Past few days has been catching the movies from the good old days on Netflix

Jaws:
watched it as a kid, now watched again with me kids
Now they are same like me last time, refused to go to their fav beach when I offered them

First Blood:
It's funny to see the young "Detective Horatio" without his one liner and his signature sun glasses
I actually appreciated the movie more when re-watching it with more matured mind
It's actually has very decent plot and flow compared to the rest of boom boom pow movies of that era.

Conan the Barbarian:
The violence, the nudity, and Arnie's weird accent make it one of a kind movie.

Taps:
One of Tom Cruise earliest movie, came with kinda Bollywood's standard of sound effects. Took me wifey few minutes to recognize her idol from younger days


Too bad currently none of the Dead Wish series or Chuck Norris's iconic movies are on netflix

This post has been edited by greyshadow: Apr 25 2016, 04:28 PM

Enemy Below
IMO one of the greatest naval war movie of all time
Rivalry between 2 captains from opposing force, battle of wits and lucks
and it sends a clear message at the end, there's no winner in war
everyone is a loser.

First Blood : Part II
John Rambo return with a more classic 80s boom boom pow!
It's only good as a watch and forget action flicks, unlike the first one which actually has more depth. Part II doesn't age well, especially the sound effects, really LOLed hard at the sound effects of the bow and machine guns

Well... luckily Kurt Russell turn down the role for Col Trautman, can't imagine a younger version of the Col as young as Rambo.
Anyway, Richard Crenna nailed the character spot on, which in turn heavily influenced Hideo Kojima in his creation of Metal Gear series

Commando (1985)
Had very good memory of watching it repeatedly on VHS when I was a kid
But it doesn't age well when re-watching it 30 years later
It only can be classified as B-movie by today's standard.
Arnie as usual is a man of few words, and just kill kill and kill
And the kiddo Alyssa Milano, how much she has grown now
The BGM IMO is actually cringe worthy bad, even by 80s standard
and as usual, all sound effects are 80s goofy standard as well, a pistol sounds like a canon
and the action sequence, oh my... so much ridiculous in it
Arnie has 100% hip fire accuracy!

Legend (1985)
Tom Cruise before his Top Gun fame, and before his plastic surgery for his set of perfect teeth.
Top notch extravaganza sets, even by today's standard. Fantastic makeups too, but whole film let down by poor editing and wooden actors
even the elve kid are a much better actor than Cruise

2001 : A Space Odyssey [1968]

A grand daddy of space sci-fi that many renown directors called it The Big Bang of sci-fi
A space opera filmed before the moon landing, before the CGI, and before most of us are born yet

I could write few pages of things about this movie, but I'll sum it to few words

Truly amazing even in today's standard!!
Amazing cinematography that many modern films can't even match!

Most of the future prediction were spot on!
video-conference? check!
flat screen computer display? check!
A.I. ala Siri/Cortana? check!
Tablets? check!

watching it gave me a goosebumps, thinking how possibly Kubrick and Clarke could predict the future so accurately.
or maybe today's inventions are mostly inspired by them? a paradox?

This post has been edited by greyshadow: Jun 27 2016, 11:34 AM

Highlander (1986)

There can be only One

True to the quote, all the Highlander spin-off/sequels are a failure

But this the original filmed in 80s MTV style doesn't age well 30 years later today

Watching it again last night gave me lots of LOL moments, ah... the good old days of cheesy action and dialog

Sword fights are bad in today's standard, sparks flying everywhere, as if those are light sabers
and doing back flips again & again during a duel is really funny in a way

A french as a scots, and a scot as an egyptian

but nontheless, it has become a cult classic, my fav movie during my childhood, too bad I didn't really enjoy it when rewatching it after so many years

Heavy Metal (1981)



Once upon a time in the 80s...
I saw this awesome video poster in my local VHS rental shop, which I frequent weekly with RM2 allowance from me mom for a weekly VHS rental.

Saw someone test the video quality for that tape before renting, WOW!! Conan/He-man like cartoon!!! I told the lady at the counter, I wanna rent this tape too, but no matter how I begged, requested, and wined, she still refused to rent that particular cartoon tape to me. I was puzzled why she won't rent me the cartoon, but no problem renting me those violent movies like Rambo & Commando, I remembered she said my mom will be very angry with me and her if I rent that tape home.
So eventually I've totally forgotten about it after they took down the poster, and the arrival of the era of VCDs.

Fast forward to today, arrival of VODs, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Videos
We are spoilt for choices, all the classic movies are available with a click.
Then I saw this on Netflix, awaken some buried memories from long long time ago
Clicked, and now I know why the counter lady refused to rent it to me so many years ago

Basically it's an compilation of adult oriented animation shorts, but all shared a common plot, which is the villain protagonist.

Speaking of adult orientated, the shorts are full of violence, nudity, sex and vulgarity, which are popular in the 80s.

Some shorts are done pretty well, and has become a cult classic, and the final shorts, Lady Taarna, oh boy!

This post has been edited by greyshadow: Apr 27 2017, 12:06 PM

we always fast forward the VHS after the end credits, sometimes if we were lucky we managed to catch part of the ending of other movies
and one time we got a shock of our life! a naked blonde showering with full frontal nudity!
and my parent were in front of the TV as well, and they quickly chase me away from the TV

This post has been edited by Mov_freak: Apr 27 2017, 08:09 PM

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior [1981]

A very very different movie compared to the first one, beside sharing the title as a sequel, and the main actor, the almost same car, the rest has almost nothing to do with the first one

But this is one of the few rare movies from those years that still can stand the test of time, still very enjoyable by today's standard, in fact, it's very similar to the modern Mad Max Fury Road, very similar setting, but with updated visuals.

The film does away with any of the rampant CG effects that was very popular during those days, all are real stunts with real cars, which makes most of the action scenes are enjoyable to watch.

Young Mel Gibson and the rest of the actors' performance also is great, a joy to watch

Now looking for the 3rd, Beyond Thunderdome, which almost all criticize it as the worst in the series, hope it's not as bad.

Mad Max : Beyond Thunderdome (1985)

Well, the previous Road Warrior is waaay too good, and free from the typical Hollywood influence of that time, and this sequel is a quite a disappointment.

The first arc is nicely done, the same old Max, in a richer post apocalyptic world, he just wanna get his car back, again. So he struck a deal with Aunty Tina, to fight in the arena call Thunderdome, but after the fight, it all goes down hill in the 2nd arc... and I was huh!??
Neverland doesn't quite fit in the whole plot, I actually fall asleep in the 2nd arc few times, and have to restart the whole part when I'm more sober
Then the final arc, that's where the real meat of the Mad Max series comes in, the road rampage!!! but just when I'm getting excited, one big crash, and it's the end, wtf?!

No doubt the production value of this movie is high, and it doesn't gets old by today's standard, when you rewatch it today in 2018, you can't hardly believe it was filmed 33 years ago!
But the obvious Hollywood influence with PG-13 rating makes it the worst of the trilogy.
I would rated Fury Road as the best, followed by Road Warrior, Mad Max, then this one Thunderdome.

This post has been edited by greyshadow: Jul 31 2018, 08:53 AM

Watch a bit of it last night, ah... the 90s
where you can smoke on plane, VHS tape flight movie, planning on the big cardboard map with big arrows, the public phone, the Usenet, zero mobile phones, and the cheeky slo-mo action scenes

This post has been edited by greyshadow: Aug 7 2018, 10:58 AM

The Quick & the Dead (1995)

Was hungry for some good old western after playing Red Dead Redemption 2, saw this on Netflix, watch it donkey years ago on LD, watch it because of Sharon Stone but was disappointed due to very minimal nude scenes, just a few nipple flash

Directed by Sam Raimi, starring megastars of today: Gene Hackman, Sharon Stone, young Russel Crowe, and even younger Leonado DiCaprio
I think it was trying to ride on the success of Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, which IMO is a masterpiece western.

Movie has lots of Sam Raimi's signature zoom in shot, which you'll only sees in B movies nowadays.
Few interesting but shallow characters, story wise nothing to shout about, ended with a few big booms typical of movies from those days, and with some of Raimi's signature comical death.

IMO, good western movies nowadays are hard to find, the recent Magnificent 7 reboot is meh, and I won't consider Quentin Tarantino's Hateful 8 as a real western, exception is his Django Unchained, which is real nice.

This post has been edited by greyshadow: Nov 28 2018, 11:31 AM