Author: Jim McLennan

Gloria (1980)

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★★★½
“Gloria, you’re always on the run now…”

Yeah, I’ll confess to having Laura Branigan’s eighties hit running through my head on repeat almost the entire movie, even if its lyrics can only be tangentially tied to it. What also struck me is how strong of an influence this was on Luc Besson’s Leon, especially at the beginning. I mean: a criminal gang takes out an entire family in a New York tenement, except for one child, as punishment for the father having tried to steal from them. That survivor takes refuge with a very reluctant neighbour with mob ties, who then has to protect the child as they move about the city. There’s even a scene where one of the gang fires his gun at a nosy resident.

In this case, the protective neighbour is Gloria Swenson (Rowlands), and the child is Phil Dawn (Adames), son of a mob accountant, who is also in possession of a highly incriminating notebook given to him by his father. Gloria makes no bones about her opinion, telling the parents, “I hate kids, especially yours.” However, necessity is the mother of motherhood, as it were, and her maternal instincts end up being awakened by six-year-old Phil, who swings wildly between acting three times his age and one-third of it. Gloria has no issue with using lethal force against those she perceives as a threat, as she seeks to broker a deal that will trade the book in exchange for her and Phil being allowed to walk away. This brings her into contact with mob boss Tarzini (Franchina) – not for the first time.

Rowlands is great in this, and you can see why she’s one of the few actresses to have been nominated for an Oscar in a girls with guns role. Director Cassavetes was her husband – he was originally just going to sell the script, but took on the director’s role after his wife was cast – and their long history of working together likely helped provide her nuanced performance. The problems are elsewhere. Phil is certainly no Matilda, and I was largely with the opinion Gloria expressed above. There’s also no-one like Stansfield, to act as an antagonist. Tarzini isn’t seen until the end, and up to that point, Gloria is opposed largely by a series of faceless goons.

Even given her background, it does seem remarkably convenient how she and they seem to stumble into each other in every other scene. It’s as if the film took place in a small farming town, rather than a city of over seven million inhabitants at the time. However, the film is never less than engaging due to Rowlands, who was fifty when the film came out, so is definitely older than your typical action heroine. Though your biggest takeaway may be how early eighties it all feels. Chris, who lived in New York at the time, loved that even seeing a car identical to her first one parked in a scene. Personally, I just had to marvel at how an unaccompanied six-year-old could buy a train ticket from New York to Pittsburgh without anyone batting an eyelid. Truly, a very different world… But what I really want to know is this: what happened to Gloria’s cat?

Dir: John Cassavetes
Star: Gena Rowlands, John Adames, Basilio Franchina, Buck Henry

Gloria (1999)

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★★½
“Gloria, non in excelsis“

Nineteen years after the original, four-time Oscar nominated director Lumet opted to remake Cassavetes’s movie. Though by some accounts, it was more a case of him wanting to work, rather than being particularly attracted to the project. If the results are anything to go by, he should have stayed at home. For the film was a bomb, and leading lady Stone received a Razzie nomination for her efforts. I wouldn’t have said she was that bad, though she’s clearly not at the same level as Gina Rowlands in the original. It does also address some of what I felt were its’ predecessor’s weaknesses. However, it tones down the central character, and this helps lead to what you’d be hard-pressed to argue is other than an inferior product overall.

It keeps the basic premise. Gloria (Stone) becomes the unwilling custodian of a young boy (Figueroa), whose family was wiped out by the mob. However, the kid is in possession of incriminating data, which could either be his salvation or his death knell, so Gloria has to protect him as the Mafiosi try to hunt him down. The big change is, rather than being a neighbour with some mob ties, Gloria here has just got out of jail, having served a three-year sentence after refusing to squeal on her boyfriend, mob lieutenant Kevin (Brit actor Northam, sporting a very credible New York accent, i.e. Chris didn’t complain about it!). When he brushes her off, she absconds with both the boy and the floppy disk which holds the data here. All 1.44 MB of it, I guess. For comparison, the original image of the poster (right) is larger than that. Gotta love tech in the nineties.

This does give the film a clear antagonist in Kevin, something lacking in the previous version, and the child here is less irritating, with a character that seems more consistent. The problem is Stone’s take on the character, which feels like the “Is Diet Pepsi alright?” flavour of the character. This one is considerably less ruthless: while she is happy to wave a gun around, I don’t recall her ever shooting anyone, which Gloria v1.0 did with an almost reckless abandon. Her motivation is also considerably more selfish, spawned (at least initially) by a desire to hit back at Kevin for dumping her.

You can perhaps tell the difference simply by comparing the posters for the two movies. The one here appears more interested in putting Stone’s cleavage front and centre: I note the kid did not stay in this picture. Indeed, on its own merits, this would have been a fairly marginal entry for the site, since it’s closer to a thriller-drama than an action movie. It does possess some effective enough moments, though some of these are cribbed wholesale from the original. This is not as terrible a remake as its reputation indicates: the core concept is too strong for that. Yet any purpose to it remains obscure at best, and entirely missing at worst.

Dir: Sidney Lumet
Star: Sharon Stone, Jean-Luke Figueroa, Jeremy Northam, George C. Scott

Borrego

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★½
“Borrego? BORE-rego, more like…”

Sorry, couldn’t resist it. For the recent string of suboptimal Netflix movies continues with this tedious bit of work, which feels like the first journey across the South Californian desert filmed in real time. It begins with Ellie (Hale), a botanist carrying out a survey near the Mexican border. She meets a teenage girl, Alex (Trujillo), who is skipping school and the two have an awkward conversation. I initially thought its stilted nature was intended to tell us something about the two characters, but nope. All the conversations here are awkward. Writer-director Harris just has no ear for dialogue, which may explain why so much of this is people wandering about instead.

Anyway, the plot proper kicks off when Ellie witnesses a plane crash nearby. Rushing to the scene, without any attempt to call for help, she finds the pilot, Tomas (Gomez) crawling from the wreckage with his cargo of drugs. At gunpoint, she is coerced into helping him carry what remains of the merchandise to its delivery point, where the intended recipient is growing increasingly antsy. Meanwhile, the only local cop (Gonzalez) is on the hunt, both for the missing botanist, and Alex, who is his daughter. All these plot threads lead to the copious trudging across the terrain mentioned above. Though people also bump into each other with the frequency required by the plot, so that the desert appears to be the size of your local convenience store.

Things unfold with the predictability of the sun in this arid corner of the country. Tomas and Ellie bond over their campfire, Tomas’s grasp of English waxing and waning as necessary. Turns out he was only involved in this sordid business to help his family, a casual excuse used by criminals since time immemorial, which cuts no ice with me. Hell, even antsy intended recipient says the same thing. We can clearly end the War On Drugs, by killing every drug dealer’s family, to remove their motivation! The movie opens and closes with po-faced captions about the societal problem of drug abuse, both prescribed and otherwise. I think if you need a Netflix original movie to tell you, “Drugs are bad, m’kay?”, there are bigger problems.

You will get an hour and a half of the various parties, showcasing some rather pretty locations, in lieu of anything approaching genuine tension or action: a car hitting a cactus is as close as we get. The photography is easily the best thing about this, with some excellent aerial footage that brings home the scope of where the participants roam. However, I did not sign up to watch “Drones Above the South-West”, and any goodwill generated falls into a canyon, as a result of the poor excuse for a climax. I’d not blame you for tuning out well before that point, however. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it’s all almost enough to make me wish for the ludicrous stupidity of Interceptor. 

Almost…

Dir: Jesse Harris
Star: Lucy Hale, Nicholas Gonzalez, Leynar Gomez, Olivia Trujillo

Lou

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★★½
“The family that slays together, stays together.”

A Netflix original movie, the first thing to say is: thankfully, this is not as bad as Interceptor. Mind you, few films with budgets measured in the millions are as bad as Interceptor. It did more damage to my perception of the Netflix brand than any other, to the point I was genuinely concerned about having to watch this, fearing it would be down at the same level. Certain elements are, most likely the script. But the presence of Alison Janney, single-handedly prevents the film from sinking, effectively acting as a life-belt for the less successful elements. It’s a shame the makers apparently didn’t realize what they had, and used the strength of its star better.

She plays Lou, a near-retiree who lives quietly on an island near Seattle. She has a tenant, Hannah Dawson (Smollett), a single mother of Vee (Bateman). But Lou is ready to check out of life entirely. She has a gun pointed at her own head, when Hannah rushes in, begging for help, because her husband Philip (Marshall-Green) – supposedly dead – has shown up and kidnapped Vee, in the middle of a ferocious storm. Fortunately, Lou has a history, which has given her the ideal set of special skills for the circumstances. She and Hannah set out through the rain in pursuit of Philip. Yet there’s more going on, with Lou’s history catching up with her, as well as the truth about her relationship to Hannah and Philip. 

The idea of Lou is a strong one, playing roughly along the lines of Liam Neeson in the Taken franchise, with a hint of John Wick. A grizzled veteran, who just wants to be left alone, who is dragged back into a life of violence: only, this time, it’s a woman, Lou being a CIA field agent, with 26 years experience, before leaving under murky circumstances. The rest of the story though? Oh, dear. The film staggers from ineptly-staged scenes of family bonding, to revelations that are more likely to provoke a snort of derision than a gasp of surprise. Lou vanishes entirely for much of the second half, and Hannah is simply not interesting enough to hold the movie together.

The action is fairly well-staged, though they don’t put enough effort into equalizing the fights. Lou’s opponents are all bigger and stronger than her, and there are times where the movie forgets this. However, Janney sells her persona so well, I was inclined to cut this the necessary slack. Director Foerster’s previous feature was Underworld: Blood Wars, and there’s a definite sense at the ending they want to turn this into a similar franchise. Despite the mediocre overall rating, there is plenty of potential in the lead character, and I would not be averse to more of her story. Let’s just hope they keep writers Maggie Cohn and Jack Stanley in a remote cabin on an island in the Pacific Northwest, and well away from any sequel’s script. 

Dir: Anna Foerster
Star: Allison Janney, Jurnee Smollett, Logan Marshall-Green, Ridley Asha Bateman

Mermaid Team

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★★★
“Ariel assault?”

This feel like it could easily have come out of the nineties, with the distinct whiff of a throwback to the golden age of Hong Kong “girls with guns” movies. That is, of course, not a bad thing. However, this is not really golden. It’s probably not even bronzey. High-quality PVC perhaps? I think the main difference is probably that the classics starred the likes of Moon Lee, Cynthia Khan and Yukari Oshima, who could kick ass in a convincing fashion. The actresses here are largely limited to gun-play, and most of them look like they would be soundly defeated by a stiff oncoming breeze. However, I can’t knock the production values here: this is slick, well-made and looks very nice.

The group of the title consists of six young women, under the leadership of Yang Yi/Moman (Xu) – the subtitles say one thing, the credits another – who go after drug dealers and related bad guys. It’s the usual group of individuals, each with their own special skills. For instance, Qi Xia (Zhou) appears to be the smart girl of the group. Well, she wears glasses and sucks a lollipop, anyway: her intelligence never has much relevance. Similarly, Sha Lv, which I have no idea how to pronounce, is the team’s sniper, and so on. None of them make much of an impression, save for Moman, who is also the one lucky enough to receive a dramatic arc, since her sister was killed during the escape of a captured villain. Or was she?

This runs barely an hour long in the version officially released on YouTube, – maybe there’s a director’s cut somewhere? There did definitely seems to be edits. It’s not so much slim as positively anorexic, with not much room for development of story or characters. Moman and her team work their way up the chain, with some light action, though there is a surprising amount of death on the way. Let’s just say, Mermaid Team will be placing a ‘Help wanted’ advert. I did like Zhu, who plays Mi Lai, a henchwoman to one of the bad guys, and has an appropriately wild-cannon vibe to her. I was hoping for a final battle between Mi Lai and Moman; however, this seems almost totally disinterested in hand-to-hand action.

Not that it’s by any means bad, just competently forgettable, with a lack of many memorable elements – in either good or bad direction. I don’t know what the budget was on this. I suspect, like many Chinese films, it was relatively small by Hollywood standards, yet Ma certainly does a good job of squeezing every ounce of production value out of the price, and the images pop off the screen too. I must confess though, given the title, I was expecting at least some aquatic shenanigans, but these mermaids remain resolutely land-dwelling. On the other hand, while Googling the title, I did learn there is apparently a World Mermaid Championship. Never say this site is not informative…

Dir: Ma Hong-Wen
Star: Xu Zi-Lu, Zhang Da-Ke, Zhou Jing, Zhu Jue

Ghost in the Cowl, by Jonathan Moeller

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

This one was probably teetering on the edge of a seal of approval, except one aspect. For what’s supposed to be book one in a series, the author spends a lot of time discussing events prior to the book getting under way, such as the tragic loss of the heroine’s true love. However, subsequent research revealed that this is not the start of Caina Amalas’s history. The Ghost Exile series is actually a sub-set of her saga, which appears to consist of no less than 26 primary works. According to the Goodreads listing, this is #11, so we are clearly well under way. I’m a little annoyed, since I never like joining stories in progress. However, this entry is strong enough to stand on its own.

It’s a fantasy setting, populated by powerful mages, alchemists and warriors, where kings and emperors battle for power and territory. As a teenager, Caina became part of the “Ghosts”, the intelligence arm for the Emperor of Nighmar. Over the following years, she acts as a spy and assassin for him, with a particular talent for disguise, though is capable of using force when necessary. Going by the title of the sub-series, she seems to have incurred the wrath of her masters somehow, and as we start this entry, has been sent to re-establish a compromised spy ring in the geographically critical city of Istarinmul. It’s a scant two weeks after losing both the love of her life and the man who had raised her, so she’s still a bit fragile. 

This likely explains why she ends up diverted off-mission, instead risking her life to rescue the children of a widowed innkeeper from the hated slavers of Istarinmul. Yet this opens the door for her to cause havoc as a near-mythical figure, the Balarigar; find out why there has been a sudden surge in the need for slaves; and trigger what may be the Giant Fireball to end all Giant Fireballs, using the occult/chemical concoction known as Hellfire. There’s plenty going on, and when Moeller concentrates on the present (rather than rehashing previous events) this is a fast-paced page-turner. I consumed the entire second half in one sitting, a rare event given my usually fractured reading habits.

Caina, at least by this point in proceedings, is a well-rounded heroine, who is skilled without being overpowered. Part of what makes her so effective is, she knows her limits and how to get things done within them. For example, she knows she can’t beat the enhanced warriors known as Immortals in a straight fight, so uses stealth to get around them. Without having read earlier entries, her dwelling in previous tragedy was a bit annoying, and didn’t add much to this entry. But with the genuine first three books of her story in an omnibus edition for just 99 cents, this still easily did enough to make buying that collection a no-brainer.

Author: Jonathan Moeller
Publisher: ‎CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book.
Book 1 of 9 in the Ghost Exile series (but see above). 

Perfect

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★★★½
“All in, all out!”

When I reviewed Russian fencing film On the Edge, I said, “I just need to find a synchronized swimming movie.” While this is a documentary, with all the positives and negatives of that genre, this fits the bill until Hollywood produces something more narrative. It follows the efforts of the Canadian team to get into the 2016 Rio Olympics. While normally, they’d be in as Pan-American champions, hosts Brazil got the spot reserved for the Americas. This forces Canada to go through the qualification tournament, battling their nemeses, Spain and Italy. The doc covers the arrival of new Chinese coach Meng Chen, efforts to get the most from her swimmers, and when this initially falls short, a radical re-invention of the team’s routine. 

You may be wondering what one of the most mocked Olympic sports is doing on the site. But beneath the fixed grins, penguin walks and stripper make-up, lies one of the most intense, demanding and gruelling sports, for men or women. To quote one team member, it’s like “running an Olympic-level 400-metre sprint while holding your breath”. She’s not wrong. The most memorable sequence here is when a series of team members list the injuries suffered for their sport. Broken bones. Torn muscles. And concussions. So many concussions, an inevitable result of rapidly-moving limbs in close proximity to skulls. I wrote elsewhere about the sport, now called “artistic swimming”; read that if you want the full case for why it belongs here.

Alternatively, just watch the film, because you’ll likely leave giving the athletes the respect they deserve. It’s the result of throwaway lines like one saying she spends 7-12 hours a day in the pool. Or the relentless pressure of Chen, pushing to unlock their potential. Or team captain Morin succumbing to an eating disorder, this sport being as much about how you look as how you perform. However, I’d have liked to have seen more technical background, rather than another scene of Chen yelling at the team. Even simple things, like explaining they aren’t allowed to touch the bottom of the pool, would have enhanced the footage of them throwing team-mates into the air. Though there are still some staggeringly beautiful shots, using reflections, tilted cameras, etc. it is a shame they couldn’t use the performance music – presumably for rights reasons. 

Interestingly, and perhaps pointedly, the team realizes its greatest results, after Chen adopts a more collaborative approach with them, and brings in external help. They even get an acting coach, to help improve their ability to convey emotions through movement. It’s nice too, to get a bit of insight into the aspiring Olympians, such as Holzner, for whom this has been an ambition since she was eight. We see the scrapbook she made when she was young (to help cope with a concussion!), and it helps foster an understanding of why people are willing to put themselves through this kind of ordeal. It all ends a bit messily: we don’t even see their final routine. But the journey is the thing here, not the destination, and you should be left with a new appreciation for the sport and its participants. 

Dir: Jérémie Battaglia
Star: Claudia Holzner, Marie-Lou Morin, Meng Chen, Karine Thomas

Matching Escort

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★★
“No sense nonsense.”

I was pleasantly surprised when this random kung-fu film found Tubi (under the Silver Fox title) turned out to be by the creator of Wolf Devil Woman. which was batshit crazy, but at least quite entertaining. This is, unfortunately, only half of that – and worse, it’s the insanity which is delivered, with the entertainment being only sporadic in nature. I will say, in the film’s defense, the presentation is likely not helping. There’s no subbed version I’ve been able to find, and the English language one is badly dubbed, cropped visually and is likely also cut (either that, or the editing is worse than terrible).

All that said, I didn’t feel this was up to the same level of quality as WDW, which at least had a novel story. This, is just your basis revenge item, no matter how much the trappings insist otherwise. Pearl – I’ve no clue about her character’s name, I’m not sure it’s ever used in the entire film – is brought up as part of a martial arts family, whose training methods consist of strapping heavy shoes to her feet. Just as she reaches adulthood, the other 73 (!) members of her clan are killed by a rival, in search of a jade amulet that’s the source of their power. But, naturally, Pearl escapes with the amulet, and goes into hiding.

She’s taken under the wing of the rather weird Silver Fox (Ying), who teaches her his advanced kung-fu techniques, up until he is also brutally killed. This triggers Pearl, who goes after both his killers, and those responsible for slaughtering her family. There may be a connection. There is also a roaming nobleman (Meng) and his comic relief sidekick (Seng), but up until the end, they are largely irrelevant and so can safely be ignored. The main issue is, the film sits around in Silver Fox’s underground lair for far too long: it feels as if the movie spends twice as long on the training for the revenge, as the actual revenge. While it’s a somewhat loopy environment, it gets old quickly and my interest largely died during this middle section.

Things do perk up down the stretch, with some insane battles, not least the bit where Pearl stabs a guy in the top of his head with her sword, and he then turns into a geyser of blood for a bit. This is is the kind of insanity for which I am here. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel there was enough of this, and I found the herky-jerky editing approach close to inducing a migraine: the stabs at comedy have much the same effect. The IMDb says it was written by Godfrey Ho, and I’ve seen enough of his dreck to make it seem plausible he was involved here. It’s an underwhelming kind of revenge for Pearl too, and leaves the ending falling painfully flat. Closure, it would appear, is for other people.

Dir: Sze Ma Peng, Pearl Chang
Star: Pearl Chang, Fei Meng, Shih Ying, Sek Fung
a.k.a. Fury of the Silver Fox or Venus the Cavalier or Wolf Devil Woman 2

The Female Hustler

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★★½
“The long climb up.”

This is another one in the apparently endless series of low-budget urban movies, which focus on crime in the black community. Though this does actually have a couple of wrinkles which make it stand out, if not quite enough to make it a success for a wider audience outside its community. Columbus, Ohio is the setting, where Princess (Godsey) is struggling to make ends meet. She’s relying on handouts from her dodgy brother, Dae Dae, to make rent, and also wants to get her best friend away from her pimp. Opportunity comes knocking, in the shape of an Uber driver, Omar (Campbell), who brings her on board in his business, which he tells her has almost unlimited upside and growth potential.

to the movie’s credit, this isn’t the usual drug-dealing we’ve seen so many times before. While the specifics were a bit vague, it seems Omar is working on white-collar crime, syphoning off company payroll. His associate on the West coast, the appropriately named Cali (Bosley), is planning a hostile takeover, and brings Princess on board. Omar gets wind of this, only for Princess to turn the tables, leaving her boss for dead. That brings us to phase two of the movie, where Princess is now in charge of a nationwide enterprise. However, to no great surprise, it is not as easy as that, not least because Omar is still alive, and unhappy about the situation, to put it mildly.

To start with the positives, Godsey is a good actress, and indeed, most of the cast are solid enough, when their performances are given room to breathe. The first half of this, depicting Princess’s rise to the top, may be small scale, but is effective. I do have some questions though: for example, the reason why multi-millionaire entrepreneur Omar is working as an Uber driver, is never convincingly explained. However, the budget here is entirely incapable of depicting the lifestyle of Princess once she has reached at the top. It needs yachts, big cars, lavish apartments, etc. and the film never delivers. It feels like she’s probably still living in the same crappy apartment she inhabited at the beginning of the movie.

That’s far from uncommon: I’ve seen many similar films whose ambitions did not live up to their resources. A bigger problem, however, is the soundtrack. It feels simply like the director left his Spotify account on random, with one of an endless selection of songs written and performed by his mates, blasting every three minutes. There seems to have been little or no attempt to choose the songs to fit the needs of the scene, and they are far more often a jarring distraction. Occasionally, we get some sequences where Campbell does exercise restraint, opting for stock music instead, and these are inevitably better. But I’m not averse to Campbell overall, who shows enough talent, along with his lead actress, that they will be worth keeping an eye on going forward.

Dir: Dom Campbell
Star: Courtney Godsey, Dom Campbell, Kenneth Bse Count Bosley, Vivica Cartier

President and Kung-Fu Girl

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★★½
“Lifestyles of the Rich and Communist.”

On a trip to Thailand, businessman’s daughter Wen Wan manages to cause trouble with some rather unpleasant people, causing her father, Wen Ruhu to fear a revenge attack. He hires security consultant Liang Shan to protect Wan, but his business partner Li Kaishi, also sends his daughter, Xin You, as another bodyguard. Shan and You initially see each other as rivals, but as they get to know each other (and stop me if you’ve perhaps heard this before), eventually realize that they both want the same thing, to protect Wan. The sparks become more of the romantic kind, although it turns out that the situation in which they are involved is not as advertised, with envious eyes being cast at Liang’s company and its assets.

Firstly, I apologize for the lack of information on the participants. While in both Chinese and English, the opening credits list only the crew, not the cast, and the end credits (presumably listing the players) are only in Chinese. I found the names of two actors online, but absolutely no info about the characters they played. Nor is there an IMDb page for the movie: I’ve been watching a lot of Chinese films lately, and that often seems to be the case, especially with straight-to-streaming entries like this. Even the images I found for it, such as the one above, manage to mis-spell the movie’s own title. I get they really don’t care much about finding a Western audience, so I am just grateful the print has subtitles.

This begins brightly enough, though after the opening scene, I was a bit confused as to why Wan needs a bodyguard, since she seems quite capable of taking care of herself. [I must also say, for a supposedly Communist country, the luxurious lifestyle she enjoys looks much more like an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous!] However, it’s clear that You is no slouch in the martial-arts department, though the editing here seems more intended to conceal than show off her physical abilities. Still, she looks the part and it seemed to have potential, with her and her male colleague fending off wave after wave of attempts at revenge.

Except it doesn’t happen. The film grinds to an abrupt halt in the middle, heading firmly for something closer to relationship driven soap-opera, complete with a soppy soundtrack. This sucks all life and promise out of the film, even if the two characters are rather more engaging than the whiny Wan. They’re trying, bless their hearts, it’s just not the kind of scenes I wanted to see: I generally prefer my kung-fu uncluttered with romantic tension (except for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, of course). There’s a brief burst of energy at the end, when all is revealed.  and did regain my interest, though even here You takes a bit of a back seat. It’s very much harmless fluff – I suspect it is the Chinese equivalent of a Netflix Original.

Dir: Feng Zhe
Star: Zhang Yigui, Xie Mingyu.