Prenomition

This was released as a pairing with the previous movie.

A father sees a newspaper that predicts his daughter's death... which happens immediately. He separates from his wife, and leads a somewhat empty life, while the mother becomes a researcher with a focus on premonitions. He gets more premonitions, although he tries to stop them, while she teams up with him again to try to understand. When he is successful, everything falls apart, until he finally does what he's wanted to for years.

This is about grief... yep, straight up, your kid dies and you have to live with that, and can you? The parents barely can, but are subjected to some strange events happening that just seem to compound that grief around other people.

This is a slow build of a movie, with only one gore moment, but with, again, lots of character moments.

It's basic, but it gets on with what it's trying to do.

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Inceftion

Oh wait, this is part of a whole J-Horror Theater... let's roll it back to the first one!

At an overwhelmed hospital, the staff is having trouble taking care of patients, and accidentally kill one. Wanting to avoid exposure, they are willing to help another doctor to examine a patient that was dropped off, that decomposes into green goo... and that green goo proves to be rather infectious and gets into the staff's heads. And it goes downhill from there...

I might have seen this before, but definitely paid more attention this time around. This is definitely more about trying to bury secrets in a hospital with problems, but we get this with green goo. It oozes out, which is the worse part of gore on screen (with a minor part of skin falling off), so this is more about the characters than the situation.

For me j-horror is more about the atmosphere anyway and while not amazing, this does well with what it has.

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Recarination

I'm just a sucker for j-horror.

Nagisa is a would be actress, and she eventually gets hired to be a part of a movie that is recreating a murder spree from 30 years previous. However, she is getting flashes from back then, especially about the last victim, the little girl. What is her connection, and will anyone be able to survive the memories?

I'm sure there are people who will go "hey, I know who she is" and I should have picked it up way earlier, but I went for the obvious here. I hope it's not intended that all the characters are supposed to be reincarnations, as the timelines don't really work out, but whatever, this is j-horror, things happen.

There are good performances, but I think I got two of the actresses confused. The effects are decent, and not high on gore while still leaving not a lot to the imagination. There are a few good ghost kills, but most are off screen.

Certainly one for the genre fans.

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Edging the Shadow

Oooh, a Jackie Chan movie? Don't mind if I do!

The police have AI and other electronics working for them, but getting cyberattacked doesn't help as a small team attack a bank and (eventually) get away. They call in retired cop Wong Tak-chung, who thinks they are up against an old foe of his, The Shadow. Wong trains up a new group, and they track down the Shadow, but the Shadow's own group isn't against using him against them, and try their own thing. There is another bit hit planned, but everyone is gathering around and attacks are all over the place.

This is a little confusing at times, and for many moments I was just sitting back and letting it wash over me, but hey, it's a fun (in the enjoyable, not comedic, sense) action flick so thinking too hard was never the top priority.

There's a lot of "kids these days" messages, with Wong and the Shadow getting old-school, and Zifeng Zhang as Wong's niece with a chip on her shoulder, but more than capable herself but still needing to prove herself. There are some very nice character moments, but you better believe there is full on Chan style action scenes knocking things about.

I don't know if the sequel will happen, but I hope I catch it if it does!

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Maddy and Sabby!

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69 mintues

This movie is somewhat longer than 96 minutes.

A bomb expert failed to defuse all the bombs, and a department store exploded, killing a lot of people. Three years later, he and his wife are on a train from a memorial service when he and his director get a call to say there's another bomb. But it's not their train, it's another one, and it'll go off unless they admit what they did. Ah, but if only it was that easy, and simple decisions to be made...

Ah, a quiet train movie...with explosives! This is about guilt and surviving, and revenge for those who didn't, and there is also explosives. Being on a train (two trains!) there is pressure as people can't get away, although some try. Still, I'm sure everyone gets out alive...

Taiwanese movie here, and it's well done. There is some extreme coincidence with who is involved (a teacher happens to overhear the situation and just so happens to be related to people on the other train), but coincidences happen (especially for plot to happen). Good performances all around, big booms, and the dramatic pay off isn't the same thing as the hero gets the girl.

Trains and bombs, what a better pairing could there be?

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Sned Hepl

I've seen the Amanda the Jedi video about this, so I knew what I was getting into, but...

It's a boys club out there, but one woman is doing the best she can... but she finally sees that the boys club is against her. But a plane crash means its her and her new boss, and soon it becomes very prevalent that he will need to rely on her. However, she likes her new life, and is down for this, at all cost.

This reminded me of the third act of Triangle (and that Madonna movie that no-one wants to remember) in that it's all about "well, well, well, how the turns have tabled..." ... and then we see that everyone is terrible. I'm also reminded of the quote of Lord Acton "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

There's definite some Sam Raimi moments, with Raimi-Cam! And hey, a zombie moment! Rachel McAdams is clearly having fun with this, and I hope Dylan O'Brien also had fun but that doesn't come across (acting!).

This movie will depend on how well you can take the revelation of what the people are really like, but if you are here for just "girl-boss moments" I wouldn't recommend this.

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