The first movie I watched deserves a pat on the back for some really awesome martial arts action but then deserves multiple kicks in the nuts for being a piece of shit in all other regards. THE FORBIDDEN KINGDOM. I'm not sure if this was supposed to be an insulting parody to martial arts movies of yesteryear in general or if it was just a shit movie. If it was just a parody, well you make a really convincing shit movie, guys.
The movie is really all about a staff. A staff which when returned to it's rightful owner, an immortal king of the monkeys who without his staff, turns into stone, will give the monkey the power to defeat evil and save the martial arts world. There are occasional sub narratives, but it's hard to really care about those.
It's probably best known for having Jet Li and Jackie Chan in the same movie. Jackie Chan playing a drunk, who failed to become a warrior scholar. He is also completely kick ass when using the Drunken Fist and helps teach the main character, some white American kid whose name escapes me, martial arts. Jet Li plays the supernatural and goofy Monkey King, he also plays a rather grumpy warrior monk who was created from one of the Monkey King's hairs. Monk and Scholar spend most of the movie unsuccessfully playing off each other in a sort of pseudo Goku and Vegeta homage. Their first fight, in the abandoned temple, is however, fucking badass.
What I didn't know however, until I started watching, is how awesome everything looks. Yes the wires are obvious and the martial arts has classic flamboyance but what's really great for me, was it was like watching a live action anime. With the crazy powers, the dramatic auras, the gravity defying attacks, the slashed shoulders and the powers of the main warriors, it reminded me a lot of the fighting in Kung Fu Hustle and you have no fucking idea how long I've waited to see another movie with animeesque fighting like Kung Fu Hustle had, it's a relief and made me enjoy the movie so much more.
But yeah, it was still shit. The pacing was pretty much non existent, the effects were pretty terrible (even if I loved the style), the acting was awful (but the choreography was very very good), the general writing was awful really and it was just in general a terrible movie. And the main American white kid is so fucking ugly, he put me off the movie.
But, if you are an anime fan, like I am then you might be, just like I was, craving for a live action movie that really captured the anime like battles you have watched and enjoyed so often. If Kung Fu Hustle wet your whistle for how well a live action movie can capture anime fights, then this movie may well become a rather tasty bridge until they make a decent Dragonball movie or perhaps...just maybe...the new Tekken movie actually turns out to be good (I doubt it though).
The second was the LOVEFiLM endorsed 'OPEN GRAVES', which was so bad, in basically every single regard (except Eliza Dushku, but where was the sex scene guys?) that this film really didn't deserve to exist.
Open Graves is in short, Jumanji meets Final Destination, sounds fucking awesome, yeah? Yeah, I know it does, which is why I watched this movie, despite the crap reception. But my God I was wrong, dead wrong.
Aside from there being more holes in this movie than a piece of cheese, incredibly terrible writing and acting all around and some fucking awful CGI...wait where was I going with this? Oh yeah, there is nothing good to say really, I guess...the story was on paper a good idea. I guess.
A several hundred year old board game, made out of a witch killed in the spanish inquisition, is played by seven people. If you die in the game, you die that way in real life, in the order of the game. The last person left standing is the winner, but not until he guesses which snake head to push his piece in and passes the game on. What does he win? One wish, his hearts desire (shown surprisingly awesome as a guy wishes for new legs, which literally burst and form out of his stumps).
What really lets this down is the deaths suck so hard. The best part of Final Destination was the disgustingly detailed death sequences, here we have people randomly wandering around possessed wood cutting tools before getting bitten to death by snakes because the card says so. With a bigger budget and much better pacing, with sharper writing, this movie could have been a cult favourite, no doubt.
The deaths do a decent enough job however to tie into what the game card says your character dies of without being too obvious but this often comes at the cost of being completely random. My haunted wood cutting tools is the perfect example of this, there is no reason as to why the tools keep turning on, as he doesn't get killed by any of them, he almost does, but is in the end killed by snakes which randomly fall out of the sky, like the card says. So then what was the point of him evading the 'haunted' tools in the first place then?
Everything else is rather standard fair, some mysterious half explained magic backstory to the game, a group of teens all fitting the set archetypes, some monsters, lots of death and a really shit ending.
Should you watch it? Hell no! This is almost as bad as the worst movie of all time, Kairo, watch something brilliant like 'The Fall' instead.
Think About It!
-Locke.
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