It’s been a heavy film watching week, and this has been helped out by a four-day week here. Due to illness that is. Finding myself in bed trying to get up means screw this I’m watching movies today mentality and this is the results…

POLICE STORY (1985)

Jackie Chan is a cinematic treasure. I doubt he was the first, but he seems to be the first to truly blend kick-ass martial arts action with crazy physical comedy and it shows in this movie. Some of the sequences in this movie surpass any expectations I already had being a massive Chan fan and I can’t wait to see the sequel.

I GIVE IT A YEAR (2013)

Painful. Painful. Painful. The film had a couple of odd moments that worked but overall a boring mess of just not funny anti-romantic-comedy-ness.

THE ACT OF KILLING (2013)

One of the best documentaries of 2013 (if not the). If there ever was a film to assure that I never visit Indonesia it’s this one. Listen to the latest episode of TUMP where we discuss it.

STAND UP GUYS (2013)

A lot better than I imagined it’d be. While it definitely isn’t going to win any best of the year picks the cast is likeable enough to give it a pass. I loved Alan Arkin and Christopher Walken in the film and adored the cameo appearance by Vanessa Ferlito (better known as Butterfly from Death Proof).

THE HEAT (2013)

“In this, a Bullock film, they go against each other, they become kind of cool with each other, then they become super cool with one another, then they don’t, then they do…. then it ends. It’s kind of just like Miss Congeniality, The Proposal and Two Weeks Notice. Right? The question is whether the buddy cop duo works in enough laughs for us to stop thinking of the triteness of the story or characters. I’m not sure to be honest.” – Read my full review here.

STOKER (2013)

BRILLIANT!!! Amazing how Park Chan Wook was able to make such a weird meld of Psycho and Dexter into this great movie. It’s also super weird at times and drives me insane for liking it this much. May become a point of discussion further on this week.

REWATCHED

With not much happening an action double feature of Kick-Ass and The Raid: Redemption happened. While it amazes me what Kick-Ass did for satirizing comic book tropes, I’m even more amazed at how great an action film The Raid is. I almost was expecting The Raid not to hold up on repeat viewings, but it might’ve turned out better this time around for me.

This weekend I found myself sick and in from work which lead me into a need for some cheery fun films. I therefore turned to a double header of The Brothers Bloom and Dick Tracy. These are two films that I’m sure many more much smarter than I would figure how to tie into one another but they played so well. While nostalgia plays a big part in my love for Dick Tracy, The Brothers Bloom remains one of the best comedies of the last decade for me. It gets the characters right and knows where to hide its tricks to be seen for a deeper level of storytelling, which is something I’ve come to expect from Rian Johnson. Can we get a Penelope/Bang Bang spin-off? That’d be fun.

Also rewatched Star Wars IV: A New Hope, and further on this will come in a few weeks.

My count for the year of 2013 is updated to 122 First time watches (43 from 2013); 102 Rewatches; 224 Total Films