Too much crap, but I asked for it
Weekend on my own means raiding my crap movie list to the wee hours.
Frightmare (1972) - weak. Shows its age, meaning it was looked at as horror back then but to a modern eye it's just slow with a weak (expected) turn in the end.
Ip Man (2008 ) - had seen it before, just ff'd through to the fight scenes. Very good film overall, I think, in terms of showing China during the Japanese invasion, but more importantly the life and efforts of a great man of that era. Filmwise, good camera work, good fight scenes.
Ink (2009) - supposed to be a cross between matrix and something else, multiple levels of reality. But in the end, even with some interesting special effects, the film still feels like a budget film to a degree. Acting was ok, story was ok, but I wouldn't spend money on it and I'd be reluctant to suggest anyone spend time on it either. For an indie film, it has a strong voice among viewers, but not from me.
Faces of Schlock (2009) - Well, the title pretty well sums it up. Some nudity, to include a gratuitous shower scene for absolutely no reason other than having it in the film. The stories aren't great, and feel like a college course assignment. I can watch some pretty bad films, but this is down in the lower quartile. Avoid it if you can, unless you want bad 'horror' with some skin thrown in.
Dead Teenagers (2007) - There is a reason it is 3.9 on imdb, though I wouldn't be surprised if it continues to fall. Collection of short 'horror' stories, but all are so weak they don't even count as a story in and of themselves. Another case of a few badly written, horribly acted segments with nothing stitching them together really. Doesn't even have any nekkid to make it worth watching, just a bad movie over all.
Deadtime Stories v1 (2009) - George Romero's name is tied to it, and he hosts the in-between segments to a very poor imitation of the cryptkeeper, which is accurate in that the anthology is a poor imitation of others.
The Theatre of the Bizarre (20110 - Yes, I'm on a run of horror anthologies, and I'm getting what I'm asking for....but so far have even be disappointed with low expectations. This time, the production quality is a little better on these segments, but again we find ourselves short on story quality, and in some cases the acting. Though, I must admit the cast pulls in actually known actors for several roles, and is steps above the college actors we have in the previous films I've mentioned. This is better than the other three overall, but they presented a low bar. With that, I again can't really recommend this to anyone, even my B-move loving brethren.
Merantau (2009) - it compared to Tony Jaa's The Warrior King, as an up and coming martial arts actor takes the lead in a 'coming of age' film. In this case it is Iko Uwais bringing Silat Harimau, and while it has all the expected acting and backgrounds of a film from this region, it had some excellent fight scenes. A different style than I've seen used, and it was well choreographed through the different settings - not as 'grab anything, fight anywhere' as the original Jackie Chans, but with all the explosiveness of Tony Jaa. I did appreciate the film didn't try to develop a love story within it, or go to moralistic - it stuck to what it was trying to be, an action/fight film of a young man trying to do right in finding himself. There are a couple of bad actors, and you'll know them immediately, but that kind of lent humor to the scenes.
By the Will of Genghis Khan (2009). It appears to be a decent telling of the man's youth and journey to adulthood and through building his empire - the events that shaped him, the relationships he had. Filming is pretty good, actors are all believable, story moves at a good pace, but fight scenes are cheap even if they are on a decent scale. I probably would have liked it more had I not been watching a bootleg copy such that both English audio tracks were in fact Russian. I had the subtitles on, but watching Asian actors, dubbed in Russian, while I read the English....too hard to really get into it that way. Still I respect the story and cinematography.
