Category: Review

Beauty Investigator

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★★
“Beauties and the beasts.”

beautyinvestigatorEllen (Lee) and Grace (Kim) are police officers, who are first on to arrive when the latest victim of a serial sexual predator is found in a dumpster. After a brief diversion to catch a purse snatcher – really, how dumb must you be to do that at a murder scene? – they are sent undercover as nightclub hostesses, since that’s the profession of all the victims. While fending off both lecherous customers and employers, they stumble across an arms smuggling outfit, whose leader Bill (Tsui) has pulled a fast one over his Yakuza partners, with the help of a hired hitwoman (Oshima, whose character in the end credits is named as, I kid you not, “Japanese Jap”!). Rather than letting their superiors know, they decided to investigate themselves. Probably not the wisest of moves: as they’ll discover by the end of the movie, discretion is indeed the better part of valour…

Very quickly, the bar for this one is set low, with the creators’ idea of comedy gold being to have Grace throw up over the corpse on seeing it: oh, hold my sides, for I fear they may split. If you’d be thinking the only way to go from there is up, the next hour seems to take a sadistic pleasure in proving otherwise, with Ellen and Grace doing the “mismatched cop” thing, which was already about 20 years past its sell-by date, when this came out in 1993. Then, with about 20 minutes to go, the film inexplicably takes a far darker turn (especially considering how lightly the previous carnage has been played), with the mission become one of personal revenge rather than law enforcement. In cinematic terms, it’s like putting a sprig of parsley on a cow-pat, and calling it a salad: I was left wondering if someone had sloppily spliced on the final reel of an entirely different movie.

The only redeeming aspect – and even this falls well short of making it recommendable – is the action, which is quite frequent and high in intensity. Lee and Oshima are both in fine form, and watching the pair of them go toe-to-toe with each other is a joy, as always: that’s particularly so for the end battle, in which all the previously mentioned participants are involved, along with Sophia Crawford, who plays the villain’s mistress (she also takes an entirely gratuitous shower in some versions of the film). However, the truth is, you can see Lee and Oshima in any number of other movies, without having to endure the feeble efforts at buddy comedy attempted here. And you’d be well advised to do just that.

Dir: Tso Nam Lee
Star: Moon Lee, Kim Je Kee, Tsui Zen Aie, Yukari Oshima

Sweetwater

  By

★★½
“Sweet but mostly sour.”

sweetwaterLife in the old West was tough. It was particularly tough if you were a woman, such as Sarah Ramírez (Jones), struggling to make an honest living with her farmer husband Miguel (Noriega), having escaped life as a prostitute. This movie shows it to be especially tough, after Miguel has had his throat slit by batty preacher Prophet Josiah (Isaacs) – it doesn’t help he has the hots for Sarah, apparently taking the “love thy neighbour” line very literally, and runs the local area as if it were his own personal fiefdom. Fortunately, she has an unusual ally in Sheriff Jackson (Harris). The lawman shows up, looking for two people who disappeared on a journey which took them right across Josiah’s territory, and is about the only other person willing to stand up to the lunatic religious fringe. Finally, Sarah has had enough, and embarks on her vengeance against, not only Josiah, but anyone else who has wronged her, such as the shopkeeper who spied on her in his changing-room.

That final clause kinda illustrates the main problem here: an unevenness of tone which veers between the deadly serious and the ludicrously comic. That’s even the case for some individual characters, particularly Jackson; one minute, he’s waltzing by himself in the town’s main street, the next he’s carrying out forensic analysis, decades ahead of its time. While an intriguing character, the movie might have been better off concentrating on him or Sarah: they may share a common enemy, yet they hardly share a scene until the end, where Jackson’s sole purpose appears to be to provide a second firearm for our heroine. As for the ending, “Is that it?” will likely be your reaction, though in the film’s defense, I sense the emptiness of revenge is part of the point: once you’ve taken it, bringing to an end something which has consumed your life, what then?

I enjoyed the performances here, however: Jones’s understated style works towards her, while Isaacs and Harris both put over an unhinged air of barely-repressed violence. There are some fine moments, depicting Sarah’s willingness to use any means necessary, luring two of Josiah’s men to their doom by bathing in a river [pics from the scene “leaked” out: in no way was this a shallow publicity grab, I’m sure…]. The look of the film is also well done, with good use made of the New Mexico landscapes, and as the picture above shows, the heroine’s colourful garb is an interesting contrast – must have been hot and uncomfortable as hell to film in that. But the good intentions aren’t enough to overcome the lurches in tone and content, and the result is, frankly, a bit of a mess.

Dir: Logan Miller
Star: January Jones, Jason Isaacs, Ed Harris, Eduardo Noriega
a.k.a. Sweet Vengeance or Sherif Jackson

 

"There are some fine moments, depicting Sarah's willingness to use any means necessary. The look of the film is also well done, with good use made of the New Mexico landscapes. "
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Cat Girl

  By

★½
“Claws for concern…”

catgirlI don’t review movies without subtitles very often. This would be a good reason why. I knew very little about this going in: there’s no IMDB entry, no other reviews appear to exist, and virtually the only Google hits are the range of more or dubious sites from which you can download the movie. Subtitles? Don’t make me laugh. That no-one has done so indicates one of two things: no-one was interested enough to do so, or it’s difficult to subtitle a movie with one hand, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. Either way, it leaves me in a difficult spot: any or all of what follows may be wildly inaccurate. However, the chances of anyone ever correcting me are likely slim, so what the hell…

The heroine, it appears, has a flier for a ‘cyber cosmetic laboratory’, but it appears to be rather different from the norm – whatever that is – since the next thing we see, she’s tied up to a table, being oiled up (at some length) by the mad scientist in charge. Turns out this is just a front, to bring in an attractive young woman, on whom he can carry out his fiendish experiment. This involves infusing the target with feline DNA, which apparently causes them to a) start growling a lot, b) attack other people with stylized cat-like gestures, and c) wear skimpy lingerie, topped off by a mask which is complete with little cat ears. That must surely be the Nobel Prize committee, calling on line one to make an appointment.

But what use is a single cat girl? Another one, apparently a Western friend of our heroine (there’s a pic of them together) is also kidnapped and felinized, lead to a head-to-head fight between “Cat Girl” and the new “Cat Devil.” This consists of about 15 minutes of very bad pro wrestling moves, accompanied by more grunting than I’ve see since the last time Monica Seles played Jennifer Capriati. But, oh no! Cat Girl sees Devil Girl’s tramp stamp of a butterfly, realizes it’s her friend, and refuses to fight any more! After this, things get more confusing, with the two girls apparently swapping costumes for some reason, before eventually teaming up to take on a Cat Guy in the big finale. At least, I think that’s what happened, my interest had drifted off to do something else entirely by that point.

Cheap and poorly-staged, I don’t think it’s the lack of subtitles which are to blame for making this as uninteresting as it is. It’s more like a fetish video made for a curiously specific market, where furries intersect sadomasochists with an interest in sploshing – no other way to explain the length sequence where the scientist slowly hoses Cat Girl down with a nozzle dribbling green goo. Given the content would technically be no more than PG-13 – there’s not even a glimpse of a nipple – it’s all remarkably sleazy. The best thing I can say is, it’s not a film I’ll likely forget in a hurry. Which should save me from making the mistake of ever watching it again.

Dir: No clue.
Star: Even less idea.

Lady Dynamite

  By

★★
“La donna è mobile”

la padrinaThe tenth wedding anniversary of Donna Costanza (Alfonsi) in New Jersey is rudely interrupted when her husband is gunned down during the party. For he was a Mafia boss who, it appears, had crossed the wrong person. Before dying, he whispers to his wife, “Giarratana from Palermo,” apparently fingering the man behind the hit. Seeking revenge, Madam Costanza flies to Sicily, and meets up with a loyal family employee, soliciting his help to plan the death of the local boss fingered by her husband’s last words. But things are considerably more murky than they seem, as Costanza has wandered into the middle of some shenanigans involving a corrupt local official, a police investigation and an arms deal, which are all leaving a trail of corpses in their wake. And someone wants Donna to join the dead bodies, first trying to blow up her plane, then sabotaging the brakes on her car. When a supposedly blind man guns down her contact in the street, it’s getting too warm for comfort.

I can see where this is aiming, coming out the year after The Godfather, and aiming to add an extra layer of Italian authenticity – while, of course, keeping a canny eye on the American market. However, by trying to cram everything into little more than 90 minutes, the net result is more confusing mess than epic drama, and particularly in the middle third, poor Donna is left little more than a minor supporting actress in her own movie. Things are not helped by a soundtrack and costumes which appear not so much stuck in the seventies, as repeatedly nail-gunned to the floor of the decade. Things get a bit more interesting when Donna finally meets the man responsible – he actually pays her a visit, doesn’t deny his role in proceedings, calmly explains he was basically doing what was best for business, and then invites her to join him, as the only way to keep the Costanza name at the top of the food chain. It’s a neat twist, further muddying the lines between organized crime and (semi-)legitimate business which have been blurred by the movie, almost since she arrived in Sicily.

So, will Donna take a pragmatic approach and bury the hatchet for the sake of her family’s future? Or will she follow through with vengeance on behalf of her husband? It’s somewhat diverting, while the ending is both decisive, and offers a nice commentary on life in 70’s Sicily, where Death apparently was an everyday occurrence. But getting there involves sitting through an awful lot of mobsters sitting around doing mob things, and Vari is definitely not Coppola.

Dir: Giuseppe Vari.
Star: Lidia Alfonsi, Venantino Venantini, Mario Danieli, Orchidea de Santis
a.k.a. La Padrina

De Prooi

  By

★★
“As flat as a Dutch landscape.”

deprooiThe life of 17-year-old Valerie (Bouten) is turned upside down when her mother is killed in an apparent hit-and-run accident. But that’s nothing compared to the post-mortem discovery that her mother had never had any children. So who was her real mother? As Valerie tries to pick at the scab of her own history, it becomes increasingly clear that someone does not want the past to be revealed, and is prepared to go to any lengths to make sure she doesn’t open any doors that should remained closed. But who has the most to lose from the skeleton in the closet? Her mother’s former employer, a local lawyer? The garage owner, who  is in her mother’s address-book, but professes angrily never to have heard of her? The creepy next-door neighbour Ria (Fluitsma), who moonlights in a peep show? The ever-so helpful member of the local constabulary, Inspector Mellema (Leysen)? Or even Valerie’s boyfriend, who seems to have an agenda of his own. Though since he’s a teenage boy, that might just be getting into her pants.

This seems to be going for a Dutch giallo feel in some ways, most obviously at the end, in a lengthy sequence where Valerie is pursued through her house by a masked assailant. But it never reaches the necessary levels of nightmarish excess trawled by the best Italian examples, and comes over mostly as listless and uninteresting. Indeed, this could almost pass for a TV movie, outside of Bouten’s fondness for taking her top off, and the previously-mentioned sojourn to a peep-show in the Amsterdam red-light district [which brought back some memories from my wasted youth, having visited said area of iniquity during my college days, around the mid-eighties era when this was made!]. But, like a good number of the other threads here, this subplot doesn’t go anywhere, and the film spends too much time on its red herrings, especially when compared to establishing the motivations of the real culprit. As a result, these come over barely cooked, and not very convincing when revealed.

Bouten does actually make for a half-decent heroine, pursuing the truth about her own background with a steely determination that’s quite endearing, no shortage of personal risk, and not a great deal of help from anyone. Certainly, her boyfriend is a waste of space, and Mellema seems far less committed to the investigation than Valerie. Perhaps fans of Veronica Mars might be more inclined to appreciate this: I’m not among their number – though, admittedly, this is as much due to ignorance as any aversion – and this made almost no impression on me.

Dir: Vivian Pieters
Star: Maayke Bouten, Erik de Vries, Johan Leysen, Marlous Fluitsma
a.k.a. Death in the Shadows, the title under which it shows up in a couple of those monster 50-movie packs, e.g. Suspense Classics or Pure Terror.

Miss Robin Crusoe

  By

★★★
“Crusoe is not consent”

miss_robin_crusoe_poster_03A solid re-telling of the Robinson Crusoe story by Daniel Defoe, it switches things up by turning the hero into a heroine, Robin Crusoe (Blake, best known as saloon owner Kitty Russell from Gunsmoke). Taken to sea by her captain father as a cheap alternative to a cabin-boy, she is the sole survivor of a shipwreck, and stranded on a deserted island [albeit one apparently well-stocked with make-up and hair-care products]. The first half follows the story fairly closely, as she rescues Friday (Hayes) from her captors, and works on a boat with which she hopes to escape the island. But things then diverge, with the washing up of another survivor, Jonathan (Nader). With Robin having been severely soured on men by her previous ship-board experiences, one showing up on her island paradise is the last thing she wants, and she’s disinclined to trust the new arrival. But there’s another problem: the boat can only hold two people.

It’s much more effective before he shows up, with the two women holding their own against the perils and terrors of life with courage. A couple of moments which stand out are Friday gazing at the sleeping Ms. Crusoe (which, along with the former’s jealousy toward Jonathan implies an almost Sapphic aspect, decades ahead of the year this came out, 1954). and the spectacular manner in which the natives dispose of their other captive: Eli Roth’s Green Inferno will be hard pushed to match the concept. After Jonathan arrives, the film becomes much weaker. Oh, it starts innocently enough, with him popping over to borrow a saw, but you just know that Robin is going to end up falling for him – indeed, rolling around on the beach in a manner clearly inspired by the previous year’s From Here to Eternity. But getting there, requires him to push his attentions on her, in a way which would now certainly be considered sexual harassment and, on some campuses, likely assault. That aspect of the movie has not aged well at all.

While chunks of this are severely sound-staged, there are times where filming was clearly done on location, and things are a lot better for it. The score also punches above it’s weight, coming from composer Elmer Bernstein, before the first of his 14 Oscar nomination – perhaps thank Senator McCarthy for that, as this was around the period Bernstein was blacklisted from major motion pictures for his “Communist tendencies.” On the other hand, the finale ends up being a disappointing combination of macho heroism and deus ex machina that is a good deal less satisfying than the film merits. Still, the overall product is a good deal better than I expected going in, though falls short of the impressive standards set early on.

Dir: Eugene Frenke
Star: Amanda Blake, George Nader, Rosalind Hayes

Kite (live action)

  By

★★
“A two-dimensional adaptation of two-dimensional animation”

kite_ver3_xlgLoosely based on the notorious anime, this relocates things to South Africa, after a financial crash has turned everything into a giant slum, and human trafficking gangs operate with impunity. Sawa (Eisley) is on a mission, searching for the Emir, the leaders of one such network, whom she blames for the death of both her mother and policeman father. She’s helped, as she works her way up the chain of command, by her father’s colleague, Karl Aker (Jackson). He provides her with some literally whizz-bang equipment, in the form of bullets that explode a few seconds after they’ve embedded themselves in you, and also keeps her dosed with “Amp”, a drug that lets her forget all her killing, but at the cost, eventually, of also making her forget the parents for whom she is seeking revenge.  Throwing another spanner in the works is Oburi (McAuliffe), a young man Sawa encounters, who seems to want to help her, yet also knows more about her parents’ deaths than he initially lets on.

One wonders if this might have been better served under original director, David R. Ellis, who died in South Africa during pre-production – this would have re-united him with Jackson, since Ellis also directed Snakes on a Plane. Certainly, Jackson seems to be phoning his performance in – though better that, I suppose, than the yelling which characterizes many of his recent roles, and it’s still above the 100% forgettable McAuliffe. Ziman’s pedigree is… Well, almost non-existent, with Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema his sole directing credit in the dozen years before Kite. This feels largely like someone tried to make a Hit-Girl movie, but based on third-hand descriptions of the character. Though Christopher Tookey, the now-unemployed (hoorah!) critic who whined about Kick-Ass fetishizing paedophilia, would have had his head explode during the scene where Eisley (19 during filming, but playing way younger) grinds in her underwear on top of a middle-aged man. Watching it uncomfortably, I kept expecting Chris Hansen to come out of my kitchen and say, “Why don’t you have a seat over here?”

There are some moments of visual style, with good use of aerial cameras, and the action is decent to solid, being well-constructed and executed. If you’ve seen the clips we have previously posted, then you’ll understand why they chose to feature them, because it’s the stuff between the action which is the problem here. You’re always skating on thin ice when you’re using amnesia as a key plot point in your movie, especially when it’s the particularly cinematic form seen in this case, where memory inevitably returns at the most dramatically convenient moments. It has to be that way, because if Sawa remembered at any other time, the entire story would collapse in on itself, long before you reach the “surprise” revelation, which will still come as a shock to absolutely no-one. Eisley, whom you may recognize from Underworld: Awakening, does okay, but compared to, say, Chloe Moretz, makes almost no impression at all. Much the same is true of the film as a whole.

Dir: Ralph Ziman
Star: India Eisley, Samuel L. Jackson, Callan McAuliffe, Carl Beukes

KITE-6

Lady Whirlwind

  By

★★½
“Because Lady Moderate Breeze wouldn’t sell as many copies.”

deepthrustI’m not saying this is a bad film. But when I watch one called Lady Whirlwind (though here is as good a place as any to acknowledge the wonderfully tacky alternate title featured on the poster at the right), I expect a good deal more lady whirlwinding. The focus is instead on Ling Shi-Hao (Chang), beaten and left for dead after trying to leave a gang. Wisely, he decides to continue with his death, hiding out in the country for three years with girlfriend Hsuang Hsuang (We). This anonymity is shattered by the arrival of Tien Li-Chun (Mao), who wants a word with Ling, along with ripping the beating heart out of his chest. For it turns out, he was a bit of a bastard who jilted Tien’s sister, leading to her suicide. Hence, when he thanks Tien for saving him, she replies, “I just didn’t want somebody else to kill you.”

Ling admits he deserves his fate, but asks for a stay of execution, so he can first take revenge on his former colleagues (who include Sammo Hung in an early role). Tien is clearly pretty laid-back about the whole vengeance thing, since she’s nowhere to be seen during the lengthy training montage that follows, after Ling helps a Korean herbalist, bitten by a snake, and is taught the deadly Tai Chi Palm style. Will that help him beat the bad guys? And will Tien then stop lurking off-screen and goddamn do something?

There’s certainly no shortage of action, though in comparison to some other Mao films I’ve seen recently, the fight scenes doesn’t seem as smoothly choreographed and frankly, get a bit boring – it also suffers too much from the “we’ll attack you one at a time, while everyone else circles about aimlessly” trope, common to many movies of the time. Indeed, I must admit, there was one of Ling’s battles in the middle where I actually fell asleep: never a good sign where a martial-arts films is concerned. The frequent use of musical cues definitely not composed for the film is also rather distracting: one, in particular, will be particularly familiar if you’ve watched James Bond movies, but other sources say the pillaging also includes the works of Ennio Morricone and Bernard Herrmann. Hey, if you’re going to steal, do it from the best, I suppose.

Mao does have some good fight scenes, particularly going one-on-many with a copious line of henchmen. But you wonder why she’s so apparently disinterested in her revenge, particularly at the end, which is entirely ludicrous, and all but negates everything that happened over the previous 80 minutes. Not one of her best, with not enough going on beyond her usual graceful performance, to merit your attention.

Dir: Huang Feng
Star: Chang Yi, Angela Mao, Pai Ying, June Wu
a.k.a. Deep Thrust

Gun Woman

  By

★★★★
“What is this? A Japanese manga? Or a Luc Besson film?”

nullgunwomanThe above line is spoken by one character to another during one of the more outrageous plot twists – in reality, this is neither, but it’s an accurate assessment of this exercise in excess. It starts with a woman being shot in the shower, the assassin (Miller) and his partner head for Vegas, and on the trip, he tells the strange story of Mayumi (Asami, previously seen in The Machine Girl and the Yakuza Hunter films). A meth-head at the time, she was bought by a doctor (Narita), seeking revenge on Hamazaki (Kamata), the depraved, but very rich, sicko who raped and killed the doctor’s wife, because he blamed the doctor for the death of Hamazaki’s father. The sicko is particularly fond of necrophilia, and makes regular trips to a remote establishment where he can indulge the fetish. The doctor’s plan involves training Mayumi as an assassin, getting her brought into the corpse pleasure park after inducing a catatonic state with drugs, then letting her rampage her way through the establishment to Hamazaki. Oh, and the only way she can get a weapon in, is if the pieces are surgically inserted into her body first. Well, except for the magazine. No surgery needed for that, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.

Yes, this is as totally mad as it sounds, and you have to wonder, might there have been an easier way to get vengeance? Mind you, the doctor is hardly any more sane than Hamazaki, with the Hippocratic Oath going right out the window. Anyhow, Asami literally doesn’t say a single word during the entire movie, and is completely naked for almost the entire second half, as she tries to complete the mission, taking out the guards at Club Necro in hand-to-hand combat. This is also rather less sexy than it sounds, because she’s also drenched in her own blood, after ripping the gun parts from her torso. [The doctor kindly informed Mayumi she would have 22 minutes to reach the first-aid waiting outside, before she bled to death from her self-inflicted wounds, so there’s a bit of a desperate time-crunch here.] But it’s still undeniably entertaining,  if you can handle the copious gore, with good performances from all the principals, and a script which comes full circle nicely – the opening killing turns out to be pivotal to the way things turn out as well.

This was definitely more than I expected, though admittedly, after the last few Zero Woman films, those expectations were not much above room temperature. Mitsutake has much the same budgetary limitations, but does a very good job of working within them, to create a movie that knows it has to find something different to stand out, and succeeds in doing just that. Say what you will – you won’t forget this one in a hurry! Asami continues to be among the most impressive of the J-gore actresses I’ve seen, and the news, after the end credits, that Gun Woman Will Return, can only be something to be anticipated by this site.

Dir: Kurando Mitsutake
Star: Asami, Kairi Narita, Matthew Miller, Noriaki R. Kamata

Cold Blooded

  By

★★½
“Give the policewoman a big hand!”

coldbloodedCop Francis Jane (Palmer) is assigned to guard jewel thief Eddie Cordero (Robbins), who was shot while being captured, and is now cuffed to his bed in an all but deserted wing of a local hospital. What should be a tedious task turns out to be far from it, as his former colleagues, led by crew leader Louis Holland (MacDonald) show up. They are eager both to discover the location of the stolen goods, and extract revenge for the death of one member, which they blame on Cordero, but which he swears was the act of a corrupt cop. The resulting assault leads to an uneasy alliance between policewoman and criminal, as they try to avoid his former colleagues. But is Cordero as easy-going and affable as he seems? Or does he have a hidden agenda of his own?

The film was basically the result of the producer having access to a deserted hospital, and getting a script written to fit the location. That’s not necessarily a bad idea, but it’s just one aspect of a storyline that requires too much suspension of disbelief. Another is the inordinate number of occasions one character or another is knocked unconscious by someone else, for exactly the amount of time necessary to the plot. Or, perhaps most obviously of all (at the risk of a spoiler), getting your hand sawn off by an untrained civilian not only does not lead to major blood loss, here, it’s the kind of injury you pretty much shake off, and which is little more than a minor inconvenience the rest of the way. Now, I guess there’s some precedent (127 Hours showed dismemberment can be non-lethal), but combined with the other issues, it’s a combo-breaker fatality as far as this story is concerned.

The characters deserve better. There’s a nice dynamic between Jane and Cordero, the latter frequently needling the cop that they’re not so different, and MacDonald makes for a fine villain, capable of conveying threat with a look or a few words. Lapeyre is obviously going for Reservoir Dogs, with a story that’s less about a crime and more about back-stabbing treachery in its aftermath, building to a confrontation in an operating theatre, with one participant strapped to the table, about to undergo the film’s second bout of impromptu surgery. But it never captures anything like the same sense of grit, playing more like a nasty, bloody cartoon. About all it’s missing is a few falling anvils and a pair of Acme rocket-powered roller-skates.

Dir: Jason Lapeyre
Star: Zoie Palmer, Ryan Robbins, William MacDonald, Sergio Di Zio