Author: Jim McLennan

Eye of the Colossus, by Nicole Grotepas

  By

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

This probably picked up half a star in the final couple of chapters, because up until the end, the plot seemed to have some huge deficiencies. While most of these were certainly addressed by the final resolution, it still left a rather questionable taste in my literary mouth [if you see what I mean!]. The heroine is Holly Drake, who has been unjustly sent to prison after killing her abusive husband. Unfortunately, he was a police officer, and some of his dubious colleagues helped ensure Holly went to jail for it. On release, her previous career as a teacher is no longer an option, and she’s largely thrown on to the charity of her sister, Meg, also a cop.

It’s Meg who gives Holly a lead to potential employment, albeit of a shady nature. But Holly has few options, and has to accept the job, which involves retrieving a necklace which has been stolen from its rightful owner, before it can be whisked away. To complete the task, she needs to put together a team with the various skills necessary, and also acquire a piece of tech called the Skelty Key, which is needed to defuse the security around their target. For someone with no background in the underworld, all of this poses a significant challenge, even discounting entirely the actual job itself. [Why she was hired at all is one of the eventually explained plot deficiencies]

This is nominally science-fiction, taking place in a six-moon system around Ixion, a gas giant. There are several different races, in addition to expat Earthlings like Holly, and the relationship between them is occasionally fractious. However, I never got any particular sense of “alienness”: you could rewrite this to be on Earth with almost no SF elements. There’s also not much in the way of an antagonist here. Early on, the “Shadow Coalition” appear to be trying to stop Holly from carrying out her mission; this aspect seems to peter out, as if the opposition got bored and drifted away. This combination perhaps turns it into more of a “crime procedural” than SF; that’s less criticism than an observation.

What is my main criticism is its sluggish pacing. You’re more than 90% of the way through before you get to the heist which is the book’s focus, and it’s a bit of a drag to reach that point. While self-contained enough overall, it’s clearly a set-up for future volumes, and I must confess, these are somewhat intriguing. There’s some stuff which happens to Holly late on, toughening up her character from the rather whiny one she has been to that point, and we also discover the harrowing circumstances leading to her incarceration. I just can’t help feeling we could have got to the same place considerably more economically, in about one-third of the page-count, and we would all have been considerably better off.

Author: Nicole Grotepas
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 3 in the Holly Drake Job series.

Kiss Kiss

  By

★★½
“Weaponized strippers. What could go wrong?”

Four exotic dancers go on a trip to vineyard, courtesy of a customer at their club. However, they get more than they bargained for, falling unconscious and waking up to find themselves test subject in a scientific experiment run by Gibson (Wagner – no, not that one). He is attempting to convince the military-industrial complex to invest in his project to create “super soldiers”. To this end, he has a serum which vastly enhances both aggression and compliance, and has invited Senator Graham (Farino) to witness a test, under carefully controlled laboratory conditions. Oh, who am I trying to kid: he actually just shoots up the strippers with the serum and makes them fight to their deaths. In sports bikinis. And face-paint. In subdued yet artistic lighting. Because science! And that’s how government funding works!

It’s every bit as silly as it sounds. Unfortunately, it’s probably not as entertaining. It’s as if the editors of Maxim rented a copy of Raze, and decided to do an unofficial remake for their target demographic. They just forgot to bring along any of the significant players, leading to a result which is more pale imitation than loving homage. Even beyond the color filters, King does shoot proceedings with a good deal of style, and certainly no excess of slow-motion. Though he mixes this up with over-kinetic editing, e.g. showing the same punch landing from multiple different angles in quick succession. This can, however, only go so far in covering up that the fights are no more than average.

It’s never clear quite why the protagonists have to be strippers. Even during the opening scenes, where we see them “at work,” they don’t actually show any significant skin, and it’s weird having them called each other by stage names, like Kiss (Hopkins) and Promise (Castellon). I will admit that I knew some dancers back in my youth, and they never used the fake names outside. It may backfire, in that these pseudonyms repress the feeling these are real people, and I certainly didn’t feel any significant connection to the victims. Instead, it feels for much of the time like you are watching video-game: a well-rendered one, it has to be admitted, though one where the cut scenes go on considerably longer than normal.

To that end, I did quite enjoy Wagner, who chews the scenery to good, “mad scientist” effect. His performance reaches the point that the silly trappings (I mean, do we really need an electric fence around the ring?) begin to make weirdly flamboyant sense. You can even believe his scientific research establishment has a whole team of hair and make-up artists, to ensure the test subjects never have a lock or lick of mascara out of place, despite repeatedly brawling each other in the dirt. But in the end, it’s all just too daft. 35 years ago, it would, however, have made an excellent Duran Duran video.

Dir: Dallas King
Star: Natascha Hopkins, Robert Wagner, Nathalia Castellon, Julia Farino

Counterfeiting in Suburbia

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★★½
“Fake it till you make it.”

High-schoolers Reilly (Albuquerque) and Erica (Wallace) have discovered a way to literally print money, forging hundred-dollar bills. They then use these to buy high-end fashion, and sell these ill-gotten gains on to their schoolmates for genuine cash. The more cautious Reilly wants to stop, but realizes she can do good by helping Karen (Butler), her aunt and guardian, who is in financial trouble. So when Erica is insistent they expand, Reilly goes along with it, and they use the school’s art-class resources to up their game, laundering the fake money through foreign exchange stores. However, this criminal empire comes under threat, after art teacher Tim Sylvester (MacCaull) discovers what they’re up to. Because by chance, he owes a large sum of money to some nasty people, and starts a relationship with Erica, to make sure she’ll keep working for his benefit.  Worse still, the Secret Service have been alerted to the flood of funny money, so are also investigating.

I have… questions. What made R+E get into counterfeiting to begin with? For when the film starts, they’re already printing out the Benjamins on their home printer. And where do you get the special paper? While there have been cases of people using inkjet printers for this purpose, it seems these involved wiping $5 bills, then reprinting them with higher denominations. [Googling to find this out has probably got me on a watch-list…] And while the film makes the point, especially in high-end stores, that most purchases using credit-cards means assistants are less familiar with spotting fake bills, this surely doesn’t apply to currency exchanges? As a credible piece of scripting, this ends up skipping most of the necessary check-boxes, and I doubt it’s based as much on a true story as claimed.

It’s not entirely without merit though. The underlying idea – teenagers gradually getting out of their depth, and not realizing it until they are too far in – is a decent one. The contrast between the two leads is effective as well: Erica is perpetually touting them as being like Thelma and Louise, and is unfazed when Reilly points out how that ends. There’s also a contrast in motives between the girls – though you wonder a bit why they’re friends, given their divergent natures. Reilly is entirely selfless, and is using her illicit income for what she perceives as “good” [though never quite considers the negative implications of her acts]. Erica, on the other hand, is apparently doing it for the thrill or the LOLs, and you’re never sure quite what this loose cannon might do.

By coincidence, this was watched the same weekend as Body of Sin, and the two films are similar. Both focus on two young women of disparate characters, whose decision to team up and go over the border of legality has severe consequences. Both also have severe problems in the script department. Body was perhaps better technically, but this gets the edge – simply for the sheer uselessness of the only sympathetic male character, which may arguably be more feminist than anything the women do. While some way short of great, it just about passes muster, if you’re in an undemanding Netflix mood.

Dir: Jason Bourque
Star: Larissa Albuquerque, Kayla Wallace, Sarah Butler, Matthew MacCaull

Body of Sin

  By

★★
“Diamonds are clearly not forever.”

Erica (Kriis) is an attractive con-artist, who seduces married men in hotels, then drugs and robs them, knowing they’ll never be able to report the crime. She has just brought on an apprentice, Lauren (Patrikios), to learn the dubious trade, watch her back, etc. Their next score turns out to be the jackpot. as they discover the target was carrying a stash of diamonds with a seven-figure value. Absconding with their ill-gotten gains, the pair decide to lay low for a while, and head to Erica’s hideout on the holiday destination of Isabelle Island. They’re disturbed to read news reports that the target turned up dead in the room, and it quickly appears that the owner of the diamonds is closing in on them. But who is the threat? Local policeman, Mike (McCullough), for whom Lauren has a thing? Visiting boat-owner and part-time magician Tom (Berdini), with whom Erica has a fling? Or the creepy bald guy who arrives on the island and appears to be stalking Erica?

The performer who makes the best impression here is Tybee Island in Georgia, playing the role of Isabelle Island. It seems like a very nice place to take a holiday, picturesque and relaxing. Everyone else? Not so much. In particular, you could have Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren, and they’d still struggle to do anything with a script which resembles French lace, in that it’s a lightly-connected series of holes. For instance, when robbing the target, Erica first comes across an empty briefcase, before locating the diamonds in a tube, hidden in the toilet cistern. Inexplicably. she still takes the briefcase – which, of course, turns out to contain a tracking device. For the film’s entire duration, people both good and bad don’t behave in ways that make logical sense, and Creepy Bald Guy is probably the Worst Stalker Ever, though in his defense, there does turn out to be something of an explanation.

The leads are decent enough. There’s a nice contrast between the utterly cynical and untrusting Erica, who believes she’s on some kind of crusade to punish deceitful men, and the more naive and open Lauren, who gradually becomes more appalled, the more she discovers about her partner. I’d far rather have seen this angle exploited, with the two women turning from Thelma and Louise buddies, into vicious competitors, battling each other for the diamonds. Instead, they literally stand around while the (eventually revealed) good guy and villain tussle it out, mano a mano, on the edge of a convenient cliff. No prizes for guessing how that ends. The other thing is, for a film basically predicated on sexual attraction… it’s  tame stuff. Given Kriis bears some resemblance to Penelope Cruz – though she’s Indian rather than Hispanic – this was disappointing. If ever you want proof that technical competence alone is not sufficient to justify a movie’s existence, this should be Exhibit A.

Dir: The Olson Brothers
Star: Elisha Kriis, Ellie Patrikios, William Mark McCullough, Riccardo Berdini

Agent 5

  By

★★½
“Sleepless in Seattle”

Coincidentally, this one-man production was watched immediately after another, also put together toward the north-west corner, around the USA/Canadian border. But Carter Johnson is relatively restrained compared to Shadow of the Lotus‘s Jeff L’Heureux, Johnson’s name only appearing ten times in the end credits. While not dissimilar in low-budget approach, Agent 5 likely comes out just on top of the two, due to better pacing and sleeker look.

The titular heroine is Jada (Lemos), an assassin for a shadowy group which brought her up and trained her to kill, after the death of her parents. However, her programming is broken after she’s assigned the target of a whistleblowing doctor, whose elimination has been ordered by the pharmaceutical company which employed him. He convinces her to spare his life: although nearby colleagues still complete the job, before his death, he gives her the folder of incriminating data, information which could save thousands of lives. When Agent 5 goes public with it, her own employer decides she must be eliminated for her treachery, and the call goes out that she is to be located and killed. Easier said than done, though, especially when the target has decided to take the battle to her boss.

The action is competent. Nothing especially memorable, yet those involved are wise enough to know their limitations, and operate within them, rather than pushing the envelope and coming up short. Plotwise, there are some wobbly aspects: as with Lotus, the director being the writer probably hampers seeing such deficiencies. Jada exerts no effort to make things difficult for her ex-employer. If I was the subject of a brigade of assassins, I’d have moved to another country (or at least another state), drastically changed my appearance and gone as far off the grid as possible. Agent 5 does none of this, and keeps driving around town – likely for the prosaic reason that it would have posed production difficulties. Her “defection” also needed additional work: as it stands, she goes from apparently dedicated killer to rebel on the strength of a thirty-second conversation. Showing her as already disgruntled and with thoughts of quitting, would have made this much more plausible.

Originally developed as a short web series back in 2012, the main strength for the feature-length version is on the visual side. The technical quality of the footage here is so slick, it’s all but indistinguishable from a fully professional production (from what I can gather, it’s more of a high-end hobby effort for most involved). If only the same could be said about the performances, which are the biggest problem. Not so much Lemos – I’m not the only person to think she could perhaps be mistaken for Kate Beckinsale under certain lighting conditions. But the rest of the cast are all over the place, things likely reaching their nadir in the male “newscaster,” whose acting is so spectacularly awkward, I rewound it, purely for amusement purposes.

Dir: Carter Johnson
Star: Cindy Lemos, Ben Andrews, Andrew Tribolini, Roy Stanton

Into the Dark, by J.A. Sutherland

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

Alexis Carew is a third-generation settler on the planet Dalthus, and the ward of her grandfather, her parents having been killed in an accident. But her future is murky, for Dalthusian law prohibits women from inheriting property, such as her family’s estates. With the alternative being a marriage Alexis really doesn’t want, the 15-year-old girl instead signs up to become a midshipman in Her Majesty’s Navy (or, at least, the space version thereof), on the interstellar sloop Merlin. However, this is largely just exchanging one set of problems for another, whether winning the respect of her colleagues, fending off the too admiring ones, or adapting to the harsh life of outer space – and, stranger still, the “darkspace” which facilitates interstellar travel. And then there are the pirates…

This isn’t the first SF/sailing combination to feature a female protagonist, apparently being quite similar to David Weber’s Honor Harrington series. The first volume of that is still sitting in my “to read” list, so while I can’t directly compare them, Werner has you covered for a review of Weber’s book. They definitely seem to have a mutual inspiration in C.S. Forester’s Hornblower series, with a futuristic spin. Here, I’m not certain quite how well it works: some of the sailing elements definitely seem forced, even with the hand-waving nature of “darkspace”. For it basically behaves in whatever way is necessary for the plot to be jammed into Sutherland’s nautical peghole.

That’s probably the main weakness: it’s one especially apparent in the early going, when Alexis first goes into space, until my brain seemed to get used to it. On the plus side, she does make for an admirable heroine, one who uses her wits more than her fists. As such, the action quotient is fairly low; there’s a steep learning curve here, for both Alexis and the reader, as we all learn the mechanics of how things work in this strange universe. When that is finally out of the way, the energy ramps up: in particular, when a ship captured by the Merlin, is being taken back to port with Alexis at the helm, when the captured crew mutiny and retake the vessel.

This sequence likely the action highlight of this first volume, the rest being mostly long-distance space battles. Though with war breaking out right at the end, it’s likely things escalate further in subsequent volumes. Although the supporting characters are nicely drawn, I could perhaps have done with more of an antagonist.  The nearest this book has to offer never meets Alexis directly – his son being the closest she comes. Again, I suspect this angle may be further developed down the road. There’s enough promise shown here to keep the door open to continuing the series. But I should probably read On Basilisk Station first, as I suspect one series of pseudo-aquatic sci-fi is probably enough!

Author: J.A. Sutherland
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 6 in the Alexis Carew series.

The Breadwinner

  By

★★★
“Burka-to-back.”

Around the turn of the millennium, Parvana (Chaudry) is an 11-year-old girl living in Kabul, Afghanistan – then under the strict religious rule of the Taliban, in the aftermath of the Russian retreat. Her father is arrested and taken off to prison, leaving his wife and children without a male guardian. Which is kinda important, because under Taliban law, women are not allowed out in public unaccompanied. With no other option, Parvana cuts her hair and dresses as a boy in order to be able to get supplies for her family. Teaming up with another boy-who-isn’t, Shauzia (Bhatia), they find work. Parvana starts saving for the bribes necessary to see, and hopefully win the release of, her father; Shauzia is saving up for her long-held dream of seeing the ocean. Of course, it’s never that easy, especially post-9/11, when the country is invaded by America and its allies.

A well-drawn exercise in paradox, it’s interesting to see liberal Hollywood attempt to juggle two of its favoured topics: feminism and Islam. Though in the end, this more or less says “Screw it,” and comes down firmly on the side of the former. For if you didn’t hate Islam before this film… you probably will by the time it’s over. Technically of course, the villain here is fundamentalism, in the malevolent shape of the Taliban; yet, this is the only kind of religion depicted in the movie. It’s not even clear if Parvana and her family are Muslim; they certainly don’t go to a mosque, and their existence seems entirely secular. On that basis, I’m quite surprised the film hasn’t been called out for Islamophobia, but I guess those gatekeepers were probably too busy nodding approvingly at the message of feminist liberation.

Moving on from tdubious socio-political messages which I can take or leave, as an animated feature, I liked this rather better. It intertwines Parvana’s efforts, both to contact her father and simply survive, with her telling the folk-tale of The Elephant King – making its hero her brother, who was previously killed by a land-mine left over from the Soviet occupation. The two threads use different yet complementary styles of animation to separate the “real” world from Parvana’s story, and it’s an effective way of depicting them. Parvana, too, makes for a solid heroine: brave and loyal to her family, while being too innocent and young to know the awkward questions she isn’t supposed to ask e.g WHY women aren’t allowed to go out unaccompanied.

Twomey was co-director of Oscar winner The Book of Kells, and it’s nice to see some animation that isn’t intent on being 3D and photo-realistic, so much as serving the story and the characters. It is sometimes a little hard to put aside the obvious intent as social propaganda, but I’ve never been one who felt you had to agree entirely with a film’s politics, in order to admire its artistic qualities. The latter are decent enough here to make for a worthwhile, if slightly too earnest, viewing experience.

Dir: Nora Twomey
Star (voice): Saara Chaudry, Soma Bhatia, Noorin Gulamgau, Kawa Ada

Shadow of the Lotus

  By

★★
“Give the man a hand!”

We know very well that, on low-budget films, people have to wear many hats. Hell, my IMDb entry began when a film I was supposed to be helping my wife produce, had an actor drop out. You can only respect those who can turn their hands to multiple jobs. And, yet… There’s a point at which it become self-defeating, because nobody can be good – or even competent – at so many positions. Lotus appears to have set new records in this area, with Jeff L’Heureux having his name listed in the end credits at no fewer than thirty different points, from director to make-up artist. That’s wearing an entire department store’s worth of hats, most apparent in the running time. For this is an 85-minute movie which runs for 124 minutes. L’Heureux the editor desperately needed to have had a word with L’Heureux the director and L’Heureux the writer about that.

There are two crime triads: the Black Lotus and the Red Dragons. Sarah (Huang) works for the former, but when she attempts to leave the organization, is shot, set ablaze and left for dead [Memo to self: if ever I become an evil overlord, I will not set my enemies on fire within easy rolling reach of the Pacific Ocean…] Naturally, she’s still alive, and comes back to begin disrupting the somewhat precarious plans of her former gang to form an alliance with the Dragons – I guess with the goal of forming some kind of super-triad under Gensho Woo (Geoff Wong). In the process, she encounters and subsequently teams up with local cop Claire (Neale), who has been trying to work things from the legal end. Sarah, needless to say, has no such limitations…

As noted, this is desperately in need of severe trimming, with hardly a single scene which does not go on for too long, where not altogether superfluous. This is particularly apparent in the early stages: it feels like an hour before things actually get going, with endless chit-chat between the players that’s blandly uninteresting. Things do improve in the second half, even if I found myself irrationally irritated by the way Sarah held her gun sidewise, like an amateur gangsta wannabe. The main plus is former colleague Jade (Macalino), who gets the chance to unleash her inner psycho. You could perhaps argue her performance is rampant over-acting, yet it’s still a heck of a lot of fun to watch, and the film is the poorer for Jade’s eventual departure.

L’Heureux is clearly inspired by, and trying to reproduce, the style of classic Hong Kong cinema from the likes of John Woo. That’s laudable enough an aim. Though the action is competent, it does fall short of these lofty goals, mostly lacking the passion and intensity which Woo’s actors brought to his films. This was never a function of their cost – admittedly, having Chow Yun-Fat was just a slight help to him there – though in defense of this, it appears to have been the director’s first feature. Plenty of room to improve next time, especially if he gets the help he needs to avoid spreading himself thinner than margarine on toast.

Dir: Jeff L’Heureux
Star: Vicky Huang, Melanie Neale, Alex Law, Candice Macalino

Girls With Balls

  By

★★★★
“Guess a new domain name is needed…”

Lurking behind one of the most cringeworthy titles I’ve ever seen, and a trailer that’s not much better, is a very pleasant surprise. Well, at least if you’re a fan of the “splatstick” genre, mixing over-the-top gore and comedy: Peter Jackson’s Brain Dead is the pinnacle of that genre. I certainly am, and consequently found this a real hoot. Girls volleyball team, the Falcons, are on their way home after their latest victory, when they end up diverted into a small town, populated entirely by inbred rednecks (or the Gallic version thereof). After an encounter in the hotel, they find themselves getting a night-time visit, and are soon being hunted down by the village’s residents. However, the biggest psycho may not be among the locals…

Afonso does a great job in depicting the heroines with broad strokes. You quickly establish the egotistical star player Morgane (Azem), up and coming star Jeanne (Daviot), nerdy M.A. (Balchere), etc. They’re all overseen by their distinctly non-athletic coach (Solaro), who treats them as if they were one big, dysfunctional family. Yet these internal tensions often threaten their literal survival. It was clear to me (if not many reviewers!) that Afonso is parodying the slasher genre: he takes it to such extremes, with the girls bickering over boyfriends even as their pursuers are mere feet away. That’s where this differs from the other “women’s sports team in wilderness peril” movie – yes, it’s a genre… well, there are two – Blood Games, which took itself seriously. He does an equally nice job with the villains. For example, rather than having hunting dogs, there’s one local who pretends to be a dog, playing the sound of hounds baying over a bullhorn.

It’s just one of the many times where this film subverts the audience’s expectations, not least in having heroines with their own set of flaws. Also included there is the country-and-western singer who hitches a ride on the team’s camper van, interrupting proceedings to offer sardonic commentary on proceedings. “The players on this team were all kind of hot”, he sings at the start, going on, “Another thing they have in common, is that they die before the end.” [Is he telling the truth? I won’t say…] Inevitably, of course, there’s a rather dumb scene where the girls use volleyballs to attack their enemies, and the climax doesn’t actually stick in the mind as well as many of the scenes which preceded it. The attack chihuahua, or the headless corpse that Just. Won’t. Die.

If you took this seriously, it would potentially be thoroughly offensive – though it’s entirely equal-opportunity in its approach there. Men, women, gay or straight: no-one here gets out alive. Just, for the love of all that is holy, skip the dubbed version on Netflix, and watch it subtitled. I caught a few seconds before lunging for the remote control, and my ears may still be bleeding.

Dir: Olivier Afonso
Star: Tiphaine Daviot, Manon Azem, Louise Blachère, Victor Artus Solaro

Lady Death: The Movie

  By

★★
“Death warmed up.”

My first viewing of this was on a day off from work, when I was down with some sinusy thing, and dosed up on DayQuil. So I chalked my losing interest and drifting off to the meds, and once I felt better, decided this deserved the chance of a re-view. However, the result was still the same: even as a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed viewer, I found attention lapsing. For this animated version of a mature comic, might as well be a He-Man and the Masters of the Universe episode. Which is a shame. I wanted to like it, since the creator of Lady Death, Brian Pulido, is something of a local comics legend here in my adopted home state of Arizona. This should have been better.

In 15th-century Sweden, Hope (Auten) is the daughter of Matthias (Kleinhenz), a mercenary who is actually an incarnation of Satan. When this is exposed, the innocent Hope is burned at the stake by religious zealots: there, she makes a literal deal with the devil, and agrees to re-join her father in Hell, where he has also taken her fiance, medical student Niccolo. However, once she is in the underworld, she rebels against his authority. With the aid of Satan’s former swordsmith, Cremator (Mungle), she obtains ‘Darkness’, a weapon Cremator had forged after slaying Asmodeus. Hope – or Lady Death, as she is now known – begins to amass an army and plot her demonic father’s overthrow.

All of which sounds considerably more interesting than the execution here, which is blandly uninteresting in just about every level, beginning with its depiction of hell. Even by the standards of 2004, this is low-quality animation. One of the strengths of the medium is it’s limited only by imagination: you don’t need to worry about the costs of building sets or whatever, it’s just what you draw. Yet there’s no indication here of any thought having gone into the setting. Hell is, apparently, a poorly-lit and generic cave system, populated by entities that look like Jabba the Hutt or Tim Curry in Legend. Much the same vanilla complaint can be leveled at voice-acting that’s desperately in need of more energy, save perhaps McAvin as Lucifer’s “jester,” Pagan.

But it’s perhaps the script which is the weakest element here – and considering the screenplay was written by Pulido, that’s especially disappointing. I’m only somewhat familiar with the comics, yet they seem to have a rich and fully-developed mythology. Could have fooled me based on this, where the Devil is basically an idiot, who has to make every mistake in the Evil Overlord handbook, to allow his adversary to triumph. Though this version of Lady Death appears considerably more heroic than in the source material, the question of why a “good girl” would want to reign over hell is never addressed. All that’s left is in an impressive bit of central character design, because there’s no doubt she is a striking creation. She’s someone who deserves a significantly better fate than this entirely forgettable prod with a blunt stick.

Dir: Andy Orjuela
Star (voice): Christine Auten, Mike Kleinhenz, Andy McAvin, Rob Mungle