6 stars

(범죄도시4
犯罪都市4
Beomjoedosi 4)

dir: Heo Myung-haeng

2024

Hopefully this has the dumbest title of the year until another Fast & the Furious film comes out. As far as I can tell (which isn’t very far) in Korean this flick is just called Crime City 4. This series has had a bunch of different names applied to it even as the numbering increases, so it has at times (outside of South Korea) been known as The Outlaws and also as The Roundup.

This is, therefore, the sequel to The Roundup: No Way Out, and was released, at least outside of South Korea, as The Roundup: Punishment.

I don’t know why the ludicrousness of this winds me up, but these titling issues are way more interesting than the flick, so maybe that’s why I just squandered all those words as an intro.

If you haven’t watched the earlier flicks, you are unlikely to watch this one or any future instalments based on this review, because it’s not going to be flattering or illuminating. And if you have watched the other ones, or are a fan of Korean films where the main character punches people hard enough to fling them into the 5th dimension, then you could, in theory, get some enjoyment out of this one.

When I watched the 3rd one, which, in my humble opinion, is the best one of the series thus far, I joked that these flicks are insane, and that one in particular, because it presents our hero Ma Seok-do (Ma Dong-seok), as a man who can solve every situation, criminal or otherwise, by punching people really fucking hard. And that it was a film constructed around this concept, such that the force of his punches acted as a kind of multi-tool skeleton key that could resolve any difficulty.

I feel kind of foolish for even having written or said that, because this flick acts as a complete antidote to that previous way of thinking. It’s almost like they actually read that critique and thought “good Lord he’s absolutely right, fellows, let’s rein our bullshit in next time”. I’m not so delusional that I actually think that’s the case, but I’m miffed a bit because this flick is so dull in comparison.

The culprits in the first flick were Chinese gangs. The second flick had Koreans terrorising Koreans on holiday in Vietnam. The third flick had Koreans and Japanese crims doing nefarious shit in Korea, and this fourth flick has Koreans doing crimes and unaliving people in the Philippines. Why the Philippines? Why not the Philippines, you racist?

I really don’t know, it’s not like they spend enough time there to make it worth their while or ours. It’s just a location. They could just as easily have used Werribee or Mt Druitt instead. This flick makes the mistake of thinking we, the audience, want more plot, more technical details and less punching. Or at least I think that’s what the thinking was. Apart from a bunch of people being murderised, most of the crimes that Seok-do and his team of detectives are pursuing have to do with online casinos which is probably about the most boring fucking thing I can imagine a crime / action film to be about.

dir: Alec Tibaldi

2024

So, quite often, because I’ve watched so many films, I often feel like I’ve watched a film before even when I’m seeing it for the first time.

That’s not the same as times when I’ve watched a film and forgotten it, only to watch it again down the track and realise “oh shit, I’ve already seen this.”

Such different circumstances. What I’m actually getting at is that so many screenwriters seem to be starting from exactly the same place.

In premise, and at least initially, this is pretty much the same set up as a Nicolas Cage film I watched a couple of weeks ago, called Arcadian. Except instead of a sweaty, concerned Nicolas Cage bringing up two boys after an apocalypse, we have a decidedly non-sweaty Ashley Judd bringing up two girls after an apocalypse.

Pretty much Ashley Judd is, therefore, playing Nicolas Cage.

In this version of that story, there are no monsters eating people with hyperactive hypermobile mouths, but there is a virus.

A virus, huh? Who could have thought of that?

In voiceover an aunty’s dulcet tones tells her charges of the world that existed before the virus, and of the idyllic place they now live at, one which protects and sustains them, far from the ruins of what looks like Seattle, in a forest.

dir: David Leitch

2024

If you’ve ever read any of my reviews, you would occasionally see me ask the question “who is this for” or “what is the intended audience for this flick?” Sometimes it’s rhetorical, because I can’t figure it out. Other times I’m making the statement to shame the filmmakers for pandering to a particular imagined section of society.

And if you haven’t read any of my reviews, you wouldn’t have noticed that, and you’re not reading this now, or ever, so, yes, I am talking to myself again.

Other times I ask myself the question while watching a film, and then I figure it out as a painful realisation dawns upon me.

Why you would be using fifty year old KISS songs on a soundtrack, why you would have multiple references to the Miami Vice tv show, why you would even resurrect a tv show from the 80s that this arises from, that starred Lee Majors, why you would then have visual and auditory call backs to The Six Million Dollar Man, which also starred Majors, why you would even be talking about the mechanics of filmmaking and the logistics of stuntwork, and then have an abundance of other references to the ancient times of yore?

And then it hit me, and I felt a deep, deep shame. The audience, imagined or otherwise, was me, specifically me, and other fat movie nerds of my exact vintage.

Much younger people than I, like, my kid’s age, don’t care about movies and don’t know, or get, any references earlier than the late 2000s. People older than me routinely yell “EH?” and cup their hand over one of their ears because they didn’t quite hear what you just said, or they didn’t understand most of the words you used in a sentence. You would say “it was a tv show in the 80s with Lee Majors”, and then they’d think you were talking about Lee Marvin, and start talking about how great he was in Cat Ballou and what a lovely singing voice he had in Paint Your Wagon.

dir: Adam Wingard

2024

I thought it would be “funny” to review Godzilla Minus One, a ‘serious’ throwback take on the genre that reviewers treated like it was Important and Meaningful, and then Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, which no-one thought was important and meaningful, but does have no Japanese people in it and giant creatures fighting each other which totally don’t exist as a metaphor about scientific hubris or humanity’s place in the universe or anything, for that matter

I set myself these pointless little tasks because it amuses me, and it just makes my life harder for no good reason, but I stick to my pointless and arbitrary tasks, because someone has to…

So having watched the Toho - Japanese retro version, I am now set to review the ‘American’ version, which is from the Chinese film production company Legendary Films.

They could not be more different. I am sure such statements shock and confound the reader. This has far more scenes of giant creatures trashing and thrashing each other, killing probably hundreds of thousands of people, but that’s not a big deal anymore? In this world that they’ve put together, which initially mimicked the progression of the Japanese monster flicks by having Godzilla fight more and more monsters, instead has conjured a world where, yes, many of these so called Titans exist, but there’s also this supra-government entity called Monarch that tries to control or nudge the Titans depending on what they’re doing.

You might think their main task would be saving people’s lives but that wouldn’t look as interesting on the big screen, I guess.

And I didn’t really mind, to be honest. These Godzilla versus or Kong times etc flicks have zero regard for human life except for whoever the filmmakers put forward as the representatives of humanity, because tonnes of faceless people die, since the major punch ups always happen in populated areas, but it’s accepted as like the cost of doing business.

If all you want is to watch CGI Godzilla fight CGI King Kong, and then CGI other giant creatures, why would you care about the humans at all? Humans are like puny ants at the feet of these gods.