IN: Review: While not as wild and way out as some of Takashi Miike's later films this is a very good crime drama.

The basic story is the story of a cop of Japanese cop with Chinese parents trying to take down an up and coming Chinese mobster. Complicating things is that his younger brother is acting as the lawyer for the villain and his gang. The film is actually much more complicated than that with several complications which both keep things interesting and distract things from the central narrative thrust. Its this complication and loss of way about an hour into the film that makes this less than a great film.(It is a very very good one) This is definitely worth seeing especially if you don't mind a no frantic pace.

A word of warning, the violence when it happens is explosive and nasty. There are also semi-graphic depictions of gay sex. If thats not your cup of tea, proceed with caution.

7 or 8 out of 10.
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OUT: positive

IN: Review: didn't know anything about the film or that it was based on a best selling book.Tried guessing from the opening scenes what it would be about,best guess,buried treasure and a death list.That lasted about 15 minutes when i got the sneaky suspicion that the film was crap.I'll not bore you with how bad the plot and acting were but anyone who gave it more than two stars must work for the film makers.I watched until the hero jumped into his corvette to rush to the hospital.He had his on his suit,shirt and tie arrived at the hospital in jeans and a t/shirt.Couldn't even get the continuity right. I got the Christian theme,hard to miss it .
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IN: Review: As a Southern Baptist, it pains me that I must give a below average rating to an overtly Christian movie. There certainly aren't so many that I want to discourage film-makers from a genre that's woefully under-exploited. Still, I must honestly say that "Love's Abiding Joy" is a typically low budget, low key, self-consciously Christian film. The plot is predictable, the acting mediocre (I'm being kind), and the editing atrocious. As a TV movie it might have been slightly above average, but as a feature film it leaves much to be desired. Keep trying guys. You've got to have a movie about about real Christians inside you somewhere. Might I suggest you turn to G. K. Chesterton or C. S. Lewis for some inspiration?
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IN: Review: "Footlight Parade" is fascinating on so many levels. There is no way the supposedly staged "theater prologues" could have been produced in any theater on earth, of course. Think of the huge pools and three-story tall fountains for "By A Waterfall," for instance. (Berkeley directed John Garfield in "They Made Me a Criminal" six years later and had the Dead End Kids singing "By a Waterfall" as they took their showers.)

"Shanghai Lil" is the best production number in the picture. It's a catalog of '30s Warner Bros. sensibilities. Note the African guys mixed into the scene with white and Asian prostitutes. You would never see blacks integrated into a social scene in other films of the period unless they were porters on a train or maids in a big house. Here the black guys are sitting at the bar and singing with the others. I also get a thrill when the military dancers do a "card section" presentation of Roosevelt's image. There's also the NRA eagle--the logo of the controversial National Recovery Administration of the New Deal. FDR was the new president and hopes were so high that he'd pull the nation out of the Depression. You'd never see something so working class oriented coming out of MGM, of course. Warner Bros. wholeheartedly supported the uplift dictated by the F.D.R. administration.

Dear little Miss Ruby Keeler was never better than she is playing the Chinese hooker, "Lil." She hardly even watches her feet as she dances, which was one of her signature flaws.

The Pre-Code stuff is fun. The "By a Waterfall" number is wonderful in that regard. The girls change into their bathing suits on the crowded bus speeding through Times Square with all its lights on. The spread-eagle girls swimming over the camera provide the kind of crotch shots that would not be seen for 35 years. In a few months the Production Code would eliminate such naughty pleasures.
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positive