Author: Jim McLennan

Tornado

  By

★★½
“That’s my father’s sword. Put it down.”

It’s a samurai film. Except, it’s a Western. Only, it’s one which takes place in Scotland. I trust that’s cleared up any confusion here. However, you will still need to manage your expectations, because based on both the poster and the trailer, it would be easy to go in expecting something action-packed. It is not. At all. That element is heavily back-loaded, to the final fifteen minutes. It does include one of the more imaginative and splattery kills I’ve seen this year. Probably a bonus half-star for that alone. However, it’s more a movie about mood, atmosphere and scenery than arterial spray. But I lived in Scotland. I already know it’s pretty.

This unfolds at almost the very end of the 18th century, when Fujin (Hira) and his daughter Tornado (Kōki) are taking their samurai puppet show around the Scottish lowlands. She comes into possession of some gold, which has been stolen from a church by a gang, led by Sugarman (Roth) and his son, Little Sugar (Lowden). They’re not happy, and pursue the caravan in which she’s travelling with her father. This leads to a confrontation in which Fujin is killed, albeit not before badly wounding Sugarman. Tornado flees into the forest, to regroup, and eventually plot her revenge against the robber and his pals, using the skills taught to her, to pick them off one by one on her way to the inevitable final confrontation with Sugarman. 

I respect what this is trying to do, and it’s certainly a combination of genres and settings which I had not seen before. Unfortunately, the execution is plagued with a number of missteps, which hamper the end results and negate many of the positive elements. Right from the start, we are thrown into the middle of things, with Tornado running from Sugarman and his henchmen. The film is curiously reluctant to tell us what is going on – or, more importantly, why we should care – being too leisurely to fill in the blanks. There’s also a cut-out between the gang and Tornado, in the shape of a kid who actually carried out the initial theft. Beyond giving the heroine ‘clean hands’, it’s an unnecessary complication. 

On the performance side, Roth is good value as ever in a villainous role: I was inevitably reminded of Rob Roy, where he previously played the bad guy in 18th-century Scotland. Kōki has rather more experience as a model than an actress, and director MacLean wisely keeps the need for actual dramatics to a minimum, opting to make her the stoic samurai type, so she’s good enough. It all looks quite lovely, so while you are waiting around for something much to happen – which will be the majority of the hour and a half – you can admire the cinematography and picturesque Scottish landscapes. It wasn’t quite enough for me. While possible to admire the intent, this is likely a case of “It’s not you, it’s me.” 

Dir: John Maclean
Star: Kōki, Tim Roth, Takehiro Hira, Jack Lowden

Woman at War

  By

★★★★
“Feel the electricity in the air.”

This was a real and pleasant surprise. I wasn’t even sure if this would qualify for the site, or if it would end simply being too gentle. Whole it’s not going to get any awards for hard-core action, it does fit in here. More impressively, it managed to make my empathize with someone whose views are ones I’d generally disagree with. It takes place in Iceland, where Halla (Geirharðsdóttir) is a middle-aged, single woman, waging a near one-person campaign of sabotage against heavy industry, mostly by disabling the power-lines which supply electricity to it, disfiguring the landscape and exacerbating climate change. It’s a game of cat and mouse, with the authorities keen to stop the eco-terrorist from dissuading foreign investors.

However, Halla has issues of her own, beyond the net closing in on her property destruction. A long-dormant adoption request is suddenly approved, and she can’t risk further criminal acts, as a conviction would bar her from proceeding. She intends to go out with a declaration of her manifesto, literally flung from the Reykjavik roof-tops, and a final act, stealing Semtex to blow up a key electricity pylon. Her accomplice, government employee Baldvin (Ragnarsson) is increasingly concerned about the “one last job” trope, and twin sister Ása (also Geirharðsdóttir), a yoga teacher, threatens to put a spoke in the adoption process too, by vanishing off to India for two years to live with her guru.

It’s charming, quirky and rather subversive, all at the same time. It could easily have toppled over into preachiness, but is leavened with enough humour to keep the messaging secondary to the medium. For example, there’s a poor Spanish tourist (Estrada), who is perpetually getting blamed for the attacks, simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, leading to his tent getting SWATted. There’s also the soundtrack, which shows up on screen as a three-piece band, and a trio of singers, who play whatever music is needed to accompany the scenes. Every character is a pleasure, not least the farmer (Johanson) who becomes Halla’s leading accomplice. I will say, any wannabe eco-warriors might well get some helpful tips here, such as the best place to hide your explosives…

But it’s Geirharðsdóttir’s film, in both of her roles. She has a quiet yet absolute commitment to her cause, and it’s thoroughly convincing, even to someone like me who thinks “Earth First” means, “We can strip-mine the other planets later.” I still found myself rooting for her, as she scurried across the Icelandic moors, using low-tech means to counter the authorities with their drones and thermal imaging cameras. For what’s as much a comedic drama as anything, these sequences pack their share of tension, and I was left wondering how it would get resolved. It is a bit of a cheat – are the Icelandic authorities that incompetent? I’ll let it pass, since this demonstrates the way message movies should be executed.

Dir: Benedikt Erlingsson
Star: Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir, Jon Johanson, Juan Camilo Román Estrada, Jörundur Ragnarsson

[A modified version of this review first appeared on Film Blitz]

Blood Star

  By

★★
“Neither protecting nor serving.”

I get the idea of what this is trying to do: really, be a female-centric version of The Hitcher. Though to some extent, that franchise went there itself, in The Hitcher II: I’ve Been Waiting. Here, we have Bobbi Torres (Camacho) driving across New Mexico in her sweet muscle car, and when she stops for fuel, has an awkward encounter with Sheriff Bilstein (Schwab). Things get worse when she gets back on the road, and is quickly pulled over by the officer for speeding, which gets her a thousand dollar ticket she is unable to pay. Thanks to a prologue, we know Bilstein has a psychopathic fondness for tormenting and killing young women. This ain’t gonna end well.

It is one of those films where you can tell whether someone is good or evil by their genital configuration. Every man Bobbi meets is evil; every woman we see is part of an unspoken sisterhood. I sense the aim was some kind of riot grrrl agenda, but it manifests itself in some spectacularly clunky ways. There’s one conversation which is especially cringey, Bobbi trading abuse stories with a diner waitress, Amy (Brumfield). It ends in a manner that is clearly intended to be shocking, but I was more relieved the pair had simply stopped spitting out clichés. And I am fairly sure that getting jabbed with a syringe does not typically result in instinct heroin addiction, as alleged here. 

Nor does it help that Bobbi isn’t very likeable, the script mistaking smart-ass and mouthy as endearing. Schwab does better as the authority figure, exuding menace with every sentence. Though despite sharing a fondness for toying with his victim, the Sheriff is inevitably nowhere near as memorable as Rutger Hauer’s mythical road warrior. The agenda here is less interesting as well: I’ve seen a few reviews which compare this to the Wolf Creek movie, and I’d not argue – in part because I didn’t like that Australian road-slasher very much either [the TV series, however, is worth a look] The scales here are tipped considerably in favour of torture porn (albeit more mental than physical), with the inevitable explosion of Bobbi limited to the final fifteen minutes. 

There are some positives to be found, such as the impressively sparse desert landscapes (looks like California played the part of New Mexico), and Bobbi’s car, a 1977 Ford Mustang, which arguably has more personality than its driver. There’s a plot point established about it having a balky starter motor, but I don’t recall this being as crucial as I expected. I did like the sense anyone could die at any time, with a couple of deaths out of nowhere. It needs a heroine who is considerably more aggressive, except verbally, in the first half. Bobbi ends up being too passive for too long in the face of the Sheriff’s obvious threat, which belies the strong, confident woman the script wants her to be.

Dir: Lawrence Jacomelli
Star: Britni Camacho, John Schwab, Sydney Brumfield, Travis Lincoln Cox

Parse Galaxy Omnibus, Volume 1 by Kate Sheeran Swed

  By

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

Sloane Tarnish is not exactly your typical bounty-hunter. Indeed, she’s training for a medical degree when her shady uncle, Vin, talks her into helping out with a little job. Craving excitement, she agrees, and finds herself posing as the wife of a Fleet officer, seeking to intercept a data key with potentially very explosive information on it. A year later, Vin’s ship turns up without him on it, and she finds herself the new captain, leading the crew as they try to figure out where Vin has gone, and why he vanished. To fund this search, Sloane takes up the bounty-hunting mantle.

Given this is an eight-volume series (not including the prequel which forms part of this set), it’s no spoiler to say, this does not end with our heroine being re-united with Uncle Vin. But if that does not happen, quite a lot else does. Sloane gets embroiled in a fight for power between the two major forces in her part of the galaxy. There’s the Galactic Fleet, who keep the peace, and the Cosmic Trade Federation, who run commerce. But the Fleet appear to be attempting to consolidate power in their hands, and the data key Vin liberated may contain incriminating evidence to prove that. Or it may not. But a lot of people are very interested in Sloane’s efforts to locate it and her uncle.

Among them are Commander of the Galactic Fleet, Gareth Fortune. He’s the man from whom she took the data key in the prequel, but he becomes rather more sympathetic to her over the following two volumes. Fortune has problems of his own, because he is being set up as the man in charge of the planned galactic coup. To prove his innocence, needs Sloane to find proof of the real perpetrator. On the other hand, there is Federation Coordinator Striker, whose enmity towards Sloane is considerably more persistent. Especially after she rejects his offer of work, then turns around and employs the bounty target she was supposed to be delivering to him.

This appears to be on permanent offer as a Kindle freebie, and you certainly can’t complain about that price. Despite the prequel, it still feels like I was missing some information. For example, Sloane has apparently been outside this galaxy – to our one, for she brought back coffee to hers! However, this should not get in the way of the main plot which, although unresolved, is decent, and ends without excessive cliff-hangers. I liked the occasional moments of dry humour, and the heroine is a likable sort, if perhaps a little more passive than I would have expected. The burgeoning romance between her and Fortune is a little obvious too. It still made for a pleasant enough read, and I could see myself dipping deeper into the series, if my unread pile were not its inevitable self.

Author: Kate Sheeran Swed
Publisher: Spells & Spaceships Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Collects Books 0-2 of 8 in the Parse Galaxy series.

The Viking Sisters

  By

★★★
“The reputation never dies.”

I must admit, my initial reaction to this was, it is less than a film, than footage from a group of Viking LARPers (Live-action Role-playing). The resources on view here are… not great. But the deeper I went into this, the more I found myself able to forgive the limited budget, and began to appreciate the story it was telling, and the characters inhabiting it. Oh, there are still major problems, such as in the “battle scenes”. And I use quotes there, since the count of participants there feels like it might reach… eight, if we’re being charitable. But when it wasn’t making ill-advised efforts to be epic in scale, I ended up enjoying this, and subsequently bought the Blu-ray. 

It’s the third part in the ‘Old Gods’ trilogy. I haven’t seen the first two, and didn’t even know they existed until I started the review, so it clearly didn’t impact my enjoyment too much. As you’d expect, it takes place during the time when the Vikings ruled Norway. Sisters Snöfrid (Engman) and Vitstjärna grew up together, but have since separated. Snöfrid has the second sight, and has been both feared and shunned as a witch, while Vitstjärna’s talents were more physical, causing her to become an outlaw. But she kills the king’s son during one of those battle scenes. The enraged (and more than slightly mad) queen Gunhild (Ekholm) captures Snöfrid’s husband, and says he will be executed if Snöfrid doesn’t find and kill her sister.

Thus begins a trek through some starkly beautiful landscapes, and I respect the work the makers put in to try and create an authentic historical experience. For example, “The old Norse spoken in the film uses reconstructed pronunciation as opposed to modern Icelandic pronunciation which is common in media.” Could I have told the difference? No. I still appreciate the effort, and found myself being immersed in the culture. Snöfrid ends up joining a group of rather sketchy Vikings, who are on their way to Iceland, and has to keep all her wits about her in their company. But it’s when she meets her sister that the film bursts into life, their scenes together being dramatic enough to give me pause.

It’s perhaps not as action-oriented as I expected, especially after Vitstjärna parts ways from Snöfrid. I still feel it qualifies here, despite an ending which had me scratching my head in a fair degree of uncertainty. Without revealing too much, it feels like the film is pointing in a vengeful direction, yet decides to take a more mystical one instead, rather than committing to a conclusion. It still works, and is another case where the film chose to zig instead of zag, bypassing the expected route. Finally, I can’t complain too much, about any film which adds another swear-word to the top drawer of my cursing lexicon. I’m not sure when I’ll ever get to use the phrase “troll-c*nt”, but I vow I’m going to get there eventually!

Dir: Viking Almquist
Star: Karin Engman, Eliza Sica, Sofia Ekholm, Oliver Burenfjäll

Zero Hour

  By

★½
“It’s certainly an hour.”

Not to be confused, in any way, with Zero Hour!, the 1957 Canadian film which was spoofed mercilessly in Airplane! This unfolds mostly over one night in a high-rise, where Ida (Hoover) is the last person left in the building, having taken over from best friend Katrina (Dumont). She finds herself being harassed by a pair of masked figures, and simultaneously receiving messages on her phone and computer from her husband, Isaac (Groetsch). Which is perhaps even more disturbing to her, because Isaac was killed in the home invasion which opens the movie. So what’s going on? Has he become a ghost in the machine? Do they have cellphones in the afterlife? Or is there a more prosaic explanation?

According to what Isaac tells her, the people hunting her through the building are also those responsible for his death. The obvious question is why, and it’s in providing the answers that the script (also by Groetsch) falls apart. After the heroine has been chased through the building, eventually ending up in a roof-top confrontation, we get the first of a number of twists, and… Put it this way: I have questions. Lots of questions. Out of respect for the film-makers, I won’t spoiler it, because this is clearly a big part of the film. However, I don’t feel it makes very much sense, because the conspiracy required would need to extend far further than the handful of people shown as involved.

While you are still going, “Hang on, what about…” there, the film lobs another twist at you, then a third as we flashback to Ida and Katrina’s earlier conversation in a bar, which brings in Allison (Durham). After the credits, there’s even another scene which could be a fourth twist, I dunno. Or it might be Groetsch simply wanting to get in another drone shot. I remember my first drone shot. It was in a movie called Berkshire County in 2014, and was amazing at the time. Now? It’s very easy to overuse them, and Groetsch does just that here. He’s clearly going for a fluid style of camera, with it always on the move. But there has to be a point to them. Here, not so much.

This barely runs an hour between opening and closing credits (or, perhaps more accurately, opening and closing drone shots). That’s likely a wise decision, considering how much of this is Ida staring at her phone – and Goetsch needs to learn how to shoot text messages. I will say, I didn’t hate Hoover, who is fairly sympathetic, and does what she can with material which feels more like a rough draft of an idea, and in great need of external critical input. According to his IMDb, Groetsch has no fewer than eleven other films in various stages of pre-production (though some haven’t been updated since 2017 or earlier). The only way to get better is to make more movies. I hope he does.

Dir: Justin Groetsch
Star: Mikaela Hoover, Sarah Dumont, Justin Groetsch, Carrington Brooke Durham

Pacific Fear

  By

★★½
“Surfing birds.”

At the beginning of this, I wondered if I was watching a Godzilla film. Because it opens with atomic bomb footage, depicting French test in the Pacific. We know what this leads to: gigantic lizards with fiery bre… Oh, hang on: it’s actually a group of women, looking for a place reputed to have particularly gnarly (if my knowledge of beach-speak doesn’t fail me, and it probably does) waves. There are three surfers, plus photographer Sarah (Galloy), who has been out of the game since an accident which wrecked her confidence. The island they find isn’t on any map, so it must be good, and not a death-trap waiting to happen to them. Right?

The problems occur when they stumble across a maraé, a sacred site to the locals (giving the film is alternate title). One of the women has native ancestry, so conveniently knows about this, and why disturbing it would be a Very Bad Idea Indeed. Guess who doesn’t listen? That’d be another of the women. Their next surfing session is interrupted by a hungry shark, and when the survivors struggle ashore, they are immediately met by a group of hostile tribespeople. Oh, and a former soldier, the General (Recoing), who seems to have stayed behind after the tests out of guilt. He has gone a bit Colonel Kurtz, to drop an Apocalypse Now reference, and the captured women are now in deep trouble. As in potential human sacrifices.

The main positive here is excellent photography, both above and below the water. The scenery is lovely, and it’s captured beautifully. If you’re not thinking about booking a holiday to Tahiti by the mid-way point, you have not been paying attention. However, everything else is kinda lacklustre, not helped by dubbing where the main direction given to the English voice actors seems to have been, “Make it flatter! Less interesting!” As villains, the combination of locals and Frenchmen are awkward too. It feels like the makers didn’t want to go the “savage foreigners” route, as in Eli Roth’s Green Inferno. Yet they ended up instead making them subservient to the General, which could be seen as even more condescending.

As for the women, Sarah is the only one given much depth, courtesy of her history. While the accident may not prove significant in terms of the plot, it does make her seem a genuine person, and it’s more than the other three get. Once things get going (and it takes a while)t, it becomes a reasonable entry in the wilderness survival sub-genre, though the scene of her jumping into a waterfall to escape her pursuers is either bad CGI, or shot so badly it looks like CGI. I’d have liked to have seen her go full Rambo, using her environment against her enemies, but realistically, that would be a stretch for a surfer turned photographer. There are a couple of moments of moderate gory violence, but not a lot of emotional impact. You’ll likely leave with little more than a shrug. 

Dir: Jacques Kluger
Star: Adèle Galloy, Marie Zabukovec, Marilyn Lima, Aurélien Recoing
a.k.a. Maraé

Guilty Beauty

  By

★★★
“Thoroughly lost in translation.”

Well, this is a real roller-coaster ride of style and incompetence. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a Chinese film where the subtitles were quite so incomprehensible. Even though this one is on the YouTube channel for an official Chinese streaming service (iQiYi), the soundtrack was entirely muted at some points, and the soundtrack replaced by jaunty elevator musak at others. Despite being a mere sixty-six minutes, the presentation is therefore something of a test of endurance, and I am also not prepared to guarantee the accuracy of the plot synopsis, character names or actors. There was heavy use of Google Translate required, there being no IMDb page for the movie. I did my best.

Though this is not immediately clear, it takes place in… 1930’s Shanghai, at a guess? Not sure if the Japanese are actually occupying the city, or if it’s just a Casablanca-style nest of spies and intrigue. Working for a quasi-governmental part of the Chinese authorities (yeah, it’s vague) are our trio of heroines: Qiu Di (Zhang Y.), gothette Lü Yun (Wang) and schoolgirl Cui Ya (Zhang T). They have to recover a roll of film stolen by the Japanese military, now in the possession of gangster Huang Sen. In order to get close to him, our trio opt to go through his godson, Kwok Tin-ming (Ke). Di’s mad musical skills make her best suited, so she makes contact with Kwok and becomes his girlfriend, while her two colleagues…

Um, well, I’m not sure exactly what the plan was here, because Di doesn’t do very much: her associates complete their mission without any real trouble, and we’re only twenty minutes in. Thereafter… more stuff happens. I remain vague, not out of a fear of spoilers, more because but I would not be prepared to wager money on many of the specifics. It seems like a former ally of the trio is now working for the Japanese? Maybe? I initially thought they already got the film back, but apparently not, because Di keeps hanging out with her target. He finally realizes he is being played, and Di looks surprisingly broken-up about it. Genuine feelings, maybe?

I was certainly hoping for more action, given the poster and brisk opening, something along the lines of a Chinese version of the original Charlie’s Angels movie. There’s an opening fight, a spot of action during the film recovery heist and then a long lull before a moderately rousing finale. Everyone suddenly remembers about the film again, Di has to fight a slew of kabuki-masked ninja types, and then try to rescue her boyfriend, before a final scene which… I have no clue about. I will say, the movie does look good overall, with super-crisp photography and a sense of style across its characters and settings. If you told me this was an adaptation of a local comic-book, I would believe you – it possesses that sort of aesthetic. The film is below: perhaps you can make more sense of it than I!

Dir: Sun Jiayi
Star: Zhang Yinan, Ke Jiahao, Wang Xiran, Zhang Tong

Bandit Queen (1950)

  By

★★★
“Whip it good.”

There can’t be many Westerns of the fifties where the Yankees are the bad guys. Yet here we are. In mid-19th century California, to be precise, just after it became part of the US. The new owners enthusiastically threw the existing, Mexican inhabitants off their lands, in the search for gold, using harsh taxation as a weapon against them. And worse, if this is to be believed. For it begins with the callous murder of the Montalvo family, but the legalized thugs responsible don’t realize daughter Zara (Britton) has survived. She takes on two false identities out of necessity: white girl Lola Belmont for Detroit, but also Zara, masked, whip-wieldiing outlaw. As the latter, she seeks justice for her parents, and also “Robin Hoods” the stolen gold back to its rightful owners.

There’s another outlaw, Carlos del Rio, a.k.a. Joaquin Murietta (Reed), also operating along similar lines. But also complicating matters is the local tycoon for whom “Lola” falls, Dan Hinsdale (Parker). Because it turns out his wealth largely stems from being the acceptable face of these legalized thugs. When Murietta is captured, it’s Zara who has to break him out, and the pair them team up, both romantically and in their causes. Their predations have caused enough problems to merit the army getting called in, but there’s also a movement to repeal the tax laws at the heart of the land grabs: which will succeed in their goal first?

It’s obviously a feminine knock-off of Zorro, to the extent in Germany it was released as Zorro’s Daughter. Given the obviously Hispanic leanings, it’s a shame the players involved are so thoroughly and obviously non-Hispanic. The honourable exception is Garralaga as local priest Father Antonio, who for much of the film is the only person to know the truth about both Zara and Joaquin. I wouldn’t expect too much from the heroine here: riding a horse and cracking a whip is about the limit of the on-screen action. Though she is responsible for the (off-screen) deaths of those present when her parents were killed, and does shoot the big villain in the final showdown. If unconvincing as a Mexican, Britton has a righteous intensity about the situation that is effective, and held my interest throughout. 

She is certainly more interesting than Parker or Reed, who are blandly handsome in the way leading men of the time typically were. Making a bigger impression in the supporting cast is little person actor Angelo Rossitto, whose career spanned sixty years, including both cult classic Freaks and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. Running barely over an hour long, this is probably a case where less is more: the narrative is generally slight, but good enough. I particularly enjoyed the heroine switching from Lola to Zara, then back again, in order to free Joaquin without causing suspicion. Despite the obviously low budget, this was not a chore to watch, and is as good as some of the other Zorro-related entries we’ve covered here, such as Zorro’s Black Whip.

Dir: William Berke
Star: Barbara Britton, Willard Parker, Phillip Reed, Martin Garralaga