daan_de_geus Reviews

The Shaolin Temple (1982)

A must see for Jet Li fans

[9/10 · 21 April 2007]

This is a very cool movie, I loved every second of it. Jet Li, in his first film, displays some of his most brilliant fighting moves and skill. It's no wonder this flick made him a superstar and martial arts icon.

The acting is quite alright, though the plot, which really no one cares about, is actually quite interesting.

All of the fights were totally massive and stylish, the pace was excellent. The weapons fight between Jet and the main bad guy general dude is awesome. Jet moves unbelievably fast in this bout and they repeat this excellent performance in the final battle. Jet shows true skill, just like the rest of the cast here.

Gorgeous (1999)

Confusing fun.

[7/10 · 21 April 2007]

Confusing movie. It's a love story action and comedy in one piece, in a very Jackie way. I was looking at it and thought to myself, wow It's rocky meets notting hill Jackie Style. The fights with Brad Allen are cool and the rest of the fights are funny. The girl that's on Jackie's to do list is very cute! Also a nice performance by that guy that plays a gay, he's really popular and famous I think, but I forgot his name. The fights with Brad Allen (together with the brilliant comedy of the Henchmen) highlighted this movie for me. It seems that they used wires and sped it up a bit, but it's awesome none the less. Keep your eyes on Brad Allen's feet. His footwork is awesome!

Brother (I) (2000)

Great movie

[8/10 · 21 April 2007]

I just watched this movie 2 days ago. It's really cool. Beat Takeshi is awesome in it and so is Masaya Kato. Actually... All the actors are good in it, it's truly an amazing flick. The action is totally awesome as well, very short scenes, but very rough and messy. I personally found the story very intriguing, it's very interesting to see the Yakuza in a movie (although their views were possibly slightly altered) instead of reading about them in books. They're really gangsters, cool. This movie was so capturing and you could really feel for the characters.

Aniki (played by beat takeshi) really reminded me of my grandpa, in the way he acts, moves, talks and handles. Except my grandpa is not Japanese and... not a gangster either, well you get the point. (I do suspect him of cheating with games though) Anyways the movie rocks, all of you have probably seen it already, but if you haven't, check it out. Now.

Shooter (I) (2007)

Sneaky sniper-action saves this movie from mediocrity.

[7/10 · 21 April 2007]

I love sniper flicks and this one was pretty good. The sniping seemed dead-on to me, though the only thing I can compare it with are other sniper movies

The first part is a bit slow as they lay out most of the story. The story is kinda cliché and predictable, but not as hollow as one would fear. The movie really comes to live during the action scenes, sniping or just general shooting or fighting, it's good. What bugged me about the first part was that there were a lot of scenes of a weirdly grunting Marky Mark after getting some lead pumped into him. They kinda stretched that too long, just like the car chase.

Part 2 is grand. A lot of violent action. The more general action seemed a bit over the top, but the sniping once again ruled supreme. There are some nice plot twists but they'll only surprise you because the storytelling is so crappy (Which brings up the question if bad story telling can actually improve a mediocre script )

The acting in general was OK, not Mark's best but not awful either. He's believable though I felt like he kinda changed his southern accent thingy around a bit inconsistently. Danny Glover's lisp and messed up voice kinda annoyed me, same goes for the other old guys (Ned Beatty?) who seemed to just wheel in their performances. The guy playing the wheelchair bound military dude was good, I think he plays Gredenko on 24 so I kept waiting for someone to cut his arm off, but alas, no such luck.

If you like action movies you should definitely watch it.

Wag the Dog (1997)

Interesting.

[8/10 · 21 April 2007]

Very intriguing and fascinating movie. It's about how the US government tricks the entire nation and stuff like that. The president (apparently based on Bill 'Pimpdaddy' Clinton) is accused of sexual harassment. Naturally the best thing to do when that happens is declare war on some country no one really cares about or knows how to find. In this case the US go to war with Albania, which is all staged in a studio.

The acting performances by Robert deNiro and Dustin Hoffman were brilliant and really keep you tuned in. The film is made and acted so well that (although not a real lot happens), you just can't stop watching it. Interesting.

Iron Monkey (1993)

Awesome!

[9/10 · 21 April 2007]

The amazing Iron Monkey! This movie has a legendary status amongst martial arts fans, and for good reason!

Iron Monkey is the Chinese robin hood and he owns in this totally cool martial arts flick directed by Yuen Woo Ping. The action is super fast paced (again, it's like a Donnie Yen movie trademark) and filled with wires and unrealistic stuff like that. But Donnie and Rongguang excel and shows true ass kicking moves. T he story is not really special or anything, but it suffices and the acting is good. I think about 70 % of the movie consists of fight scenes, 25% dialogue and acting and 5% classic Chinese actors making funny face at the camera. If you like unrealistic and speedy martial arts flicks, then this is the movie for you.

Another Meltdown (1998)

Fails to live up to it's expectations

[5/10 · 21 April 2007]

Chiu is a Chinese agent that didn't obey orders and is sent to a former Soviet Republic (the made up Lavernia). In there, he fights with Mishima (who thinks he's the new Messiah) the leader of the Japanese Cult the Red Sun. The Lavernians start to hate all Asians. Chiu (Arthur Dong in this movie, although the cover says Yem Dong) is one of the Chinese Ambassadors bodyguards. He fights off all the token goons and bad guys and then goes head to head with Mishima, who's really a psychopath. The action itself is alright, although heavily wire aided and unrealistic, which is not really my favourite action style. The story though, is not all that bad, they actually seemed to have made a decent attempt, but it's just done quite poorly. The acting seems to be bad, but I can't be sure since it's dubbed (horrible, dubbing sucks). Tammy (Tammie) is dubbed really, really badly but she's an annoying character anyways so when she DIES (haha spoiler but you'll thank me later, cause you're gonna hate her for sure) you'll be glad, the woman just can't seem to stop screaming, moaning and yelling.

Iron Monkey 2 (1996)

Yugh...

[3/10 · 21 April 2007]

Well compared to the brilliant Iron Monkey 1... This sucks! Compared to most other martial arts movies... it still sucks! The movie is totally weird. They said on the cover Donnie Yen starred in it and Yuen Woo Ping directed it, but apparently Yuen Woo Ping had nothing to do with the entire project and Donnie is only there for a minute or 20. So basically we're dealing with some unknowns whose fights scenes are silly, are acting badly, portraying a story that is totally ridiculous and filled with plot holes so big you can run Eddie Murphy's repertoire of yo-mama jokes through it.

The only thing from keeping this movie from a 1 are the fight scenes where Donnie and Billy are in. Donnie fights a bunch of baddies hand to hand and with a rope dart, beating them all up in a fairly nice manner. The fight is cool, although sped up to an incredible extent. Donnie's fast, but not that fast. It's strange how he (or they) speed up all his fights that much. Then Billy and Donnie duke it out, the piéce de la résistance of the finale. Cool, but still so super fast and therefor less cool then it could have been.

Drunken Master II (1994)

One of Jackie's best!

[8/10 · 21 April 2007]

Awesome movie! totally awesome fights!

Ken Lo owned the **** out of this movie. His final fight against Jackie is awesome. Jackie plays WFH (the often portrayed Wong Fei Hung), a martial artist of great skill and also a drunken boxer. His father, also a master, dislikes Drunken boxing.

The plot of this movie isn't all that bad, but you watch it for the action anyways and there's plenty to go around and it's simply astounding!

It's a classical Jackie movie, with some silly moments and prop using during the fights, wicked stunts (some of which are (naturally) really dangerous) and brilliantly choreographed combat!

Sniper (1993)

A buddy sniper movie!

[5/10 · 21 April 2007]

I saw this already about 4 year ago, and liked it a lot better back then.

It's still quite an entertaining watch though, cause snipers are cool (and you know it!). The acting is lame however, Zane is terrible and Berenger doesn't do a lot better. It's like a buddy-sniper movie in the jungle. People die, there's a dispute between the snipers, the old trainee suddenly shows up, they talk about the emotions of killing and how it changes you. O yeah there's also some sniper action, not on a realistic level compared to other movies, but it's OK. It's really the kind of action movie you really love as a kid and later on still like, not because it's good, but because it makes you feel nostalgic.

Equilibrium (2002)

Nice Matrix-inspired SCI-FI Action

[8/10 · 21 April 2007]

Very cool movie.

Very stylish fightscenes and the story was intriguing as well. I liked it a lot.

The story is about the future, and emotion is forbidden. One day John Preston (Bale) forgets his medication against emotions and starts to feel.

The rest of the movie shows Preston discovering what emotions are like, causing awkward situations because he's a part of an elite-anti-terrorist-team that kills the terrorist that fight for the right to have emotions.

The plot is good with some (predictable) twists and the action is high paced, very unreal, but stylish and really cool to watch. Bale's performance was nice, both on the acting and the action side.

End of Days (1999)

Typical non-terminator Arnie.

[6/10 · 21 April 2007]

I'd seen this film already, but that was when it was just released back in 1999.

It was fun watching it again, and not just because Robin Tunney gets naked, though that did presumably play a huge part in some subconscious fashion.

It's not really an extraordinary movie, but an entertaining one to watch from the get-go.

Arnold plays a down on his luck and somewhat miserable guy who really misses his murdered family (this guy's family dies in half of his movies) and basically sleepwalks through life.

Arnold beats up the devil, shoots tons of people, things explode and other stuff gets beaten and there's lots of blood.

Your typical Arnold-is-not-playing-the-terminator-movie.