Author: Jim McLennan

Wandering Ginza Butterfly

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★★
“More suited for ‘Cuties with Cues’ than this site.”

Nami is sent to jail for killing a Yakuza boss, and when she is released, returns to the Ginza district of Tokyo to live with her uncle, who runs a pool hall. She gets a job as a hostess in a bar, with the help of her new friend Ryuji (Watase), but the quiet life doesn’t last for long, even as she tries to help the widow of the man she killed – whose petition on behalf of Nami is what helped lead to her early release. For the local mob, in the shape of Okada (Nanbara) and his gang, are sniffing around the bar, seeking to take it over. To settle things, Nami offers to take on Okada’s champion at billiards, a challenge the gangster readily accepts, not realizing he has just been hustled, and that Nami is no mean player herself. Can she win – and even if she does, will Okada live up to his side of the bet?

While certainly fitting in to the overall themes of the genre, with a significant emphasis on revenge and its execution, this is another entry which downplays the more exploitative angles in favor of the dramatic elements. Put another way, if you want tits ‘n’ gore, look elsewhere. If, however, you want ten minutes of billiards with your heroine unconvincingly trying to imitate Paul Newman in The Hustler [a film whose poster can be seen lurking in the background during the match], this will be right up your alley. It’s only at the finale that this delivers; with the ever-loyal Ryuji at her side, Nami ploughs into the Yakuza gang’s HQ, to interrupt their group porno viewing, by releasing some of their other body fluids.

While Kaji possesses some undeniable presence, the script doesn’t live up to expectations, meandering off in directions that prove neither necessary nor interesting, and the billiards match – even with its bizarre drug-withdrawal subplot – is a poor substitute for action. The film was (inexplicably) successful enough commercially to lead to a sequel, which includes Sonny Chiba playing a comedic pimp – I sense this is likely not the best use of his talents, and won’t exactly be rushing to include it in this article.

Dir: Kazuhiko Yamaguchi
Star: Meiko Kaji, Tsunehiko Watase, Koji Nanbara, Tatsuo Umemiya

The Holding

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★★★★
“Hell hath no fury like a mother defending her children.”

Cassie Naylor (Wareing) is struggling to keep her head above water on the farm she’s now running almost single-handed, eight months after her husband vanished. What the locals don’t know is that she buried him in a remote spot on the Derbyshire moors, with the help of part-time farmhand Cooper (Bradley), for reasons not initially clear. The arrival of a transient, Aden (Regan, looking not unlike a rougher version of Gerard Butler), seems like a godsend, and they agree he can work in exchange for food and lodgings. However, it’s not long before Aden’s less-desirable tendencies start to show through. While he’s fiercely loyal – dispatching anyone whom he perceives as a threat – he seems to regard Cassie and her two daughters as “his” family, and seems to know rather too much about them.

Clearly influenced by The Stepfather, this is still its own creature, with Cassie a strong, independent heroine of the first degree, who will do absolutely anything to protect her children, even if one is a Bible-thumper and the other an immensely-irritating teenage brat. Indeed, it’s probably important to note that [here be spoilers, highlight the text if you want to read it] all the women survive, and only men die. How much of this was the input of a woman director – itself, fairly unusual for the genre – is open to discussion. Another big plus is that the film doesn’t rely too much on the stupidity of the main characters, which is a common flaw; their behaviour here is relatively logical, though there were times when the victims did not take an avenue of escape that appeared to be open to them.

The look of the film is impressive, with a lush pastoral feel early on, that eventually turns into a dark, rain-drenched nightmare as things become bloody. However, the main strength are performances which are believable, on both sides of the fence, effectively ramping up the tension as the body-count increases. It builds to a satisfactorily invigorating battle, in which Cassie has exhausted all legitimate hope of rescue and is thrown entirely on to her own tenacity and survival skills. Ellen Ripley would certainly approve, even if here, the monster being opposed for maternal reasons has a human face.

Dir: Susan Jacobson
Star: Kierston Wareing, Vincent Regan, David Bradley, Skye Lourie

Mulan (2009)

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★★★½
“Joan of Arc, without the religion. Or stake.”

Inspired by the same poem as Disney’s much-loved feature, this has the same basic idea – a young woman impersonates a man in order to save her father from being drafted in the army. However, this takes a rather different approach, being much darker in tone, not that’s this is much of a surprise, I guess. It’s also a lot longer in scope, with Mulan (Zhao, whom you may recognize as the heroine/goalkeeper from Shaolin Soccer), rather than fighting a single campaign, becoming a career soldier and rising through the ranks as a result of her bravery in battle, eventually becoming a general, tasked with defending the Wei nation from the villainous Mendu (Hu). He has killed his own father in order to take control, and has united the nomadic tribes of the Rouran, amassing an army of 200,000 to invade Mulan’s home territory. She comes up with a plan to lure him into a trap, but when she is betrayed by a cowardly commander, things look bleak indeed for Mulan and Wentai (Chen), one of the few who know her secret.

Initially, I was rather unconvinced by Zhao who, being in her mid-30s, is a tad old to be playing the dutiful daughter. But given the longer view taken by the movie, the casting makes sense, and she ends up fitting into the role nicely; there’s a steely determination which develops over the course of the film, and by the end, you can see why she has become a commander. That’s one of the themes of the movie: duty, contrasted with the terrible losses war can inflict on a personal level, Mulan being largely powerless to watch as almost all her friends end up dying in battle. “I’ve fought battle after battle,” she says, “Lost one after another of my brothers, I really don’t want to fight any more.” There’s almost a neo-totalitarian implication to the final message, however, which suggests that everyone – even those who have sacrificed everything already – need to put aside their personal interests for the greater good of the state.

There’s a nice balance between the action and emotional aspects, but Zhao doesn’t actually do much in the latter department after the battle which gets her noticed. She’s broken out of army jail to take part, after confessing to stealing a jade pendant, in order to avoid a strip-search [death before dishonour]. After that, she’s more a leader than an actual fighter: heavy is the head that wears the general’s helmet is the moral here, and it’s driven home effectively enough, thanks mostly to Zhao’s solid performance.

Dir: Jingle Ma
Star: Zhao Wei, Chen Kun, Hu Jun, Jaycee Chan

A Lonely Place to Die

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★★★½
“The Ascent rather than The Descent. With humans as the monsters. “

Five mountaineers are exploring the remote Scottish highlands, when they stumble across an underground box containing a terrified, near-dead young girl who speaks no English. Two of the party are sent, by the most direct but not child-friendly route, back to civilization to get help, but it’s not long before they discover the parties who buried the girl are not too happy with her removal. For they are two kidnappers, Mr. Kidd (Harris, who also plays a psychotic killer in The Borgias) and Mr. McRae who are negotiating with her father’s emissary, Darko (Roden) to pay the ransom, not aware that Darko has hired some ex-soldiers to resolve the matter. Having lost the child, the pair set out to recapture her, and don’t care how many bodies are left in their wake.

It’s only slowly that Alison (George, whom GWG fans may remember as Lauren Reed, Vaughn’s wife in Alias – the role here was originally intended to go to Franke Potente) comes to be the focus, but it’s clear that her maternal instincts have been aroused, and she’s prepared to do anything to protect the child, and she’s got the skills for the environment. That’s when the film is at its strongest, pitting Alison and her steadily-dwindling band of friends against Kidd and McRae. Once they reach civilization, it becomes notably less credible, not least because the “festival” conveniently going on in town (whose fireworks are needed to mask the gunshots), is so wildly inappropriate for small-town life. I grew up not far from where this was shot, and we certainly never had festivals involving topless women in body-paint. It’s a shame, as I liked how the protagonists were not your usual college students in peril, the staple of survival horror, but a little more mature and sensible. Not that this helps their longevity.

It’s always a difficult call whether the “final girl” genre should be included here. To me, the decisive factor is less how she takes on the monster, villain or nemesis in the last reel, it’s how she has behaved before that point. The Friday the 13th heroines, for instance, do little or nothing to justify the term “action heroine”. Here, however, Alison proves herself worthy of the title, almost from the first scene, which finds her half-way up a mountain-face. By the time she becomes the kidnappee’s sole hope, she has already covered miles both horizontal and vertical, fallen off a cliff, gone through rapids and survived her fair share of bullets aimed in her direction. Yeah, she qualifies, and only a clichéd last 20 minutes stops this from being thoroughly satisfactory.

Dir: Julian Gilbey
Star: Melissa George, Ed Speleers, Sean Harris, Karel Roden

Tokyo Gore Police

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★★½
“The middle word in the title is easily the most applicable. Far and away.”

In the near-future, Japan is plagued by “engineers” – criminals who have voluntarily undergone genetic modifications, which not only mutate their bodies in bizarre ways, but give them near superpowers and the ability to sprout weapons from their wounds. To combat this, the privatized Japanese police force under their chief (Benny) has an absolutely no-holds barred policy of shoot first, ask questions… Well, don’t bother asking questions. Their top “engineer hunter” is Ruka (Shiina, whom you may recognize from Audition), the daughter of a police officer who was killed in the line of duty while she was just a young girl. She is tracking down the scientist behind the engineers, known as “Key Man” (Itao) because of the key-shaped tumours which trigger the mutations. But when they meet, he infects her – and also reveals the truth behind the deaths of both their fathers.

The most obvious parallel would by Robocop, not only in the cautionary tale of law-enforcement run for profit, but also the sardonic commercials which pepper proceeding, showing how brutal society has become [here’s an example, for a wrist-cutting knife]. It’s against this backdrop that the cold, to the point of being emotionally-dead, heroine plies her trade, troubled by a past that she can’t forget. Shiina is certainly good at that kind of role, but it’s more or less a one-note performance, that doesn’t provide much reason for the audience to empathize with her. However, I get the sense that, as far as director Nishimura is concerned, characterization is probably not quite the main thing he’s concerned with here.

That would, instead, be the splatter, which goes to a whole new level, even by the outrageous standards of the genre. The arterial spray is so copious and powerful that, at one point, an engineer uses it to propel himself about, like a haemoglobin propelled jet-pack. That pretty much sums up the tone to be found here, with body parts also flying when not attached to their owners. It’s arguably the goriest movie ever made, though I’d have to re-watch Peter Jackson’s Brain Dead before I can be certain on this front. However, there isn’t quite enough to sustain it, especially at a fairly extended running-time of 110 minutes. While there no shortage of surreal imagination on view (like the creature which has had all four limbs replaced with samurai swords), and it’s undeniably the most OTT of its siblings, this probably works better as a party tape, playing in the background for your next Halloween bash, given its apparent apathy towards more conventional cinematic attributes.

Dir: Yoshihiro Nishimura
Star: Eihi Shiina, Itsuji Itao, Yukihide Benny, Shoko Nakahara

Underworld: Awakening

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★★★
“a.k.a Underworld: Look, We’re Really Sorry About The Last One. Here’s Kate Beckinsale In PVC Again.”

Actually, we quite enjoyed the third part, but we’re Bill Nighy marks. Still, nice to get back to the basics mentioned above, and the storyline here was a good one, even if more than a tad reminscent of Ultraviolet. After the revelation that vampires and lycans exist, humanity goes on a pogrom against the two species, driving them underground. Selene is captured, and wakes up to find herself, a dozen years later, in a wrecked research lab. Initially, she suspects Michael Corvin, but discovers a young girl, Eve (Eisley) to whom she has a connection; turns out to be another vampycan hybrid. Research company Antigen, under Dr. Jacob Lane (Rea) were using the two of them to make a vaccine, until Eve escaped, freeing Selene, and are now desperate to get their subjects back. But are their motives quite as altruistic as they appear?

Plenty of action, plenty of Beckinsale (I’m glad Corvin was basically absent), interesting scenario. Unfortunately, the CGI Lycans are utterly, utterly horrible, like something from a mid-90’s console game. There’s absolutely no sense of them being anything other than a visual effect added later, and this distracts terribly from a lot of the battle scenes. I’m generally pretty good at suspending disbelief; here, it was the CGI equivalent of the fake Bela Lugosi in Plan 9, holding his cape in front of his face. It was that much of an attention-grabber. The film was originally made in 3D, and one wonders whether that’s part of the problem: I saw it in regular format, and was vastly underwhelmed. Indeed, too much even of things like Selene’s falls, were obviously pixels being moved with a mouse.

That’s a shame, as there’s a fair bit to enjoy here, providing you’re looking for nothing more complex than straightforward ass-kicking. They could probably have done with developing the human angle and make this fight a three-way dance – after initiating the first purge, we are hardly seen again. However, Beckinsale has the presence and – when not replaced by her virtual stunt-double – continues to look the part with splendid self-confidence, in a way few actresses can manage. It’s an improvement over Evolution, certainly, though the series remains one where all the entries have had their flaws, preventing it from achieving the greatness which one feels they could have achieved.

Dir: Marlind + Stein
Star: Kate Beckinsale, India Eisley, Stephen Rea, Michael Ealy

Nikita: season two

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★★½
“More characters! ADD MORE CHARACTERS!”

When we last saw Nikita (Q), she’d gained some help for her struggle against Division in the shape of fellow defectors from the organization, Michael (West) and tech guy Birkhoff. But she’d lost protege Alex (Fonseca), who had stayed with Division to further her lust for revenge on those who’d killed her parents, while reclaiming her family fortune. Meanwhile, Nikita’s nemesis and former boss Percy had been usurped by Amanda (Clarke), and was now in a plexiglass box in the basement. Throw in Oversight, the government committee supposedly in charge of Division under Senator Madeline Pierce; CIA agent Ryan Fletcher and Pierce’s son Sean, who join Team Nikita; Owen, a rogue guardian, keeper of one of Percy’s black boxes… And I haven’t even got to Michael’s love-child, a source of much angst for all concerned.

I think the main problem with this sophomore season is clear: too many characters, resulting in plotting that’d be thrown out by a telenovela as far-fetched and convoluted. It was also notable that Nikita did significantly less heavy lifting on the action front, with Michael taking up more. Because, of course, no woman can survive without a man. Unfortunately, the increased focus on relationships – of multiple kinds – is probably almost inescapable on a network like the CW, even when a show gets buried in the “death slot” of Friday night. But it defused what made the show stand out: a kick-ass independent heroine, who could handle herself without relying on a team of men, and as a result, I frequently drifted off, either to sleep or to do something else more interesting. Which would be just about anything.

By the time of the last few eps, I would genuinely not have been bothered if the show had been canceled. But then, it returned to form: Percy escaped, getting himself a nuke and a satellite – nothing good can come of this. Focus on a genuinely threatening villain and the heroine, not the soap-opera “Mikita” ‘shipper bullshit, and I was engaged again. The end came almost full-circle – in part, I suspect because the makers didn’t know when they were shooting the final episodes, whether or not they’d be renewed. And, in the end, I am glad it has been given a third season, because there’s no show quite like it on television – despite the flaws, it’s flying the flag for genuine action heroines, almost solo. Still, how long my interest lasts when it returns, remains to be seen.

Star: Maggie Q, Shane West, Lyndsy Fonseca, Melinda Clarke

Young (wrestling) guns, go for it!

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Things you won’t see in American wrestling, #29. This Japanese tag bout features Manami Toyota and Tsukasa Fujimoto. But their partners are aged eleven and fourteen years old respectively. And you thought Hit Girl was an invention of fiction…

Lady Sazen and the Drenched Swallow Sword

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★★★★½
“Depth perception? It’s vastly over-rated…”

A sequel to One-Eyed One-Armed Swordswoman, this stands more than well enough on its own merits, with an interesting and complex storyline and engaging characters. As a young girl, Lady Sazen (Ohkusu) lost both an arm and her eye to the devilish Lord Daizen-dayu, who coveted the titular sword owned by her father. Sazen barely escaped with it and her life, and is now a wandering swordswoman, roaming the countryside. She saves a girl being chased by some thugs, and it turns out that she knows all the inside dirt on a corrupt priest, and he won’t stop until she has been silenced. Meanwhile, Daizen-dayu hasn’t given up on the sword, and has hired another samurai to get it from Sazen, bu any means necessary.

Dating from the end of the sixties, this is rather more restrained in terms of arterial spray than the genre would become in a few years, with Lone Wolf. But there’s still a brisk efficiency here, with Sazen needing no more than two strokes to finish off almost any opponent. It actually took me some time – well past her first fight – to realize she only was supposed to have one arm. I thought the whole “taking the scabbard off with her teeth” was a stylistic choice, not a necessity caused by a shortage of limbs; really, the term “disabled” was never less appropriate. Ohkusu is a very good heroine, smart and kind, yet absolutely ruthless when necessary.

However, it’s probably the plot that’s the strongest element in this, with the two main threads kept moving forward independently, until they finally cross over, for the final, blood-drenched reel. There’s twists and turns, with setbacks for both sides, and the political intrigue and corruption proves as tricky an opponent for Sazen as a pack of sword-wielding henchmen. Many of these films I’ve seen find it difficult to strike a balance between the dramatic and action elements, usually falling on one side or other. That isn’t the case here, and the result here comfortably kicks the arse of, say, either Lady Snowblood movie, and is among the best examples of period female chanbara I’ve seen.

Dir: Kimiyoshi Yasuda
Star: Michiyo Ohkusu
a.k.a. Lefty Fencer

La Mujer Murcielago (The Batwoman)

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★★½
“If Batman was a woman. And a Mexican wrestler. Who swam. A lot.”

Someone is abducting wrestlers, extracting serum from their pineal glands and dumping the bodies in the ocean, at various locations around the world. Most recently, Acapulco. Investigating the crime is Batwoman (Monti), a rich socialite who has a masked alter-ego that fight crime. Oh, and is also a pro wrestler. Which makes her ideal for this case, since she can hang around the gym and check out suspicious characters, while working on moves with her fellow luchadorettes [Not a real word, but I like it]. Who is involved? The blind lottery ticket salesman? The chief of police? Or Dr. Williams (Cañedo), who won’t let anyone on to his ship, which is called Reptilicus, by tha way, and who possesses a sidekick called Igor? Go on, take a wild stab in the dark…

Turn out Williams is attempting to create a race of man-fish hybrids. When sneaking around his ship. Batwoman is caught, and only escapes by flinging a flask of something noxious into his face. Now a disfigured mad scientist, naturally, he vows vengeance on our heroine, sending his scaly creation off to bring her back, so that she can become the first literal fish-wife. The sight of which immediately turns her into a screaming, fainting kind of girlie, and it is a kinda creepy creation, even it’s obviously a man in a rubber-suit. Though as we see at the end, if you want to turn Batwoman into real terror, you need a staple from sit-coms of the era.

This 1968 film came only three years after Thunderball, and shows much the same amazed fascination with underwater photography, which has not aged well. Sure it was amazing at the time: now, not at all. Indeed, that could be the theme of the entire movie: I’m sure it was pretty daring, especially in sixties Hispanic culture, which wasn’t exactly at the forefront of women’s liberation. Now, the main thought it provokes, is wonder at how they managed to avoid someone from DC Comics driving down to slap the makers with a massive law-suit, purely on the basis of the poster.

In the film’s defense, it’s probably not its fault that I came down with a nasty spot of indigestion while watching, which doesn’t exactly leave me with fond memories of it. Monti certainly looks the part, an Italian-born actress and model stepping up from supporting roles in Santo films, as part of a ferocious blitz where she appeared in 30 films over five years, before becoming a TV host. She spends most of the time running about in her blue bikini and mask, which certainly beats George Clooney’s nippled Batsuit. If falling some way short of the promise of the very cool poster, it’s not entirely unwatchable as B-movies go, especially given its age.

Dir: René Cardona
Star: Maura Monti, Roberto Cañedo, Héctor Godoy, David Silva