Author: Jim McLennan

The Watcher, by Matthew Hattersley

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

Somebody really liked Killing Eve… If you’re going to write a story about an amoral female assassin, working for a shadowy group, who becomes involved with a woman she’s supposed to kill, then you are basically inviting such comparisons. These are unlikely to be favourable to your work. I’m just sayin’. This started off okay: however, a single sentence at the 46% mark was basically a large neon sign as to how this was going to end, and proved exactly the case, as this collapsed in a slew of implausibility. Now, I’m not a trained assassin, so can’t comment on those elements. However, I do work in IT, and it’s clear the author does not. For instance, if someone was to leave our company on bad terms, their access would be immediately removed, as a top priority, so they couldn’t… oh, waltz in thereafter and download all our highly sensitive data. Sheesh.

Anyway, back on the amoral female assassin front, we have “Acid Vanilla”, the operational name of a killer working for private company Annihilation Pest Control. They’ve been contracted to tidy up after an executive of tech company Cerberix was seen  strangling a hooker. The employee who witnessed it, Spook Horowitz, and footage of the murder, both have to be disposed of. However, Acid is already teetering on the edge of burnout, and when her target informs her about the realities of the case, the hitwoman decides she is on the wrong side. She and Spook set out to take down Cerberix. This means her boss at APC will send a steady stream of other employees in their direction, in an effort to cover up the widening mess this contract is causing. It needs to be cleared up before Cerberix’s upcoming and much-ballyhoed announcement of their new venture, due to be live streamed across the globe in a few days.

Yeah, if you can’t tell the eventual direction, I don’t know what to say, and Horowitz has to be the least convincing depiction of a “hacker” I’ve ever read. Neither her, nor the relationship with Acid, are credible, and the further the book goes on, the more these elements take centre-stage. It’s a shame, since Vanilla herself is a decent character: the child of trauma, inevitably, yet not a pure psychopath either, and with significant mommy issues, let’s just say. Particularly as a first book, Hattersley should have stuck to establishing her, rather than bringing in the Jiminy Cricket-like character of Horowitz, who can also get whatever information is required by the plot with a couple of mouse-clicks. There’s no shortage of action, to be sure, although it felt almost like a running joke the way Acid inevitably took out the bad guys with head-shots (so many skulls exploding like ripe fruit…), while they only ever aimed at her and Spook’s bodies. Definitely one of the more baffling 4.25-star ratings on Goodreads.

Author: Matthew Hattersley
Publisher: Boom Boom Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 7 in the Acid Vanilla series.

Kung Fu Wonder Child

  By

★★
“So. Many. Questions…”

You may have noticed that I’ve been on a bit of a spree with these Taiwanese fantasy-fu flicks of late. However, I think I’m feeling a bit sated with them at this point, and the law of diminishing returns seems to be setting in. There are only so many unconvincing male impersonators, bad effects (both optical and practical) and almost illegible and/or illiterate subtitles a man can take, and I think I’ve reached my capacity in almost of these categories. Fortunately, my queue of such things seems to be nearing an end, with just a couple more to go. Still, after this delirious experience, I feel in need of a week or two’s break from the madness.

The villain here is the usual long-haired sorcerer (Li), who is collecting souls for the usual, megalomaniac purposes, and keeping them in large, ceramic jars in his yard. As you do. Among his collection are the father and sibling of Chiu Hsu (a rather under-used Oshima, albeit very early in her career), and she eventually links up with helpful unconvincing male impersonator, Hsiu Chuen (Lin, of course) and not one, but two, annoying comic sidekicks, Mi Fu and Tudor. Hsiu is a servant at a martial arts school, where her grandfather (Long) is the cook. Except Hsiu wants to learn the skills taught at the school, and Gramps is not just the mild-mannered chef he initially appears to be. Hilarity ensues. Well, if your idea of hilarity is a dog peeing on someone’s face, at least.

This is the kind of thing where it feels like the makers threw every idea they came up with onto the screen, regardless of a) relevance and b) whether or not it could be executed with any degree of competence. For example, the first would include the extended opening prologue about a Chinese hopping vampire, and his two kids. It serves no purpose and seems to have strayed in from a completely different movie. As for the second… well, outside of the willingness of Taiwanese stunt-people to fling themselves around and into things for our enjoyment, this rarely gets to passable, even allowing for it approaching forty years in age. I did laugh that one of the monsters Hsiu ends up fighting, is obviously a flying facehugger from Alien.

That said, there is a surprisingly decent stab at mixing animation with live-action, when the villain transforms into an animated dragon for the final battle. If it’s not exactly Who Framed Roger Rabbit, it’s not notably worse than the Disney efforts in this area. In general though, the execution trails far behind the imagination, and as a result, does the latter something of a disservice. The slabs of childish humor are no more of a help. In the film’s defense, the target audience is likely also childish, or at least, child-ish. On that basis perhaps some slack needs to be cut? Yet I couldn’t help thinking, “It was acceptable in the 80s, it was acceptable at the time…”

Dir: Tso Nam Lee
Star: Hsiao-Lao Lin, Yukari Oshima, Jack Long, Hai-Hsing Li

The Tale of a Heroine

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★★½
“That old bag wanted to damp my Spirit Knife with Virgin Sword.”

Yeah, if the above line of subtitled dialogue makes sense, this film then ups the ante, with white subs on a frequently white background, and which frequently appear to be making a bid to escape from the bottom of the picture. It’s safe to say that a decent presentation of this, perhaps with a print which doesn’t look like it was left in someone’s pocket when their suit went to the cleaners, might merit a half-star more. A few more fight sequences would help too: the ones there are, don’t lack in quality. There’s just a bit too much farcical comedy for my taste.

It begins with the evil Aoba swiping a book of martial arts skills, killing its owner and kidnapping his wife (Hui). Their daughter, Lunar (Wong, who was Jet Li’s first wife) grows up, clearly believing revenge is a dish best served cold. Eventually, along with her comic relief acolyte (Wan), Lunar enters Aoba’s castle, disguised as a man, seeking to recover the book, free her mother and take revenge for her father. However, complications ensue, largely down to Aoba’s sex-mad wife. To stop her from being unfaithful, Aoba has staffed the castle entirely with gay men. The acolyte is the only exception, and has repeatedly to fend off her demands. The always welcome Cynthia Khan also shows up, as another swordswoman who switches sides to join Lunar, after finding out the truth about Aoba.

At least, the above is my best guess. For the reasons explained in the first paragraph, I’m not prepared to stake my life on much beyond the film’s title. As usual, I do have to question the apparently literal gender-blindness of people here. The only person less convincing as a person of the opposite sex, than Wong trying to be a man, is likely Wan attempting to pass as a woman. That and him trying to keep his trousers on, occupy a significant chunk of the middle portion. While it’s not too painful, as comedy goes – at least, when compared to some entries I’ve endured – it’s not why we are here, and the decent opening fight only whets this unsatisfied appetite.

Although there are sporadic outbursts of activity, it’s not until Lunar discovers the key to tap into the power of Virgin Sword (let’s just say, it’s counter-intuitive to the name), that she’s able to take on Aoba and his many, many minions. This provides the acceptably rousing content for which we have been waiting, as she storms the castle and releases Mom. Not least, for a spectacular sequence involving some kind of outdoor scaffolding construct, and a significant quantity of pyrotechnics. Everyone ends up having to team up in order to destroy Aoba, and there’s an odd coda where the acolyte ends up with both Lunar and Khan’s character, while pretending his mother is one of the gay guys from the castle. I can only presume the phrase “lost in translation” applies here.

Dir: Chien-Hsun Huang
Star: Wong Chau-Yin, Deric Wan, Cynthia Khan, Kara Hui
a.k.a. Wu Tang Witch 

Lioness, season one

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★★★
“Crossing the Lion…”

If 2023 has been underwhelming on the theatrical front (to put it mildly), the various streaming services have certainly had no shortage of entries to keep us occupied here. This one comes to us from Paramount+, and stars Saldaña – already known around these parts, most likely for Colombiana – as CIA operative Joe McNamara, who uses undercover operatives against terrorist groups around the world. Her most recent mission does not end well, and she needs a new operative. She finds one in Cruz Manuelos (De Oliveira), a young woman who finds herself literally falling into the Marines, as a means of escape from a tough life and an abusive relationship. After acing boot camp, she becomes part of McNamara’s team.

The mission involves adopting the identity of a young Muslim woman and befriending Aaliyah Amrohi (Nur), daughter of a very rich Arab. The CIA believe her father is a major source of terrorist funding, but he is very hard to find. Aaliyah is engaged to be married, and her father seems certain to turn up at the wedding. So it’s up to Cruz, in her new identity, to insert herself into Aaliyah’s circle and get invited to the nuptials, so that the target can be neutralized as appropriate. Of course, it’s not quite as simple as that. In addition, Joe has familial issues of her own, as well as having to handle political manoeuvres among the alphabet soup of federal organizations, all with a finger in the pie.

I feel the characters work better than the scenario, which leans too heavily on cliched elements, such as Cruz and Alliyah falling for each other. I rolled my eyes quite hard at that, though it does lean into the “men are bastards” narrative occasionally present here. Hey, it applies both to American and Arab males, so that’s balanced, right? The scene where Cruz got drink-drugged also provoked ocular rotation. Though I was amused when the would-be date-rapist realized he’d bitten off rather more than expected, when a bunch of pissed-off Special Ops people showed up to rescue their comrade. I also enjoyed Wagner, former ditzy co-host of game show Wipeout, playing someone who looks like she’d give Vasquez a tough fight.

The action stuff is certainly well-staged, with De Oliveira giving a good account of herself through the selection process. And, when necessary, as part of her mission – leaving her with some injuries that required a bit of explanation to her new friend. The finale severely ramped up the stakes, especially when the groom-to-be ran Cruz’s face through facial recognition software. It all got… a bit messy thereafter, shall we say. Though it escapes me quite why he never alerted the large security contingent present about the Marine in their midst. If a lot of this doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny, the cast – also including Nicole Kidman and Morgan Freeman – give it their all, and if there turns out to be a second season, we’ll be down for it.

Creator: Taylor Sheridan
Star: Laysla De Oliveira, Zoe Saldaña, Stephanie Nur, Jill Wagner
a.k.a. Special Ops: Lioness

The Vigilante

  By

★★★
“The Noise of Freedom”

Not to be confused with A Vigilante, this is rather more downmarket and straightforward. It’s likely less thought-provoking, yet probably works a bit better as entertainment, albeit being so basic as to border on the simplistic. Marine Jessica (Jandreau) comes back from a tour of duty in the Middle East with PTSD, following an encounter with a kid wearing a suicide vest. Almost immediately on her arrival, however, her 13-year-old sister, Aimee (Timmons) is kidnapped by sex-trafficker Frank (Cesario), who plans to sell her off in the vilest of ways. It’s a race against time for Jessica and her army buddy and tech wizard Dan (Pierce) to track down those responsible before… [/gestures vaguely] y’know…

If this feels like it has a certain similarity to an unexpected hit in cinemas this summer, you’re probably right. In the movie’s defense, this has been in the pipeline for five years or more, so it can’t be called a quick cash-in – though The Sound of Freedom goes back even longer. Interestingly, director Whittaker worked on Freedom as a stunt co-ordinator, part of a career in that field which goes back to the early nineties. He brings that experience to The Vigilante and it shows, with the action probably the film’s best element. There are a couple of undeniably impressive fights for Jandreau, in particular the final one after she has located the house in which Aimee is being held by her kidnappers.

The other elements are a bit more variable. It begins with an earnest recitation of facts about sex trafficking, with voice-over from (real?) victims detailing where and at what age they were ensnared. But the concept of Frank literally ploughing into the car in which Aimee is a passenger, in order to kidnap her to order out of the wreckage, is hugely, almost ludicrously, implausible. The reality of sex-trafficking is considerably less dramatic: like murder, it’s far more likely the perpetrator is someone known to the victim, rather than a complete stranger. Some of the other elements also don’t feel like they ring true, and the sheer number of shots of underage girls in white underwear had me expecting Chris Hansen to pop out of my closet.

Another weak spot if quite what Dan is doing to locate the trafficking houses which Jessica and he then hit. It’s only vaguely explained, in tech-speak of the least convincing kind. However, there are times where the film does still hit the mark, such as the line said by one of the girls with almost chilling off-handedness: “The first time is the worst. Then you simply go numb.” You sense any creepiness is entirely deliberate, although it is undeniably playing up the more sensational aspects for the viewer. Nothing new there, of course. In many ways, The Vigilante is simply a spiritual successor to the white slavery movies which date back well over a century to the silent era, and titles like Traffic in Souls. As such, this is no better or worse; it succeeds well enough, despite low ambitions.

Dir: Lee Whittaker
Star: Jet Jandreau, Eric Pierce, Jamie M. Timmons, Julien Cesario
a.k.a. Aimee

Vesper

  By

★★★½
“Battle Angel Nausicaa”

As the above suggests, I was getting a strong manga influence, in particular from the works of Hayao Miyazaki: it feels like the script could have been something he’d have written on a gloomy Wednesday in January. Feisty teenage heroine? Check? Ecological message? Check. For this takes place after some kind of change in the world, which has left the bulk of the population clinging on to existence by their grubby fingernails, in a world now owned by bizarre flora. Vesper (Chapman) is one such, tending to her paralyzed father (Brake) whose consciousness has been transferred into a drone. She trades with her uncle, Jonas (Marsan), swapping blood for the seeds they need to survive.

Yet there’s also elements of Battle Angel Alita, with a sharp delineation between the haves and the have-nots. The latter live privileged lives in Citadels, served by artificial lifeforms called “jugs”, and as suppliers of the seeds, hold everyone else in their control. One day, a Citadel craft crashes near Vesper’s home, and she rescues Camelia (McEwen) from the wreckage. She promises to take Vesper and her father back to her home. Yet it eventually becomes clear that Camelia is not being 100% honest about her own situation either. On the other hand, she is potentially the key to liberating everyone from under the thumb of the Citadels, and ending their monopoly on the resources necessary for survival. It’s not something the rulers will give up easily, however.

This is rather ponderous in its progress, running close to two hours, and is clearly content to take its time getting to any of its points. If you’re willing to accept that, there’s a lot to appreciate here, not least some great visual style and world-building. This has to be one of the most fully convincing post-apocalyptic landscapes I’ve seen, a remarkable achievement considering its budget was a mere five million Euros. Vesper is a heroine right out of the Nausicaa playbook: someone who is smart and brave, rather than physically strong, devoted to her family, and who has an inherent affinity for the natural world. Her mother left the family, under circumstances best described as murky, and Camelia is a surrogate, to some extent.

It does feel as if the makers fell in love with their creation a little more than I did, and wanted to wallow in the imagination, at the expense of developing the plot. No-one seems in a particular hurry here, and for every scene which moves the story forward, there’s another that seems to exist purely as a visual showcase. I think it might work better at 90 minutes than 120 – or alternatively, expanded beyond the confines of a feature film. This is the kind of thing I could certainly imagine HBO developing into a series. The ending came close to toppling into “Eh?” territory, before a final shot where it made sense, and wrapped things up on easily the most optimistic note we’d heard. Miyazaki would likely approve.

Dir: Kristina Buozyte, Bruno Samper
Star: Raffiella Chapman, Rosy McEwen, Eddie Marsan, Richard Brake

Magic Warriors

  By

★★★
“Lin-sanity rides once again.”

I am going to be entirely upfront, and state that any factual statements regarding the plot here will be entirely cribbed from other sources. Because, on my own, I have close to no clue as to the details of what was going. I got that some girl dressed as a guy, Little Flying Dragon (Lin, inevitably) was trying to protect Golden Boy (Chan) from a bunch of very strangely dressed weirdos with even more bizarre powers. They want Golden Boy for some nefarious purpose on behalf of an evil sorcerer type, who laughs maniacally. A lot. Everyone involved wears wigs which look like they were bought in bulk from Hair Metal R Us. There’s an acid pit, into which Golden Boy’s father is unceremoniously dropped. His mother is called “Evil Lady” in the subtitles, though she isn’t really. At one point, there’s a song whose lyrics according to the subs go, “Little Flying Dragon, Little Flying Dragon, change all the time, power breads everything.”

You will understand my confusion.

Actually, I’m not going to bother with a more coherent description of the plot elements, because in the final analysis, they don’t particularly matter. It’d be like spending 500 words discussing background to the 1998 Hell in a Cell match, when what actually counts, is Mankind getting thrown off the cage and through a table. Any story here is simply an excuse for the usual combination of high-flying action and low-brow humour. We’ve seen them present in earlier, similar Lin-powered entries such as Magic of Spell, yet it feels like the makers felt the need to one-up themselves here, in both departments. The kung-fu feels more well-assembled and, though still significantly wire-powered, there’s clearly no shortage of skill from the performers. On the other hand, you get a steady stream of jokes about urine, farts and excrement: Golden Boy seems to have got his name from the first of these. If you find someone mistaking pee for tea the peak of comedy, you’re going to love this.

Me, not so much, and again, I find myself unable to figure out the target audience here. For every element which seems squarely targeted at a nine-year-old audience, there’s one which seems heavily inappropriate, such as Evil Lady projectile vomiting blood into a lake. Maybe the Taiwanese pre-teen audience is just considerably more resilient? It’s still not quite my cup of tea (or pee, I guess), with the more childish elements not to my taste. However, I think I did enjoy this one a bit more than Spell, with what felt like better pacing and a particularly rousing finale in the villain’s lair. I’d not be willing to take a test on the plot, what with people changing sides at the drop of a small child. Yet this is one of those cases where you simply need to, in the words of the great philosopher Adele, “Let it go, let it go…”

Dir: Yan-Chien Chuang, Tso Nam Lee
Star: Hsiao-Lao Lin, Chan Yin-Yu, Alexander Lo Rei, Chen Shan

Phoenix

  By

★½
“Tubi or not Tubi? NOT Tubi…”

Much though I love the streaming service, even I have to admit that “Tubi Originals” are a bit of a mixed bag, to put it mildly. For every Mercy Falls, an entertaining enough B-movie that punches above its weight, there is also… Well, things like this, which is filled wall-to-wall with non-actors trying to act, among a plethora of other, poor choices. Both heroine and villain are former WWE employees, being known there respectively at Eva Marie and Vladimir Kozlov. The latter comes off better, largely because he doesn’t have to do much more than be a menacing thug in his role as Maxim Vasiliiv, head of a Russian crime syndicate in Miami.

He’s involved in the death of Everett Grant (Couture), which is a bad move, since the corpse’s daughter, Fiona “Phoenix” Grant (Marie), is a combat trainer in the US Army, and does not believe her father killed himself. You can probably figure out the rest of the story without me needing to explain it. To be honest, my notes on the topic would not trouble a cigarette paper, such is the shallowness of the plot. The acting is no great shakes either. A lot of the supporting cast is filled out by people who are clearly more familiar with the inside of a gym, rather than the Actor’s Studio. Consequently, they look the part (even if it’s “Menacing Thug #4”), only for the illusion to be shattered when they deliver lines.

There are a couple of minor exceptions, though the real actors only show up the deficiencies elsewhere. Neal McDonough plays Fiona’s commanding officer, and the always welcome Bai Ling appears as a rather weird role, missing from her IMDb entry, most notable for lipstick and make-up which leaves her looking as if she came right from a booking as a kid’s party clown. All of which would be acceptable, if the film delivered copious amounts of over-the-top mayhem – as you’d expect given the two leads’ histories. The reality is, it’s almost forty minutes before you get Phoenix doing anything of significance. We do first get a shopping montage with her Aunt Grace (Camacho – a former cop who appeared on Survivor, apparently). So there’s that.

Things perk up somewhat thereafter, at least when those involved are kicking and punching each others. These sequences may not make a lot of – read, any – sense, yet they’re preferable to the makers’ feeble efforts in other departments. The scene where Fiona and Maxim have dinner and trade lscklustre barbs, may be the low-water point in this department, though any flashback involving Everett (“It’s Christmas Eve and Dad still hasn’t shown up – or called!”) is probably going to be ranked. When I saw the trailer for this, I was surprised by how little action it seemed to have. Turns out, the answer is definitely “not enough,” and the final ten minutes are not enough to rescue the situation.

Dir: Daniel Zirilli
Star: Natalie Eva Marie, Oleg Prudius, Jessie Camacho, Randy Couture

Heart of Stone

  By

★★
“Entertainment: Impossible”

The Great 2023 Void of Action Heroines continues on. The closest thing we’ve seen to one as a mainstream hit in the cinemas is… um, Barbie. Yeah. Not going there. I was looking at the box-office chart for the year, and excluding movies which were actually released in 2022 e.g. Everything Everywhere All at Once, there is only one single film in the top two hundred we have covered here. Polite Society sits outside the top hundred, at $1,.5m [We will get round to The Wrath of Becky in a bit. It’s #181, with a gross of $168,109.] Last year, we had Everything and The Woman King in the top thirty. 2021 gave us Black Widow; 2020, Birds of Prey and Wonder Woman 1984. The complete lack of tentpole heroines this year is disconcerting.

There has been no shortage of female supporting characters who have kicked butt. We already wrote about the The Women of Mission: Impossible, while John Wick 4 also delivered in this category, among quite a few other successful movies. But if you want to see a GWG take centre-stage, you will not find it in the movies. In some ways, it’s more convenient, to be able to sit at home, in your own comfy chair, with a choice of reasonably-priced snacks, and simply push a button on your remote control. But, it has to be said: quality wise, there’s often a good reason most of these films have gone straight to a streaming service. We’ve already covered a number here. The Mother. Furies. Mercy Falls. True Spirit. Some were decent. Yet none have achieved a seal of approval.

This one certainly won’t, barely reaching the level of acceptable entertainment, and sadly, continuing Gal Gadot’s streak of swings and misses. She blazed onto the scene in Wonder Woman back in 2017, and seemed set to take over the mantle as one of the top action actresses in Hollywood. But she has singularly failed to build on that foundation. She lost a lot of public goodwill for her tone-deaf Imagine video in the pandemic. WW84 was a flop, Red Notice was a quickly-forgotten Netflix Original, and her turn in Death on the Nile was widely-panned, becoming a meme. This, however, was a chance to correct course, putting her front and centre in a movie which, it was clearly hoped, would kick-start a franchise and become the female version of Mission: Impossible.

Ain’t gonna happen.

Two minutes in, Chris turned to me and said, “Is this a movie or a TV series?” and I can see her point. Having watched this just a couple of weeks after the undeniably cinematic Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, the difference is obvious. Harper directed The Aeronauts, which was decent enough, but it seems he is incapable of scaling things up from a balloon basket, to the much larger scope needed here. Part of the problem with the action sequences in particular, is the VR enhancement gimmick the heroine wears, allowing her to get real-time updates from her handler. This too often leaves everything looking like it’s a video-game, and it rubs off on other sequences, such as her parachute jump, which feels thoroughly unconvincing.

The plot is perhaps an even greater weakness, a confusing and unengaging mess. Rachel Stone (Gadot) works for a group called Charter, who use hi-tech surveillance for good (yeah… about that…). She’s embedded as an agent in MI-5, for reasons that are never made clear. Wouldn’t you know it, one of the people on her team, Parker (Dornan), turns out to be plotting to steal The Heart, the super-computer on which Charter relies for their surveillance – and use it, presumably, not for good. He has teamed up with talented young hacker Keya Dhawan (Bhatt) to this end, and only Stone can stop them, recover The Heart, and save her colleagues at Charter, including Stone’s boss Nomad (Okenedo).

Dear god, I almost lost consciousness merely typing the previous paragraph. Reviewing the previous work of writers Greg Rucka and Allison Schroeder, what stands out is an almost complete lack of action movies. Rucka has worked mostly in comics (including the one which became The Old Guard), while Schroeder did, um, Christopher Robin and Hidden Figures. The lack of experience shows. Never mind not having written an action movie, it feels as if neither of them had seen an action movie. If so, they might have realized Stone’s handler flicking VR screen around by gesture, was done twenty years ago in Minority Report. The good ideas here are all like that, things you’ve seen elsewhere, and done better, while the ones the movie can call its own are uninspired in concept and/or execution.

It doesn’t help that the supporting cast are mostly bland. If Gadot does still have reasonable charisma, Dornan is completely forgettable. Bhatt is a thoroughly unconvincing hacker – I might trust her to reset my account password, and apologize for the inconvenience. That’s about it. The most irritating character though, is probably her handler. I get what they were going for, but almost every time he’s involved, it leaves the heroine feeling not much more than a meat-puppet, removing a significant degree of agency from her. I will say, some of the action set-pieces aren’t too bad. There’s a good car-chase through Lisbon, for example. But any secret organization which fills its airship with hydrogen, is certainly not going to remain secret for very long. That’s the level of idiocy we are dealing with in the writing here.

Long before the end, I had mentally checked out, as the film globe-trotted manically from [checks notes] the Alps to London to Portugal to Senegal to Iceland. There’s no denying there was a significant amount of resources expended on this production, though Netflix is notoriously tight-lipped on specific budgets. However, the film doesn’t so much jump the shark, as use it for a 3000-metre steeplechase, when the MI-5 spies have a dance break. Read the sentence again. Roll it around your brain. That it’s to a Lizzo song – unfortunate timing, that – makes it considerably worse. Everything thereafter feels like a waste of those resources, as well as the variable talents of those involved.

Dir: Tom Harper
Star: Gal Gadot, Jamie Dornan, Alia Bhatt, Sophie Okonedo

Magic of Spell

  By

★★½
“Spell-ing B-movie”

The best way to describe this, is perhaps to say that if I was nine years old, I would think it was the greatest movie I had ever seen. And I would likely be right, at the time. With the benefit of [redacted] more years, and several thousand additional movies under my belt… Not so much. Oh, it’s excessive, insanely imaginative and high energy, to be sure. However, it is also slapdash, incoherent and juvenile. Never mind appealing to nine-year-olds, it often feels like it was made by nine-year-olds. This explanation could be the most logical way to explain how the film manages to misspell its own name in the opening credits, calling itself Magic of Stell.

Let me attempt to summarize the more sane elements of the plot, as best I can. An evil wizard (Chen) seeks to reclaim his youth. This involves bathing in childrens’ blood, and eating the Ginseng King, who is played by a little kid dressed up to look like the herbal root in question. Out to stop him is Peach Boy (Lin, doing her usual unconvincing male character shtick), with the help of a bunch of friends, led by… some randomly wandering dude (Ku). Both sides are populated with bizarre characters, sporting even more bizarre abilities. For example, Peach Boy can summon a giant fruit which he can use like bowling-ball, and that occasionally shoots lasers out at her opponents.  Or one of his allies has an arm, which turns into an aggressive chicken on occasion and pecks peoples’ eyes out.

There are moments here which are “I can’t believe I just saw this.” If you saw the Indian film RRR, you’ll know the kind of thing I mean. Except, there is good reason why this has remained an underground item, rather than generating Oscar buzz. For there are also moments in this which appear to have strayed in from your local community theatre pantomime. I mean this in a number of ways: the quality of the performances, the juvenile humour, and the way you have both men playing women and women playing men. Not all of it works, to put it very, very mildly, and I’ve no idea who the target audience might have been.

Matters are likely not helped by the VCD release, which has the Cantonese audio track coming out of one speaker, and the Mandarin out of the other (how they used to do multiple-language media). So you’re listening to two different languages, simultaneously, and they are not in sync either, adding to the overall insanity. I think “exhausted” is the best single word for how the whole endeavour made me feel. It’s the cinematic version of a run-on sentence which lasts for 80 minutes, making copious use of the words “and then…” While I can appreciate the invention on view here, it doesn’t excuse an approach that seems to involve spraying the audience with a fire-hose, and hoping it slakes their thirst.

Dir: Chung-Hsing Chao
Star: Hsiao-Lao Lin, Chen Shan, Pao-Ming Ku, Mei Fang Yu