Haven't placed this order yet and it is a work in progress.

Which titles in this list are ones I should surely avoid and which ones are great and which ones are missing from my list that are about to come out or have just come out? I haven't ordered in a few months... here's the current list:

Killing End
La Brassiere
Dummy Mommy, Without a Baby
Love Me, Love Me Money
Record, The
Yamakasi
Stowaway
Calla
Harmonium In My Memory, The
Sino-Dutch War 1661
Extreme Challenge
Nightmares In Precinct 7
Beijing Rocks
Uzumaki
Bayside Shakedown
Gohatto
Kakashi
Ghost In Love
Glass Tears
Funeral March
Eternal Evil Of Asia, The
Failan
Bullets Of Love
Merry Go Round
Lover, The
Sharp Guns
Midnight Fly
Horror Hotline...Big Head Monster
St. John's Wort
City of Lost Souls, The
Space Travelers
Nang Nak
Ximp
990714.com
Nightmare

I've probably asked about a few of these before, but if you don't mind... Also - the last few are Japanese and Korean and there are some Korean and Japanese ones mixed in too - anyway - that's if you don't recognize the title as a Hong Kong film.

...Nang Nak is a Thai movie ( http://www.dvdrama.net/fiche.php3?1317 )... Yamakasi is a French movie (written/produced by Luc Besson, and a humongous critical and public flop in its home market) ( http://www.dvdfr.com/dvd/fiche.php3?id=4528 )...

...just thought you might want to know...

. . . . . .

Bayside Shakedown plays like a TV movie, which kinda makes sense because it is based on a TV series. Not the best movie that you will ever see but not the worst either. It was just OK.... I was expecting more since it made so much at the box-office in Japan... It is kinda a murder mystery thriller, without many thrills.

Trigger, out of curiosity - how many DVDs do you own? Hong Kong + other?

I've seen you list gigantic orders before and I'm just super curious.

-matt

-Bayside Shakedown- I thought it was good. Murder mystery with good dose of comedy.

-Space Travelers- (I'm assuming you got the non-animated one)
I just watched this on 12/26 3 guys go to rob a bank at closing time. They take employees hostage and get them to pretend be part of the criminals gang. They assume personae of characters from a TV Anime series. (hence the name of the movie). I thought it was a decent flick, very shallow, but it kept my attention. <truth be told, I ran across this when looking for other movies that Eri Fukatsu was in.-(and the answer is; Michelle Yeoh is still my girlfriend, especially after seeing Heroic Trio) It sounded interesting so I got it. btw- Eri Fukatsu is also in Bayside Shakedown which I saw before this.>

-Nang Nak- Been on my shelf for months, haven't watched it yet. Might watch it over New Year's holiday.

-Gohatto- on the shelf for about a month now, got it along with Gonin (which I only briefly started watching and need to finish). Both movies from Ocean Shores... if Gonin is any indicator, I'm not impressed with the dvd at all. (No menu) burned in subs, some white on white in the beginning, etc. Picture is adequate... maybe I'll watch Gohatto this weekend too.

Like to hear what you think of these too
Ones on your list I haven't seen but would like to hear about from you or others:
-Kakashi
-Failan
-Beijing Rocks

I generally don't like horror films. I watched Victim with Lau Ching Wan and had a hard time watching it, kind of spooky in parts. Kinda weird for me, I liked Se7en & The Crimson Rivers but maybe those aren't true horror films, I don't know... (Freddy Krueger and Hellraiser type stuff is a big no-no for me though).

Cheers, and Happy New Year to all not using the Chinese calendar. (Chinese New Year is Feb 12, 2002)

Cheers,
Gabe

Gohatto

Okay, I watched this last night... I was tired, and my cognitive abilities were waning towards the end of the film.
-That being said, I will refrain from putting much thought into a full-review until I can watch it again.

1. Yes, I liked the movie
2. At this point, I don't understand what happened at the end of the movie. (which is why I need to watch it again)
3. Yes, I'm biased. I like Takeshi Kitano. (solid acting all around in this one though)

I had no idea what this movie was about before starting it.(or forgot, since it was on the shelf a while). -Well, okay the cover had samurai pictorial type stuff on it
I don't want to mislead anyone not familiar with the story. It is excellent IMO, but quite possibly not to everyones' tastes.
Here's the story in 4 words or less:
Homosexuality in Samurai land.

(Sounds like a really bad movie when put that bluntly... ) I'd recommend reading the review at kfccinema or the dozen or so reviews at imdb.
You must pay attention to the movie or you will get lost!
There is a lot of dialogue at times, it's easy to miss a couple lines. There are a few misspellings, but the subs are good. Slow paced movie. Not an action movie, let's say Drama. Smallish pieces of comedy too...


Trailer, Extras, and Making of clips can be found here. (11 clips total)
But with French subs...

Cheers,
Gabe

Eternal Evil of Asia
I only have the VCD but watched it again today. I can't think of another Cat III film I've seen that throws so much into the mix: Ghosts, hexes, nudity, shower scene, rape, Thai bar girls, over the top splatter-gore, cannibalism, raunchy comedy from the women, moletai comedy from the men, wizard battles(a nude wirework sex scene reminiscent of Tsui Kam Kong in Chinese Torture Chamber story), Elvis himself turned into a d**khead (pic at http://brns.com/pages4/fantsy71.html), the very very lovely Ellen Chan, voodoo dolls, hallucinations, heavy metal music, wacky subtitle translations, seasick cam/zoom cam and on and on.

Took a few viewings to figure out what the hell was going on, but whew, this one is a wild ride and you get your money's worth. I may upgrade to DVD if the transfer is decent, tho the Brooklyn Bridge reviewer says its soft and the DVD has pixelization problems. Might deserve a place on the recommended list but could be a bit much for a newbie and a lot of the oldbies too. Cat III erotic horror fans should go for it!

Moral: Don't mess with a wizard's sister. You've been warned!

To add my comments...

failan
Good decent, original melodrama with a dose of punchups and violence. all of Cecilia's scenes are shot as flashbacks, and Choi Mik Sin is the main character, as we follow him returning to hs hometown to tend to the death of his pre arranged marriage to failan (Cecilia) who he has never known much before.
Well acted by all, and the direction is well suited to the story.
The disc is from Chinastar and comes in a pleasing anamorphic transfer, although not a great transfer (there is area for improvements), it's still head and shoulders above the vast majority of Hong Kong discs. Comes with Korean or Mandarin 5.1 with no other noteworthy extra apart from a nice menu screen.

Extreme Challenge
If you treat it as a cheap B-movie, it has its moments. Tung Wai could have however got rid of some camera effects and concentrated more on the fighting rather than slow mos, and stuff. The english on the whole is badly scripted, but for the price, people that get it won't feel to cheated. But people who have no intentions to get it needn't bother with the film.

Bayside shakedown
I highly enjoy. And the fact that the disc is a better effort from Ocean Shores helps. Shot in a high-concept Jerry Bruckheimer produced film fashion. The film is very much self contained and doesn't need references to the tv series to enjoy. Possibly some of the jokes may be quirky japanese style, but I didn't notice.

Funneral March
Definately one of my favourites of the year because I think I saw it more than 3 times in 2 days (soft lad?). A simple tear jerker that nearly got me klennex's out. One half of the Twins phenomenon (excuse to give a link of piccys ), Charlen Choi. The acting is good and an inoffensive cat I.
The transfer on the disc is pretty low on the typical Universe disc, but there are deleted scenes for the film which add to the film, but you can see why they were deleted.

Hey Trigger,

looks like you got every new DVD release in the last 2 months. I can only comment on the HK ones, I know nothing about the non-HK ones...

The best movie of the lot is Funeral March. Midnight Fly is also a decent movie but has a disturbing second half that makes this film more haunting rather than good IMO.

La Brassiere and Dummy Mommy Without a Baby are both very entertaining movies. Love Me Love My Money is somewhat entertaining, though pretty predictable and not quite in the same class as the other two movies.

Sharp Guns and Bullets of Love are decent movies, though Bullets of Love is more drama than action.

Glass Tears and Merry Go Round are two more teenage-type movies - there's been a big trend in these type of movies in the last year or so. Both are ok so I hear.

The Lover - is that the classic Tony Leung one, or some other?

I didn't see any of the others, so chances are they're probably not any good, unless someone tells me otherwise...

oh Failan I did see also, I made the mistake of watching it in Mandarin the first time because I have a general rule of not trying to watch a movie with subs the first time. I was wondering why Cecilia Cheung sounded so funny... Feels and sounds a lot better watching it in the original Korean version. Decent movie, what I would call a typical slow China movie, one of those movies that I could have easily seen Gong Li in instead of Cecilia.

You crack me up... Thanks for the advice on the ones you've seen. "If I didn't see it, it probably sucked" is probably fairly accurate, but it just sounds funny.

Anyway - Thanks everyone for the advice. Anyone else have any more comments? Anything I'm missing or anything I should just dump off the list?