Recently Watched Films

"Bigger than Ben Hur" makes sense now. It's an epic story, but probably runs half an hour too long. The chariot race is incredible, as is the naval battle.

Supposedly the first American movie with a narrative. Being from 1903, it's out of copyright, so freely available on YouTube. And it's not very long, about 11 minutes the version I watched.

And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Satario (THIS LINK IS NSFW!)- thought to be the first hardcore porn movie, from 1907. Yeah, the naked human body hasn't changed much in 115 years. It's less than 5 minutes long, and has actual sexual content, so be warned.

Seen this before but not in good quality. Much improved experience all round this time. Great film with lots of fun swordplay. 

King Hu's epic three hour Wuxia film, A Touch of Zen. Also seen this before but again in poor quality. Still some instances of film damage that are regrettable, but this looks much better this time. I think I prefer Dragon Inn, but this is also excellent. Fun fact: Jackie Chan was an uncredited stuntman on the film. 

Equal parts absurd and brilliant, quirky and disturbing. 

Anime. More trippy and deep than anticipated. 

Fuck. Saw this as a teenager, and it stuck with me, particularly as that was a time when nuclear war was a distinct possibility. Really grim and powerful, and that power hasn't diminished over the years. There was an American film on the same subject in the same era called "The Day After" which is really feeble compared to this.

Stunning, if disturbing. It's as if the filmmaker was trying to one up Soviet classic Come and See. This kid goes through some serious shit (and the buried up to the neck to be pecked at by crows on the cover is far from the worst). It can not be called a nice film. It can be called a brilliant one though. It's as beautifully shot as it is harrowing and horrifying. It runs for almost three hours, but really doesn't feel like it. It's also the first film ever made in its language, Interslavic, and features an international cast including Udo Kier, Stellan Skarsgård & Harvey Keitel as people the boy meets along the way. 

I feel like this one has gone somewhat ignored so far, which is a same. I'm tempted to give this one 5/5 right off the bat, and I try to reserve that rating now for at least second viewings. 

I don't know what sort of weird shit I just watched here, but this is brilliant!

Final King Hu movie I picked up recently. This one's another epic, over three hours long but is in a different genre (RYM naturally puts it in the exact same genre as the other three I watched recently, which honestly kinda stinks of unintended racism - 'It's Chinese, must be a Wuxia' kind of thing). It's actually a ghost story blurring the lines between fantasy and horror. I'd put it in a similar style as the Japanese Kaidan films (something those geniuses over at RYM recently got disassociated with horror, ruining tagging on a number of important films). The film itself was very good with some great visuals but could sometimes be hard to follow and is probably my least favourite King Hu film so far. Still a solid 4/5 though.