required to allow the characters make sense, or set up various plot elements and so on.
Everything in the whole movie feels rushed. Even some of the speech is spoken as fast as it possibly can be, leading to me having to rewind a little bit to try and catch what was said. Some things were obviously thrown together hastily to try and move the plot on (the real army just suddenly showing up to relieve Blue Boys operation, for example).
The film also falls into the trap of assuming everyone who is watching it has also read the book. In my case, and probably a lot of others, this is true, I have read the book, and that's what kept me watching (because after the first 30 minutes, I really just didn't want to carry on watching).
The acting is... passable. Certainly no fantastic acting, especially in a film where the characters expressions are a large part of the story, but it's not cringe worthy. Some of the scenes are also fantastically set up. The scene where Jonesy/Mr.Gray passes Henry on the snowmobile while Henry is hiding was almost exactly how I'd imagined it reading the book, and that wasn't the only scene like that.
Overall, the movie just feels rushed, as I've already mentioned. The scenes are too short, I never actually felt attached to any of the characters, as I did in the book (I actually cried reading the book, I felt more like laughing while watching the film).
The worst part for me was the ending. For those who have read the book but not seen the film, a short version of the ending would be "Duddits turns into an alien and saves the day". For those who haven't read the book or seen the film, a mentally handicapped guy turns into an alien and saves the day. It's just as bad if you haven't read the book as if you have.
Given a bigger budget, perhaps to hire some better actors (Morgan Freeman was good but he just felt way out place in his role, and his character wasn't developed anywhere near enough), or perhaps just to turn the film into a series of films or TV specials (as The Stand was) because the actors did their best with the lines given, I believe (and the lines weren't great, and as with the rest of the film, they came out rushed). The whole film just needed to be about 3-4 times longer to get the full experience of the book.
A good effort, but doesn't really do justice to the book, and if you haven't read the book the movie is just too hard to follow and incredibly confusing and dull. 5/10.
Five the Hard Way (1969)
**Contains Spoilers**
Since so many others have pointed out the bad points of this movie (and lets face it, there are loads), i'll try to pick out some of the better points.
The bad guy is *bad*. Too many films show you someone, and just tell you he's a bad guy without actually showing him doing anything worse than shouting at someone. In this movie, though, the bad guy (J.C) beats women, hits people needlessly, is quite obviously insane, shouts at people and shoots his own men for no real reason. Plus he kills two women, one for no reason other than she's the girlfriend of someone who annoyed him, and the other one because she stood up to him (it was his girlfriend).
In my opinion, Michael Pataki does a good job acting his part. Sure, he's the only real talent in the film, but he's there. He does give quite a strong performance as a completely mad, kill-happy nutcase.
Well.... that's it for the good points, really. The plot is bad, bad, bad. And it doesn't even make sense. For one, Rommel (main good guy) does not let his team use weapons against the guys he knows to be armed and insane enough to use them. What J.C actually does is never made quite clear, either. He seems to be a stunt-guy of some sort, who tours around. But his people follow him like brainwashed zombies, so he could be some sort of motorcycling priest for all we know.
The "Sidehacking" scenes go on for way too long. There is a mainstream sport that is basically "Sidehacking" but with race bikes on tarmac. These are dirt bikes, and it's very, very boring to watch. And there's plenty of it.
All in all, a pretty bad film, but still an interesting watch, especially with friends (so you can laugh).