Found the whole CD and DVD set in a Half Price Books in south Austin a few weeks ago. I'd heard the album before and saw one or two songs from the live performance DVD which had been turned into music video singles at the time. But I think this may have been the first time I had seen the DVD all the way through. Seeing some of the way the album came together was pretty neat. Crazy to think this was now over 20 years ago. I don't know how often you get mash-ups with genres this different anymore. To be fair, I also only listen to so much current music these days, too. It's old well-known tracks from both Jay-Z and Linkin Park, and just reminds me that this was a Linkin Park from a pocket of time that I'm never gonna get back. This came out the same year I saw the band come through on their Meteora tour, at the Freeman Colosseum in San Antonio, Texas. Glad Linkin Park is still kickin', but man, Collision Course is truly from an era long gone. Glad to have found it just randomy lying around someplace, though. Now that I'm trying to build my CD collection back up after having lost most of my CDs in a car accident over ten years ago, I'm happy to put it next to the rest of my Linkin Park. I get the feeling I probably should have watched this movie at least 20 years ago. It's fine enough, I guess. But maybe I don't completely understand why it is that it has a huge cult following. The good news is, at no point in time did I ever feel like it was unreasonable to think that Elle could go to Harvard and be good enough to go to law school. The movie never for a second presents her as a student who just accidentally fell all the way up. They did a perfectly decent job making her look like somebody who dedicated enough time and effort to accomplishing her goal and learning that there were better things to work towards than just winning the affections of some dude. To that extent, I get it, and it's a perfectly decent and serviceable message to deliver in the movie. Past that, I guess it's just super corny. Some pacing and editing didn't really land with me, and maybe that's just thanks to the passage of time and the way movies now get made. Maybe I'm not surprised this turned into a stage musical. Actually, maybe it really shines as a musical (I don't know, I haven't seen the musical myself yet). I can really see where musical numbers possibly should have gone. Maybe it's so corny that musical numbers really serve to take it over the top. Anyway, uh, the movie's okay. I feel like somebody on the internet is going to eat me alive because I said it was only okay. This is somebody's favorite movie, and I know I've just broken your heart. I'm sorry. But I'm totally willing to try the musical next, though. I've also seen this listed in English as "Guns & Sunny-Side Up", which seems to be on at least one poster for this movie, but the result is the same either way. This movie is super difficult to watch outside of Japan. Copies of the DVD are mostly really expensive, since I guess they only ever made so many of them. This film and the director's second film just recently got added to Japanese streaming services, and it took me several tries to find the one streaming service that would let pay for a rental through a VPN just to get access to it. Like the one other review here on Letterboxd, I came to find it after watching the director's third film "A Samurai in Time" ("Samurai Time Slipper"). And also much like I had written about that film, I'm always just in awe to see people who are just working their day jobs and dreaming about making movies. It's an adult love letter to Kamen Rider, easily. Parts are imperfect. Lots of dialogue audio had to be recorded later, as I assume some shots weren't properly mic'd up, but that's also exactly how tokusatsu often works, especially in much older shows. There's moments where blood has been added into the movie in post, and they're just really obvious splatters layered on top of the movie, but like, it's fine. Watching a guy who doesn't know anything about fighting decide to become the hero his town needs and then start buying up a bunch of motorcycle armor to build some kind of a pieced-together superhero suit is incredible. I have watched people do this exact same thing in real life, and it left me crying laughing. Not everything in this movie is funny, though. I'm not thrilled that there is an assault scene featuring the lead female actor that goes on for as long as it does. It's not especially graphic, but it's still unsettling and discomforting. I think I'd have rated the movie higher if that hadn't been there. Regardless, this movie and the story of its director just trying to make movies in his spare time out of his own wallet is the kind of thing that makes me want to make movies again. I don't know a lot about what I'm doing, I gotta admit. But I empathize with people struggling in this world against what the trappings of capitalism force them to do, in order to do the thing they feel like they were actually meant to do. This writer and director really went out there and did it, and it speaks to the tokusatsu/Kamen Rider fan, so that's what makes me like it as much as it does. These words are brief and spoiler-free for Letterboxd, but I have a longer version on my website here: www.marzgurl.com/movie-review-a-samurai-in-time/ Wasn't sure what to think when a new Japanese acquaintance recommended this movie to me and couldn't stop singing its praises. Turns out it's just as great as he said it was. Though you do have to think about it from a Japanese cultural standpoint. Period drama TV shows were extremely popular in Japan, the way the cowboy western was in the US for a long span of time, and then also much like the western, its popularity dramatically dropped off. It's clear this movie's director loved these shows and also has great love for the stunt actors that have worked so hard in them. Just a huge love letter to a very specific genre of Japanese television whose time in the spotlight is now waning. Also super cute, with good comedic moments. I kinda like that we honestly never really figure out why the samurai time traveled in the first place, how the time travel works, and that he never figures out how to go back. It's clear the time travel was just barely even the point of the movie. There's a lot more to be said about pursuing things you love, and living for today, in order to best remember people whom you've lost in trying to achieve greater peace and prosperity. I'm super interested in watching the director's previous two films now. They're pretty hard to access in the west, but both have just recently gone up on Japanese streaming sites, so I may yet be able to weasel around and snag a copy from somewhere. I think a lot of people who follow me really like tokusatsu, so shows like these samurai period dramas are really kind of like next door neighbors, with similar filming and stunt techniques, and often created by the same studios. I think if you like tokusatsu, even if you don't really watch period drama shows, you'll probably understand the passion people have for the creation of those shows, and so you'll understand and appreciate this movie. Another recent rewatch. If you're a tokusatsu fan, you should watch this just for the sake of the history of the medium, but I can't say it's actually, like, good. It's not the worst thing ever made, and there's some pretty good stunts and pyrotechnics. But the story is pretty un-fleshed out. The android lady looks cool and all, and I like that her earring is actually functional and stuff. But, I mean, she's not even actually a cop? Sure, I think, like, she came from the cops trying to develop an android, but she wasn't actually part of the program, the police don't use her, and she just kinda shows up whenever. She also walks. She walks a lot. There's a lot of music playing while she walks to make you think things are happening when nothing is happening. Also, there's a guy with psychic powers, for some reason? He's not super well-explained. Why does the cartel have a guy with psychic powers on call? What is the psychic's motivation? What does HE want to do with his life? Dunno, lol, but the movie will show you his naked ass and hope that you just forget about anything else. Also, lots of shots with a lot of dialogue that were all filmed with a single take, which kinda makes me think they couldn't afford to do multiple takes or have multiple cameras. Still though, it is kinda unfortunate that Lady Battle Cop doesn't actually count as one of Toei's Metal Heroes. It's the violence, and the direct-to-video thing, I guess. But it does mean that no Metal Hero title exists with a female lead, when it so very almost did this one time. Earlier this year I rewatched Aoi Honoo (Blue Blazes), a live action TV series based on a manga, which is actually based on the manga author's real life experiences with a bunch of people at his art college in Osaka in the 1980s who would go on to become some of the most well-known animators of his generation. It was already a no-brainer to me to watch it the first time since it was directed by Yuichi Fukuda, who may very well be my favorite Japanese director at this point, given that I've enjoyed almost every single one of the TV shows he's had control of. His comedy is second to none. I don't always feel like it comes across the same in his films, though, so I can't say it's a 100% hit every time. But Blue Blazes does it for me for sure. Despite the fact that the main character (and I am assuming the real person the character is based on, who was the author) is kinda full of himself and turns everything into a competition when nobody else feels like they're in competition with him, there's something very real about him. Everybody has probably known a guy like him before. Watching him be told by everybody around him that everything he's doing is unreasonable, but still crashing out and insisting he's "winning" feels like some guy you probably went to school with at some point. And of course that feels real, because on some level, a lot of these events really did happen. Actually, seeing a sort of facsimile of how the creation of the famous Daikon III animation came to be, and how the early backbone of Gainax was slapped together, was really fascinating and even somewhat motivating. Watching people succeed and fail at their dreams really makes you want to pick up a project of your own and just start working on pursuing your dreams. As usual, Jiro Sato slays in the minor role he's given as a manga editor. Like he was told there are specific lines he needed to say, but then was given free reign to do any other character business he wanted in the middle of all of that. I mean, you could get me to watch just about anything if you told me Jiro Sato was in it somewhere. Worth your time if you like Yuichi Fukuda's comedic directing style, or if you just really want to see a comedic semi-non-fiction work about a small piece of manga and anime history. Just a lot of really fun and fascinating things all in one package. This past week my family and I watched both "The Fable" movies. As I wrote in my review about the first movie, I haven't read the manga or seen the anime these films are based on, but it's hardly necessary. In fact, I dare say this sequel is a huge step up from the first film. The action is far more intense. There's some crazy practical effects, wire work, and physical stunt action. The character of Fable himself is just really likable. With a mission not to kill anybody for a year (has it not been more than a year for this character yet? I don't know, who cares, the movie's still cool), he has to take out a bunch of bad guys without getting them killed. But I think one of my favorite moments was him knocking out a dude right in the front entrance way of an apartment, but laying his body down in such a way that his feet were still in the genkan (the part of the apartment where you take off and put on your shoes), meaning that even in a drastically hectic moment where dudes just kept coming at him, he was still polite enough to not want to get the apartment dirty with this random dude's filthy shoes. And he's just kinda like that the whole movie. I love his bird that he's been tasked with taking care of as well. Maybe I just love birds and wish I could keep a bird again. There were more recognizable actors this time around, too. Our main villain has played a decent sized face character role in two of the most recent Like a Dragon (Yakuza) games, so he stood out to me right away. And thank God they let Jiro Sato be more Jiro Sato in this. I'm glad we stuck it out to the second movie to just let him have more screen time to ad lib being a goofy dude. These movies are great. Gonna go find the anime now and see how that compares. It was sometime after the last Ant Man movie that I finally fell off of keeping up with Marvel films. I had been doing a pretty good job seeing all of them and all the streaming shows as soon as they came out. But in the last couple years, Marvel films have finally been much less of a priority to me. Regardless, it's not like I don't still find them fun when I eventually get around to them. I generally don't care about these characters, but in its own little bubble, I did in fact find it entertaining enough. Bob felt like a pretty real dude, actually. I feel like I know that guy in my real life, and I would definitely not want that guy to be given super powers. Either way, I'm not sorry I missed it, and didn't even feel like I missed a lot by not watching, what, I guess that last Captain America movie, and probably something else in the last year or two? It sat on its own just fine. Had a good time. You don't desperately need to see it in a theater or anything, but if you catch it on streaming, you'll probably have a pretty good time. I'd never read the manga this is based on, or watched the anime adaptation. But my whole family loves Jiro Sato, who is a minor character in this movie, so we wanted to watch it when we saw it while scrolling through Netflix. The lead actor actually, interestingly enough, kwas a member of the Japanese boy band V6, whom I had been familiar with for their performances in the intro songs for shows like Ultraman Tiga and Inuyasha. This is wildly far and away nothing like being in a boy band, and actually I think it's a pretty huge career step up. There are moments in this movie that are a little slow, and Jiro Sato's humor way deep buried in the background is completely underutilized. Regardless, the action in this story about a guy who is an assassin who has to spend one year not killing anybody is absolutely legit. Really good action film, and you wonder how it is that a guy can get through all this and not end up killing somebody even on accident. There's all kinds of other actors I recognized from other places, so it was neat to kinda point fingers and go, "Oh, wow, like three of you at least were in Aoi Honoo (Blue Blazes) somewhere." Really good acting. Kept me interested enough to go want to check out the sequel film. I'll probably end up writing about that one tomorrow, because man, these are really neat films. I'm definitely interested in checking out the manga and the anime now. Great film. Feels like I'm unqualified to critique it, but it's still great. The vampire trope is an old familiar one, but that's not really why you're watching the movie, right? Setting it in a backdrop of Jim Crow-era America in a deeply-segregated south, just watching people trying to survive, just watching people trying to make the most out of the life they've been given, even before you get to the part where you've introduced the vampires, is really what makes it so important. The fact that some of the vampires also happen to be white supremacists that get their shit kicked in is just the icing on the cake. And also watching the regular non-vampire white supremacists get their shit kicked in is pretty great, too. Michael B. Jordan probably didn't NEED to be both brothers, but the movie was good, so it didn't matter, and I ultimately didn't care. He's also a good actor, so it's fine, let him have a good time doing double time. The musical backdrop of it was also really inspired. I'd really consider picking up a soundtrack in the future. I'm not much for horror and thrillers, but it's just a solid movie, with or without that horror film element. Definitely worth your time.Letterboxd - Kaylyn Saucedo
Jay-Z and Linkin Park - Collision Course, 2004 - ★★★★
Legally Blonde, 2001 - ★★★
The Gun and Fried Egg, 2014 - ★★★★
A Samurai in Time, 2023 - ★★★★★
Lady Battle Cop, 1990 - ★★★½
Blue Blazes, 2014 - ★★★★★
THE FABLE: The Killer Who Doesn't Kill, 2021 - ★★★★★
Thunderbolts*, 2025 - ★★★★
The Fable, 2019 - ★★★★
Sinners, 2025 - ★★★★★
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