Delayed Reaction: Enter the Dragon

Premise: A Shaolin master is recruited to infiltrate a martial arts tournament on a secluded island to expose a suspected crime lord.

I never had a Bruce Lee phase. Martial arts movies have never been my cup of tea. I have nothing against them. They just never appealed much to me. To my knowledge, Enter the Dragon is the first of these I've ever seen. That said, WMAC Masters should've run for longer than just one season.

Right away, it's clear that Bruce Lee was a force of nature. He brings so much intensity to everything. Even the way he talks looks like it would exhaust any other person. It's a shame he died so young, because it would've been fun to have him go through the phases like Arnold Schwarzenegger did. Would there be a Bruce Lee Twins equivalent? That would be fun.

This premise is delightfully looney. It obviously works backwards from the idea "Why would Bruce Lee need to fight someone?" Well, a martial arts tournament. OK. Up the stakes: It's run by a crime lord. But why don't they just send agents there? Of course, because it's on a secluded island where guns aren't allowed. Then you'd need to employ a Shaolin master for it.

I'm not desensitized enough to just go with it, but I can see the appeal.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Footlight Parade

Premise: A director puts together a trio of movie prologues to sell to a distributor.

One of my ongoing missions is to see every movie featured in The Great Movie Ride, formerly at Walt Disney World: my favorite attraction there until they replaced it recently. Footlight Parade is a special one because I never got to see that portion of the ride fully functional. All I ever saw was a stationary human waterfall they moved to B-mode after years of malfunctioning. Anyway, it's as good a reason as any to introduce myself to the Busby Berkley musicals.

No need to be delicate here. You can throw away the entire first half of the movie. James Cagney, Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler, and company are fine and all. It has some OK place setting. It established the different characters and relationships well enough. There are a few decent jokes. But no one is watching Footlight Parade for the talky first half. It's just filler. The movie comes alive when it gets to the three prologues. "Honeymoon Hotel" is an earworm that's so incredibly pleasant that I want to leave it on in the background as I work on anything. The synchronized swimming routines in "By the Waterfall" are mesmerizing. It's strange that that become a whole subgenre of movies for a while. It's such a specific idea that you'd think they'd quickly run out of ideas to include women swimming in formation, but it sure is impressive to watch. The "human waterfall” really is a showstopper too. "Shanghai Lil" was my least favorite of the three, yet even that is catchy and has a fine tap routine. Obviously, a lot in this movie hasn't aged well. "Shanghai Lil" is practically yellow-face, and I'm sure if I paid closer attention to the lyrics of "Honeymoon Hotel" I'd find some terribly antiquated lines in there. Assuming you can excuse that as a relic of that time period, those numbers are really grand. I'm a lot more curious to check out other Busby Berkeley musicals now.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Castle in the Sky

Premise: A young girl and boy try to protect a magic crystal from some military forces and also look for a fabled castle in, well, the sky.

These premises for Miyazaki movies will be the end of me. That guy is a master of world building. It doesn't feel like that much as I'm watching the movies, but attempting to explain them after the fact is daunting. I have to either describe it in such general terms that it sounds like nothing or I got fully down the rabbit hole trying to explain any part of it briefly.

I'm not crazy about steampunk in general, but it works quite well in this. It's hard to come away from any Miyazaki movie not impressed by the visuals. This feels like a big overall improvement from Nausicaa. The characters popped more. The action and soundtrack drew me in more. I can't help but wonder how a movie like this would've embedded in my psyche had I seen it when I was younger.

I wish I had more to say about Miyazaki's movie. They're just good. It's that enough?

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

Premise: In a post-apocalyptic world, a young princess gets caught up in a larger struggle to harness an ancient power.

I guess I'm out of excuses now. I've never made it a priority to catch up on all of Hayoa Miyazaki's movies. I used to have the excuse that they really weren't streaming anywhere, so I could take my time. Well, now they are all on HBO Max. It's time to get caught up.

Miyazaki's movies are sort of the populist movie nerd's anime*. He's made some of the biggest international hits ever. Even if you aren't that interested in Japanese animation, there's really no excuse to skip these.

*I don't know if anime is technically the right word, nor do I really care, since you know what I mean.

Nausicaa isn't technically Miyazaki's first feature, but no one of saying I need to track down Lupin the 3rd: Castle of Cagliostro. For all intents and purposes, this is where it begins for him. And you can tell. I've seen a few of his later movies (My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle). Nausicaa is a little light on that "Miyazaki magic". The characters don't pop quite as much. The visuals aren't quite a distinctive. Still good. Not quite as memorable. I think I prefer his movies set in a more contemporary time period. I like the contrast of Miyazaki's imagination with a more mundane world.

I'm not very well versed in anime. I'm sure there are better comparisons to make, but a lot of this movie sure reminded me of the Kingdom of Zeal portion of the game Chrono Trigger. Even the ohms remind me a lot of the Lavos spawn in that game. Maybe that's just me, and given the timeline of things, it's better to say that portion of Chrono Trigger reminds me of Nausicaa.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: One Child Nation

Premise: A documentary examining China's long running one child policy.

Is something wrong or just different? It's hard to tell sometimes. There was always something about the one child policy that didn't sound right when I heard about it growing up. Telling people how many children to have just sounded wrong. I never thought too much about it though. Cultural differences, right? There's a lot of stuff I hear about in other countries that sounds absurd. Hell, there's stuff that my neighbors do that sounds insane.

It's nice to have this documentary to confirm a lot of what I intuitively figured about this policy. It sucked and the number of intended and unintended consequences are staggering. This is a hard movie to get through at times. I've pretty much hit my quota of seeing fetuses in landfills now (not that that number was high to begin with). The stories of forced abortions, kidnappings, and abandonnings hare harrowing. Thankfully the movie is barely 90 minutes. And even that was a little hard to get through. In hindsight, I'm not sure how I've gotten through The Act of Killing twice.

I appreciate that this was made by someone who grew up in China. As much as I love Joshua Oppenheimer's work in Indonesia for The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence, it's less personal when an outsider is coming in to explore a topic. In Once Child Nation, Nanfu Wang literally interviews her family and hears very personal stories about how her family was affected by this policy. And I get the sense that she left a ton on the cutting room floor. This movie isn't for the faint, but it's good if you have the stomach for it.

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Sinister

Premise: A man investigating a gruesome crime at the house he moved into uncovers a supernatural explanation.

It's really hard to find good horror. There's plenty of great horror out there. It's just damn hard to distinguish a lot of the bad from the good going in. The genre is highly subject to personal taste. Since some people just don't care for being scared or get triggered by different things, pretty much any horror movie you'll find will have mixed reviews. I probably watch more mediocre horror than any other genre just because I can't tell going in if I'm at all likely to like it.

I didn't have any reason to expect much from Sinister. It didn't do that well when it came out. Reviews for it were mixed. Director and co-writer Scott Derrickson's history directing/writing/producing horror is pretty mixed. The only reasoning for it I had was "I might as well". Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the results.

Ethan Hawke is a big name, but this is the kind of role he disappears into easily. It's the frustrated academic role that he plays in half his movies these days. I like that the movie sneaks the supernatural aspects in as a trojan horse. It's there from the beginning, but when the movie starts it just seems to be about gruesome murders. The super 8 footage makes it feel tactile. Mr. Boogey is added in fits and spurts. They actually never fully explain what's going on with him. They could nearly write a version of the movie that never actually shows him if they wanted. I've never been a big fan of horror movie bad guys - my favorite one is a stationary mirror (Oculus) - so it's nice that Mr. Boogey didn't get the Freddy Kruger treatment.

After watching this, I found out that it was inspired by a dream that co-writer C. Robert Cargill had after watching The Ring. I'm glad to find that out, because I got a lot of Ring vibes from this with the super 8 footage and the chain letter logic of the murders.

It falls a little short of me really loving it though for a pretty simple reason: It didn't scare me. I like to carry a haunting idea or dreary mood with me afterwards. Mr. Boogey just didn't get under my skin. I appreciate that the movie didn't push hard for jump scares, but even the big payoff scare at the end didn't work. Maybe I'm forever chasing the high of Samara coming out TV screen. I almost wish the movie just ended with the daughter holding an axe behind Ethan Hawke or something.

Falling short on scares is a pretty big mark against a horror movie, but at least it did everything else well enough that it didn't get boring. It has some distinctive images. The cast is solid. The premise is intriguing. It doesn't over rely on people making the kind of stupid decisions that only people in horror movies make. It's a good time. Not sure I need to see that sequel though.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend