The Ghost of Yotsuya

The Ghost of Yotsuya (Tokaido Yotsuya Kaiden) (1959)

Runtime: 77 minutes

Directed by: Nobuo Nakagawa

Starring: Shigeru Amachi, Norkio Kitazawa, Katsuko Wakasugi, Shuntaro Emi, Ryuzaburo Nakamura

From: Shintoho

This is the 1959 movie The Ghost of Yotsuya from Shintoho based on an old kabuki play, not the 1959 Daiei movie of the same name based on the same play. You can see how this is confusing-even on the Eternal Family platform, they have the Daiei film but their page for the film credits the director of the Shintoto picture. I viewed this on the Criterion Channel-the other movie wasn’t selected as this has been seen far more and the ratings are a bit higher.

A ronin named Iemon (not Lemon like the citrus fruit!) murders the father of his wife Iwa so they can get married. A pal is unwittingly roped into the scheme; this results in more murders. The marriage isn’t a happy one despite the presence of a young child-Iwa passes away. She’s the titular ghost, looking for revenge. It does take awhile for the death then appearance of the apparition—however, this allows for the story and characters to be built up and it was all a delight, despite Iemon’s abhorrent behavior.

Given that director Nobuo Nakagawa went on to direct Jigoku the following year, the more gruesome than expected moments + the strong visual moments shouldn’t have caught me off-guard. As Iemon is quite the SOB who causes much havoc with his selfish decisions, the revenge was incredibly sweet-& the movie is less than 80 minutes in length. As there’s also some nice scenic outdoor scenes, this version of Yotsuya was a delight. It likely won’t be until far in the future but eventually I should view the Daiei film to compare & contrast.

 

Two Billion Hearts

This is a 1995 FIFA documentary concerning the 1994 World Cup: 

Who knew that since 1954, FIFA has produced a film of each World Cup? I was ignorant of this until a random Tweet noted this recently, while noting that at least in the United States, all of those movies were on FIFA+, which is on the DAZN platform along with the other sports this platform has. While June hasn’t been great overall, something nice is to have the World Cup games on in the background while I sometimes do other things or listen to other audio.

I usually don’t watch soccer (as us Dumb Americans call it) although I’ve gone to some games live in Orlando. I’ll give my thoughts on this current tournament at the end of the review. For a service that was free, I was quite happy that only one ad played before the film began, and never again.

It made sense to see the film of the 1994 tournament, a.k.a. the first time this extravaganza came to the United States. The presentation was largely what you’d expect: after an opening where Americans were ignorant of soccer-accurate; it was only a few years after this that Major League Soccer began & the sport was more niche here back then-various contenders were featured in a logical order which wasn’t always chronological but was never confusing. Backstories were provided for each team that added context. Aside from the audio dropping out for a few seconds and-mainly when changing reels-the footage looked ROUGH, otherwise the print quality was pretty good.

Sure, this wasn’t perfect. A tragic moment was after the tournament when Colombia’s Andres Escobar was murdered in his country, probably due to allowing an own goal against the United States—that was only briefly mentioned at the conclusion. I suppose fanaticism leading to a murder of a star player probably would be a downer for this sort of documentary… in addition, there’s plenty of dialogue in languages other than English which is never subtitled. Needless to say, I don’t speak any other languages (especially Swedish or Bulgarian) so there’s a decision that can be disagreed with.

Otherwise, a swell job was done in presenting the tournament to those unaware—from the stellar footage shots of the games to the fans both at home and watching in their home countries. The narration is from a familiar voice: Liev Schreiber. I don’t plan on checking out those other FIFA films even if others were narrated by two Bond actors (Brosnan, Connery) among other actors and one was directed by Michael Apted.

A nice story of the ’26 World Cup is how people from around the world have visited America and especially in the United States, have enjoyed the food, customs, people, and everything else. Look at that random German Twitter user Freddy-he and his mates went viral and now are treated like dignitaries to the point that they talked to NASA astronauts on the ISS and will soon meet Ella Langley! The decision to expand the field from 32 to 48 teams is one I don’t agree with… then again, the Spain vs. Cape Verde match is a great story & a casual like me has found the early stages of the tournament to be fun.

I don’t know how many reading this were even alive in ’94-let alone have interest in this era of soccer-but if you want to see footage of Romario and Roberto Baggio…

The Furious

The Furious (Huo Zhe Yan) (2025)

Runtime: 113 minutes

Directed by: Kenji Tanigaki

Starring: Miao Xae, Joe Taslam, Enyou Yang, Brian Le, Yayan Ruhian

From: In the United States, Lionsgate

Or: In this nightmare of a June 2026 for me-where even the browser that I use (Firefox) is now broken after today’s update-how an unnecessary 4th act can ruin a movie, especially one I’d been looking forward to.

In the 13 (!) years I’ve been here and the 4,001 films I’ve now reviewed (!!), this is only the third time I can recall marking a review as containing spoilers. However, I feel this is necessary to explain why Furious was a letdown for me. Recently, I heard great buzz elsewhere & even comparisons to The Raid. I love The Raid-the sequel, much less so. That had a bad story and absurd action that was just Too Much. Sadly, those are also my complaints with The Furious. I’ll explain in a review later this month why June has been so miserable, but even at the cineplex my luck has been rotten.

It's set in “a city in Southeast Asia”; why they couldn’t name Bangkok is beyond my comprehension. In any event, a mute Chinese badass has his young daughter kidnapped by child traffickers. Meanwhile, another badass has a missing wife-she was investigating said traffickers. They team up. Now, the action beats reminded me of modern pro wrestling—overly choreographed and becoming overkill. Unlike modern pro wrestling (which is just absolutely unwatchable, for the most part), most of the action here was quite delightful to view. Dudes Getting Wrecked (TM) was a lot of fun here.

Regrettably, the idea of a 4th at that has been prevalent in 21st century Hollywood and has hampered many a film reared its ugly head here. How our mute hero is so unstoppable he might as well join the Avengers or Justice League isn’t my preference yet I see the same thing in Indian movies and that’s not a deal-breaker. Unfortunately, there are others that are also unstoppable; there’s a villain that out of nowhere in the 4th act that suddenly slaughters all his bosses and is superhuman out of nowhere.

Things go down the toilet once the 3rd act ends w/ the climatic rescue of the children from the traffickers. Besides that villain suddenly becoming superhuman, we see the return of Hulking Brute superhuman. There’s a big brawl early in the 2nd act where we see Hulking Brute hold his own 1 on 2 against our humans, until his face is literally beaten into a bloody pulp; yes, that image of his face is fuzzy in the background yet is still obvious, especially on a cinema screen. Yet, the 4th act begins with Hulking Brute resurrecting… and his face is fine! That’s right, no damage aside from a scar or two!

I should have walked out of the movie at that point, no lie. From that point, everything in the 4th act was just stupid and overblown, full of poor ideas. Sure, some plot strands would have been left unresolved but the three acts that cinephiles would probably decry as “basic” would have been hunky-dory with me, several dumb moments aside. Instead, a sour taste was left in my mouth with those dumb superhuman villains; I know that no one else will agree but that’s my honest opinion. “Plot armor” is another giant 21st century movie problem that I wish would be banished.

It was nice seeing a reunion of Joe Taslim and Yayan Ruhian from The Raid, at least; however, IMO this film is not legendary like that was, a joyous theatrical experience. Shame about that 4th act… it’d be nice if June would stop being a nightmare for me, but hopefully the next film I review will be one where I am not so negative.

Guess What, I Loathed Backrooms As Well!

 This is Exhibit B in “Why most horror movies that cinephiles love made this century are massively overrated in my eyes.” If people didn't hate me after I said that Obsession was bad or my going Scorched Earth on the new Masters of the Universe, they sure will upon knowing I went Scorched Earth on this piss-yellow movie. Strap in, this'll be another long review.

In my dissertation of Obsession, I mentioned how that most horror cinephiles loved in the past 15 or so years have done nothing for me. Many examples were listed; two more that I recalled only days afterwards were a pair of horrendous remakes: Suspiria and The Evil Dead. Now, I did view the first Kane Parsons The Backrooms video from 2022... for the first time yesterday, a few hours before leaving to see this film! How that dude literally fell into that liminal space was stupid yet the vibes overall were creepy. I know there were many other videos after that; whether viewing those would have changed my opinion of this-probably not.

There's a cold open which wasn't bad; after that, I hated every decision that was made. Like with Obsession, the movie just failed on a fundamental level. I wasn't thrilled by the alcoholic loser dick that was our lead, or his (unintended?) off-putting conversations w/ his therapist. I know people will be APPALLED by this admission too, but this is my first Renate Reinsve movie—the presumption is that the weirdly bad performance she gave here isn't indicative of her talents and instead is the fault of the material/director, or perhaps even a language issue. It was a strange character w/ a half-assed “troubled past” backstory + both leads were given some rotten dialogue; many actors probably would have struggled. One day I'll check out a Joachim Trier picture where presumably I'll like her performance much more.

Let's see, I hated:

* How this only superficially felt like it was set in 1990.

* How they tried to give a backstory to this liminal space when the unknown concerning that was a big part of its appeal. Not one iota of that backstory worked and only reminded me of another overrated horror film made within the past 10 years which at least was better than Backrooms. Get this, it's all trauma and grief! What a new and exciting idea in modern horror...

* How I didn't give a damn about the lead as portrayed by Chiwetel Ejiofor. You can guess how I felt about his two young employees who constantly dropped F-bombs.

* How I didn't like Reinsve's character, but I probably made that plain already. It was impossible to give a damn about her inept therapist, that's for sure.

* How I was never scared! There's only a moment or two I found to be a tad bit creepy; that's it. The rest is random absurd crap that was supposed to be unnerving, soil your pants terrifying, nightmarish... boy, was it not. The vibes in the first short weren't even present.

* How the movie had no rhythm or pacing... at least good rhythm and pacing.

* How the movie treated its audience w/ utter contempt. There was a needless “look at the map” reminder as if the audience wouldn't remember that this map was established like a half hour earlier. Did they do that in case they were afraid that this boredom would be a cure for insomnia?

* How the movie turned into what I'll describe as “David Lynch if David Lynch had an IQ of 75... and was in the midst of a crack binge!” The worst sort of surreal, it was, along w/ pathetic and laughable.

* How some parents took their children (!) to this disaster! What made them think this was a good idea? Whether those parents were too cheap to hire a babysitter or the children watched those YouTube videos way too young, that is undetermined.

* How those same children started scrolling their phones! Normally this would be enraging. However, they were positioned where it wasn't too distracting.. .and I almost wish I could have joined them! Which reminds me:

* How boring the movie was overall.

* How Backrooms could have affected my mood for the other movie I saw at an AMC last night. That review is coming tomorrow and some won't like how that film ultimately disappointed me-was it because I was so ticked at how Backrooms wasted everyone's time?

* How Backrooms didn't even get a reaction from the crowd once everyone was put out of their misery and the end credits rolled. They couldn't have been stunned silent because they actually enjoyed and were moved by this poppycock! At least there was uproarious laughter after the ending of Undertone; I didn't agree with their derision yet at least it was a reaction I'll never forget. I was hoping for boos or yelling or couples arguing about its merits. Instead, there was nothing.

My giving a bottom-of-the-barrel rating is incredibly harsh, admittedly. The sound design had its moments and I can't fault the set & production design. Otherwise, the highlight for me was recognizing a song in the background as Reinsve went into a room and took presumably pills from a cabinet. It was Ulterior Motives! Much to my delight, the original 1985 song master tapes were found and is now on YouTube under “AOP 1985 Mix.” In short, a snippet of that tune was uploaded in 2021 by a guy who vanished as he did not want to admit it was from an EIGHTIES PORN known as Angels of Passion. The truth was only revealed about two years ago. Why it's in this movie, who knows... but RIP to one of the tune's creators-Philip Adrian Booth-who just passed away days ago. It was great that this catchy tune was found, that a copy of the song without “noises” is now available, and that about six months after this was ID'ed, so was The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet—which is another nice 80's ditty.

Apologies for the diversion, but that was far more enjoyable to elaborate upon than why this inexplicably popular (especially at the box office) motion picture absolutely failed for me. Heck, I would have enjoyed watching Angels of Passion for its plot and characters!

Maybe it is time to have an existential crisis. Why has June been so crummy in general? Why has the only theatrical new release in 2026 that I've raved over been Baz Luhrmann presenting great Elvis concert footage and drawing an awesome mixed crowd of people... or why the only theatrical movie seen in the past month or so that hasn't been a let down was the new Star Wars-and that's only because it met my expectations of being mediocre.

Honest, I gave both this and Obsession a chance to wow me like it did everyone else; are my tastes so bizarre now that so many modern pictures don't work on me at all? This must be the case, as awful as this is to admit. I guess I should choose better in regards to what I watch & review; this might mean “don't watch modern cinema for awhile.” “Avoiding anything released by A24” is probably a swell idea too, along w/ “please avoid movies from YouTubers.”

BMX Bandits

BMX Bandits (1983)

Runtime: 90 minutes

Directed by: Brian Trenchard-Smith

Starring: James Lugton, Angelo D'Angelo (yes, that's his name), Nicole Kidman (!), David Argue, John Ley

From: Nilsen Premiere

Yes, I wanted to see another movie w/ Nicole Kidman. Even now, only a few of her pictures have been peeped by me; this is not due to any sexist reasons. Rather, that is an oversight on my part. As this is part of my collection (nevermind the details how!), last night seemed the best time to check out something Ozploitation.

After an opening where a well-organized heist is done at a bank-involving a van being driven through the front window of the bank-two of the henchmen involved with the heist are total buffoons. They are tasked with retrieving special walkie-talkies crucial to an upcoming huge score. Much to their dismay, a pair of young teenage boys named Goose and P.J. found it first, and sold those devices to fund bike repairs. They have a Meet Cute w/ Kidman’s character Judy at the supermarket. Soon, the clown henchmen are after our lovable trio.

The movie’s on the juvenile side and the heroes are greatly aided by how dumb their foes usually are. No kidding, one of the heels goes “Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk, nyuk!” as if he’s Curly Howard. At the same time, sometimes the film does have an edge even after its opening. A long segment is spent on the run at night in a cemetery. More than twice as long is a rather extensive chase where they on bikes are usually dodging a 70’s Ford Galaxie-a large sedan-and cause wanton destruction in a number of locations, including unexpected ones like a waterpark. 

Brian Trenchard-Smith’s movies are quite the mixed bag once he left Australia. However, in his home country the one’s I’ve checked out have all been at least solid. If I-a child of the 80’s & 90’s-had experienced BMX Bandits my rating now would be higher as viewing young teenagers outwit stupid adults via silly methods would have tickled me pink. That said, even as a jaded adult I can appreciate the action beats, some funny dialogue that did make me laugh, the 80’s soundtrack (the random Aussie pop of the period they used, on the other hand…) and how charming the seaside town of Manly, New South Wales appeared. The cinematography was from future Oscar winner John Seale, who later did everything from Dead Poet’s Society and Fury Road to The Hitcher and The English Patient.

For those curious, the lead triple weren’t a THROUPLE, as the kids would say. All were just pals-only one scene had Goose express an attraction towards Judy, which wasn’t reciprocated. Thus, she wasn’t able to say that heartbreak felt good in a place like Manly, New South Wales…

Days of Thunder

Days of Thunder (1990)

Runtime: 107 minutes

Directed by: Tony Scott

Starring: Tom Cruise, Robert Duvall, Nicole Kidman, Michael Rooker, Randy Quaid

From: Paramount

Half paying attention to the World Cup match last night between the United States and Paraguay-where Paraguay got its ass kicked!-was the main inspiration for me to see a Tom Cruise film; he was there at the match in the Los Angeles suburbs, sitting next to David Beckham and his wife. No comment on Beckham or his wife!

My reason for selecting Day of Thunder: recently, elsewhere there was discussion over the blatant homage to Top Gun in The Mandalorian & Grogu. Unfortunately, it wasn't until after Tony Scott passed away that I better appreciated his talents. That's even on a troubled production like this, where Don Simpson & Jerry Bruckheimer were out of control, spending millions of dollars frivolously & partying all the time like they were Eddie Murphy.

The plot itself: standard sports story where Cruise (named COLE TRICKLE as there was once a driver in the sport named DICK TRICKLE, no lie) is a hotshot racer in another level of auto racing who wishes to join NASCAR. There are rivals, a crew chief who is the source of occasional friction, a team owner responsible for more friction, a love interest, crashes, some laughs, an amusing freeze-frame ending... what is an asset is that according to Wiki, several incidents in the film actually occurred w/ real-life NASCAR drivers, as many characters were based on figures in the sport. Thankfully, Trickle wasn't an unstoppable hero; rather, he had many flaws.

Additional assets included appearances from those involved w/ the sport (including driver turned announcer Ned Jarrett, who just passed on the 4th of this month), races filmed well, entertaining characters, a great cast full of familiar faces, and the thankful decision to have Nicole Kidman be more than just a love interest by her delivering a fiery promo over how dumb Cruise was as a macho man who believed he could control fate, especially in an auto race with “other infantile egomaniacs.” In addition, there's a nice score from a young Hans Zimmer, collaborating w/ the forever-underrated Jeff Beck.

Days of Thunder is silly yet especially now, I appreciate a big motion picture that doesn't wink at the camera and takes the subject matter seriously. While I don't watch NASCAR, some races were viewed when I was a kid in the 80's and 90's. As the movie accurately portrayed, it was still a Southern phenomenon, thus hotshot Cruise from California would ruffle feathers, and I'm sure there were teams that drank moonshine while on the road. That is a memorable milieu I'm sure is a bygone era long-gone from NASCAR. There is but one reason why there was no regrets in discussing the film here.

The Last Voyage

The Last Voyage (1960)

Runtime: 91 minutes

Directed by: Andrew L. Stone

Starring: Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, George Sanders, Edmond O'Brien, Woody Strode

From: MGM 

For those that love obscure old aquatic disaster movies… late Wednesday night, I DVR’ed this film from a Turner Classic Movies screening; that night they played a few films in that category, most prominently The Poseidon Adventure. I have viewed & reviewed that but not The Last Voyage. The cast is what intrigued: Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone (yes, a reunion of a pair who were in a pair of Sirk films; they didn’t just do Written in the Wind. There’s also The Tarnished Angels), George Sanders, Edmond O’Brien, and Woody Strode.

The action began immediately after the MGM logo. A fire in the boiler room would soon lead to a massive explosion. Captain Sanders was way too reluctant to admit this was an issue and they should evacuate. Much of the drama was Malone being trapped by debris due to the explosion. They have a young daughter best described as “cherubic” who cries often. I was reminded why disaster films tended to have more characters-even at only 91 minutes there is still a time or two where the momentum seemed stalled.

There’s a continuity issue or two and I was always amused when the occasional random monotone narration from disembodied voice would appear. Otherwise, The Last Voyage was a pretty good time. The performances are all satisfactory + there are plenty of suspenseful scenes/setpieces during the runtime, some of which were appropriately sweaty. The key asset of the production was the usage of the French luxury liner SS Ile de France, a ship about to be scrapped. The filmmakers were able to wreck that ship, adding plenty of authenticity to the proceedings.

A nice detail is that Strode-always shirtless due to the part but I’m sure he didn’t complain as he was in tremendous shape-had a heroic role larger than you’d first suspect. In this era, that was nice to see a Black person play such a character.

For those that like at least some of the disaster flicks from the heyday of the 70’s & wish for more, The Last Voyage might be a trip worth embarking on.