Film therapy revisited

“The Ultimate Versus”
Excellent as expected (see two entries below). This one is not dubbed in English so a good portion of the hilarity is lost. However, the extended fight scenes were great. The epic fight lasted for what seemed like a quarter of the movie in the original. In the Ultimate version it seemed like it took up damn near half the movie. Very cool.

“Azumi” & “Azumi 2”
I wasn’t as impressed as I thought I’d be with these two. They were good movies, just not as full throttle as I was hoping for. On the plus side, part two picked up exactly where part one left off.

The two Takeshi Kitano films were a double disc.

“The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi” and “Sonatine”
Kitano’s Zatochi is a remake of the old Zatochi films of the 50’s and 60’s. I loved it! It was ‘blind guy (with a sword) brings on the pain in the form of hell and havoc in the name of justice, meets River Dance’. Throw in a cross dresser and some really impressive sword play and you’ve got yourself a rockin’ little film (I shit you not. Rent it, you‘ll see what I mean)! How much did I love it? I bought it! The second film Sonatine really was like a Japanese “Goodfellas” hanging out on the beach. Weird but fairly good.

All in all I’d have to say my film therapy was a success. Aside from working my ass off Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and five hours of training sessions scheduled for today- I feel better. More movies got tossed on Aza’s critiquing table this evening when I returned those watched and paid a substantial late fee.

Up next we have….

“Date Movie”
“Princess Blade”
Another Kitano film “Hana-Bi” or “Fireworks”
And “Kibakichi”