Category: Review

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

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★★★½
“Of Power Swords and Cat People”

When the reboot (you hardly can call this just a remake) of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power – and please note the plural form! – was released by Netflix in 2018, it immediately drew fierce criticism. The main issue was re-designing the classic character of heroine She-Ra as well as others. The original animated series ran from 1985-87, and featured very feminine-looking characters. You could call them the feminine ideal: large in size, fit, attractive and yet still more realistic than the musclebound hero from mother series He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, of which She-Ra was a spin-off.

Though it has to be said: those characters then looked very much alike, as if the same model was used for almost all of them. In the new show, which ran for 5 seasons between 2018-20, the characters look more like prepubescent teenagers, and it was one of the things old fans took issue with. She-Ra and her allies were once an ideal of what a young girl might hope to look like as a grown-up, similarly to Barbie. The reimagined version stresses more diversity in body-shape. The character of Glimmer is more rounded – arguably a bit over-weight – which drew ire, too. But these characters also look more androgynous, essentially eliminating the feminine ideal. We seem to live in a time when female characters aren’t allowed to look stereotypically female, though there seems no such problem with heroes e. g. Hugh Jackman in Deadpool & Wolverine.

The show was soon called “woke”, but this is only justified, in that it fits the usual Netflix inclusion rules. So, the character of Bow, the archer, is black and has two fathers; there are indications some characters have relationships with people of their own sex; there is a lizard person whom we are informed online is transgender; then there is heroine She-Ra, who at the very end of the series (similar to The Legend of Korra), enters a relationship with her constant frenemy, Catra. I personally didn’t mind, though it may have something to do with me never caring for She-Ra in the 80s. It makes a difference if you create an original character like Korra, or take a preexisting character and change them drastically. I would have a beef, too, if let’s say James Bond in his next incarnation would be declared homosexual.

Though woke? Is it woke? Well… not in the sense I normally understand the word. For me, it means an agenda is being pushed. I can’t really say I see this here, unless the agenda is to stress that people exist who are not hetero-normative. Which… is true? The focus is on the story; we don’t get characters demonstrating against being sexually or politically repressed by the evil patriarchy, or talking about the problems of their gender orientation in modern society. This is no more woke than The Dragon Prince, another popular Netflix show. Part of the attention is probably due to creator ND Stevenson, who has stated he is – according to Wikipedia – “nonbinary, transmasculine and bigender,” as well as having bipolar disorder and ADHD. Well, whatever it is, is reflected in Stevenson’s work, in She-Ra as well as Netflix animated movie Nimona, based on his graphic novel.

But what is the story?

The core is the same. Adora, a human girl, has been raised as a soldier by the Horde, an alien race ruled by the evil Hordak, who is at war with the inhabitants of the planet Etheria. When Adora finds the magical sword of power that makes her She-Ra, Princess of Power, she learns the Horde aren’t the good guys. She swaps sides to fight them, with the support of several princesses living on Etheria, who all have special powers. However, there is no mention here of Prince Adam (a.k.a. He-Man), Adora’s brother, separated from her at birth when she was kidnapped by the Horde. This fits the modern animated He-Man series released by Netflix in 2021, which was in a totally different drawing style – its characters wouldn’t have matched. And as far as I know – someone correct me, if I’m wrong here – Adora’s childhood was not part of the original story. I’m also unaware she shared a sisterly childhood bond with Catra, a humanoid with cat-like features, in the Horde.

For it’s here where the new show differs from the old stories. And is all the better for it, as the relationships of the characters inform the story of the new series and are essentially the core of it. As Adora leaves the Horde, she puts herself essentially in opposition to Catra. Like her, Catra has been a childhood protégé of Shadow Weaver, a mysterious woman with magical powers and loyal servant of Hordak. Shadow Weaver has raised the two girls but has always been lying to them and treating Catra badly compared to Adora. This plants the seed of a competitive relationship between the two girls. There are definitely shades of Avatar – The Last Airbender in this.

Catra sees Adora’s defection as a personal betrayal, which leads her to fight against Adora more and more. At the same time, it becomes clear that Catra cares – in her own twisted way – for Adora. Her actions are, in some way, a logical result of her upbringing by Shadow Weaver, who later in the proceedings will turn to Adora’s side, too. In the end, Catra is on Adora’s side, declaring her love, which finishes the story.

The series got a lot of praise for inclusivity and character reinvention and has a quite enthusiastic fan-base. Though I don’t see anything here, I hadn’t seen before somewhere else, especially in the Avatar series, as mentioned. It’s not surprising a show like Sailor Moon and the style of Miyazaki films (though I fail to recognize the latter in the show), were cited as influences. The fan-base here, which may mainly consist of “non-heterosexual oriented” young people is definitely not the same fan-base as the original series. So if the intent was to enlarge interest in the franchise in general, I guess one could say: Mission accomplished!

On the other hand, it’s clear this new spin on an old title has split fandom – or, rather, created a second fandom. This is not necessarily a good thing. It can result in embittered online wars and open hostility between members of different fan groups, both claiming ownership of “their story” and how it should be portrayed or interpreted. It’s not the only case. See franchises like Star Wars (George Lucas’ or the Disney version?) and Star Trek (“old Trek” vs. “new Trek”?). If you are as old as I am, you may even remember a time, long before Internet and personal computer communication existed, when people argued over if Kirk or Picard was the better captain, or Sean or Roger the better Bond. Change, it seems, always creates controversies. Therefore, the new show – as good as it is – has created a problem for the franchise that won’t be solved in a foreseeable future.

The plot is interesting and captivating, depicting a cycle of childhood abuse that repeats itself later, with Catra attacking Adora and others – just as she was mistreated and psychologically manipulated by Shadow Weaver when she was a young child. It gave the characters a depth you probably wouldn’t have expected, from a reboot of an old animated show – one that itself was just a spin-off of another show, made more than 30 years ago. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? We always expect “our” franchises to continue year after year, decade after decade, telling us the same stories without changing. But the world constantly changes, and you can’t expect series and franchises not to reflect that in some way. It’s especially true, if we talk about series lasting more than a generation.

What I also liked here very much, were the action scenes. When Catra was being evil-sarcastic to Adora it did remind me a bit of Shego being mean to Kim Possible, or Callisto toying with Xena (another… princess…). But it also has to be said that the show needed some time to get going, had some episodes that felt like fillers, and while characters like She-Ra, Catra, Shadow Weaver, Entrapta, Scorpia or Hordak were mostly written interestingly, others felt a bit bland, underdeveloped and interchangeable. Though it might be a given, if you have so many characters in one show. It is true, the show didn’t break new ground, though I didn’t expect it to. These reboots typically repackage an already existing product, despite presenting it to the audience as something entirely new. Is so much praise justified for a show that essentially is recycled? Just because the main characters come out as lesbians at the end?

Additionally, it has been pointed out that the redemption of Catra is more than just a bit questionable. [Though she isn’t the main villain of the show: it’s still Hordak, who in the original show was also the mentor of He-Man’s archenemy Skeletor.]  She has attacked and tried to kill Adora several times and went so far as wanting to destroy the entire world, rather than see Adora succeed in her goals. That’s pretty bad, and one wonders how such a character can just be forgiven. Admittedly, Etheria might have a different legislation and jurisdiction than planet Earth! But someone put it quite well: “Catra is a war criminal. Why is she not being treated as one?”

In the end the show is indeed comparable to Sailor Moon – it’s all in the name and power of love and forgiveness. Who wants to question logic here? For all its perceived “controversial” elements and flaws, the show is good entertainment, which is where my main focus always lies. Netflix’s streaming rival, Amazon, announced a while ago they wanted to do a live-action She-Ra series (recent news reports suggest it may be He-Man’s turn next). This caused something of an uproar among the fans of the Netflix show, obviously fearing She-Ra may become straight again! It’s history repeating, similar to the reactions of original series fans when they first saw the Netflix show. Though if indeed that She-Ra show is produced, its story-telling will have to match the quality of this one.

But it seems you can never make everyone happy at the same time!

Creator: ND Stevenson
Star (voice) : Aimee Carrero, AJ Michalka, Karen Fukuhara, Marcus Scribner

Surrounded

  By

★★★
“Putting the stage in stagecoach.”

This is certainly a little different from the usual Western. It takes place a few years after the conclusion of the Civil War. Mo Washington (Wright) is on her way to Colorado to take up a piece of land she bought with her hard-earned savings. To avoid trouble on the journey, she is dressed as a man, though being black is problematic enough at that time. The stagecoach in which she’s travelling – or rather, on which, the driver not wanting a Negro inside – is attacked by brigands, led by notorious bank-robber Tommy Walsh (Bell). After a fierce fight, Walsh is captured, but the coach, complete with Mo’s documents, plunges off a cliff. 

The good news? There’s a ten thousand dollar bounty on Walsh’s head, and Washington is left to guard the fugitive while another passenger, Wheeler (Donovan), goes to fetch the authorities. The bad news? That leaves her alone with Walsh overnight, and there are others interested in the fugitive, including those after the reward, and the remaining members of the Walsh gang. Because he’s the only one who knows the whereabouts of the very large pile of loot, resulting from their last robbery. Mo is going to have to figure out who she can trust. For instance, is Walsh’s offer, to split the loot if she frees him, legit? It would certainly more than cover the losses she suffered when her Colorado land went over the edge.

As with the Hong Kong movies which use the gender disguise thing, it does require a large suspension of disbelief. As soon as Wright opens her mouth, any illusion of her being able to pass for male goes out the window of the stagecoach. On the other hand, gender is almost irrelevant as things unfold. I suspect eliminating the need for concealment would not have helped the intended moral here. The racial element however, is much more pertinent, with Mo having literally walked off her owner’s plantation. Yet there’s more in common with Walsh then it initially appears. Well, providing you accept at face value and trust his story, about being orphaned at age eight by robber land barons. Which might or might not be wise.

It’s in their scenes together where the film is at its strongest, even if they’re just sitting by the campfire, talking. If it feels almost like a play, this is still engrossing, two actors in prime form. Less successful is the arrival of a third party, not least because this leads to a poorly-staged fight, unfolding in near total darkness, where it was impossible to see what was happening. Maybe it worked better in the cinema? At home, it severely took me out of the experience, staring at a blank screen. Fortunately, this recovers to a decent finale, with Mo deciding she is the only person she can truly trust. In the end though, her character seems less fully-rounded than Walsh, despite, or perhaps because of, all the talk. As a result, this only intermittently fulfills its undeniable potential. 

Dir: Anthony Mandler
Star: Letitia Wright, Jamie Bell, Jeffrey Donovan, Michael Kenneth Williams

Planet Urth, by Jennifer and Christopher Martucci

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

This is written by a husband and wife duo, which is a nice idea. I wonder how Chris would react if I suggested writing a novel to her? Unfortunately, the results are a little disappointing. It feels like the execution is better than the idea – usually it’s the other way around. For example, this is a post-apocalyptic scenario, except the book never details in more than the vaguest terms, what happened. It’s disposed of in about one page: a war, involving both bio- and nuclear weapons. Some humans went underground; those who didn’t, became “grotesquely distorted” mutants and calling themselves Urthmen. We’re now 200 years later, and they are still seeking to wipe out the dwindling number of “real” humans who abandoned their bunkers for some reasons. Those include Avery, in her late teens, and her sister, eight-year-old June, orphaned by the death of both parents: Mom killed by Urthmen, Dad… just kinda died, I guess.

They’re barely clinging on to life, in the face of all the perils around them. As well as the Urthmen, there are other nasties, such as “Lurkers” – also mutated, nocturnal wolf-like creatures – giant spiders, etc. However, hope arises when Avery discovers another family when hunger forces her to roam further than usual on a hunting expedition. This consists of the parents and three children, one of who is about Avery’s age, Will. And you can probably predict, Avery immediately falls for Will, and spends the rest of the book utterly gushing about him – “His eyes are a brilliant blue-green, pale, like tropical water I once saw in a picture, and his hair is a dark as a raven’s feathers.” Never mind the imminent, omnipresent threat of brutal death, or the daily struggle for survival. There’s a cute boy in the area, and of course he must be made frequent, repetitive gooey eyes at!

The other problem is June, who is the most middle-aged eight-year-old I’ve ever seen. While it is mentioned how “mature” she is for her age, June’s dialogue is thoroughly unconvincing, spouting lines like, “Be safe, Avery, You are my sister and my best friend,” or “Something is different about you, Avery. Something happened that you’re not telling me about.” While my knowledge of children is (mercifully!) limited, my grandkids certainly do not speak in that way. But when it’s just the heroine, this has its moments. There’s a sequence where she falls into a giant spider’s web, and it’s one of the more horrific and disturbing things I’ve read this year.  The action in general is well-handled, though again, the ease with which Urthmen get dispatched – two adults and two teenagers wipe out a raiding party of “more than a dozen” – dilutes their threat considerably. While I reached the end okay, I’m just not interested in more romantic tension, unresolved or not, or pre-teens who sound like English lit majors.

Author: Jennifer and Christopher Martucci
Publisher: Self-published, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 6 in the Planet Earth series.

The Girl of Destiny

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★★★
“Lost in translation.”

I’m very cautiously giving this one our middest of mid-tier ratings, which I reserve the right to change in future. Because this one showed up on one of the… “less official”, let’s say Chinese movie channels on YouTube. While the likes of Youku and iQiyi make the effort to deliver subtitles which are typically at least intelligible, I’d say the subs here reached such a level, only about one line in five. Then I still had to figure out cultural context for this period piece, which also seemed to reference local folklore. I guess I should be grateful the soundtrack here was intact. The previous night, I’d watched another film on the same channel which, I kid you not, had random bursts of musak injected, presumably to avoid YouTube’s automated copyright system.

I have to discuss all this, because consequently, I really can’t describe the plot in more than the vague terms. It takes place in Shang Dynasty China, the earliest period for which there’s evidence, when the country was under threat from invasion by the Luo people. A heroine arose to stand against them, Fu Hao (You), who was destined by fate to be the country’s saviour. [There’s something here about her being descended from a heavenly bird, but I am absolutely vague on the details there!] She teams up with the Emperor’s heir, Wu Ding (Ma), despite the objections of his father. For the emperor wants him to marry a noble-born, yet less heroic woman (Li), rather than a peasant girl like Fu Hao.

It reminds me of the various versions of the Mulan legend, with a plucky heroine coming out of nowhere, when the country needs her most. There doesn’t appear to be quite the same element of needing to hide her identity; though for reasons discussed above, it’s hard to tell. I will say, it looks better than I anticipated, with some impressively large-scale battles. I was a bit concerned they were going to make her fly, in line with her avian lineage. Fortunately, Fu Hao’s talents appear to lie particularly in things like mountain climbing; there’s a nice moment where she and Wu Ding jump out a high window to escape, landing on a kite being flown by an ally.

If the broad strokes here are all decent, there’s a severe lack of detailed depth – again, that may be me more than the film. It does also feel rather comfortable and safe. It ended up exactly where I expected – she basically sends the Luo leader home, after giving him a good telling-off – and I don’t think any significant plot development (of the ones I understood!) came as the slightest surprise. I get the sense it may have been quite jingoistic, pitting the heroic Chinese against evil foreign invaders. Hardly the first there, and it wasn’t especially egregious. If this ever appears in a more intelligible version, I’ll probably give it a re-review. I feel it deserves that.

Dir: Dong Wei
Star: You Jingru, Ma Xueyang, Ma Shuliang, Li Linfei

Cleaner

  By

★★
“DEI Hard.”

Director Campbell recently appeared here with the entertaining Dirty Angels, and I was hoping for more of the same here. Sadly, I came away disappointed. There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, Daisy Ridley is not Eva Green. That’s OK. After all, only Eva Green is Eva Green. But it’s still an issue. A bigger problem though, is likely the unashamed way thus is a knockoff of a certain Bruce Willis movie, and Daisy Ridley is not Bruce Willis either. Here, she plays Joey Locke, a former soldier now working as a window-cleaner in a skyscraper owned by Evil Corporation Inc. They’re actually called something else, but I’ve already forgotten what, in the two hours since. 

She also has to care for an autistic brother, Michael (Tuck), who is alternately utterly useless and a wiz with computers, depending on what the script needs at that moment. She ends up having to take him to work, and – what are the odds? – it’s the very same evening a group of eco-terrorists under Marcus Blake (Owen) and his lunatic sidekick, Noah (Skylar). will storm the building. Their intention is to blow the lid off Evil, Inc’s dirty little secrets. In the nasty little corners of the Internet where Luigi Mangione is a hero, they’re probably the good guys. It’s all fashionably murky, but another demerit: Skylar isn’t anywhere close to Alan Rickman. Owen might have worked, but for reasons, he’s not the main bad guy.

The film is, at least, considerably shorter than its inspiration. Although it feels this was obtained by removing most of the stuff which made Die Hard such fun. Instead, Joey is left dangling outside the building for too long, exchanging vaguely sisterly dialogue with the police inspector on the ground. It’s painfully notable that the competent people in this film are, almost without exception, wonen. In the middle act especially, it feels very much like the script was not so much written (by three human beings, apparently), as constructed by a Democratic focus group, circa September 2024. Occupy Wall Street! Climate change! Disability representation! Vote Kamala! Sorry, dunno how that slipped in. By the time we get to Joey actually kicking terrorist butt, I was largely checked out. 

There are some positives. The relationship between Joey and Michael is sweet, and kudos to the film for casting a genuinely autistic actor. Campbell also has enough of a track record in action, he could do this sort of thing in his sleep. Though, except for the opening scene, a flashback to twenty years earlier, there is rarely a sense Joey is genuinely dangling hundreds of feet off the ground [contrast Fall]. Ridley does enough with her part to suggest she may have a decent future in the action genre. She’ll need to pick better scripts, however, and the same goes for Campbell. Dirty Angels had its flaws, to be sure. It was still several notches more entertaining than this. 

Dir: Martin Campbell
Star: Daisy Ridley, Taz Skylar, Matthew Tuck, Clive Owen

13 Steps of Maki: The Young Aristocrats

  By

★★★½
“Light pink(y)”

Made by Toei, this is very much a straightforward “pinky violence” film in concept, telling the story of the Wildcats and, in particular, their leader Maki Hyuga. What separates this – in ways both good and bad – from the pack is that Maki is played by Sue Shiomi, best known for her roles in the Sister Streetfighter series of films. That means the action in this is considerably improved on the typical pinky violence movie, with Shiomi capable of holding her own, even when fighting many opponents. In particular, her skills with a pair of nunchaku is a sight to behold. The scenario here provides plenty of opportunities for her to show all her abilities off.

However, the downside is that Shiomi is simply too “good” to play a bad girl. When you put her beside the titans of the genre, like Meiko Kaji or Reiko Ike, Shiomi just does not have the necessary edge to succeed as the leader of an all-female gang of delinquents. Any group led by Shiomi would, I feel, be more likely to sell you cookies or help old ladies across the road, than beat you up and take your lunch money. It’s notable that, while this is certainly not short on the nudity required in the field, Shiomi remains firmly attached to her clothes. Others take care of this onerous duty, with the heroine instead providing the second half of the sex ‘n’ violence recipe.

The story sees Maki running foul of Yakuza chief Ryunosuke Daimon (Nawa) after rescuing a girl from his white slavery operation, and also annoying rich bitch Takako Ebihara (Ohara). Their revenge ends in Maki being framed and sent to prison, while the rest of her gang get hooked on smack by Daimon, and turned into compliant slaves. However, she gets help from an unexpected quarter, in the form of Daimon’s top bodyguard Tetsuya Eto (Nanjô), an honourable ex-boxer who grows increasingly unhappy with his boss’s sleazy business practices. Takako is also unimpressed when she discovers she’s going to be married off to Daimon, whether she wants to be or not. That comes after he has blown up Takako’s father with a car-bomb.

Things unfold as you’d expect. Maki wins the respect of her cell-mates, breaks out and, with Tetsuya are her back, storms the headquarters of Daimon’s yakuza clan, just as he is in the process of getting married to Takako. She’s not there to bring the gang boss a toaster or some nice crockery. If almost entirely predictable, the presence of Shiomi, and resulting upgrade in the quality of the fight sequences does make it feel relatively fresh in style – just not in content. The main factor which stops it reaching the top tier for the genre is the sense Shiomi is almost cos-playing as a bad girl, something you never doubted with the Queens of Pinky Violence. There’s good reason she only dabbled in this field.

Dir: Makoto Naitô
Star:Etsuko Shihomi, Misa Ohara, Tatsuya Nanjô, Hiroshi Nawa

Lady With a Sword

  By

★★★
“Can’t argue with that title.”

This was originally titled after its heroine, but since that obviously wouldn’t work in the West, it was changed to become about as generic a title as you could get. Behind this is a decent little flick, which is also worthy of note, because it may be the first Shaw Brothers action film to be directed by a woman. Pao-Shu Kao had been an actress with the studio since 1958, but this ended up being her sole movie as director for Shaw, as she started her own company, Park Films, with her husband. But this, her debut, is the highest-rated on the IMDb of the eleven features she helmed, at a respectable 6.8.

The heroine is Feng Fei Fei (Ho), who gets distressing news when her nephew, Hu Tou (Meng) shows up. He narrowly escaped with his young life after he and his mother, Fei Fei’s sister, were set upon by brigands, with Mom being killed. Fei Fei isn’t having that, so immediately sets out to take revenge on those responsible. She tracks down the first one, but this is where things get awkward. Because it turns out he’s Chin Lien Pai (Nam), the scion of a family friend, and worse, is the person to whom Fei Fei has been betrothed since they were young. While it’s a bit vague on the details, I guess vengeance would bring dishonour to her relations. Or, at least, make subsequent family get-togethers more than a little uncomfortable.

The first half-hour of this is really good, likely peaking with a hellacious fight at a brothel, where Fei Fei takes on what appears to be the entire population of China. It’s also notable, because next door, Hu Tou is also fighting, and it’s quite impressive too. East Asian films, be they Chinese, Taiwanese or from Hong Kong tend to use kids as comic relief, and the results tend to be grating and irritating. Not so here, with Hu Tou taken seriously, and allowed to take part in battles that work because he uses quickness and agility, not strength. But it is mostly Ho’s film and she gets a slew of solid fights, including against her fiancé’s mother, defending her son.

Unfortunately, after the brothel brawl, the film does tend to become a bit chatty and, worse, spends too much time on Chin and the other bad guys. It may be an attempt by Kao to deepen the portrayal of the villains beyond the shallow. However, guess what? I don’t care. The original attack firmly cements them as murderous scum-bags who deserve to die, and nothing is going to change my mind on this, thank you very much. The only interesting section sees Chin’s parents sharply differ in reaction to their son’s crimes: Dad thinks it brings shame on the family, Mum (as noted above), not so much. Fortunately, the ending gets back to the fighting, though it’s disappointing how Fei Fei needs help. Entertaining enough, yet after how if began, it seems a lost opportunity. 

Dir: Pao-Shu Kao
Star: Lily Ho, Seok-hoon Nam, Hsieh Wang, Yuen-Man Meng
a.k.a. Feng Fei Fei

Snow White and the Seven Samurai

  By

★★½
“That whirring sound? Akira Kurosawa, spinning in his grave.”

I added an extra half-star here out of how much I was entertained by this. Although this was more a result of us yelling things at the screen than any intrinsic merits. The idea is kinda cool, but if you can’t think of ways this should have been improved  you are simply not trying. Anya Voight (Dorn) is known as ‘Snow White’, because her father, Joseph (Eric Roberts),  is a coke dealer. He’s killed by a mysterious assassin, and when his will is read, her jealous stepmom, Quinn (Vitori), is highly annoyed to discover Anya will be the one inheriting the business, and has plans to go legitimate. 

She sends her mysterious assassin (Jackson) to kill her stepdaughter, but he is driven off by Luna (Tellone), the leader of a sect of onna-musha, female samurai. Once numerous, they got into an ill-advised was with organized crime, and are now only seven in number, each a specialist in a different weapon. They agree to teach Anya, so she can take revenge on Quinn for killing Joseph. Cue the training montage! There is also a subplot where Quinn is trying to eliminate the three other bosses with which her late husband had partnered. However, this is functionally useless, and one of the avenues for improvement would have been eliminating this thread entirely. Spend the time instead, giving more than two of the samurai adequate character depth, for example. 

For if this had gone the way of The Asylum’s Mercenaries, it would also have helped. Cast seven women who know one end of a katana from the other, instead of… maybe one and a half? Give us something like Lady Bloodfight. Instead, while there’s no shortage of action – the final assault on Anya’s former home takes up much of the final third – very little of it makes an impact, save an unexpected twist regarding Joseph’s death. Vitori is fun to watch, really getting her teeth into the “evil stepmother” role. Hardly anyone else makes a significant impression. This is why we were forced to make our own entertainment, e.g. yelling “How not to be seen”, every time someone with a mask showed up. Which was frequently – largely to allow for recycling actors, I suspect.

Jackson, best known as an MMA fighter, obviously makes for a formidable opponent, though his role is almost wordless and doesn’t merit the above the title billing he receives on the cover. I’m fine with that: the problem is more that the film needs someone as a protagonist who can hold our attention, as well as a sword. Sadly, Dorn isn’t good enough in either category. Tellone might have made a slightly better lead actress, though that wouldn’t help problems in the script, such as the way Anya goes from fencing amateur to professional samurai, in only a few days. The best thing about this is the title, and disappointment thereafter is almost inevitable.

Dir: Michael Su
Star: Fiona Dorn, Gina Vitori, Sunny Tellone, Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson

The Eye of Ebon, by P. Pherson Green

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

Independent Goodreads author (and one of my Goodreads friends) P. Pherson Green has been writing since the late 90s, and has previously had short stories published in various venues. However, this novel, the opener for his projected White Sword Saga series, is his long-fiction debut. He graciously gifted me with a hardcover review copy; no guarantee of a favorable review was requested, or given. My wife and I read the book together, during the intermittent and usually short times we were both traveling together in the car; so the nearly two months it took to read is misleading. It would have been a much quicker read if I’d read it by myself, devoting all of my individual reading time to it.

This is a work of traditional epic fantasy, set (as most tales in this genre are) in a medieval-like setting resembling the Europe of that day, except in an invented fantasy world. (A helpful map is provided, though it doesn’t show every single locality a reader might like to locate.) It would be fair to say that most if not all English-language epic fantasy written from the last half of the 20th century on owes something to the inescapable influence of Tolkien’s monumental LOTR saga, and this novel is no exception. We have here, ultimately, a quest narrative involving an artifact of great significance (and great seductive power, of an unwholesome sort). The characters’ world is one with a very long history, involving elder races and cataclysmic wars which have consequences for the present. Two non-human races, the Allarie and the Groll, are respectively much like Tolkien’s elves and orcs.

More importantly, we’re very definitely dealing here with a conflict between good and evil, with domination of a world at stake; and the conflict is not simply one of “Us” (the “good” characters) vs. “Them” (the “bad” characters), but rather within “Us” as well, since all humans can be tempted by evil. And like Tolkien (who once famously characterized the LOTR corpus as a “Catholic work”) Green is a Christian author, who writes from a Christian conception of the universe. Neither writer makes any explicit reference to Christianity, and indeed both are dealing with a world in which Christ has not been born; Middle Earth is supposedly our world long before Christianity existed, and Green’s Silver World (he introduces that name only in a short note after the novel proper) is an entirely different world with a different salvation history. But like Tolkien’s Morgoth (“the Great Enemy, of whom Sauron of Mordor was but a servant”) the entity variously known here as the Shadow, the Wyrm, the Foul Pretender or the Dark Beguiler is recognizable as Satan; and the apparently pagan polytheism of the Silver World isn’t quite as polytheistic as it initially seems.

For all that, Green is his own person with his own literary vision and style; The Eye of Ebon is not a direct LOTR knock-off, in the way that Terry Brooks’ The Sword of Shanarra is. A major difference, of course, is the distaff perspective. While Tolkien’s Eowyn is an action-capable female, she’s not the heroine of the saga; his major characters, and most of the characters who display any real agency, or play a direct role in defeating evil, are male. Here, the two viewpoint characters, protagonist Samiare (whom you see depicted on the book’s cover) and essentially co-protagonist Rugette are both female, and formidable fighting females who carry the brunt of the book’s down-and-dirty struggle against evil, and who make the key, crucial gut wrenching and difficult moral decisions at the climactic points. (I was already inclined to rate the book at five stars, but those were the moments that clinched it, and for me moved this tale into the ranks of great, rather than merely good, literature!)

To be sure, unlike Rugette, whose combat skills, especially archery, result from rigorous training since she was in her early teens (I’d guess her to be about 30 here) and have been honed in years spent as a high-ranking warrior and scout fighting the Groll, Samiare, an untrained girl of 15, owes her prowess to a mysterious sword. At the very beginning of the main narrative, she lies dying in the snows of her homeland from cold and blood loss after being gang-raped by a band of Groll and renegade humans, who carved an obscenity on her belly, beat her and tortured her with branding irons, after killing her father and making off with her sister. When she cried out for deliverance “to the one god she knew –the one who watched over,” that sword was gifted to her by a glowing man-like being; and it proves to be no ordinary sword. But she still has to hold it and wield it –and make decisions about how she uses it.

The above paragraph suggests another difference from the Tolkien corpus; this narrative is much grittier, and gorier. While the gang-rape itself isn’t really directly described, we can tell it occurred; and while Green doesn’t make the brutalizing and torture here any more drawn-out than it has to be to make us feel it, he does make us do that. This sets a tone for a very violent book; there’s a lot of mortal combat action with edged weapons, and the Groll are an extremely sadistic and treacherous bunch, even to each other. (Tolkien, in a letter, once characterized the orcs as “almost irremediable,” but allowed that no being created by God is wholly irremediable. We get the impression here that the Groll may be; but even here, Green depicts them as having a claim to merciful treatment when they’re disabled in combat, which I regard as a plus.) So there’s a high body count, with quite a lot of humans and humanoids dying, often in nastily unpleasant ways. There’s no “pornography of violence,” but we do see the spilled entrails, severed limbs, split skulls, etc. However, there’s no quoted bad language, and no explicit sexual content. (In fact, the only reference to sex at all, besides the implied rape above, occupies a tastefully phrased single part of one sentence, in 230 pages of text proper. This would definitely not be characterized as a “romantasy.”)

Green has a serviceable, dignified and assured, naturally flowing prose style that holds interest well. Settings, scenes and people are described vividly enough to be pictured in the reader’s mind (and some of the scenes conjured rival those depicted by Robert E. Howard or A. Merritt for atmosphere and spectacle!), but not over-described. World-building is delivered along the way of the storyline, without info-dumps (there are a couple of roughly page-long appendices, “About the Silver World” and “The Four Lands,” which should be read). There aren’t many serious typos, the worst one being that “reigns” tends to be substituted when “reins” is meant (but that’s a quibble). We come to realize before long that the Prologue describes events taking place millennia before the main story, and occasional interspersed flashbacks set in the same time-frame aren’t distinguished by typeface or a heading; but the reader quickly comes to identify and understand these, and they do convey important information.

There’s no cliff-hanger here; the challenge of the main plot is brought to its conclusion. But it’s clear that the overall epochal struggle of the Four Lands is only beginning, and I’m invested in continuing the series!

Author: P. Pherson Green.
Publisher: Gold Dragon Publishing, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Hunting Day

  By

★★
“I am very confused.”

I like to think I am not an idiot. I can assemble words into a coherent order, perform fairly complex mental arithmetic with reasonable accuracy, and recently connected a printer to my wife’s computer on the first attempt. So, when I tell you I did not understand this film… I really did not understand this film. I’ve seen movies before, where I may be unclear on some points. But I could still provide a reasonably detailed synopsis. Here? I am utterly at sea, beyond the most basic level, to the point I’m wondering how the heck I will be able to reach my standard five hundred words. How many can I spend describing my bemusement?

I do have to admire the fact the film unfolds entirely without dialogue.  Not a single word. It’s the kind of brave artistic choice which deserves respect. However, I have to say, it likely hurts the film more than it helps, and ends up feeling like an artistic conceit. Going by the IMDb, co-writer/director Patrice has no other credits beyond being executive producer, on a film currently in post-production. Yet this kind of gimmick movie screams out for someone with experience and a firm grasp of cinematic language. Somebody with a proven capacity for telling a story with dialogue. You need to work up to this kind of thing, otherwise you will potentially be leaving both yourself and, more importantly, the viewer, adrift and confused.

The IMDb synopsis is: “Deep in a threatening forest, Sarah faces off with the brutal hunter who killed her sister. Its a cat and mouse fight for survival.” No argument there. It’s just the large amount of stuff going around the edges, from which my confusion stems. For example, not long after Sarah (Huet) arrives in the forest, she starts seeing a young girl in a sheep’s head mask. Is that supposed to be her sister? If so, does this indicate Sarah is barking mad? In turn, would that mean nothing else we see or hear is trustworthy? Not least at the end, things spiral off into a resolution which is not, followed by a post-credit moment that then throws everything into doubt.

It all simply left me with too many questions, though other elements were fine. This is nicely photographed, and Huet does as much as she can, without words to express herself. The same goes for Duez as her (dead?) sister, and Bardoul, in the role of the hunter. But another seeming misstep is Patrice’s decision to tell the story out of chronological order. I’m unclear what he was trying to achieve with this, but the net result was another element coming between the audience, and any emotional reaction to events as they unfold. I tried. I really did, to the point I watched this twice (at a 72-minute running time, it could have been worse). In the end though, I’m convinced of one thing: I’m not the problem here. 

Dir: Julien Patrice
Star: Clothilde Huet, Cloe Duez, Steve Bardoul