Jeremy's Reviews Blog

Thursday, March 09, 2006

2 Short Movies reviews...

Double Vision

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0284066/

Some movies you are just completely glued to, they draw your entire attention. This is one of those movies. The plots starts off as a murder mystery, a man is killed in Taiwan under circumstances that seem almost supernatural. Basically, he freezes to death in his office in an office building, in the middle of summer. With the AC turned off.

Then another mysterious one happens, and a thrid, where a foreigner is killed, so an American FBI Agent (David Morse) specializing in serial killers is brought in to liason with a troubled foreign affairs officer, played by Tony Leung. The mystery is unraveled slowly, and you never know if it is indeed supernatural, or just very weird. Tony Leung is one of the best actors working today, and while David Morse generally plays supporting actors, he more than holds his own, his character bonding somewhat with Leung's because both of them are outsiders to the regular police.

Really good movie. Brooding, creepy, great cinematography. Some really creepy imagery. Some really unexpected twists that come out of nowhere, but they aren't twists per se, just things you don't expect.


House of Fury

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0435026/


This is a HK film, action-comedy. It's about a former spy, played by Anthony Wong, who works protecting identities of other spies. He likes to tell outlandish stories about his earlier days, which really tend to embaress his 2 children, one some guy (who is also apparently the director) and Gillian Chung.

Anyway, his past catches up with him, and he gets kidnapped. His kids realize that hey, he wasn't making those stories up. So they try to rescue him.

It's really funny in parts. It's pretty slick in terms of fight sequences and special effects and fades between scenes. In fact, while HK Cinema was perhaps behind Hollywood in that effects and slickness and such in the 80s & 90s, now they are perhaps ahead of it.

Another amusing thing, Michael Wong is in it but he still apparently can't speak Chinese, all his lines are in English. This movie works around that pretty well, as he plays an American.