Category: Review

The Flower and the Blackbird, by Liane Zane

  By

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

My friend Liane Zane kindly gifted me with a paperback copy of this second of her Elioud Legacy novels, as she did with the first one (The Harlequin & The Drangùe), in exchange for an honest review. Having liked the first book, I was glad to accept; and I wasn’t disappointed with the sequel!

The premise of the Elioud Legacy builds on the idea, based on a passage in the book of Genesis, that in the days before Noah’s flood, “and also after that,” there were matings between angelic beings and humans, resulting in mixed-race offspring, here called the “Elioud.” On that foundation, Zane builds the literary conceit that these pairings are still going on at times, that a fair number of humans with some angelic genes still walk the earth, gifted with more-than-human abilities and perceptions in proportion to their angelic ancestry (although using these usually takes some training), and that those who know their ancestry may consciously ally themselves either with God or Satan. Though some, the “Grey Elioud,” would prefer to stay out of the whole cosmic battle….

Readers of the first book will already know the above; and I definitely recommend reading the books in order. Here, events from the series opener are referred to in a cursory way; but you will understand the characters, situation, and prior events better with a reading of the first book, and that one lays an essential foundation for what follows. In the first book, CIA agent Olivia Markham and her two close female friends and fellow 20-something intelligence agents (though from different European countries) met Albanian tycoon Mihail Kastrioti and his two fellow long-lived Elioud warriors for the Lord –and the ladies learned that they also have Elioud blood. That book pitted the two threesomes against the demon Asmodeus and his human acolyte, Joseph Fagan, who happens to head up the CIA’s Vienna office, but who has an agenda and proclivities that his superiors wouldn’t like. (A serious psychological evaluation on him before he joined the Company would have been a really good idea!) But equally importantly, we also learned that each member of the two trios felt a mutual strong attraction to a member of the other one. Since the series is projected to be a trilogy, and it’s in the paranormal romance sub-genre, I figured that each book would feature the story of a different one of these couples, and focus on their relationship.

Here, we focus on Italian intelligence agent Anastasia (“Stasia”) Fiore and Mihail’s side-kick Miro Kos. (“Fiore” is Italian for flower, and “Kos” means blackbird in his native Croatian, hence the book title.) Neither are unaware of feeling attracted to the other, but neither of them welcome it. Stasia’s not immune to male charms; but as a largely secular-minded young woman who mostly goes with the flow of her culture’s mores, she’s always opted to keep her sex life strictly casual. And she’s put off by the whole eternal cosmic battle revelation, and wants no part of it; she wants to keep her feet firmly planted in the familiar mundane security of the “real” world she’s always known. For his part, Miro has psychological baggage going back a long time (to the era of World War I, in fact!); his only venture into romance didn’t end well for him. But circumstances are about to throw these two together.

When last we left Asmodeus and Fagan, the former was in a coma and the latter had been on the receiving end of a partial memory wipe. But some weeks have elapsed since then…. Now, on loan from her agency to the Art Squad of Italy’s national police force, Stasia’s on the track of the thieves of a couple of valuable paintings, one of them a long-unknown, recently surfaced work by Rembrandt, “The Judgment of the Watcher Angels.” This case will be the tip of an iceberg involving not one but two demons, secrets of the classical art world, and high-stakes derring-do and fighting action that will give all six of our favorite Elioud a dangerous work-out, on both a physical and a spiritual plane.

In terms of messaging, stylistic features, and the quality of the writing, this volume is much of a piece with the preceding one. We have the same Christian grounding (the author is a Christian, of the Roman Catholic denomination) and strong good vs. evil vibe. Also in evidence is the same quick narrative pace, vivid characterizations (all six of our principal characters have quite distinct personalities, rather than being clones of each other), local color clearly based on serious research, capable depiction of action scenes and high technology, and solid knowledge of the actual geography of the locales where events take place, which I’m guessing comes from very extensive use of Internet maps and pictures. The relationship between the hero and heroine develops over a period of months, so we don’t have the same insta-love problem as in the first novel. Readers interested in the shady side of the art world, including art theft, will appreciate the use of that angle here (in that respect, the book might appeal to fans of such novels as The Collection and Zrada by Lance Charnes, though his works don’t have any supernatural elements).

Unlike the first novel, this one does have some explicit (and unmarried) sex, though it’s described in a way that comes across as loving rather than lewd. The author is aware that this poses issues; but it’s also, in the circumstances, not an unrealistic development, human nature being what it is. This is a stirring tale of a strong, respect-worthy hero and a tough, straight-shooting (in more ways than one!) heroine fighting evil and finding a committed connection to each other along the way. Though I don’t recommend starting the series here, I’d recommend this book to any reader who liked the first one!

Author: Liane Zane
Publisher: Zephon Books; available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

 

Planet Dune

  By

★★★
“Tremors in Space.”

On the one hand, this is obviously The Asylum’s mockbuster version of Dune, and that carries with it weightily low expectations. But, dammit if I didn’t actually enjoy this more than Denis Villeneuve’s ponderous epic. This is about seventy minutes shorter, for a start, with considerably better pacing and rather more of what we wanted to see: sandworms. Admittedly, the sandworms here are sometimes very poorly-animated – the sandworm riding scene… yeah, they should probably not have bothered. But it has energy, and the characters appear to care considerably more than Paul Atreides, for whom simply getting out of bed seemed like a chore.

The heroine here is Astrid (Killian), a pilot in the Space Force who gets cashiered after disobeying orders, and rescuing a Russian astronaut. As punishment, she’s assigned a crappy ship, with a crappier crew, and sent on a crappy mission to a crappy planet to pick up a craft with which contact has been lost. Of course, it turns out to have been preyed upon by sandworms, making Astrid’s mission considerably trickier, as these worms feed on iron, can smell your blood and are hungry as all get out. Fortunately – and this is just the first of many similarities to Tremors – they can’t get you if you’re on rocky terrain. You’ll certainly be forgiven, when Astrid starts making home-made explosives, for muttering “A few household chemicals in the proper proportions…”

If this is Dune, it has had all the political and religious overtones removed, and stripped down to a pure slice of action SF. I can’t say I mind too much, since what’s gone was probably my least favourite aspect of the bigger movie. I also have to respect the great way in which nobody makes a fuss about how, including Astrid, three-quarter of her new crew are women, along with her commanding officer (Young, looking a bit puffier than when she appeared in David Lynch’s Dune. Mind you, that was 37 years ago. I’m a bit puffier myself than I was in 1984). This is the way gender equality should be in the future: completely unremarkable. Again, an improvement over Dune which is as archetypal a example of male saviour complex as you could want.

There’s certainly an extraordinary amount of running about (Sean Young excepted…), to the level of a particularly energetic Doctor Who episode, and I liked Killian as a heroine: she’s very tenacious, and doesn’t let bureaucracy get in the way of doing the right thing. While the worms may not have been all that, some of the space effects were actually perfectly serviceable – likely as good as anything The Asylum have ever produced. If you are expecting Dune, you are clearly going to be massively disappointed. Hell, even if you are expecting Tremors, you’ll be underwhelmed. But as a cheap, B-movie slice of pulp SF, I found this perfectly fine. I just wish Astrid had yelled after taking care of one of the worms, “Broke into the wrong goddamn space-ship, didn’t you, ya bastard!”

Dir: Glenn Campbell, Tammy Klein
Star: Emily Killian, Anna Telfer, Manny Zaldivar, Sean Young

The Long Kiss Goodnight – 25 years on

  By ,

★★★
“We have a mommy who slays the monsters for her daughter – but the monsters are real.” — Shane Black“

As mentioned in my review of Kate, I was startled to discover I had never reviewed this, since it is one of the most well-known entries in the action heroine genre of its time. Since its time was almost exactly 25 years ago  – the movie was released on October 11, 1996 – now seems as good a point as any to rectify the omission. It was the second collaboration in our field between Renny Harlin and then-wife Geena Davis. The first was Cutthroat Island, a film whose troubled production and spectacular failure we have previously covered. But that did not dissuade either Harlin or studio New Line Pictures from trying again, albeit without the troublesome period setting and sea-going. As a result, the budget here was $65 million, a third lower than Cutthroat.

Some aspects were still not exactly cheap. Writer Shane Black was, at the time, a ‘rock star” screenplay author, having written Lethal Weapon – though subsequent efforts The Last Boy Scout and The Last Action Hero had not lived up to commercial expectations. Still, the script for this provoked a bidding war between New Line, Warner Brothers and Columbia Studios, eventually costing the first-named $4 million in July 1994, including a $500K producer’s fee for Black. That was a new record for a spec script, one which would last more than a decade, breaking the previous high of $3 million, paid to Joe Eszterhas for Basic Instinct. This was before filming on Cutthroat Island had even started, so production of Goodnight was put on the back-burner. Consequently, shooting did not begin until 18 months after the script was purchased.

It took place from January-May 1996 in Ontario, Canada, and the conditions posed many issues for the cast and crew. According to Harlin, “The coldest night was when we were working on the bridge in the end sequence. It was a night when the wind was blowing 70 miles an hour and it was minus 98 degrees with the wind chill.” Though it was probably Davis, who had to pretend she was unconscious and lie on the ground, who experienced the worst of it. Harlin had nothing but praise for her: “Geena’s particularly tough. She’s very athletic and very determined. So, if there’s anything she feels that she can’t do, she’ll put all her energies into making sure that she can learn it, and by the time it is needed, she can do it.”

Generally, however, production went smoothly – save for a historic location burning down.  But if you read Black’s February 1995 script, you can see the violence has been significantly toned down by the time it reaches the screen. For example, this line depicting a character, shot in the head in a diner: “Mr. Shotgun dies on his feet. Outgoing matter. Flung. Spattered on the grill where it sizzles along with burnt hamburger.” Ick. A test screening also triggered a significant change. Jackson’s character, private eye Mitch Henessey, was originally intended to die, but the audience reaction was so negative, that Harlin went back and shot additional footage. “That’s right! You can’t kill me, motherfuckers!” now crows Henessey, as he comes back from the dead.

While not the disaster at the box-office which was Cutthroat Island, it wasn’t a great success. In its opening weekend, it came in at #3, well back of fellow new release The Ghost and the Darkness, and even behind The First Wives’ Club, in its fourth week out. By the end of its run, it had taken $33.4 million, though did better overseas, with $56 million. Still, that $89.4 million was not much more than the production budget and after promotion and other costs, profits will have been slim to non-existent. Was it a hang-over from Cutthroat? Poor marketing? Or simply having an action heroine? Black reckons “It might have made more money” with a male lead. That all said, how does it stand up, a quarter-century later?

Truth be told, I’ve seen this several times over the years: it always feels I should like it more than I do, and I come away feeling a little disappointed. Especially now, it is a product of its time, and certainly, pales in comparison to not dissimilar spy movies since, such as Salt or Atomic Blonde. The pacing feels particularly leisurely, with it being close to an hour before Samantha Caine (Davis) gets fully in touch with her inner assassin, “Charly” Baltimore. Charly suffered amnesia after a fall on a mission eight years previously, and had become happy housewife Samantha, complete with boyfriend and adorable little moppet. But a blow to the head reawakens Charley – much to the concern of a number of people, not least of whom are her former employers, to whom she could now become an embarrassment.

Firstly, what is it with Black and hyperviolent Christmas film? Like Die Hard, and much of his output, this takes place over the festive season because… I guess it’s a counterpoint to that hyperviolence. That aside, this is mostly the journey of Charly to rediscover her past, but the terrorist mission she was targeted with disrupting, is about to happen in a couple of days – what are the odds? – as a CIA false-flag operation, under Assistant Director Leland Perkins (Malahide). As leverage against her, Perkins’s minion (Bierko) kidnaps the moppet. Big mistake. Charly storms in and rescues her daughter, before having to stop the planned attack. I must say, the moppet is remarkably resilient, surviving being thrown through a hole in the wall of her house, and a hellacious tanker crash, with barely a scratch.

It might have been more fun to have sustained the housewife/spy duality for longer e.g. having Charly turn up at the PTA, or deal with the thousand and one microaggressions of everyday suburban life. Instead, we get rather too many scenes of her driving round with Henessey. These are kinda fun – there’s an entire film to be made about the shady PI, with his sideline in blackmail – yet in a movie that’s two hours long, feel like needless padding. The bad guys are basically stupid, wasting any number of opportunities to take care of the problem i.e. Charley, and go about their plot in a way that… well, let’s be charitable and say, maybe it made sense in the mid-nineties. That is not the only aspect to have dated poorly. The whole “false flag” thing now has the distinct scent of conspiracy nut to it, since we’ve heard this claimed for virtually every attack since 9/11.

It’s certainly not all bad though. Davis is great on both sides of her split personality, eventually merging them into a whole which feels comfortable. There’s no denying her derring-do, and on several occasions, Harlin shoots things so you feel certain it’s a stunt double assembling a gun, or ice-skating, only to pan up and show – nope, it was Geena. The final explosion at Niagara Falls is as spectacular a giant fireball as you could hope to see, and the action scenes in general are top-notch stuff, from a time before you assumed CGI was always involved. However, I think I preferred Cutthroat, not least due to its more consistent tone. Black always wants to seem both hard-edged and jokey; he doesn’t get it right here, leaving each side pointing a finger at the other, in accusatory fashion.

Both Jackson and Harlin speak fondly of the film. Jackson calls Long Kiss the favorite of his own films to watch, and Harlin agrees. Despite the initially underwhelming return, its cult status has helped to feed discussion of a sequel over the years, though Davis – long divorced from Harlin – would not be involved. The director said it would be about Jackson’s character crossing paths with an adult version of Davis’s daughter. Harlin now lives in China, where the film is apparently well-regarded and said that “Several people, producers and financiers, here in China have talked to me about doing either a Chinese remake or doing an English-language sequel.” As of June 2021, he still wants to make a second part.

Will it ever happen? Only time will tell, though given how long since the original movie, it seems doubtful. But we’ll always have that, and the moderate yet violent delights of Geena Davis as a home-maker turned lethal operative.

Dir: Renny Harlin
Star: Geena Davis, Samuel L. Jackson, Patrick Malahide, Craig Bierko

Babysitter Must Die

  By

★★★½
“The babysitter, murders”

Josie (Scott) is a babysitter, though her real interest is her work as a leader in the Girl Guide-like “Mustard Seed” summer camp. In this she mentors young girls, and accumulates some nifty skills of her own. This is relevant, due to her current situation.  She’s taking care of Sophie (Hazen), the youngest daughter of the Castillo family. The father is a rich music mogul, and they live in a remote mansion, deep in the Utah mountains. The family come back early, but before Josie can leave – she’s playing hide and seek with Sophie – there’s a home invasion by three people, under the leadership of The Woman (Yeaman). They’re no regular burglars, but members of a Satanic cult, intent on retrieving artifacts hidden in the house by its previous owners. These can then be used to sacrifice the inhabitants, and open a portal for… something not very nice to enter our world. 

It’s quickly made clear that the new arrivals have no problems with killing anyone who attempts to interfere with their mission. But they don’t initially know about Josie’s presence. You can probably work out how the rest of the movie goes from there – and you’ll be more or less right. Josie gets caught, escapes and taps into her inner warrioress, to ensure at least Sophie survives the night. She picks off the intruders, one by one, before eventually facing off against The Woman. 

While there’s not an enormous amount new or special in the execution, there are enough wrinkles to lift this above average for the “home invasion” sub-genre. Firstly the heroine is unusual enough to be interesting. She’s a quiet, understated type, who’d rather spend the night babysitting, than go to a party with her friends. Her background in the Mustard Seeds provides a justification for some of her abilities, though it’s an angle I’d like to have seen used more. Maybe, given the Christmas setting,  thrown in some Home Alone-style improvised defenses? The other main strength is the antagonist being a woman too, and Yeaman delivers the necessary level of intensity to pull off the role. The apocalyptic motivation is also a fresh one, and there’s enough background dropped in over the course of proceedings, to give this more depth than “because cultists”.

There are some holes in the plot. For example, at one point when Josie is fighting one of the cultists, things get a bit noisy – but the other two seem completely oblivious. There are also points where Josie’s actions seem illogical, or at least where her motivation is unclear. However, Glass keeps things moving forward with sufficient energy to overcome any issues. Credit is also due to cinematographer Neil Fernandez, who does a good job of capturing the isolation, from the opening shot as Josie drives up with her Mom to the mansion. An early game of hide-and-seek both foreshadows subsequent events, and gives us a good look at the home’s interior. For a small-scale, relatively low-budget production this was a pleasant surprise. At 76 minutes, it does what it needs to, and in a lean, efficient way.

Dir: Kohl Glass
Star: Riley Scott, Melinda Yeaman, Nic Fitzgerald, Scarlett Hazen

The Trip

  By

★★★½
“One bad trip – but in a good way.”

This is a nasty, mean-spirited piece of work. But I mean that as a compliment, for it’s clearly intended as such. The European Queen of Action Heroines Rapace (I must get round to giving her, her own tag!)  stars as soap actress Lisa, whose marriage to her director there, Lars (Hennie), is on severely shaky ground. So shaky, in fact, that Lars plans to use their upcoming weekend getaway to his father’s cabin to kill Lisa, cut up the body and dispose of it in a nearby lake, while saying she vanished on a solo hike. Except, just as he’s about to enact the plan, it turns out Lisa also intends to kill him in a “hunting accident”, and she gets the jump on her spouse. But before she can enact her plan, an accomplice of his shows up. Then three escaped convicts (literally) drop in to the cottage, with bad intentions of their own.

In some ways, it’s reminiscent of a hyperviolent version of seventies theatrical farce, something with a title like Run For Your Wife. Plot twist is piled upon twist, the characters furiously reacting to every additional complication and new arrival as best they can, in the hope of finding a way out of the mess.  The original Norwegian title translates as “For worse” – as in “For better or…”, and that’s probably a better one than the highly-generic name Netflix tacked on. You will need a strong stomach, to be sure. Wirkola’s previous work has often been in the horror genre, such as Nazi zombie movie Dead Snow and it’s sequal, and that informs a lot of the brutality here. But he also directed What Happened to Monday, also starring Rapace, and this re-union is another good effort. Not all the shots land as they should – there’s what feels like a painfully extended sequence of one of the prisoners going to the toilet on the attic floor, which frankly, I could have done without.

However, the bulk of it works well, if you’re in the mood for brutal black comedy. Having a couple who genuinely want to kill each other, and forcing them to team up against a greater, external threat, is a concept full of potential, and it’s mined with energy and enthusiasm. I particularly loved Lars’s geriatric father, who leaves his nursing home and turns up with a zero-tolerance approach to everyone. But Rapace’s character is the focus, cutting and stabbing her way through proceedings with the best (or worst) of them, while taking no small amount of damage – as the picture (top) suggests. This may not be the sort of film I want to re-visit on a regular basis; not knowing what was coming up certainly felt a significant part of the fun. However, as a bloody good time, with the emphasis on “bloody,” it delivered everything I was hoping, and a little more.

Dir: Tommy Wirkola
Star: Noomi Rapace, Aksel Hennie, Atle Antonsen, Christian Rubeck
a.k.a. I onde dager 

Wilderness Survival for Girls

  By

★★★
“Just because we’re girls, why do we have to be afraid all the time?”

Three teenage girls, Ruth (Brox), Deborah (Henning) and Kate (Humiston) head off to the remote mountain cabin owned by Kate’s parents for a weekend away. Initially, it’s an overdose of teenage drama bullshit in various flavours, as they drink, smoke weed, talk about sex and so on. But their soap-opera idyll is interrupted by the unexpected return of Ed (Morrison), who has been squatting in the cabin. The girls capture him, using the gun he left behind, with the intent of taking him down the mountain to the police the next day. But as the night goes on, the tensions between the three young women begin to fracture their friendship. There’s also the question of Ed: is he the innocent drifter he claims to be, or is there a connection to a long-buried trauma in Kate’s history?

If you’re hoping for definitive answers to at least some of the questions asked by the film, you’re going to come away disappointed. Ed is almost a MacGuffin in human form. He exists largely to propel the rest of the film forward, and act as a force which will cause the girls to reveal their true nature over the course of events. They are three very distinct personalities, to the point that I wondered if (and not for the first time) they were intended to represent the three aspects of the psyche: id, ego and super-ego. While my recent knowledge of teenage girls is strictly limited to parental experience – and thus not that recent – if there’s one thing I know, it’s that they tend to congregate with those like them. The disparate trio we get here wouldn’t last 10 minutes in high school before tearing themselves apart. Though I guess that is what happens for a good chunk of proceedings here.

You should probably be forgiven for having strong reactions to them: my instant dislike of Kate, turns out to be not unjustified, considering the ease with which she embraces her inner psychopath. Deborah, meanwhile, is a little too one-dimensional and obvious for my tastes, so it’s left to Ruth to do a lot of the dramatic heavy lifting. Brox does well enough in that task to keep the movie interesting; at least, once it gets past a rocky opening 20 minutes, and the thriller aspects come into play, more than the “teen angst” ones. I will confess to being somewhat disappointed by the ending, which seems contrived in such a way as to achieve closure, without any of the participants having to take personal responsibility for their actions. There are also any number of poor choices made by the trio, in order to reach that point. Though, against speaking from my parental experience, that’s probably about par for the teenage girl course. There was just about enough here to sustain its brisk 78 minute running-time, and going much longer would likely have been a mistake.

Dir: Eli B. Despres, Kim Roberts
Star: Jeanette Brox, Megan Henning, Ali Humiston, James Morrison

Girl of Nightmares, by Kendare Blake

  By

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

Warning: while this review contains no spoilers for the book I’m reviewing, it inevitably involves some spoilers for the book to which it’s a sequel, Anna Dressed in Blood. (I didn’t review that one here; see below). The situation in this book directly grows out of the events of the first one; and though the author provides some brief references to those in the opening chapters here, if you have not read the series opener, you would get only the very bare basics of what happened there. IMO, she expected that her readers will read the books in order, and I would strongly recommend doing so. Your whole understanding of the premise here, your engagement with the story, and your understanding of who most of the major characters are as people and your emotional connection to them will be seriously impaired if you don’t!

With this novel, Blake concludes the Anna duology. The two books are quite similar in terms of style and literary vision. As in the first book, our protagonist and present-tense narrator is high school junior Cas Lowood, the latest member of his family line to wield a magically-powered athame capable of sending those ghosts which are homicidal (not all ghosts are) out of this world into the afterlife. And again, our title character is Finnish-descended Anna Korlov (ca. 1942-1958), brutally murdered by her own mother, a black-magic witch, who cursed the girl with a spell that forced her to haunt the house in which she died and to savagely slaughter anyone hapless enough to subsequently enter it. Near the end of the first book, Anna deliberately cast herself through a portal into Hell (conceived in terms more owing to North American European-derived folk religion than to anything biblical), dragging along with her an utterly malevolent and murderous spirit of enormous power and menace, the “Obeahman,”and thereby saved the lives of Cas and others –but not before she and Cas had forged a genuine emotional connection.

The previous novel took place in the fall of Cas’ junior year in high school. When the second one opens, we’re now in the late spring of the next year, when the school year is rapidly winding down to its close. All during the interval, a grieving Cas has been searching for some way to communicate with Anna and at least obtain some sort of closure. He’s been aided in this quest by his mom, a white witch; by his London-based British mentor (and the mentor of his late father before him) Gideon Palmer; and by his high-school classmate, psychically-gifted Thomas Sabin and Thomas’ grandfather Morfran, a pair who are endowed with pretty formidable magic talents of their own. So far, they’ve drawn a blank. But now, Cas is beginning to find his dreams turned nightmarish with visions of Anna and, increasingly, experiencing very vivid waking visions of her as well. Are these genuine communications from Beyond, or is he simply beginning to lose his mind and hallucinate? (Well, for an answer, you’ll just have to read the book! :-) )

The first novel in the series isn’t an action heroine read. There, although Anna, as a cursed ghost, is formidably deadly (she can, and does, kill people by literally ripping them to pieces), she’s not inflicting her mayhem in a heroic mode; and where physical combat with dark forces is called for, it falls strictly on Cas. This time, though, he’s going to need help in that department; and Carmel Jones, queen bee of the high school’s “in” crowd (and Thomas’ girlfriend; Blake lets her transcend stereotype, which I appreciated) will find herself “getting in touch with her inner warrior princess.” Then there’s magically-gifted teen Jestine “Jess” Reardon, groomed to be Cas’ replacement (long story!) by the ancient Druidic order whose ancestors created the athame, who’s combat-capable as well as smart. And just because Anna’s no longer cursed doesn’t mean that she’s not still one tough ghost…. Action scenes that involve these young ladies aren’t numerous –but they are pretty intense, and potentially lethal (or worse).

Our initial setting is the main setting of most of the first book, the real-life rather large Canadian city of Thunder Bay, Ontario. We also have a couple of ghost-hunting side trips to Minnesota, and then shift to the British Isles for roughly the last half of the book. Again, Blake gives us three-dimensional people in her important characters (both the returning ones and one newly introduced here), who have realistically complex feelings and motivations and nuanced attitudes and interactions, but whom at the same time we can understand and like. Folklore from the Vodoun tradition isn’t as prominent in this book, but the author continues to make good use of Finnish lore, particularly the role of Sami drums in shamanism. Again, this is a very gripping read, with a high suspense factor, several surprise developments (which never violate the logic of the plot, unlike the “surprises”thrown in by some genre writers!), often a real sense of life-and-death danger in places, a high-stakes central conflict, and scenes of ghostly menace which conjure a genuine, powerful sense of creepiness. The emotional intensity of the story, for me, was quite high.

As with the first book, I’d call this an adult novel which happens to have mostly teen characters. I don’t unreservedly recommend it for teen readers because, like the first book, it has a lot of bad language, including profanity and obscenity, the great majority of it gratuitous. (That cost it a star.) But, also like the first book, it has no sexual content, and the violence, though it’s there, isn’t more graphic than necessary. If you’ve read the first book, I’d characterize this sequel as a must-read.

Author: Kendare Blake
Publisher: Tor Teen; available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Kung Fu Mulan

  By

★★★
“Disney gets some of their own medicine”

Going into this, I was expecting it to be really terrible. After all, this Chinese animated version seemed to be little more than a mockbuster, riding on the trails of Disney’s live-action version of the Mulan story. That is a little unfair, since this film began production back in 2015, five years before its Chinese release in October 2020. But it’s that timing – less than a month after Disney’s version came out – which inevitably invited comparison, and the local reaction was utterly scathing, despite an advertising tagline of “Real China, real Mulan.” It was compared unfavourably to a Western version of Chinese food, and lasted only three days in cinemas before being pulled, not taking in even one-tenth of its relatively small $15 million budget.

This is why I was braced for something at the level of pre-school stick figures. The reality, however, is nowhere near that bad. The animation is, it must be admitted, functional rather than impressive, but matters are helped significantly by decent voice acting and a plot which doesn’t appear tailored towards 12-year-olds. We join Mulan (Guest) already in progress, with her in the army and going on a mission to assassinate the prince of an invading army from the Northern grasslands, who are attacking the Central plains. Except, nobody mentioned there are two princes. She stumbles across the young one, and refuses to kill him.

While escaping, she ends up falling off a cliff with the older one, her actual target, Arke (Lee). As they make their way back to civilization, they fall for each other, partly because he conveniently forgets to mention the whole royalty thing. Needless to say, her superiors are not impressed with the failure to complete the mission. But there is a possibility of her marriage to Arke bringing peace between the two kingdoms, though there are some who are not in favour of that possibility either, and intend to use Mulan a pawn towards their own ends. I will say, there’s simply more plot going on here than in Disney’s version, and if the visual side is considerably plainer, the lack of ill-defined superpowers for its heroine is definitely a plus.

However, it doesn’t take advantage of the freedom which animation provides. While there are occasionally pretty moments, it falls short of capturing the majestic grandeur of China, and animated martial arts is always going to be less impressive than the live-action version. Though the dubbing is solid, with Guest in particular bringing her character to life, any cartoon version of Mulan is always going to end up being compared to Disney’s animated one, and this is just not as good. The main deficit here is the inability to make an emotional connection to the viewer. I never cared about the fate of Mulan or her country in the way I did while watching the classic edition. But considering my expectations going in, this was far better than I feared. Then again, I quite like the Western version of Chinese food. :)

Dir: Wallace Liao
Star (voice): Kim Mai Guest, Allan H. Lee, Vivian Lu, Greg Chun

Sexy Rangers

  By

★★★
“Something mighty morphing in my pants.”

Because what the world really needs, is an all-girl version of Power Rangers, tasting very strongly of cheesecake. That’s what you have here, in a world where women’s breasts are a source of energy. Okay, later on we discover it’s actually male appreciation of women’s breasts that is the true source of power, but let’s not quibble over details. This “pai” energy has been used by Professer Saionji to create a team of five, color co-ordinated heroines, who use their abilities to fight off monsters from other dimensions, sent here under the control of Queen Amorous (Yamada). These “Pai Rangers” are firmly referred to in the subtitles as “Sexy Rangers”, presumably to avoid a cease-and-deist from Saban. Their leader is the Red Ranger, Momiji (Tejima), apparently because her breasts are the biggest. Um, the biggest source of pai energy, I mean. Occasionally, she and her team need to recharge, which is done by flouncing about the beach in bikinis, exploiting the male gaze.

It is, of course, utterly ridiculous and possesses all the production value you would expect, given a budget estimated on the IMDb at 50,000 Yen. Adjusting for inflation and converting to dollars, that’s $480 in 2021 terms. I double-checked no zeroes had gone missing in the process. It does appear largely to have been filmed in car-parks. But I have to say, it’s bright, colourful and energetic, and all stupidity is absolutely in line with the show which is its inspiration. Witness the two main monsters: Unikong, which is an armoured, lance-wielding unicorn, and Camerang, a humanoid camera. Because, why not? Anyway, Queen Amorous kidnaps the Professor’s daughter, ransoming her for a device which can extract the pai energy from the Rangers, weakening them so that her monsters and their (literally faceless) minions can overpower them and take control of Earth. Meanwhile, she’s working at the order of King Muscle, a giant eyeball – again, because why not?

The fight scenes are more or less complete garbage, barely even reaching “I kick in your general direction, you vaguely swing in my postal code” level. But what would you expect when you have five bikini models going up against a giant camera? They clearly are not the point; the director’s choice of camera angles and focal points makes that abundantly clear. Yet it helps that everyone takes it dead seriously; maybe it’s just me, but the hottest woman here is likely evil Queen Amorous, the one who shows the least amount of skin. Not that there’s every anything more than copious cleavage, I should point out. Though I can’t think of many films which feel more like a porn flick, yet fail to contain any actual nudity. As such, the combination of wholesome values (loyalty to friends and family, perseverance, etc.) and fan service is quite conflicting. I would still watch this on a weekly basis. Hell, considering the cost, I’d be prepared to fund a sequel.

Dir: Shinji Nishikawa
Star: Yû Tejima, Yuzuki Aikawa, Jun Suzuki, Yoko Yamada
a.k.a. Big Boob Squad: Sexy Rangers

Hockey Night

  By

★★★
“Cool as ice.”

At one point, the teenage heroine in this sports flick is asked, “What do you want to play hockey for?” In a modern film, I suspect you might get a long speech about female empowerment, proving that girls can do anything boys can, and so on. But here, her response is three words: “I like it.” It’s a plain and simple response which illustrates the approach taken by this plain and simple TV movie. That plain simplicity is both its biggest strength and its greatest weakness, for there are certainly no boundaries being broken or preconceptions challenged here. It’s exactly what you would expect from the genre and the story.

The Yarrow family have moved from the big city to the small, rural Canadian town of Parry Sound, described by local girl Evelyn as “the armpit of North America.” When daughter Cathy (Follows) asks Evelyn, “What do you do for fun?”, the reply is, “They haven’t invented it yet.” But they do have hockey…  And Cathy had been the goal-tender for the local girls’ team back in Toronto. Since there’s no equivalent in the small town, she tries out for, and wins, a spot on the local boys’ team, under coach Willy Leipert (Moranis). But this co-ed approach meets with opposition, in particular from the team’s sponsor, who threatens to pull his support if Cathy is allowed to play.

Yeah, from the above you can probably pencil out, with about 95 percent accuracy, how things will unfold, leading up to the finale of the big game between Parry Sound and local rivals, North Bay. Will Cathy fall for the team’s star player, Spear Kozak (Bisson)? Will there be moderate, but non-threatening. family strife as her mother fails to understand? Will curmudgeonly and chauvinist commentator, Bum Johnston (Chaykin) be won over to support her? Will there be montages along the way? I offer no prizes for anyone correctly guessing the answers to all of the above questions.

Yet there’s a simple and honest warmth here that works. Parry Sound is the birthplace of Bobby Orr, who is to hockey what Pele is to football, and the affection for the game is clear. There isn’t much conflict, to be sure – nobody ever tells Cathy directly that she poses a problem. Yet this feels in keeping with the polite and non-confrontational nature of the society depicted here (it would be a sweeping generalization to claim it of Canada as a whole. And yet, not necessarily inaccurate). Sure, her team-mates are sometimes jerks: they are, however, teenage boys, so it goes with the territory, especially with regard to teenage girls.

The two young leads are both very likeable, and it’s easy to see why they went on to greater things. Follows, in particular delivers a quiet, understated performance which is likely far more effective than a brazenly defiant one. Moranis and Chaykin provide good support, and deliver the kind of colourful  characters found in any small town. The plot may be hackneyed and obvious, yet as forty-year-old TV movies go, this is likely better than you would expect.

Dir: Paul Shapiro
Star: Megan Follows, Yannick Bisson, Rick Moranis, Maury Chaykin