Saturday, December 14, 2013

Buraddo/Blood (2009)

There are movies that I’ll hold off watching if my only option is getting it as a DVD rental.  Netflix has allowed me to watch a lot of movies through its streaming service that I might not have otherwise watched.  Blood looked interesting.  There was an attractive woman on the cover.  She’s a vampire.  I put this on my list, knowing that renting it on DVD would be a waste, but streaming might just work.

The movie starts in Japan, some unspecified time in the past.  A warrior is near death on a woman’s property.  The woman, Miyako, is a vampire and can make him one, too.  Cut closer to the present.  A young girl is brutally murdered.  Years pass and the statute of limitations is approaching.  Detective Hoshino is transferred to the cold-case division and is assigned the case.  He sets out to find answers, so he starts with the woman who owned the house where the victim had been a servant.

It turns out that it’s the same woman from the start of the movie.  She has a young assistant, Brigitte, who doesn‘t say much.  Miyako knows what’s going on, but can’t really just come out and say it.  She makes Hoshino into a vampire and tells him about the murderer, which complicates things.  He knows who did it, but can’t really give the family justice without sounding crazy.

As you might expect from a vampire-police movie, there is a fair amount of fighting.  We also have two very attractive women, one of which has a lot of screen time naked.  Admittedly, I was hoping for this.  Other than that, the movie wasn’t that good.  The plot and script were marginal.  The pacing was slow.  The nudity was great, but there wasn’t a lot of it.

For instance, it was said that vampires couldn’t truly die.  If you wound one, they can regenerate.  If they appear dead, they’ll come back.  Beheading isn’t really acknowledged.  Could a head grow a new body or reattach itself to the old one?  Hoshino does get his wish, but at a cost.  The ending seemed more like the ending you’d use if you know you have to end the movie, but can’t come up with a good way to do so.

At least I didn’t have to waste the DVD rental on this or even pay for it.  This isn’t the worst of movies, but is far from the best.  It does have potential, though.  I’m just happy I was able to get a review out of it.  I imagine one day, I’ll find a soft-core vampire movie with an all-female cast.  I may not be able to stop watching it.


IMDb page

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Review Overflow

It seems that it's gotten a little more difficult to post reviews over at Epinions.  If the product is in the catalog, I can post it.  If not, there's no way to have it added to the database.  This means that I either have to wait for the product to be added or find someplace new to post the review.

I'm actually thinking of posting them here.  The only issue would be figuring out how.  I'd have to post the product name and all and have to worry about searchability.  I may do one or two just to see if it works out.  (I have been adding my reviews to the External Review section of the appropriate pages on IMDb.  This may help with search engines and hits.)

I'm also wondering if I should just use this blog or start a new one.  I haven't been using this one for much else and I don't know that I want to start a new blog for what intermittent reviews I'll be posting.  Is it better to have a new blog or to use an existing one?