Tag: fantasy

The Princess

  By

★★★★
“Die Hard in a castle.”

Well, this was a surprise. I was not expecting too much, this being a movie released straight to Hulu or Disney+ (depending on your territory), and starring someone best known for rom-com franchise, The Kissing Booth. Actually, scratch the “too” from that sentence. I went in on the basis that I was contractually obliged to watch it, as the guy running this site. I say this, so you’ll understand how unexpected it is to be writing this: it’s the best action-heroine film of the year so far. This is just thoroughly entertaining, and as the tag-line above suggests, is as close as I’ve ever seen to a genuine, female version of the greatest action movie of all-time. 

The first half structure though, plays more like The Raid in reverse, the heroine having to fight her way down, floor by floor, from the top of a high tower. It opens with the Princess (King) ‐ and that’s her credited name – waking to find herself in a bed-chamber. She’s being prepared for a marriage she very much does not want to happen. Her father, lacking a son and heir, intended to wed her to Julian (Cooper) for diplomatic purposes. She jilted him at the altar, and he then staged a coup, seizing her family and planning a union by force. What he doesn’t know, is that the Princess had been quietly trained by family retainer Linh (Ngo) in fighting skills, and begins working her way down, to rescue her family and stop Julian. Guess he is going to have to “altar” his wedding plans, hohoho.

It’s the kind of film which will stand or fall on its action sequences, and the good news is, these are the movie’s strongest suit. Kiet had previously worked with Ngo on Furie: that was solid, yet it now appears his imagination was bigger than the resources available to him there. Right from the start, when the Princess takes out the two attendants sent to her chamber, the fight scenes are all inventive, well-executed and assembled in a coherent manner. Now, King is no MMA fighter. However, they’ve constructed a fighting style for her character based on speed and agility, rather than strength and power. Her holding her own against bigger (sometimes, far bigger) opponents feels credible as a result. 

This reaches its height in a glorious, extended sequence, with the Princess battling her way down the tower’s staircase. It feels as if it’s 20 minutes long, such is the energy contained in it. There’s even a beautiful moment of tension releasing humour, part of a running gag involving one of Julian’s minions who is too fat for all the stairs he’s ordered to climb. Nothing thereafter, including the inevitable fight against her wannabe husband, quite reaches the same heights. Glover is good value as Julian, staying just this side of a pantomime villain. As Die Hard shows, having a memorable antagonist is an important element. He’s not quite Alan Rickman – though who is? And I do have to question some of Julian’s decisions. 

I mean, if ever I become an Evil Lord, I will choose a more definitive method of execution for my nemesis than defenestration. And if I did chuck them out a high window, it would be on the side of the building over the cobblestone courtyard, rather than the one facing the water. Though I must give credit where it’s due, for his selection of a sidekick, in whip-wielding bad girl, Moira. Kurylenko has a track record of her own on this site, most recently in Sentinelle, and builds further on that here. On the other hand, the Princess’s father is a totally ineffectual pussy, when faced with the brutality of Julian and his crew. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing though. It makes his daughter’s rebellion feel organic and legitimate, rather than some kind of obvious third-wave feminist statement. I’d rebel in her shoes too.

Speaking of which, my concerns this would end up being some kind of Statement Movie, largely proved unfounded. Indeed, some reviews criticized it for not being progressive enough. [Insert eye-roll] This is largely traditional fairy-story territory, except with a female lead who is capable of rescuing herself, rather than needing a prince to come to her aid. I would say some of the flashback scenes were superfluous, breaking into rather than enhancing the narrative progression. For instance, we know Linh trained the Princess; do we really then need to see it taking place as well? The R-rating, while welcome, seems a little at odds with the atmosphere too, which does feel quite Disney+. If you’re going R, embrace it in all its forms, I’d say. However, these are minor gripes, and this is one Disney princess I’m certainly happy to endorse. 

Dir: Le-Van Kiet
Star: Joey King, Dominic Cooper, Olga Kurylenko, Veronica Ngo

Seventh Son

  By

★★★
“Son of a witch…”

Despite generally terrible reviews, this is definitely not, by any means, a terrible movie. It is, admittedly, a fairly generic sword-and-sorcery flick, in which a hero must rise from a common background to save the world from a terrible magical threat. But it looks spiffy – the hundred million dollar budget is on the screen. If the central performance has its issues, there’s enough around the fringes to make both for an adequately entertaining experience, and also merit the existence of a review here. In particular, the main antagonist is the evil witch Mother Malkin (Moore). She escapes from the prison to which she had been confined years ago by Gregory (Bridges), now the last survivor of his order of witch-hunters.

Malkin seeks revenge, but only succeeds in killing Gregory’s apprentice, Jon Snow [okay, it’s just Kit Harrington, but this works well enough as a Game of Thrones side-quest]. With just a few days before Malkin’s powers are fully unlocked, he needs a replacement, stat. That is pig farmer’s son, Tom Ward (Barnes), whose lineage provides him with the necessary talents to help fight Mother Malkin. Maybe… Things are, naturally, complicated on the fringes, by Tom’s growing relationship with half-witch Alice (Vikander), for she is also Malkin’s niece, and if uncertain loyalties. On the other hand, Tom owns the Umbran Stone, which his mother – at the time an acolyte of Mother Malkin – had stolen from her mistress, and which multiplies the abilities of any witch who possesses it.

In other words, a smorgasbord of Young Adult fantasy tropes, and there are a few plot-holes, e.g. why doesn’t Malkin just hole up for a few days to acquire her full powers? However, the execution of things here has some positives, in particular the energetic commitment of both Moore and Bridges [It’s a Big Lebowski reunion: I leave it to you to write your own joke there]. The former delivers a no-holds barred approach, getting good support from Antje Traue as Malkin’s sister, Bony Lizzie.  The witches depicted here are certainly independent, strong women. They’re just not very nice. Meanwhile, Gregory has a clear zero-tolerance policy for witches, something which brings him into conflict with Tom, and Bridges’s mumbling feels a bit reminiscent of his performance in True Grit. Once you get used to that, it’s a far bit of fun to watch. 

I think Bodrov’s lack of Hollywood experience may have been the main issue. While Bridges and Moore are experienced enough not to need much direction, the same isn’t true of Barnes, despite his previous fantasy role as Prince Caspian. Tom is simply bland and uninteresting. If the movie had concentrated on Gregory and Malkin, I’d probably have liked it a lot more. As is, whenever the hero is on-screen, I tended to find myself admiring the pretty backdrops and production design instead. Though I’ve not read the book by Joseph Delaney on which this was based, we did review the later series entry, I am Grimalkin. Done properly, I’d certainly not mind seeing that made into a film. However, the tepid response to this killed any hopes for a franchise: Grimalkin will likely have to remain a creature of my imagination.

Dir: Sergei Bodrov
Star: Ben Barnes, Jeff Bridges, Alicia Vikander, Julianne Moore

Witch Hunt

  By

★★★
“Not-so sunny spells.”

This is set in the everyday world – but with one major tweak. Witchcraft exists, and has been outlawed in the United States by the 11th amendment. Now, government agents from the BWI seek out witches, using tried and true methods from the middle ages (the “sink test” is exactly what it sounds like), and punish those found or suspected to be practicing witchcraft. But those opposed to this have set up an “underground railroad” to smuggle the targets over the boarder to Mexico. Teenage girl Claire (Adlon) is part of one such family, courtesy of her mom Martha (Elizabeth Mitchell); Dad is out of the picture. Claire is rather ambivalent about their activism, since she just wants to fit in at school. But the arrival of Fiona (Cowen) and her little sister, siblings whose mother was burned at the stake, forces Claire out of her professed neutrality,. Especially as the investigation of the unrelenting BWI Agent Hawthorne (Camargo) gets closer to home.

This was on wobbly territory in the first half, with a few storyline flaws. Why are witches outlawed? Was there some 9/11-like incident to trigger the crackdown? And why has the government built a wall to keep them in? If they want to leave, surely that’s a victory for everyone? I was also amused that, at least initially, it appears all witches are redheads. Because, as we all know, gingers have no souls. :) There was also a scene in which schoolgirls Claire and Fiona hang out in a bar: hey, this society may hate witches, but they’re clearly more relaxed about teenage drinking. However, that scene was also where the film suddenly “clicked”, as they discussed whether the ending of Thelma & Louise had been censored because they were witches. For whatever reason, thereafter I felt in tune with what the film was trying to do. The film may have been more than a little clunky with its social metaphors, yet it was still an interesting universe to depict.

This seems to ramp up markedly after Hawthorne shows up, putting an all-too human face on the hatred, and providing a good antagonist – something largely absent in the early states. There’s a very politeness to him which makes his actions all the more menacing – a little like Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds. The updating of old-time mythology surrounding witches also works very well: the modern version of the sink test involves the school swimming pool and, in a nod to the “kinder, gentler” era, scuba apparatus. Though as it turns out, this isn’t infallible: albeit without consequence or impact. All told, there are plenty of interesting ideas here: however, the movie falls short of merging them into an effective whole. If the generally decent performances do help paper over some cracks, there are enough still apparent, and the end result is actually a little infuriating. I suspect a moderately near-miss like this has a greater sense of unfulfilled potential than a complete disaster.

Dir: Elle Callahan
Star: Gideon Adlon, Abigail Cowen, Elizabeth Mitchell, Christian Camargo

Justice is Calling, by Justin Sloan and Michael Anderle

  By

Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆☆

I’ve heard of the “Kurtherian Gambit” universe before, but this would appear to be the first book I’ve read which is part of it. For some reason, I thought it was more of a science-fiction series. While there are elements of that, such as anti-gravity, and the overall setting is post-apocalyptic, this entry seems more like urban fantasy. We have the almost requisite vampires and werewolves, the former represented by the story’s main protagonist, Valerie. She flees the carnage in Europe after her brother tries to kill her, accompanied only by her faithful human sidekick, Sandra. On the airship to New York, they meet Diego, who is a werepuma, and the trio become allies.

On arrival, however, their individual goals in the New World have to take a back seat. They discover that humans in the city are using the local Weres to hunt and abduct vampires, so their blood can be harvested, and used as an “elixir of youth”. Valerie isn’t standing for that, needless to say, and starts assembling a combined force of vampires and Weres, to stop the farming and go after its instigator, Strake – part of a shadowy trio who run the city. Adding a sense of urgency, is that her brother is on his way across the Atlantic, eager to add what’s left of the United States to his dominion. There’s also whispered legends of the “Dark Messiah”, a particularly powerful vampire. Could that be Valerie? Or is there someone even above her?

The cover is a bit misleading, as Valerie seems much more inclined to use the sword nestling on her hip – or even her bare hands – than anything as prosaic as a firearm. Looking at the cover, it was only then I realized, it tells me more about what the heroine looks like, than I’d gleaned from the whole novel. As events were unspooling in my head cinema, she was almost a blank space. Diego probably gets more descriptive prose. The authors do a good job of capturing her personality though, and how honour is an important aspect of it. I also liked the dry humour that occasionally popped out.

There is definitely no shortage of action: the movie of my imagination was rated a hard R for strong violence. It builds over the course of proceedings nicely. First, Valerie rescues Diego from Strake’s “Enforcers”; then she and her were/vamp loyalists mount an assault on Strake’s HQ; finally, she has to face her brother in single combat. It did skirt around the deus ex machina a bit at the end, with a convenient (and not unexpected) arrival; though wisely, this then stands back and lets Valerie handle things herself. I’m not sure the set-up here quite justifies a further seven more volumes. Yet as a quick read, this was entertaining enough to leave me at least somewhat curious to see where it goes.

Author: Justin Sloan and Michael Anderle
Publisher: LMBPN Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 8 in the Reclaiming Honor series.

Everything Everywhere All at Once

  By

★★★½
“I’d have settled for two of three.”

This has been a long, long time coming. I’ve been a fan of Yeoh since seeing her Hong Kong starring debut, Yes, Madam, which came out all the way back in 1985. Over the years since, her career has had its ups and downs, including complete retirement after her marriage in the late eighties. She returned, and is the only actress to have appeared in two movies rated five stars here: Heroic Trio and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. But her career in Hollywood has been limited to sterling support roles, in both movies and television, encompassing everything from Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies through Star Trek: Discovery to Crazy Rich Asians. A starring role, appropriate to her talents, never seemed to come along. 

Until now. Thirty-seven years after Yes, Madam, and at the age of 59, this film finally puts Yeoh where she deserves to be: front and centre. Yet, perhaps partly due to how long I’ve been waiting for this, I must confess to being a bit disappointed this is not a classic to match the titles listed above. Oh, it certainly has its moments, and Yeoh is as good as expected. However, its 139-minute running-time feels more a curse than a blessing. The concept at its core is almost infinite in scope, and I did feel the movie was trying to include all of it. Less could have been more, with a targetted approach preferable to the relentless overload adopted by the makers, which left me feeling as if I was drinking from a fire-hose.

The multiverses here literally rotate around Evelyn Wang (Yeoh), who runs a laundromat teetering on the edge of failure, with her husband, Waymond (Quan). Their marriage is also failing, her relationship with her daughter, Joy (Hsu) is on rocky ground, and she has to go to an appointment with hard-ass IRS tax auditor Deirdre Beaubeirdra (Curtis). The last is where things kick off, as she is visited by a Waymond from an alternate universe, who tells Evelyn she is the only hope of foiling the evil Jobu Tupaki. That’s an alternate Joy, who has gone insane and created a black hole-like vortex which could destroy all the multiverses. Fortunately, Evelyn’s abject failings at life give her the ability to tap into all the skills and knowledge of the other, better versions of herself.

Like I said: almost infinite in scope. Apparently, co-writer/director Kwan was diagnosed with ADHD during the creative process: to be frank, it shows. While the imagination on view is admirable, the film bounces about between ideas at a ferocious rate, almost regardless of whether they deserve it. We spend an inordinate amount of time in a multiverse where everyone has long, floppy fingers. Yet there is also buttplug-fu, which is an example of the movie going places you’d never have expected could be so entertaining. Or a lengthy, surprisingly engrossing, scene in which two rocks in an otherwise lifeless multiverse have a conversation in captions. Because why not?

To the film’s credit, it never abandons its characters, and that helps keep it grounded. Albeit only just, on occasion the movie standing on its tippy-toes as it tries desperately to avoid being blown away by its own excesses. It’s perhaps telling that, despite all the film’s visual bluster, the most effective moment for me was among the simplest, one character telling another, “In another life, I would’ve been happy just doing laundry and taxes with you.” As such, Yeoh is the story’s heart, and gets to demonstrate her unquestionable acting talent. It has been fascinating to see the development of that, especially considering her lack of not just experience but any formal training. I mean, she first entered the field close to four decades ago, as a former Miss World contestant. How many of them eventually go on to get talk of an Oscar?

It’s as a result of this that I kept watching the film, because I genuinely cared what happened to Evelyn. I wanted to see her figure it all out and make peace with the various forces trying to tear her humdrum life apart. From that angle, it’s close to soap-opera, albeit an unusually effective one. Except, of course, the means by which that peace is potentially achieved, includes multiverse hopping, and fighting an evil version of your own daughter, who wields a gurgling plughole of doom. It’s the overlap between the mundane and bizarre where this finds its own voice. The problem is, it tries too hard to live up to the title. Sure, give us everything, everywhere. I’d just rather it hadn’t done so, all at once.

Yet, similarly, it leaves an awful lot of potential on the table. Why is kung-fu virtually the only talent Evelyn uses? Tap into a universe where she’s a cab driver, and give us an epic car-chase. Or the one where she’s a cat-burglar, for heist purposes. It’s not hard to come up with a dozen such threads. Perhaps the makers were constrained by their budget, a relatively cheap $25 million – less than Crazy Rich Asians. They do an admirable job of squeezing value out of it; again, the sheer pace probably helps, with your brain trying so desperately to keep up, it’s hard-pushed to pay attention to any of the finer details.

But I’m glad I won’t go to my grave with my final paid cinematic experience being Terminator: Dark Fate. [Though the two Neanderthals beside us, talking loudly and checking their phones throughout, really make me think we are done with theatres] The Daniels deserve credit for the obvious invention displayed, and this is the kind of original property I’m happy to support, over another sequel and/or shitty comic adaptation. I also must mention the supporting cast, who are uniformly great, particularly Hsu as both aggravated daughter and multiiverse threatening villainess [There’s also a cameo by another eighties Hong Kong action actress, Michiko Nishiwaki. Maybe she’ll get her own movie next?]. That it stars one of the most under-rated actresses in Hollywood, finally getting the opportunity she deserves, is alone reason enough to see this. Just don’t expect too much.

Dir: Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert
Star: Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Jamie Lee Curtis

Hidden Dragon, by Trudi Jaye

  By

Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆½

This version of the world is more or less identical to our own. Except, several hundred years ago, there was a catastrophe in which massive dragons rampaged around, with humans being collateral damage. A secret society called the Earthbound managed to end the thread, partly through the invention of the Spell Web – basically, an Internet for magic users. Now, the Earthbound and a secret government organization, the Supernatural Intelligence Group, operate to keep a largely oblivious population in the dark. Though everyone knows dragons are extinct… aren’t they?

Well, for whatever reason, someone seems very keen to take out Mei Walker, who has grown up under the protection of the SIG, before she comes into her supernatural powers at age 20, which will be in a few weeks. There have been over 530 assassination attempts made against her in the past 12 years. While the Earthbound and the SIG are supposed to be allies, it’s clear there’s a faction of the former intent on getting their hands on Mei, and using her talents for their own ends. Fortunately, she’s not exactly defenseless. Beyond those magic abilities, allowing her to manipulate the element of water, she has also been brought up to be able to take care of herself. She’s forced on the run with SIG agent Seth, unsure who she can trust – even her long-absent father – or how far up the plot against her goes.

I think my main problem is that Mei is almost entirely in the dark as to why she is so important. She (as well as, by proxy, the reader since it’s all told in the first person) and Seth seem about the only people oblivious to the specifics of her situation. It’s a conceit which seems there solely to generate a sense of mystery – not least because of her being left a mysterious box which is built up as being a serious Macguffin, but contains basically nothing of significance. It feels as if, especially after 500+ attempts on her life, the story would have made more sense for her to be aware of the situation from the beginning, rather than running around blind. By the end, we finally know what’s about to happen, though the book ends before there’s any conclusion as to exactly what that means.

Outside of that (admittedly, fairly major) flaw, this is okay. Mei is pitched at a nice level of ability: competent, without being super-powered, and there’s a lack of significant romance which is pleasant. There is a spell in the middle which edges towards the dreaded urban fantasy love-triangle, before it backs off – at least, for now… Jaye does a decent job of building a world lurking just beneath ours, with the standout scene perhaps being Mei’s retrieval of the box from a pawnbroker, who is also a collector of magical artifacts and… things. But safe to say, I think I prefer my fantasy considerably less shrouded in mystery.

Author: Trudi Jaye
Publisher: Star Media, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 4 in the Dragon Rising series.

Wolfwalkers

  By

★★★
“Mononoke Hime, with potatoes…”

Ok, that’s a little harsh. But this very definitely does feel like an Irish take on Princess Mononoke, Hayao Miyazaki’s epic fantasy. This begins with the technical aspects, both animated films rejecting CGI in favour of a more traditional, hand-drawn style. In 1997, when Mononoke came out, that wasn’t so radical: the first fully CGI feature, Toy Story, had come out less than two years earlier. But in 2020, the dominance of CGI is such that Wolfwalkers seems a total throwback; after all, Disney went fully CGI after Winnie the Pooh in 2011. This is a very different style, and if you’re used to the hyper-realistic approach of Pixar, may take some getting used to.

The similarities don’t stop there. Both take place in medieval times, and have a settlement on the edge of the woods in a struggle with nature and its spiritual forces – in particular, as marshaled by a young girl. Another young person ventures into the woods, eventually befriending the girl, and the pair team up to prevent the destruction of the forests in the name of “civilization.” For rural Japan, read rural Ireland in the mid-17th century. For Lady Eboshi in charge of the modern forces, read England’s Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell (McBurney). This adds a touch of colonialism to the general ecological message here, with Cromwell seeking to subdue the wolves, partly as a demonstration of power over the local population.

There are other differences, too. The heroine here is Robyn Goodfellowe (Kneafsey), the daughter of hunter Bill (Bean), who has come to Ireland to control the wolf population. Robyn wants to help her father, but he’s having none of it. That doesn’t stop her from sneaking into the woods where she meets Mebh Óg MacTíre (Whittaker). She and her mother are wolfwalkers, whose spirits leave their bodies and turn into wolves when they are asleep. They also control the local native canine population. A bite from Mebh turns Robyn into one as well, but Cromwell has captured Mebh’s mother in her wolf form, sending her into a sleep from which she can’t awaken. Robyn tries to convince her father of the existence of wolfwalkers, and broker a peaceful resolution. Neither he nor Cromwell are having any of it, setting up a final confrontation in the forest.

On its own terms, this might have merited a slightly higher score. The problem for me was, it simply reminded me of the strengths of Mononoke. That was considerably more subtle about its message, making Eboshi a much more sympathetic character than Cromwell, who is positively cartoonish in both looks and demeanour. [Spoiler: I’m also fairly sure he wasn’t pushed to his death off a precipice by an Irish lycanthrope]. The approach here is  simplistic in comparison, especially the deeper we get into the story. which probably makes it more appropriate for a younger audience than adults. I still enjoyed it, but doubt there’s much rewatchability to be found here.

Dir: Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart
Star (voice):  Honor Kneafsey, Eva Whittaker, Sean Bean, Simon McBurney

Arcane

  By

★★★½
“A tale of two sisters.”

I’ve never played League of Legends, but the good news is, you don’t need to, in order to enjoy Arcane. While that may provide some extra depth, it works perfectly well on its own. There is a degree of over-familiarity with the high-level scenario, which is Generic Fantasy Plot #3. Per Wikipedia’s premise, “Amidst the escalating unrest between the advanced, utopian city of Piltover and the squalid, repressed undercity of Zaun…” Yeah, it’s class war time again, cut from the same basic stamp as Mortal Engines, Alita: Battle Angel and The Hunger Games. To this series’s credit, it does show more nuance than some, with good and bad on both sides of the divide. Perhaps a bit too much though, as there were points where it felt like new characters were being thrown at the viewer, even late into the nine-episode series, when the time might have been better spent developing existing ones.

The central pair are sisters Vi (Steinfeld) and Powder (Purnell), orphaned after a failed rebellion. They’re brought up by the leader of the rebellion, and subsequently get entangled in the web of crime, politics, magic and science which powers both sides of the divide. There’s a lot going on here: simply summarizing it would fill the rest of the article. But there are a couple of key points. Powder becomes estranged from her sister, changes her name to Jinx, and goes to work for crime lord Silco (Spisak). Scientist Jayce Talis (Alejandro) creates a technology called Hextech: this (Generic Fantasy Plot #7…) allows for the control of magical energy, which can used for good or evil. It also does… well, whatever the plot needs, from curing illness to blowing things up. Intrigue ensues. A great deal of intrigue.

I did appreciate the script’s complexity, which stands in contrast to most video-game adaptations. I think the greater length (9 x 40-ish minutes) than a movie, gives the writers time to explore things in more depth, and I can’t complain at all about the overall world-building, either in story or artwork. Its French origins perhaps explain the look, which sometimes resembles a bande dessinee. Indeed, the show does almost all the big things right, from animation that’s top-notch, through good voice-acting, and some very well-constructed fight scenes. Vi does not mess around, and proves more than capable of going toe-to-toe with the biggest and baddest both Piltover and Zaun have to offer. Animated combat often lacks the impact of live-action – it’s an almost inevitable result of the medium – but that is not the case here. Blows pack a real punch, if you see what I mean. 

However, there were a number of elements which did hamper the show, and for me, left it short of Seal of Approval level. I mentioned above the reliance on over-familiar tropes. This extends to dialogue which sometimes topples over into clichés, e.g. Vi telling Powder, “What makes you different makes you strong.” Pardon me if I roll my eyes and quote Chuck Pahluniak in response, “You’re not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else.” I also didn’t like the use of indie rock and rap music, finding it too distracting and not a good fit for the environment. I like Imagine Dragons as much as the next person, but… This felt too much like a soundtrack CD in search of a film. Contrast the fight at the end of episode 7 (I think?), accompanied instead by orchestral music, which is perhaps the best in the entire show.

Still, there are absolutely no shortage of strong female characters, even past the sisters. For example, Caitlyn Kiramman, the daughter of a noble family who taken on the difficult job of policing the streets, or Mel Medarda and her mother. While the society portrayed in the show has its issues, gender (and race) don’t appear to be among them, rarely even cropping up. I’ve tended to skip a lot of the Netflix animated shows, for one reason or another, but this definitely was not a waste of time. The way it finishes though… I can’t discuss it in depth for spoiler reasons. But if they hadn’t already announced a second series is coming, I would be severely peeved. I hate that kind of ending in books, and it works no better in a TV show. Do better next time, please.

Dir: Pascal Charrue, Arnaud Delord
Star (voice): Hailee Steinfeld, Ella Purnell, Kevin Alejandro, Jason Spisak

HellKat

  By

★
“Contains far too much pussying about.”

Rarely has there been a bigger gap between expectations generated by a synopsis, and the underwhelming reality of the actual movie. The former: “A fallen MMA fighter must win a netherworld no-holds-barred death tournament against man, beast and demon to save her soul. ” While I guess it’s not technically inaccurate, you will be forgiven for expecting something like Mortal Kombat on ‘roids – and not the recent, fairly crappy remake. Instead, you get a film which dillies, dallies and faffs about for the first forty minutes. Considering it runs less than eighty in total, including the end credits, this is not a good thing. And the “netherworld no-holds-barred death tournament”? It’s a boxing ring lit by red lights, in which the heroine has a couple of fights against people in remaindered Halloween masks. You should now understand my palpable disappointment.

When you are a low-budget movie (actually, true for any level, but especially on smaller budgets), you typically need to hit the ground running, and grab your audience’s attention quickly. It’s okay if there’s a lull thereafter, but in today’s world of short attention spans and other entertainment alternatives, if you lose people, they’re probably gone forever. Unless, that is, they run a site devoted to action heroines in popular culture, and thus feel obligated to soldier on, for review purposes. Though even they maybe spend more time than is ideal checking their email, eating snacks, and wondering how in hell they are ever going to write 500 words about this.

In this case, it begins with ex MMA fighter Katrina (Cohen), who is on the road in murky circumstances. Her car breaks down, and she accepts a lift from a stranger, whom she ends up having to shoot. She then goes to a bar, and hangs out there for a bit, being paid in tequila for mopping up patrons’ puke. The customers are an unprepossessing lot, abusive to each other and to Kat, even though the barman (Bouchet) wields a sawn-off shotgun at the slightest provocation. Again, we get forty minutes of this before the Devil, or a representative thereof, turns up in the shape of the man who gave her a lift. He is Satanic fight promoter Jimmy Scott (Davies), who gets Kat’s signature on a contract and the tournament is finally under way.

It’s pretty obvious we’re not in the real world from the get-go, e.g. Scott possesses demonic teeth and doesn’t die after getting shot. A bar patron survives a shotgun blast to the head with nothing more than a bad attitude. The number of moons exceeds the customer “one”. Kat, however, is so oblivious that none of this makes any impression on her. Any of this would have been forgivable, had the fight scenes – when they show up – been solid and effective. They aren’t. There’s a couple of decent moments, and Cohen’s stunt double [yeah, it’s kinda obvious] is athletic enough. Then it’s back to the chit-chat once again. Nobody cares. If there is a hell, it probably involves watching this on endless repeat.

Dir: Scott Jeffrey, Rebecca Matthews
Star: Sarah T. Cohen, Ryan Davies, Serhat Metin, Adrian Bouchet

Girl of Nightmares, by Kendare Blake

  By

Literary rating: ★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆

Warning: while this review contains no spoilers for the book I’m reviewing, it inevitably involves some spoilers for the book to which it’s a sequel, Anna Dressed in Blood. (I didn’t review that one here; see below). The situation in this book directly grows out of the events of the first one; and though the author provides some brief references to those in the opening chapters here, if you have not read the series opener, you would get only the very bare basics of what happened there. IMO, she expected that her readers will read the books in order, and I would strongly recommend doing so. Your whole understanding of the premise here, your engagement with the story, and your understanding of who most of the major characters are as people and your emotional connection to them will be seriously impaired if you don’t!

With this novel, Blake concludes the Anna duology. The two books are quite similar in terms of style and literary vision. As in the first book, our protagonist and present-tense narrator is high school junior Cas Lowood, the latest member of his family line to wield a magically-powered athame capable of sending those ghosts which are homicidal (not all ghosts are) out of this world into the afterlife. And again, our title character is Finnish-descended Anna Korlov (ca. 1942-1958), brutally murdered by her own mother, a black-magic witch, who cursed the girl with a spell that forced her to haunt the house in which she died and to savagely slaughter anyone hapless enough to subsequently enter it. Near the end of the first book, Anna deliberately cast herself through a portal into Hell (conceived in terms more owing to North American European-derived folk religion than to anything biblical), dragging along with her an utterly malevolent and murderous spirit of enormous power and menace, the “Obeahman,”and thereby saved the lives of Cas and others –but not before she and Cas had forged a genuine emotional connection.

The previous novel took place in the fall of Cas’ junior year in high school. When the second one opens, we’re now in the late spring of the next year, when the school year is rapidly winding down to its close. All during the interval, a grieving Cas has been searching for some way to communicate with Anna and at least obtain some sort of closure. He’s been aided in this quest by his mom, a white witch; by his London-based British mentor (and the mentor of his late father before him) Gideon Palmer; and by his high-school classmate, psychically-gifted Thomas Sabin and Thomas’ grandfather Morfran, a pair who are endowed with pretty formidable magic talents of their own. So far, they’ve drawn a blank. But now, Cas is beginning to find his dreams turned nightmarish with visions of Anna and, increasingly, experiencing very vivid waking visions of her as well. Are these genuine communications from Beyond, or is he simply beginning to lose his mind and hallucinate? (Well, for an answer, you’ll just have to read the book! :-) )

The first novel in the series isn’t an action heroine read. There, although Anna, as a cursed ghost, is formidably deadly (she can, and does, kill people by literally ripping them to pieces), she’s not inflicting her mayhem in a heroic mode; and where physical combat with dark forces is called for, it falls strictly on Cas. This time, though, he’s going to need help in that department; and Carmel Jones, queen bee of the high school’s “in” crowd (and Thomas’ girlfriend; Blake lets her transcend stereotype, which I appreciated) will find herself “getting in touch with her inner warrior princess.” Then there’s magically-gifted teen Jestine “Jess” Reardon, groomed to be Cas’ replacement (long story!) by the ancient Druidic order whose ancestors created the athame, who’s combat-capable as well as smart. And just because Anna’s no longer cursed doesn’t mean that she’s not still one tough ghost…. Action scenes that involve these young ladies aren’t numerous –but they are pretty intense, and potentially lethal (or worse).

Our initial setting is the main setting of most of the first book, the real-life rather large Canadian city of Thunder Bay, Ontario. We also have a couple of ghost-hunting side trips to Minnesota, and then shift to the British Isles for roughly the last half of the book. Again, Blake gives us three-dimensional people in her important characters (both the returning ones and one newly introduced here), who have realistically complex feelings and motivations and nuanced attitudes and interactions, but whom at the same time we can understand and like. Folklore from the Vodoun tradition isn’t as prominent in this book, but the author continues to make good use of Finnish lore, particularly the role of Sami drums in shamanism. Again, this is a very gripping read, with a high suspense factor, several surprise developments (which never violate the logic of the plot, unlike the “surprises”thrown in by some genre writers!), often a real sense of life-and-death danger in places, a high-stakes central conflict, and scenes of ghostly menace which conjure a genuine, powerful sense of creepiness. The emotional intensity of the story, for me, was quite high.

As with the first book, I’d call this an adult novel which happens to have mostly teen characters. I don’t unreservedly recommend it for teen readers because, like the first book, it has a lot of bad language, including profanity and obscenity, the great majority of it gratuitous. (That cost it a star.) But, also like the first book, it has no sexual content, and the violence, though it’s there, isn’t more graphic than necessary. If you’ve read the first book, I’d characterize this sequel as a must-read.

Author: Kendare Blake
Publisher: Tor Teen; available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.