Screening Log
This new site feature is a collective effort to summarize our viewing habits. Occasionally, you will find titles here that are coming to a theater near you, in addition to films viewed on television, and even films viewed in piecemeal. The screening log is archived each month; to view past entries select a month in the menu below.
October 2007 activity
Total Log Entries: 46
- Adam (12)
- Chet (0)
- Chiranjit (0)
- Cullen (0)
- David (0)
- Eva (2)
- Evan (0)
- Ian (18)
- Jenny (1)
- Katherine (0)
- Leo (1)
- Megan (1)
- Rumsey (7)
- Teddy (2)
- Thomas (2)
- Victoria (0)
Total Comments: 12
- The Werewolf vs. The Vampire Woman (0)
- Les Enfants Terribles (0)
- 3:10 To Yuma (0)
- The Kingdom (0)
- Orchestra Rehearsal (0)
- The Voice of the Moon (0)
- Ginger and Fred (0)
- No Country for Old Men (0)
- The Wicker Man (0)
- 28 Days Later (0)
- Braindead (0)
- Shaun of the Dead (0)
- Robyn Hitchcock: Sex, Food, Death… and Insects (0)
- Project Grizzly (0)
- The Host (0)
- My Super Ex-Girlfriend (0)
- Crazy Love (0)
- Freaks (0)
- Cat People (1)
- Toby Dammit (0)
- The Temptations of Doctor Antonio (0)
- A Marriage Agency (0)
- 4 (0)
- The Bridge (0)
- Severance (0)
- The Clowns (0)
- Amarcord (0)
- City of Women (0)
- Boys and Girls (0)
- Breaking and Entering (0)
- The Proposition (1)
- The Baron of Arizona (0)
- I Shot Jesse James (0)
- Little Miss Sunshine (0)
- No Country for Old Men (1)
- Avida (7)
- Dragon Wars (1)
- The Boss of it All (0)
- L’Iceberg (0)
- Lust, Caution (0)
- Bonnie And Clyde (0)
- The Alps (1)
- Eastern Promises (0)
- Zoo (0)
- Lenny (0)
- Klute (0)
Full Archive
Dragon Wars / D-War/Dragon Wars: D-War / South Korea/USA / 2007
I went in expecting a purely entertaining mess (a friend called this “junk food”) and I couldn’t even enjoy myself. This is awful on a level incomprehensible to most human beings. Writer-director Hyung-rae Shim has no command of his actors and spends 90 minutes stealing from Lord of the Rings, William Shakespeare, and Kung-Fu movies. (If your brain can conceive of such a combination without trying to claw its way out of your skull, you’ll have a good idea of what this film looks like.) The plot is inconsequential—this is a story built solely around special effects, some of which are surprisingly fun—and the dialogue is a mesh of grating one-liners. And Robert Forrester seems to have reached the end of a respectable career as the reincarnation of a 500-year-old master swordsman who manages an antiques shop in downtown Los Angeles. (Because, if you’re a 500-year-old spirit from feudal China trying to keep a low profile, antiques are the way to go.) It’s the kind of film that makes you wish Mystery Science Theatre 3000 was still around.
Sure, I suppose I don’t “get it”—I’m a stuffy adult at a party thrown solely for ten-year-olds. A square. But it says something when a film like Dragon Wars earns $40 million in its home country while native filmmakers like Ki-Duk Kim, one of the best directors working today, languish in obscurity. So you can have your sour, underdeveloped dragon films, as long as I can have my beautiful Kim operas.
by Adam Balz | Source: 35MM Theatrical Print
07 Oct 2007 12:12 AM | Comments (1)
Devin / 10 October 2007 / 2:09 PM / URL
The MST3K guys are still around, with their “RiffTrax” DVD commentaries. Hopefully, they’ll pick “Dragon Wars” as their next target.