15th overall wrote:Pacino62 wrote:As for 15th Overall. Blue Ruin was amazing. So well done for a little indie with no stars. Glad it's got some fans out there. Love revenge movies. Some of my favorites:
"I Saw the Devil"...Amazing
"The Vengeance Trilogy"...Not the Old Boy remake either. The original. Old Boy is far and away the best of the 3.
"Mother"..Not as violent as the others
"Moebius"...Be warned
I watch a lot of foreign movies and Korea, IMO, has the market cornered on revenge + crime movies. Seen all of those except Moebius, which I'll have to check out... never even bothered with the Old Boy remake as there was no way it could possibly hold up to the original.... also, F Spike Lee. Kind of fuzzy on the particulars of the "Sympathy for [X]" movies from the vengeance series at this point, but I remember thinking that Sympathy for Lady Vengeance was the worst of the bunch by a good margin, but the critics don't seem to agree.
"Amazing" is absolutely an accurate description of "I Saw the Devil." May be too crude for some, but it's a must watch for anyone that likes fast paced violent movies with a severely F'd up element. Never a dull moment.
Big fan of
"Mother" too, Joon Ho-Bong's got a few good ones. "
Memories of Murder" is excellent, I think I may like it better than
Mother, but both do a fantastic job of injecting humor into some pretty grim scenarios without it coming off as too corny. "The Host" is entertaining, but not anywhere near the same class as
Mother and
Memories of a Murder... wayy more Hollywood-ish. He recently did his first English-speaking film,
Snowpiercer (starring Chris Evans and Ed Harris), which I enjoyed more than I thought I would but it's absolutely wicked cheesy... a good movie to smoke a bowl to, but I don't think I'd ever seriously recommend it to anyone (especially if they don't blaze)--- somehow it got a 95% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is absurd.
Two other Korean crime movies worthy of your time are
The Yellow Sea and
The Chaser. Chaser's a bit over the top, while Yellow Sea's more serious.
If you liked, Blue Ruin, I'd recommend checking out the Argentinian movie,
The Aura. Not the same kind of story (although still crime-related), but I got a similar vibe from it, as far as the pace, build-up, etc.
I'm assuming you've seen the Indonesian movie,
The Raid: Redemption? If not, drop whatever your doing and go watch that isht right now. IMO, it's one of the greatest action movies of all time. The sequel was pretty disappointing, too chatty and political. They're coming out with a third one soon. If you like The Raid,
Merantau's worth checking out--- same director and lead actor (Iko Uwais), but with a much lower budget. Iko's a legit martial artist, so they all have A+ action scenes.
I've already written too much here, but I'm definitely interested in hearing some more foreign and indie recommendations from you (& others) at some point. TBH, I've been meaning to bring this up in the Boston Community Thread for months now.
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