<Missing> ( 2008 )
Got this one as a mistake. Someone wanted to send me a Tsui Hark action fantasy film for Christmas that he saw a couple of years back and thought I would enjoy. But he couldn't remember the English title. So he got on the phone with a Chinese dealer of Hong Kong import DVDs and Blu-rays, who was not very good at speaking English, and described the film to him, and was told it was this one. When the disc came in the mail, just a few days before Christmas, he could tell by the box art and the English language film description on the back that it was not the right film. But it did have ghosts, so he gifted it to me anyway. It turns out the film he didn't know the title for was Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon, a film I already own.
<Missing> will not be remembered as one of Hark's best films. In fact, will probably not be remembered at all. It was just a potboiler made between Seven Swordsmen and the first Detective Dee film. A young couple fall in love, and make plans to scuba dive at the ruins of an ancient lost city that somehow ended up at the bottom of the sea. The film suddenly cuts to a few weeks later, and the girl is at the funeral of the boy, who was beheaded in a diving accident, which the girl has no memories of. The film then becomes a possible haunting story as the girl attempts to unblock her lost memories to learn what happened to the boy, and befriends a mental patient who claims he is able to see ghosts. The gimmick of this film is that for it's first two thirds it never makes clear if there are actually ghosts, or if the powerful drugs that both the mental patient and eventually the girl take are causing hallucinations. And then when it finally appears as if there was a happy conclusion to the film, it suddenly takes a twist that changes everything for it's final third. Their are twists that you don't see coming, and the plot does keep you guessing. But it just doesn't get that good. I guess it is worth watching if you are a Tsui Hark fan, but that is just about it.
Venom ( 2018 )
Why the hell does this film exist? When the MCU became a success, every studio who had film rights to superhero characters thought of making their own cinematic universes. 20th Century Fox had the best shot at doing this. They had the rights to the X-Men, who had enough characters and villains to spawn off into many solo films, and also the rights to the Fantastic Four and The Silver Surfer. But that all came crashing down as the Fantastic Four reboot they didn't need to make was terrible. It was around this time that Columbia Pictures, who owned the rights to Spiderman, announced they were spinning the franchise off into a cinematic universe, which would include Venom solo films and The Sinister Six. Of course, Columbia f%$ked up their chances at a cinematic universe by needlessly rebooting Spiderman, then finally giving Spiderman back to the MCU for another reboot. Had they stuck with the Raimi films then they could have come up with some BS plot device to resurrected Venom and Brock for a spin off ( as they did with Elektra ) and not need a new origin story. Once rebooted, they would need to also reboot the origin story. But the MCU was not interested in redoing the Venom origin...….yet. At some point they will adapt Secret Wars which is where Spiderman actually got his black costume from, which would later turn out to be Venom. So basically Venom could not be part of the MCU, and can not be part of any Spiderman cinematic universe. So instead we get an origin story without Spiderman, and no explanation as to why Venom looks and acts like Spiderman. But if Venom is not going to be part of any known cinematic universe, then why are Venom films being made? Columbia could have uses the resources to make more Spiderman MCU films, one every year instead of every three years.
Venom has everything a superhero film should. But for some reason just doesn't work. Probably because with Columbia's history of continuously rebooting the Spiderman franchise, and this movie not being tied into any known cinematic universe, you just don't feel like investing yourself into the origin of a film series that probably won't be around that long. Perhaps the oddest thing about this film is the two mid credit sequences at the end of the movie. One introduces Woody Harrelson as Carnage. What balls to assume there would be a sequel, and to pay Harrelson for a guest role. I mean, there will be a sequel. They already started filming it. But any other studio would have cancelled the sequel based on the critical response the first film got. The second mid-credit sequence was a cartoon, and takes place during Spiderman: Enter the Spiderverse. Wait a second! You can't do that! The films aren't connected! You may as well had a promo for Men in Black International or any other upcoming Columbia Pictures release.
Topic: What was the last movie you watched? (Read 1634516 times)
