March 21, 2026
★★★★★
Toshiro Mifune is a great actor (I've said it before and I'll say it again— he's also very handsome), and the plot of this movie is very fun and cool. There's schemes, there's sword action, there's a bloody fucked-up badass man taking a stand for justice. I like that it takes place right at the time that guns are being introduced (people describe this movie as being about the end of the samurai era, but since [HOVER HERE FOR SPOILERS] it seems to me like that's not necessarily the point of the movie) because we do get to see the spectacle of sword-versus-gun but the gunpower is not as oversaturated as in other action films— there's just one, and it's pretty little. When me and my friend saw this movie together, we thought the guy with the pistol kind of looked like Elvis Presley, and so we ended up forgetting his name and calling him "Gun Elvis." I definitely liked this movie a lot better than its later Western adaptation (1964's "A Fistful of Dollars"), which is also how I felt about "Seven Samurai" (1954) versus "The Magnificent Seven" (1960).
March 21, 2026
★★★☆☆
I went into this movie knowing only that it was about a con artist who plays ping pong. While that is more or less what the movie is about, it went to places I did not expect at all! Taking place in New York City (and other places) in the 1950s, it reminded me in many ways of my all-time favorite movie, "Jersey Boys" (2014)— but in this version, Tommy DeVito is the only member of the band. They use a lot of 80s pop music in the soundtrack, which was rather odd and I haven't figured out the reason for it. But in any case, the audacity of Marty in his words and actions, the things the people who love him let him get away with, and the unexpected turns of events (like the Holocaust-surviving ping-pong champ's honeybee story, and the whole side quest with the dog and rural sundown-town New Jersey) make this a very very memorable story! I liked it a lot more than I expected to.
March 20, 2026
★★★★☆
The acting was a little cheesy at times, but can I really complain? I was a little worried about getting jumpscared since it's a horror movie, but to my surprise there were few if any jumpscares at all! Which for me is great. I really liked this relatively unique distant future world (it reminds me in some ways of The Locked Tomb), the unexpected twists and turns of the plot, and the very human characters. Though in one sense I really hated it (I'm a weenie), I certainly APPRECIATE the horror of being trapped in a submarine, the fear of asphyxiating or possibly drowning, and the terrifying sense that you might not be alone in there... The x-ray images were very cool as well. I also really liked certain technical aspects of the film. It seemed to use a lot of very impressive practical effects. I really enjoyed being able to "feel" the textures of the fabric, the sweat, the grime, the machinery, the BLOOD! Finally, the most unexpected thing I loved about this movie was the transitions between shots. They did some very creative things in this area. One example is having the main character appear in two different places at once, to show that time is passing, like a montage but all at once. My favorite thing they did was the transition from an image of an "X" made of clear plastic tape, fading into a shot of a passageway with pipes along the walls (converging in the center, making the same "X" shape), where the reflective lines on the tape transform seamlessly into the light hitting the pipes. Both of these examples confused me at first, but once I understood what was going on I was very impressed and happy.
