that almost made me pass out from excitement
― christmas candy bar (al leong), Thursday, 14 March 2013 21:10 (eleven years ago) link
ikr?!?!?!?!
http://i.imgur.com/R7wolJw.png
ah ah ah ah *presses fast forward on my life*
― 乒乓, Thursday, 14 March 2013 21:11 (eleven years ago) link
YES
what a trailerwhat a trailer
― 凸凹凸凹凸凹凸 (c sharp major), Thursday, 14 March 2013 21:29 (eleven years ago) link
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?we_cat=11&art_id=133273&sid=39583973&con_type=1&d_str=20130429&fc=10
― 乒乓, Wednesday, 1 May 2013 12:25 (eleven years ago) link
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1225874/four-arrested-after-suspected-triad-member-hacked-death-outside
― 乒乓, Wednesday, 1 May 2013 12:27 (eleven years ago) link
watched cold war after someone convinced me it was the new johnnie to
need to start paying attn to this thread
― cocktail onion (fennel cartwright), Wednesday, 1 May 2013 14:07 (eleven years ago) link
cold war was tense but ultimately kind of meh i thought
― 乒乓, Wednesday, 1 May 2013 14:09 (eleven years ago) link
was kind of disappointed by drug war tbh
― max, Wednesday, 17 July 2013 10:46 (ten years ago) link
http://25.media.tumblr.com/ba8a3fd218d847e57b61b2992d8effe2/tumblr_mph4c2wbdK1ry4hn1o1_500.jpg
― 乒乓, Monday, 29 July 2013 02:11 (ten years ago) link
I've never been crazy about the genre, but Drug War is impressively bleak.
― Miss Arlington twirls for the Coal Heavers (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 14 August 2013 03:33 (ten years ago) link
have you seen 'election'?
― christmas candy bar (al leong), Wednesday, 14 August 2013 03:39 (ten years ago) link
I don't think I've seen any previous To.
― Miss Arlington twirls for the Coal Heavers (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 14 August 2013 03:48 (ten years ago) link
Drug War is really good; definitely in the "good" column of To stuff. (Though not quite at the Election/Election II level.)
― sean gramophone, Wednesday, 14 August 2013 04:35 (ten years ago) link
donotseeblinddetective
― socki (s1ocki), Wednesday, 14 August 2013 04:42 (ten years ago) link
he can't see you either!!!!
― christmas candy bar (al leong), Wednesday, 14 August 2013 04:56 (ten years ago) link
classic
― 乒乓, Wednesday, 14 August 2013 19:01 (ten years ago) link
you knew shit was gonna get serious when lam suet showed up
― 乒乓, Friday, 16 August 2013 22:55 (ten years ago) link
thought this was really well done... though had some flaws for sure. all the drug use in the film was kinda hilarious and OTT and reminiscent of that anti-marijuana PSA that ends with the kid turning the shotgun on himself. i guess you could even see the whole film as a PSA against drugs, i wonder how much pressure the mainland exerted on the production. nevertheless, really liked sun honglei in this - had a suitable gritty 'mainland' edge that you don't often see from hk actors.
― 乒乓, Friday, 16 August 2013 23:04 (ten years ago) link
drug was alright but it had a kinda inert ambience, there was a kind of dourness to it which reminded me of old french neo-noir films
― Amílcar Lopes da Costa Cabral (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Friday, 16 August 2013 23:10 (ten years ago) link
drug *war*
yeah i think it depends on how compelling you find the relationship between koo and sun
― 乒乓, Friday, 16 August 2013 23:11 (ten years ago) link
i wanted to mention, since it hasn't been mentioned before, that tony leung ka-fai was really, really excellent in 'election.' such a great old school charismatic villain performance.
― christmas candy bar (al leong), Friday, 16 August 2013 23:12 (ten years ago) link
idk how much of my reaction to this was about the general idiocy of 'drug wars', just when there are inklings that america and europe might be seeing the errors of their ways, china will continue the good fight
― Amílcar Lopes da Costa Cabral (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Friday, 16 August 2013 23:29 (ten years ago) link
what is the next best to thing after election
― Amílcar Lopes da Costa Cabral (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Friday, 16 August 2013 23:31 (ten years ago) link
the mission, exiled
― 乒乓, Friday, 16 August 2013 23:33 (ten years ago) link
election 2 is pretty sick (in more ways than one)
skip 'vengeance' imo
'breaking news' is solid. 'the big heat' is a nice superviolent late '80s relic.
― christmas candy bar (al leong), Friday, 16 August 2013 23:41 (ten years ago) link
to's movies are only as strong as the scripts, and oftentimes they end up very gimmicky
― 乒乓, Friday, 16 August 2013 23:42 (ten years ago) link
that said, he can often direct his way around a gimmick... if you can look past the silly memento-crib in vengeance, johnny hallyday turns in a really good performance
― 乒乓, Friday, 16 August 2013 23:43 (ten years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZU0bljAVlY
― christmas candy bar (al leong), Friday, 16 August 2013 23:44 (ten years ago) link
hallyday is really good. the movie feels like an 'exiled' retread aside from that imo. it might be the 'team of killers vs vicious simon yam' thing.
― christmas candy bar (al leong), Friday, 16 August 2013 23:45 (ten years ago) link
yeah... i'm not sure how i feel about to's emphasis on brotherly fraternity between contract killers. i mean, comes from a long tradition, but it often feels a bit hollow. it's a recurring theme in his movies for sure
― 乒乓, Friday, 16 August 2013 23:48 (ten years ago) link
i think 'the mission' is the strongest of his works in that mini-genre, maybe because it's such a stripped-down exercise in masterclass action directing and while it's violent, it's also a basically good-hearted film.
― christmas candy bar (al leong), Friday, 16 August 2013 23:50 (ten years ago) link
i love that the whole movie boils down to a bunch of charismatic actors biding their time in between gun battles in which they basically stand in one place shooting at people we don't see until the last ten minutes of the movie.
― christmas candy bar (al leong), Friday, 16 August 2013 23:51 (ten years ago) link
dig the balearic music in this scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnqIC3IU3j8
― christmas candy bar (al leong), Saturday, 17 August 2013 00:07 (ten years ago) link
Ok, yes definitely a spaghetti western in Far Eastern fair. But this movie sux. These are suppose to be professionals? They can shoot tin cans but they can't hit the guy standing next to them. And they empty their clips yet fire a dozen shots! I would say this is more a poor poor parody. That is the kindest thing I can say about it. It is just play silly without meaning to be. It's stupid is what it is. Slick & hip? You need to get out more often. If you are looking for something that you can sleep through, hey, this is your movie. Just turn down the volume.
― well if it isn't old 11 cameras simon (gbx), Saturday, 17 August 2013 00:10 (ten years ago) link
Slick & hip? You need to get out more often.
― well if it isn't old 11 cameras simon (gbx), Saturday, 17 August 2013 00:11 (ten years ago) link
there was this a few weeks ago:
http://www.film.com/movies/ranked-johnnie-to-films-from-worst-to-best
― Miss Arlington twirls for the Coal Heavers (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 17 August 2013 01:45 (ten years ago) link
a day out and i think i'm liking drug war better and better. there were a few missteps towards the end but i think they were necessary to set up koo for the finale. verdict: Very Good Movie
― 乒乓, Saturday, 17 August 2013 18:36 (ten years ago) link
i liked drug war!
― socki (s1ocki), Tuesday, 20 August 2013 03:53 (ten years ago) link
the "print" i saw was pretty shitty tho, felt like i was watching a bootleg bluray
i watched a blu-ray rip...looked pretty good. think it might have even been shot on 35mm??
film was set in tianjing i think, real sense of northern bleakness in the gray sky lightbox, unfinished roads, piles of concrete shingles on the side of the road.
― 乒乓, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 11:49 (ten years ago) link
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2165735/technical?ref_=tt_dt_spec
hel l yeah, keep 35mm alive
― 乒乓, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 11:53 (ten years ago) link
there's northern light and a bit of smoggy grimness but also lots of sleak cars and sense of emergent wealth, it looks more like moscow than some industrial backwater
the space is important, the vast disquieting emptiness around the climactic bloodbath which you wouldn't get so much in the hk films
― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 12:01 (ten years ago) link
yeah i wanted to write how his wide angle has a lot more space to breathe up north
― 乒乓, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 12:01 (ten years ago) link
i feel like i should be able to tell whether a film is on 35mm or digital but often i find it hard to tell without waiting for some minor celluloid glitch
― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 12:02 (ten years ago) link
but he has been pretty good at finding big expanses in hk/macau, the bale scene in vengeance was kind of lol but good
― 乒乓, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 12:02 (ten years ago) link
digital tends to look 'brighter' overall, and there's a kind of cleanness or gloss to it as well. biggest clue is in low lit scenes - with digital, unless the cinematographer has crushed the shadows to black, there's often tons of 'shadow detail' that's not there with film.
― 乒乓, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 12:03 (ten years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oZOMNeJjzQ
not only was this a terrible movie but the 'look' of it was so boring, and completely at odds with its early 1900s shanghai setting
― 乒乓, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 12:08 (ten years ago) link
has anyone been done anything interesting with low light digital since collateral? michael mann was raving at the time about that but i can't recall another film since which has captured halogen glow like that
inland empire did its own thing i suppose
― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 12:13 (ten years ago) link
miami vice is the other big movie that has great looking low light scenes
― 乒乓, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 12:17 (ten years ago) link
still great
― 龜, Saturday, 8 July 2017 03:31 (six years ago) link
is this the only Johnnie To thread? a few of his movies are on Canadian Netflix but it doesn't seem to be a great selection. I did watch Don't Go Breaking My Heart and found it handsomely shot but ruined by its utterly psychotic characters
― Simon H., Friday, 6 September 2019 19:59 (four years ago) link
revisiting drug war and it rules as much as I remembered
― intern at pelican brief consulting (Simon H.), Tuesday, 8 June 2021 23:58 (two years ago) link
Watched Trivisa - a Milkway production, not directed by To but it could as well have been. Crazy plot twists, cynicism, quirk. Whole thing's a pretty explicit metaphor for the Handover, kind of a farewell letter to the vanishing Hong Kong film industry. Film's super explicit about corruption amongst the mainland authorities - basically one of the gangsters tries to go semi-legit and gets frustrated by the fact that Chinese officials are less dependable and more demanding than previous authorities, who also had to be bribed but only once while these guys just keep pushing it again and again. Film's from 2016, perhaps they couldn't get away with portraying something like that now. Or perhaps they could, I won't fake deep knowledge of the Chinese censorship system.
― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 3 November 2021 09:58 (two years ago) link
It's on Shudder, for some weird reason.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2EuZ4bngqE
― MaresNest, Friday, 29 July 2022 17:51 (one year ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7UCUlcE0A0
― MaresNest, Tuesday, 22 November 2022 17:29 (one year ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zksKhwBZljY
― MaresNest, Friday, 23 June 2023 18:14 (ten months ago) link