The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne

★★★½
“Who said crime doesn’t pay?”

the_life_and_crimes_of_doris_payne_3By the time I reach the age of 80, I think I’m probably going to be content simply to be waking up each morning. Not so for Doris Payne, a woman whose first conviction for jewel theft came in 1952 and her last – or at least, her most recent, for I think we’ll only be sure she’s done when she’s six foot under – came sixty-two years later, at the age of 83. She’s the charming topic of this documentary, which both looks back over her criminal career as an expert international purloiners of diamonds, and at her then-current legal troubles. Was she still actually at it, almost two decades after normal retirement age? Or is this simply a case of her reputation preceding her, and causing a heinous case of mistaken identity?

It’s a wild tale, which would likely be rejected by Hollywood as implausible [there’s vague mentions of a movie version of Payne’s life, starring Halle Berry, though exactly how far that has got is left annoyingly vague]. According to Doris, She got her start when she was hustled out of a watch store by the owner, when a richer, less black customer came in, and he didn’t realize she still had the watch. Her adoption of a life of crime, using sleight of hand and distraction to confuse sales assistants, was in part a reaction to this – but it also opened the door to a life likely unobtainable to a poor, half-black half-Cherokee girl from West Virginia.

Her career likely peaked with a seventies theft of a 10-carat diamond ring in Monte Carlo, valued at over half a million dollars. Though arrested, she managed to hide the loot by sewing it inside her girdle. On another occasion, she jumped from a moving train in Switzerland to evade the authorities. But it’s the fact that she never stopped which makes for such an intriguing character. It may be a case of rampant kleptomania at work, with her skills now no match for technology, such as the unblinking eye of closed-circuit television, but it comes embodied in the adorable form of someone who you feel should be baking cookies for her grandkids. Which may, of course, be how she (more or less) got away with it for six decades, for the first rule of successful thievery is, don’t look like a successful thief. It’s that contradiction which powers the film, and you keep watching to find out whether she will be found guilty of the crime with which she has been charged. She certainly seems credible enough in her testimony – but, again, credibility is probably the second rule of successful thievery.

Mixing interviews, re-enactments and footage of her ongoing legal issues, the film probably errs too much on the side of falling in love with its subject, never probing beyond her surface or seeking to establish the validity when Doris provides her version of events. While they may have said in The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” a documentary is likely not the best format for such a collection of questionable tales, regardless of how appealing the teller may be.

Dir: Kirk Marcolina, Matthew Pond

Awaken

★★
“Liver and let die.”

awakenThere’s a stellar B-movie cast here, of faces you’ll recognize, even if you don’t remember their names; let me start by listing a few. Vinnie Jones! Daryl Hannah! Edward Furlong! Robert Davi! Michael Paré! David Keith! Even Benny Urquidez, whom I don’t recall seeing since he memorably battled Jackie Chan in a couple of 80’s flicks. Shame the plot is such nonsensical garbage. The heroine is Billie Kope (Burn), whose sister disappeared five years ago and Billie has been trying to solve the mystery ever since. She mysteriously wakes up to find herself on a tropical island with a group of other, similarly abducted people, who are occasionally hunted by camo-clad soldiers, under the command of Sarge (Jones). Turns out they are, effectively, a holding pen for an organ trafficking ring run by Rich (London). With the help of some of the the other prisoners, such as Nick (Copon), Billie has to fight her way off their island prison and find the truth about her sister’s fate, before becoming a live organ-donor herself.

There’s so much here that doesn’t make sense, with characters wandering in and out of the movie without logic; for example, leader of the prisoners Quentin (Davi) just walks out of the plot, and you never find out either what happens to Mao (Hannah), whose daughter is intended as the recipient of Billie’s liver. I’m not certain of the medical accuracy of much of what’s depicted either, but I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV, so we’ll leave that alone. Instead, I wallowed in some of the more surreal aspects, such as the football commentary Sarge is listening to on the radio; seriously, just listen to it and see if it sounds like any game you’ve ever heard. Though at least Jones, and to a lesser degree Hannah, appear to have realized the dumbness of what they signed onto, and decided to go full, bone-in ham and have some fun with it. If only the rest of the cast had adopted the same approach.

However, Burr isn’t too bad: she also co-produced and co-wrote the film, so credit is certainly due for her passion. While she could do with some more muscle, she packs the right attitude and the scenes of her training with her father (Urquidez) set the tone early. She uses a brisk, no-nonsense style of fighting, closest to MMA than kung-fu, and the fights in general are edited and put together well – fast-paced, yet still coherent, which is less common than it should be. Unfortunately, it’s the storyline which strangles this puppy, and any viewer who is moderately high up the evolutionary ladder will be alternating raised eyebrows and derisive snorts for much of its duration. Occasionally-decent action makes this just about an adequate time-passer, and there’s worse on Netflix. Yet, that last clause falls more into the “damning with faint praise” category, and is hardly much of a recommendation.

Dir: Mark Atkins
Star: Natalie Burn, Michael Copon, Jason London, Vinnie Jones

The Girl With Ghost Eyes, by M. H. Boroson

★★★★
“A Chinatown Ghost Story.”

girl with ghost eyesDisclaimer. I first heard about this on our forum, where the author posted about it. That said, my copy of it was bought and paid for from Amazon at full price, so I’ve no commercial bias. And of the 58 customer reviews currently on Amazon, not one is less than four stars, and it’s also rated at 4.2 stars on Goodreads, so I’m comfortable my appreciation of it appears to fall in line with others, and is no way appears abnormal.

It takes place in turn of the century San Francisco, almost exclusively in the city’s Chinatown, and is told in the first person by Xian Li-lin, who is 23, already a widow, and “a Maoshan Nu Daoshi of the Second Ordination.” That’s a clause which probably makes no sense. Don’t worry, one of Boroson’s strengths is explaining a world which is about as weird as Middle-earth. She’s effectively an exorcist in training, under the watchful eye (literally!) of her stern, much more experienced father, and who has the ability – or curse, in her father’s opinion – of being able to see the many different kinds of spirits which inhabit the world alongside us. A supposedly simple ceremony, involving Li-Lin visiting the astral plane, turns into an ambush, staged with the intent of possessing her and using her to attack her father.

For his rival, Liu Qiang, has teamed up with one of Chinatown’s organized crime leaders, with a plan to use dark magic to raise the Kulou-Yianling, a nightmarish creation that will destroy all their rivals. Naturally, knowing Li-Lin’s father would stop them, the first step is to take him out. While that doesn’t quite succeed, it does enough damage to leave his daughter as the only person standing in their way. But as a mere second-level exorcist – albeit one who also has good martial-arts talent – can she stand up to, and defeat, someone far above her? Perhaps, if she can convince some of those spirits she can see to help her – though they must first put aside their concerns about helping an exorcist.

There’s a similar feel to Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away here, with quirky characters including an animated eyeball (I told you her father kept a literal eye on her…), a tiger-monk and three-eyed seagulls. There are less appealing creatures too, not least the monstrous Kulou-Yianling, which feels like it may have strayed in out of H.P. Lovecraft. Oh, and incidentally, the manner in which Li-Lin eventually handles it is elegant and simple; let’s just say that the bigger you are, the larger become your vulnerable spots. If anything, there’s perhaps too much going on, in terms of invention, with creatures blazing across the firmament of the storyline almost tangentially. At one point, Li-Lin witnesses the Night Parade, a near-endless procession of the weird, the freakish and the outlandish, and readers may feel the same way, to some extent.

However, that’s a minor quibble, when set besides the positives, such as Boroson’s handle on the kung fu. Writing a description of martial arts is hard: like editing a fight sequence, you have to balance excitement with coherence and pacing. You don’t want to spend 10 times as long describing something as it would take to watch, yet need more than “She kicked him. Repeatedly.” Boroson gets the balance right, creating passages that flow, like a good fight should, and making it easy for the reader to imagine what’s going on, in their mind’s eye. I’d love to see this turned into a film, though it would certainly not be cheap to make – and, unfortunately, Lam Ching-Ying, who would have been perfect as Li-Lin’s father in my mental cinema, died in 1997.

It’s a thoroughly engaging read, with a setting that’s new (to me) and a heroine who is well-rounded, with just enough imperfections to make her seem real. I will be eagerly looking forward to the next installment of Li-Lin’s adventures, which I’m assured is in the works.

Author: M. H. Boroson
Publisher: Available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.

Chastity Bites

★★★
“Not-so real housewives.”

chastitybitesA somewhat successful modernization of the vampire legend, it sees feminist wannabe journo Leah (Scagliotti) clashing with the popular clique at her high-school, under their queen bee Ashley (Okuda). Just as Leah is preparing a devastating expose on how the cool girls are planning a mass virginity loss, the ground gets pulled out from under her by the arrival of Liz Batho (Louise Griffiths), a counselor who begins a devastatingly successful abstinence program, the Virginity Action Group, into which Ashley and her cronies buy in, for their own ends. Liz also lures in the local moms, with her devastatingly impressive line of skin-care products. Leah digs into the past of Ms. Batho and thanks to a helpful tip from her Internet search engine (which is, at least, a first in cinematic plotting!), realizes Liz is – gasp! – Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who escaped being walled up in her chamber, and has roamed the world ever since, using the blood of virgins to sustain her youth. But since Leah’s relationship with local police soured following an article calling them racist, she’s going to have to stop the Countess using her own resources.

The results are sporadically funny. It’s a nice reversal on the usual horror trope of “have sex and die,” [albeit not the first: Cherry Falls already got there], and some of the characters are a hoot. Griffiths hits the spot just right as Bathory, combining elegance and threat with just a hint of Katie Holmes, and Okuda makes the Alpha Bitch far more rounded than most depictions [it took Chris to realize where we’d seen her before; she plays Tinkerballa in popular web-series The Guild] But she and Scagliotti are both clearly past high-school, well into their twenties, and so aren’t convincing teenagers. The heroine also appears to have eaten a dictionary, leading to dialogue that is both forced and not as witty as it thinks it is. Worst of all, I could have done entirely without Leah’s lesbian sidekick (Raisa), since her main purpose in the film appears to be to allow for embarrassingly-bad banter with her gal-pal.

It does make some nice stabs (hohoho) at social satire, in particularly the hypocrisy of high-school and American vs. European values, but it’s a bit too monotone in its approach. I did appreciate its almost entirely gynocentric nature. The only male character of note, is in the film mostly to ensure Leah is no use to the Countess, and when the chips are down, rather than rescuing anyone, is disposed of with ease, leaving Leah to face her immortal enemy alone. However, there remains too much of a problem with the heroine, who comes over for much of the movie as smugly PC, rather than someone with whom I’m interested in spending time. It’s this which restricts the film’s eventual success, leaving it as more of a respectable time-passer than an outstanding triumph.

Dir: John V. Knowles
Star: Allison Scagliotti, Louise Griffiths, Amy Okuda, Francia Raisa

The Quiet Hour

★★★
“Alien apocalypse? Time for a nice cup of tea.”

quiethourIt took me forever to figure out where I’d seen the heroine before. Turns out Richards was also the young central character of The Golden Compass though in my defense, she was two-thirds of the age she is here. The film takes place some time after an alien invasion has effectively destroyed humanity, in order to strip-mine resources from the earth’s core: for all except a brief period of two hours each day, anyone found outside is ruthlessly tracked down and killed by the aliens’ craft. Hiding out in their rural farmhouse are Sarah (Richards) and her brother, Jude (McMullen), the latter having been blinded during the initial assault. Their isolated security is disrupted by the arrival of the wounded Tom Connelly (Davies) – he is being pursued by another group of survivors, with highly unpleasant dietary habits and led by Kathryn (Millar), who lay siege to the house, demanding Sarah hands over Tom to them.

By coincidence, I watched this the same week as the similarly-themed (though alien-free) October Gale, with Patricia Clarkson as the woman under siege after helping a wounded guest. This is actually better, with the director here having a better handle on the escalating tension, and Richards giving a solid performance, trying to put a brave face on a steadily-disintegrating situation, for the sake of Jude. What’s curious here, is how the aliens are almost irrelevant to the rest of proceedings: for virtually the entire movie, they’re just a backdrop in front of which the bigger threat, of Kathryn and her clan, plays out. It’s a strange approach. I kept expecting the extraterrestrial angle to be more significant, and if you’re expecting something like a British version of Independence Day, you are going to be very, very disappointed, as this is much more slower-paced, almost to the point of glacial.

However, I can’t say I minded too much, as that makes for a more character-driven movie, and the aliens’ almost-complete indifference to humanity is, in some ways, more chilling; it’s as if we were insects, worthy only of swatting. On the other hand, it feels a bit of a bait and switch, being little more than an excuse for why there’s no external help coming for the siblings – a slightly more sophisticated version of waving a cellphone around and saying, “No signal”. Still, Sarah has a nice sense of English resolve to her, in a ‘Keep calm and carry on’ kinda of way, and Richards shows enough here to make her a name to look out for. Hopefully, The Golden Compass, will not be her sole big-budget effort, since on the evidence here, she deserves better..

Dir: Stéphanie Joalland
Star: Dakota Blue Richards, Karl Davies, Jack McMullen, Brigitte Millarof

Pride + Prejudice + Zombies

★★★½
“Not the zombie apocalypse I expected.”

ppz09I’d imagine the market who would most appreciate this – those who like early 19th-century literature, but feel it would be improved by the addition of the walking dead – is rather small, which may explain its lackluster performance at the box-office. Personally, I’m more a fan of Victorian and later work, and have never actually read Pride and Prejudice, so suspect all those aspects here, flew entirely over my head. I have, however, seen more than my fair share of zombie flicks, so that’s the angle from which I will be reviewing this. Several angles surprised me. Firstly, it’s not a comedy. While we laughed, the film takes its theme seriously. Secondly, there’s surprising invention here. It’s not just dropping zombies into a costume drama; there’s thought gone into details of the setting, and also ideas such as the undead initially retaining their humanity.

On the other hand, it’s not the action extravaganza I expected from the trailer, and never achieves the all-out heights of excess I was hoping to see. There are some decent sequences, but a number of missed opportunities, for example, in eye-patch wearing aristocrat, Lady Catherine de Bourgh (Lena Headey), who is described as the ultimate bad-ass, yet barely lifts a finger. I expected a massive battle at the end, and didn’t get one; instead, the film almost rubs our face in this, inserting a mid-credits epilogue that’s the biggest tease since the end of My Wife is Gangster 2. Not that you’ll mistake this for anything other than a zombie film, of course, even if it is closer to Pride and Prejudice (and Zombies) – which would make sense since I believe the book was about 85% Austen’s original text. There are still plenty of positives, led by James, as Elizabeth, the feistiest of the five Bennet sisters, whose father (Charles Dance) has brought them up as zombie-killers, much to the concern of their mother (Sally Phillips), who’d rather they married rich.

The story revolves around a love-triangle between Elizabeth, Mr. Darcy (Riley) and Lieutenant Wickham (Huston), unfolding against an the backdrop of an escalating zombie threat, which lurks in almost every hedgerow, whist party and back bedroom. Previously, the walking dead have largely been confined to London, but appear to be developing organization, and given their increasing numbers, this could be disastrous for humanity. Meanwhile, Elizabeth also has to fend off the perhaps even more threatening predations of Parson Collins (Matt Smith), who has been brought in to marry one of the sisters, providing a male heir that will secure the family’s future, since the daughters are unable to inherit property. Her skills are unquestioned, and nicely understated; when Darcy suspects one of Elizabeth’s sisters of being bitten, and releases carrion flies to see if he’s right, she plucks them out of the air, one at a time, and hands them back to him.

Their relationship is another well-handled aspect. This Darcy is not exactly swoonworthy, and hardly the life of the party (no-one who totes carrion flies everywhere they go, ever will be), yet he’s prepared to let Elizabeth be the person she wants to be – a sharp contrast to Collins. It’s her free-spirited nature and stubborn refusal to be ground down by the conventions of society – even the severely-skewed ones of this scenario – which make her an engaging heroine. Other pleasures are the work of Smith and Phillips, adding a great deal of background charm, largely due to their total indifference to the zombie apocalypse – achieving marital bliss is clearly far more important. It probably works better as satire on class, rigid social norms and the British stiff upper-lip, than as real horror; its PG-13 rating obviously limits the latter aspect. As long as you are not going in expecting a Georgian-era version of World War Z, this should be well-made and enjoyable enough.

Dir: Burr Steers
Star: Lily James, Sam Riley, Jack Huston, Bella Heathcote

ppz01

Zoë Bell kicks twice the ass in double helping of trailers

You’ll know we’re fans of Ms. Bell here, and were particularly impressed with her fine work in Raze. The good news is, she has teamed up again with its director, Josh Waller for Camino. This sees Bell playing  photojournalist Avery Taggert, whose latest commission is a piece on Guillermo (Nacho Vigalondo), the leader of a paramilitary group operating out of the Colombian jungle. However, when she witnesses something she wasn’t supposed to see, he orders his men to track down and kill her. Needless to say – this is Zoë Bell we’re talking about here – that is an awful lot easier said than done.

It’s due out in the US on March 4. We’ll naturally have a full review… probably round about March 5! Hopefully, it’s as solidly combative as Raze turned out to be.

But, wait! There’s more! For there is also a trailer out for another Zoë Bell film, Paradox. This is science fiction and, to be honest, looks to be more of an ensemble piece – if you blink too many times, you might miss her. However, it’s still an intriguing enough premise to draw me in: a group of scientists working on time-travel send one of their number one hour into the future. But when he returns, he tells them that within that hour, they are all going to die… Yeah, looks like it’s going to be a mind-bender. Which is kinda appropriate, because Nacho Vigalondo, the villain in Camino, wrote and directed Timecrimes, one of the best time-travel movies of the last decade. The universe works in strange ways, doesn’t it? Anyway, here’s the trailer for Paradox, too. It’s out in mid-April.

Battle for Sevastopol

★★★
“Russian into battle.”

battleWe wrote previously about Lyudmila Pavlichenko, a.k.a. “Lady Death” one of the many bad-ass Soviet women who helped fight off the Nazis in World War II. So, if you’ve been paying attention, you should already know her story, as a female sniper credited with over three hundred enemy kills before being wounded and forced out of front-line action. She then became a spokesperson for the Russians, globe-trotting to raise funds and elicit overseas support, becoming the first Soviet citizen received at the White House, by then President Franklin Roosevelt, and his wife Eleanor – with whom, if this film is to be believed, Pavlichenko developed a strong friendship.

The movie was a Russian-Ukrainian co-production, which is interesting in itself, given the often strained nature of recent relations between the countries. I guess one of the few things on which they can both agree, is that killing Nazis should be lauded. The results are solid enough, hitting the expected notes and telling a respectful, if somewhat too distant, portrait of a heroic figure. The original Russian title translates as Indestructible, and that seems perhaps more appropriate, as she get blown up, shot, and blown up again, defiantly begging her way back to the front repeatedly. Mokrytskyi is at his best with these large-scale spectacles, unfolding over a soundtrack both period and contemporary; in particular, a sequence during an evacuation by boats is stunningly well-constructed, giving a real sense for the hideous, beautiful chaos of war.

It’s rather less successful at giving us insight into the character of the heroine, as played by Peresild; she’s clearly a strong-willed young woman, but that’s about all you get. There are various semi-romantic interludes, as various of her male comrades are wheeled on and off, yet these seem only to provide pauses before the next burst of (undeniably impressive) mayhem. The structure also leaves a little to be desired, switching back and forth between her wartime exploits, and Pavlichenko’s trip to the United States where she met Mrs. Roosevelt (Blackham). It’s all a little bit fragmented, without much narrative flow, and feels more like a selection of unconnected segments, rather than providing a sense of Lyudmila developing as a character. Perhaps it might work better for an already audience familiar with the backdrop of time and places in which it’s set; my knowledge of the Eastern front and Soviet geography is sketchy, to say the least, and the movie appears to presume a higher level.

This is somewhat disappointing, though some of that is because it makes for a really good trailer (below), and because this has been teasing me from the “to watch” pile for what feels like ages, as I waited for coherent English subtitles to be available. Not to say this is a bad film – far from it – just that Mokrytskyi has a better handle on the explosions than his character. Perhaps he is the Michael Bay of Russian cinema? If so, at least it’s closer to good Michael Bay, e.g. The Rock, than bad Michael Bay (Pearl Harbor).

Dir: Serhiy Mokrytskyi
Star: Yulia Peresild, Joan Blackham, Yevheniy Tsyganov, Vitaliy Linetskiy

Eye for An Eye (1996)

★★★
“No-nonsense crypto-fascist cinema.”

eyeforaneyeSubtle, this ain’t. But if you’re looking for a knee-jerk tale of vigilante vengeance, when the lily-livered justice system has failed, kowtowing instead to the “rights” of the guilty… This has certainly got you covered. Karen McCann (Field) is on the phone with her teenage daughter, planning a birthday party, when their call is interrupted by the arrival of serial rapist and murderer, Robert Doob (Sutherland). Karen can only listen as her daughter is brutalized by Doob, then bludgeoned to death with an ice sculpture. While his DNA is found at the scene, Doob walks because of a prosecutorial blunder, leaving Karen and husband Mack (Harris) aggrieved, and investigating detective Joe Denillo (Mantegna) powerless to help, even when Karen follows Doob and finds him apparently preparing to strike again. She joins a support group for those who also lost their kids, only to discover some of the members have an additional agenda; to help each other take revenge, where the law has been unable to do so. However, it turns out the FBI have also been monitoring the group, so what is Karen to do?

It’s entirely straightforward, pitting the perfect American family against an utter sleazeball; Sutherland is extremely creepy in his portrayal of Doob, and it’s quite eye-opening if you’re more used to him as (the similarly crypto-fascist) Jack Bauer. This reaches its apex when Doob confronts Karen and her surviving six-year-old daughter, Megan, whom he has been stalking, and whispers to the mother, “I don’t even really like kiddie pussy – but I’m willing to make an exception…” Yeah, I think that was probably the point at which the last vestiges of my liberal sensitivities checked out, and I could throw myself fully behind Karen’s mission. Just don’t expect anything approaching moral balance, or philosophical insight: this is rabble-rousing cinema at its most elemental. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it’s following in a long line of such movies, going back at least as far as Dirty Harry in 1971.

On the other hand, I can’t really argue with Roger Ebert, when he wrote, “Movies like Eye for an Eye cheapen our character by encouraging us to indulge simplistic emotions – to react instead of analyzing.”  For this certainly is simplistic, and if Sutherland is impressively one-dimensions as the villain, Field is less convincing as Karen, in what needed to be a rather more nuanced performance, if it was going to rise above the material [There’s also an unexpected cameo from Cynthia Rothrock, of all people, as her self-defence teacher]. However, not all cinema needs to be “deep” or “thought-provoking,” and Schlesinger clearly has no such aspirations. Even if the targets here are hung low, it still hits more than it misses.

Dir: John Schlesinger
Star: Sally Field, Kiefer Sutherland, Ed Harris, Joe Mantegna