ifelloffatrolleyanddied Reviews

Operation Dunkirk (2017 Video)

Not very good

[5/10 · 9 November 2017]

I went into this knowing it was an Asylum movie, but I was bored. Asylum's raison d'etre is to make knockoff movies with similar names to big-budget ones, in the hopes that people will accidentally buy them. They also make outlandish movies like Sharknado. Being a smaller company, their movies don't have as much glitz and glamour as ones from the likes of Universal or Disney, but they can be fun if you go into it with the correct expectations.

This movie was no exception. Meant to be a knockoff of the blockbuster "Dunkirk", the story instead follows a squad of British soldiers on a mission to rescue a member of the French resistance (played by the beautiful Kimberly Hews) who holds the secret to radar technology called the "macguffin", I mean "algorithm".

It has its faults. The dialog isn't very well-written or well-performed. The gunplay and costumes are unrealistic, often laughable. Bottomless magazines. There are lots of anachronisms. The pacing started to drag in the middle of the movie, to where I fell asleep for about 30 minutes, and didn't feel like I missed anything important.

Despite all this, one bright spot was the German commander. I felt his acting was the best, and I really enjoyed his scenes. It was obvious he took great joy in portraying a cartoonish villain. I've seen people complain that his German speech was poor, but that wasn't a problem for me since I don't speak German. The tanks they use at the end are pretty cool too.

Overall, I wouldn't consider watching this movie a complete waste of time. It was clearly a rush job that lacks attention to detail, but it's fun in its own way, and it has a happy, if nonsensical, ending.

Shao Lin nian si liu ma (1982)

Slightly above average kung fu

[7/10 · 24 March 2008]

The plot centers on Little Lu (Sonny Yu) who tends horses for the local Shaolin temple, and wants to learn skills that will help him defeat some corrupt officials who want to destroy it. He has a couple of friends (one with no arms, the other with no legs) who help him train using some bronze mechanical horses in a secret room in the temple.

Overall, this movie was pretty good. The bad parts were the dubbing, and the overuse of an echoey sound effect in some of the fights. The plot is a little strange, there were some confusing scenes that really weren't explained too well. And then there are the ridiculous bronze horses. Other than that, it was good.

The strength here was the well-choreographed fight scenes with various interesting weapons, and good editing. My version was full-screen pan and scan, but I could still see all of the action. Sometimes the fights in kung fu movies have obvious cutting points because the actors can only do a few moves at a time, but in this one I didn't really notice that. There was some minor gore, but not too much that one wouldn't expect from a movie of this type.