Category: Review

Natassa

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★★½
“A blonde, not having more fun.”

I am reluctant to be overly harsh on this one, because I suspect I didn’t get to see this in its best format. The fact it feels very choppy and disjointed could potentially be a result of the IMDb giving this a running time of 136 minutes, but the only print available ran a good half-hour less. It was also dubbed from Greek into English and pan-and-scanned. Pretty much the holy trinity of cinematic suckage, right there. It’s the story of Natassa Arseni (Vougiouklaki), who lives in Greece when the Nazis invade during World War II. She’s initially largely unconcerned, but gradually becomes involved in the local resistance.

There are two men in her life. A former college friend, Max (Karras), followed his father’s German heritage, and is now a member of the occupying forces, who has feelings for Natassa. Her affections are elsewhere, haven fallen in love at first sight with Orestis (Papamichael), a partisan dedicated to ridding his home country of the occupying forces. She marries him and throws her lot in with the resistance, but is captured by the Nazis, and tortured for information. Except, this was a cold-blooded decision to sacrifice them, in order to provide false information to Germany about the location of a future Allied invasion. Orestis escapes capture, and hatches a daring plan to disguise himself and his men as the Nazi firing squad sent to execute Natassa. Fate, however, has other plans.

There are some good ideas here. The character of Max, with a foot in both camps is an interesting one, and I liked how there are biggest issues at play, requiring sacrifices – unwittingly, admittedly – from those on the front lines. Some scenes are very effective. The wedding of Orestis and Natassa, where they are ambushed on the way to the church, and she pushes through with the ceremony despite being shot, would be one. Then again, I’m a sucker for a bloodstained wedding dress. Vougiouklaki is strikingly blonde, and rather unGreek. However – again, perhaps due to the editing down to the most dramatic scenes, or maybe the dubbing – it feels as if she has her acting permanently set at a level of “11”, occasionally toppling over into overacting.

There are points where this is justified: I mean, you’re being interrogated and tortured (even if Max points out, “I’m not in the Gestapo, I’m in the SS” – not sure that makes much difference…), a little hysteria would seem fair enough. But when it seems most scenes are played out like that, it reduces the impact when it’s needed most. There are also moments which dangle awkwardly, such as the opening, where a post-war Natassa visits Dachau, or when she’s a singer, bursting into(presumably patriotic?) song when the Nazis show up. That feels like a knock-off of the Marseillaise bit from Casablanca. I don’t recall the heroine wielding an automatic weapon at any point, as the poster suggests, either. I’ve read that this was the biggest-grossing local movie in Greece for years after its release. Needs a remake, I’d say. 

Dir: Nikos Foskolos
Star: Aliki Vougiouklaki, Dimitris Papamichael, Kostas Karras, Kakia Panagiotou
a.k.a. Lieutenant Natassja or Battlefield Constantinople

The Protector

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★★½
“Post-apocalypse, talk will still be in abundant supply.”

[Note: not to be confused with Protector] The year is 2042. A plague knows as The Rot has decimated the land, and those who survived it are in a precarious state, with the water supply having almost run out. There is one source left: an underground aquifer which has enough water for a century. Needless to say, its highly coveted, but access to it has been cut off by the native American tribe under whose land it sits, with the road heavily mined by Chief Brand (Greene, in what must have been close to his final role before passing away). Warlord Gael (Aryeh-Or) lets Key (Moreau) out of jail, knowing she has a map through the minefield and can give him control of the aquifer.

But, wait! There’s more! Because another issue facing society is mass infertility, with children almost non-existent since The Rot. Key finds herself acting as guardian to one rare kid, Kellan (Lane) on her journey. Oh, and there’s also a mad pastime called “Dirt-Joust”, which is like jousting, only with hot-rods replacing horses – it appears fuel is not hard to come by – on which the combatants ride on the bonnet. It’s not a career choice with a pension plan, shall we say. To be honest, it’s a shame we didn’t get to see more of this sport, since the scene we do get is kinda rad. But then, doing so would have only been possible by cutting out the many, many scenes of chit-chat. 

That’s the main problem here, I found. The obvious point of comparison is Mad Max, and in its female protagonist, particularly the new iterations of the franchise, such as Fury Road. However, there, the plot was basically there to act as a delivery mechanism for jaw-dropping action scenes. Here, it’s as a vehicle for moral lectures, pontification and general conversation. It feels as if writer-director Gasteazoro did not understand the assignment, or the rules of the sub-genre. It’s a shame, because there are elements here which work. Not the least of which is Moreau, who looks the part of a world-weary heroine who has had it up to here, and carries herself well, on the rare occasions when she is called into action. 

The film also looks pretty nifty. I haven’t been able to find out the budget: it likely wasn’t a huge amount, yet unlike things like Road Wars: Max Fury, it rarely if ever looks cheap. Some wobbly CGI flames are about the worst element on offer. It instead feels like the film is mostly intended to be a vehicle – pun not intended – for Gasteazoro’s liberal views on a variety of topics, from ecology, through the rights of indigenous people, to same-sex marriage. I would venture to suggest that a post-apocalyptic film might not be the best route to change minds and influence people on these subjects. Give me ninety minutes of dirt-jousting instead, and I might be prepared to listen to you. 

Dir: Raul Gasteazoro
Star: Marguerite Moreau, Aryeh-Or, Mark Lane III, Graham Grene

Scarlet

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Mamoru Hosoda is one of the senior figures in Japanese animation, with thirty-five years of experience since he joined Toei Animation in 1991, after graduating from college. He made his feature debut with One Piece: Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island in 2006, though this came only after he had almost directed Howl’s Moving Castle for Studio Ghibli. He subsequently left Toei, to go freelance, and his works since have met with both critical and commercial success. Mirai was nominated for an Oscar in 2019 as Best Animated Feature – the first non-Ghibli film to be so honoured. 2021’s Belle , loosely inspired by fairy-tale Beauty and the Beast, was the second-biggest movie at the Japanese box-office that year, domestic or foreign.

His latest movie and the follow-up to Belle, Scarlet, was a long production, taking four and a half years to complete. It mixes traditional 2D cel animation with computer-generated animation, and is a take on Shakespeare’s story of Hamlet, with its titular heroine seeking vengeance on the people who murdered her father, the monarch of 16th century Denmark. Her first attempt backfires, when she consumes the poison intended for her uncle Claudius, the leader of the plot. Scarlet wakes to find herself in the purgatory of the underworld. She needs to complete her revenge in order to move on to the Infinite Land; otherwise, her spirit will collapse into nothingness. It turns out that Claudius is in the underworld too…

Both Dieter and Jim watched and reviewed this one independently. Below, you’ll find their respective ratings and thoughts, with Dieter going first. 

★★★★★
“The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns”

On the fourth anniversary of Russia invading the Ukraine a movie like this hits harder, I feel. At the same time, the Berlin Film Festival has ended and while a whole lot of boring message movies got awards, this one was not even in competition. I guess it also won’t win any Oscar awards. For the same reason: it’s just too good. It would blow any competing features out of the water. And yes, this is a strongly subjective review. Watch the movie and judge for yourself, I suggest.

But… I’m already starting with the end. I was honestly blown away by this movie. While neither the idea of a female Hamlet is new (see the 1921 Hamlet: The Drama of Vengeance with Asta Nielsen) nor doing a Shakespeare-inspired anime (there is the anime series Romeo x Juliette from 2007) what director Mamoru Hosoda has done here for Studio Chizu, is fascinating. No idea why he chose the story of Hamlet as an entry point: perhaps because it’s the most universally-known revenge story next to Death Wish? It would have worked just as well with new, fictional characters and other names.

I didn’t mind. It only serves as a basis on which the director discusses the general but often overlooked and therefore more essential questions of humankind: What defines our humanity? What do we live for? What does death mean? What is love? What can be forgiven? What cannot? How much are we shaped by the environment we grow up in? And if we spread a loving and peaceful attitude can we change the world for future generations?

These are big, important ideas which do not normally form a part of “entertainment culture” or political discussions today, as everyone is too much occupied in serving their own self-interest. Actually, I would locate these questions more in the areas of philosophy and religion. At the same time, the animation style itself is impressive: not just the usual 2D cell animation nor CGI animation. I don’t know how to describe it: while most of it seems classically drawn, many of the backgrounds seem photo-realistic as if they are “real”, including the desert, water, ruins and a jungle. Also overwhelming is the sky of this “other land” which looks like waves, over which a giant dragon flies and occasionally erupts in deadly lightning.

While the visual style takes some time to get used to, this is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s different and new and that’s it. I liked it but I can understand if other people might reject this approach. It’s really a matter of individual taste. Putting all these aspects aside, I found the movie really entertaining. It’s an epic, bombastic movie with a passionate heroine, lots of fights (somehow these medieval Danes seem to have quite some knowledge of martial arts) and – surprisingly – beautiful songs. With Scarlet being shown training hard since her early youth, her fighting larger opponents doesn’t seem that much of an overstatement. She also doesn’t always win, which helps to make the fights look more realistic.

If Mamoru Hosoda might not be as famous or successful as Hayao Miyazaki or Makoto Shinkai (Your Name), so far, he has always delivered excellent and interesting movies. Scarlet is his 8th movie (I challenge the uninitiated to discover his other movies, and especially recommend The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Summer Wars) and was co-produced by Columbia Pictures. I regret that movies like this only ever run for one day here, and occasionally some more in some tiny cinemas as I think they deserve so much more exposure. Here is hoping, I may have contributed to making this excellent movie more well-known, and create some interest in its potential audience watching it, or at least giving it a chance.

★★★
“Better red than dead.”

Up-front confession: I haven’t seen any of Hosoda’s other work, so am not familiar with the style. Indeed, for a while, I was confusing him with Mamoru Oshii, of Ghost in the Shell and Avalon fame. Which isn’t as much of a stretch as it may seem. Oshii’s work seems to rely a lot on a loose narrative, using the virtual world in Avalon as a convenient loophole through which any plot thread can pass. You could make much the same argument for Scarlet, with the underworld being a realm where stuff simply can happen, because it’s the underworld. I’m not a huge fan of this kind of plot armour, and would likely have been happier if Scarlet had been pursuing her vengeance in the everyday world. 

The early stages will feel rather familiar to any fan of Game of Thrones. Scarlet can only watch as her father, a beloved figure, is executed in the name of political machinations. She then vows revenge, and undergoes a rigorous training program to that end. Very Arya Stark. Fortunately (or perhaps not?), it finds its own way after she consumes poison, and Scarlet finds herself in the afterlife. It’s necessarily a shock, but she has the mental fortitude to adapt. She’s joined there by Hijiri, a paramedic from the present day. In effect, he acts as her conscience, continuing to treat the wounded as he had done in life, and questioning the need for her revenge. This becomes especially pertinent after we hear the message Scarlet’s late father had for her. 

I cannot fault the visual side of things here at all. Dieter encouraged me to see this on the largest screen possible. Unfortunately, it did not last long in cinemas here: two weeks after release, it was down to showing in just twenty-four theatres nationwide. But having seen it in my living-room, I would not have minded a much larger viewing experience, and can only imagine the impact. It’s not seamless, in that you can often tell which sequences were old-school, and which were zeroes and ones. But the overall effect is undeniably impressive, and on that basis alone, I’d say it deserved an Oscar nomination more, say, than Zootopia 2.

However, as the above likely suggests, I was not particularly impressed with the plot. The basic elements were there – you can’t go wrong with revenge of the Shakespearean kind – but there are elements which seem not to serve this. For example, there’s a significant chunk where Scarlet and Hijiri are simply hanging out with elderly souls. It feels like John Wick paused his revenge, to spend an afternoon helping out at the local senior centre. I guess the eventual aim is that Important Lessons™ need to be learned by Scarlet about the value of life. But if you compare this to the works of Hayao Miyazaki, the moral lecturing here comes over as less than subtle. 

I did like the contrast between Hijiri and Scarlet. Interesting that the “caregiver” character here was male and from the present times, while the vengeance seeking warrior was female and out of the middle ages. This subversion of standard tropes is thought-provoking, without needing to deliver any explicit messaging, and the relationship between the pair works well. If you’re familiar with Hamlet, you’ll also get a kick out of some of the references (the versions here of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are particularly memorable). But any film which uses a dragon – another Game of Thrones nod? – as a convenient prop for the story-line, needs to be answering questions about its scripting. It’s this which stopped Scarlet from being more, for me, than just a well-crafted, pretty thing at which to look.

Dir: Mamoru Hosoda
Star (voice): Mana Ashida, Masaki Okada, Koji Yakusho, Kōtarō Yoshida

Protector

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★★★½
“You must be Miss-taken…”

There are certain actors who are capable of elevating the material with which they work. Peter Cushing. Rutger Hauer. Klaus Kinski. They could all appear in B-movies, and make them B-plus films. I’m steadily, increasingly convinced that Milla Jovovich deserves to be thought of similarly. I am pretty sure that, without her in the lead role, its rating would be an entire star lower, if not beyond that. But she compels the viewer’s attention, and the end result is considerably more enjoyable than with almost anyone else. It is, after all, not much apart from a combo platter of elements from Taken and Rambo. Indeed, director Grünberg was responsible for Rambo: Last Blood. He knows disgruntled veterans.

The one here is Nikki Halsted (Jovovich), whose daughter Chloe (Myers) sneaks out to party with friends on her 16th birthday. She gets roofied, and abducted by a sex trafficking group called The Syndicate, run by a shadowy figure known only as The Chairman. However, Nikki is a former Special Ops soldier, which returned from the Middle East specifically to be with Chloe, after the death of her husband, Chloe’s father. So she’s not letting any well-dressed (but curiously white) pimps get in the way. And Nikki has the very particular set of skills necessary to make The Syndicate pay for having taken, um, I mean abducted Chloe. Neither the cops, led by Captain Michaels (Sweeney), nor her former commanding officer, Colonel Lavelle (Modine) can stop her.

There are a couple of odd stylistic choices. It basically skips the first burst of vigilante activity for Nikki, jumping from Chloe’s abduction to Nikki hanging upside down in a meat-packing warehouse. It was rather disconcerting. My other gripe was a fondness for things to unfold in darkness or a close cousin thereof. We are here to see Milla carving off the ears of traffickers, or gnawing chunks out of their faces with her teeth. Not peering into the darkness and “using our imaginations”. Maybe it was a ploy to avoid ratings board issues? Certainly, this does not skimp on the old ultraviolence in general. After a couple of Netflix movies which were very restrained, I found the savagery here quite refreshing. 

Then there’s the ending, which… It would be an example of “go big or go home”, with a twist I did not see coming. But does it work? While it does explain some things that seemed a little strange at the time, it may pose more questions than it answers. I think my main concern though, is that writer Bong-Seob Mun has added an unnecessary level of complexity to proceedings. I was enjoying this perfectly well before the revelation showed up, and while it certainly came as a shock, did it add anything overall? Did it really? Mind you, I would be there for a film simply entitled Milla Jovovich Punches People For 85 Minutes – so what do I know?

Dir: Adrian Grünberg
Star: Milla Jovovich, Isabel Myers, Matthew Modine, D.B. Sweeney

Apex

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★★★
“Aileen vs. Predator”

How far Charlize Theron has come. It has been interesting to follow her transition from a clothes-horse to an Oscar-winning actress playing a serial killer in Monster, and then her unexpected turn to become perhaps the leading action heroine of the past decade (despite mis-steps such as Aeon Flux). She’s now in her fifties, so we’ll see how long she keeps going, but for now, I’m happy to enjoy her output. Here, there’s nothing particularly special, but as Netflix Originals go, this is certainly better than Thrash, the mediocre shark movie we also watched this weekend. It fares particularly better on the character side, giving the audience solid performances from both the heroine and the villain. 

The former is Sasha (Theron), a rock-climber who lost her husband, Tommy (Bana), after an accident climbing the ‘Troll Wall’ in Norway [a real, three thousand feet high cliff-face]. It’s basically the same opening as Fall. However, things then diverge, as Sasha goes to Australia for a hike into the Wandarra National Park, also involving climbing and a little white-water rafting. Silly girl: doesn’t she know that everything in Australia is trying to kill you? She soon learns this, encountering first a sketchy pair of locals, before meeting Ben (Egerton). Since this element is in the trailer, I don’t feel I need to hide the fact that he is the real threat. He hunts and then captures Sasha, taking her back to his dank cave lair, where…

Yeah, it’s a bit more than being your garden variety psycho, and Egerton plays it to the hilt. Theron, meanwhile, has the necessary skills to fight for her survival, in a way that Ben’s numerous previous victims did not. I’m not sure exactly how much of the work here was performed by Theron. There is clearly some composite work going on, especially with the numerous falls. But I’ve a feeling, from Charlize’s previous efforts, she’ll have done as much as humanly possible, with regard to the climbing and canoeing. Kormákur does a good job of capturing things right from the start, with some queasy cliff-face camerawork, and drone work that really shows off the immense size of the wilderness in which Ben hunts. 

It is all rather predictable, but gets by on the charisma of the two leads. Theron manages to look the part, convincing the viewer of her credentials as a climber, in a way much younger actresses struggle to do (hello, Daisy Ridley). Meanwhile, Egerton proves an admirable foil, capable of flicking a switch to go from pitiable to pretty damn scary, in the blink of an eye. There were a couple of points towards the end where I found myself thinking of ways this could have tweaked the formula to better effect. But Netflix is all about meeting the viewers’ expectations, not confounding them. If you’re looking for something entertaining, without any intention of pushing the envelope, this does exactly that: no more, no less. 

Dir: Baltasar Kormákur
Star: Charlize Theron, Taron Egerton, Eric Bana

Burner

  By

★★½
“Crime does pay…”

Kiki (Owens) was in a detrimental relationship with drug dealer Axar (Wheatley), until an arrest and subsequent jail time acted as a wake-up call. She cleaned up her act while inside, got out on probation, and has just succeeded in winning back custody of her teenage daughter, Lola Ray (Wylie). However, Axar – who slid out from charges on a technicality involving mishandled evidence – comes crawling out of the woodwork, wanting to resume their relationship, and offering one last score which will set the family up for life. This goes badly and violently wrong (of course!), but Kiki ends up in control of a cryptocurrency wallet containing close to a million dollars. Naturally, that’s not where the story ends. 

Indeed, the early going goes bouncing about in time like a rubber ball, beginning with Kiki being hauled out of a van by a masked man, in the middle of the desert. We then kick back to see the various events which led up to that point, as outlined above. I’m not sure this approach necessarily adds much, beyond offering an immediate hook at the start. It always feels like the use of this gimmick indicates film-makers are unsure about the overall strength of their narrative, having to cherry-pick an incident to lure people in. That is somewhat the case here, with a story that doesn’t have much to offer which wasn’t familiar.

For example, the mother prepared to go to dodgy lengths for her child is rather clichéd, and the supposed twist provided by the reveal at the end, of what actually happened, is nowhere near as much a surprise as the makers think. However, there are enough positives in other elements to make this a tolerable watch. Owens’s performance gives Kiki a commitment which helps paper over the cracks, and there are a couple of excellent supporting actors. Veteran Lew Temple only has one scene, as the detective investigating the shootout, but almost steals the film with his probing interrogation of Kiki. He knows for sure something is up; he just can’t prove it, given Kiki’s stonewalling. Similarly, Jolene Andersen is great in her single scene as very bad cop Stanikov.

However, these moments only highlight the rest of the film, which is nothing special at all. I didn’t feel Kiki was particularly sympathetic, not least because she jumps back in with Axar far too easily for my tastes. Certain subsequent events – part of the reveal – also suggest she’s hardly a good person or a fit mother. Indeed, you could credibly argue she’s worse than Axar, and certainly little worse than Stanikov. Again, this feels like a misstep by the makers, who seem to like their lead character more than they give the viewer reason to do so. Having a kid feels very much a lazy and insufficient excuse for her actions. While it’s understandable, this does leave the film touting a questionable moral, albeit unintentionally.

Dir: Robert Orr
Star: Kacy Owens, James Oliver Wheatley, Akina Wylie, Robert Laenen

Infiltrate

  By

★★★
“Canadian bakin’.”

Thanks to Chris for finding this one. Albeit through a clip on a Chinese site under the name “Rescue From the Abyss”. This led to a significant diversion into movies about submarines, before eventually finding the correct, entirely submarine-free movie. No question, this is the hardest hitting film I’ve seen so far in 2026, though once you get past the action, things get more wobbly. Lily Chen (Ladouceur-Nguyen) is an operative for a shadowy government law enforcement group. She just learned about a potential promotion, though husband Jonathan is less enthusiastic and storms out. Before further discussion can occur, she gets a phone-call. The voice (Goad) informs her Jonathan is his hostage, and Lily needs to do exactly what he says.

His subsequent orders involve working her way through the criminal organization belonging to Marcel LaFleur (Moussi). Matters are complicated, as the voice eventually reveals that not everyone in Lily’s organization is as honest as she is. Can she trust even her boss, Director Bass (Berry)? There’s also backstory about a traumatic event in our heroine’s past, though this is largely irrelevant and can safely be ignored. Indeed, I’d say that overall, the scripting is the weakest link. The eventual explanation, while I can’t discuss it in detail due to spoilers, left me with a lot of questions. The supporting cast are a mixed bag too. LaFleur’s mismatched hair and beard colours irritated the hell out of me for some reason, as did his unexplained facial scars. 

But when he’s not doing pretentious things like painting in blood or debating Shakespeare… It takes a while to get to the expected Lily vs. Marcel battle. However, it is worth the wait, and is thoroughly convincing, despite the significant size disparity. It’s long, gruelling and brutal. I did have to laugh at the obvious stunt table, which stands out in LaFleur’s apartment like a sore thumb. The best fight might actually be earlier, when Lily has to take on a particularly psychosexual pair of henchmen. Though the opening scene sets bar for savagery quite high as well. Mark’s background in stunts is apparent, though I think I preferred his earlier feature, Control. While its script was imperfect, the flaws were less apparent. 

This Canadian production must be out of Quebec, given the significant sprinkling of French here. But, in another in the series of micro-aggressions the film commits, the font used for the subtitles is hard to read. I don’t recall the last time a film got the core element – here, the action – so right, yet appeared entirely dedicated to screwing things up around the edges. I could go on. The whiny nature of Jonathan, who doesn’t appear to realize it is no longer the Victorian era. Occasional forays by the director into shaky-cam. Despite that, there were still enough positives to keep me interested, and I look forward to seeing what both Mark and Ladouceur-Nguyen are able to deliver down the road. 

Dir: James Mark
Star: Orphée Ladouceur-Nguyen, Alain Moussi, Lisa Berry, Jonathan Goad

Away Bus

  By

★★★½
“Just the ticket.”

And this will cross Ghana off the list of countries for action heroines, in a charming and rather fascinating little glimpse into African culture. After their mother falls ill, Bibi (Mumin) and Kiki (Makafui), have to raise 20,000 cedi that day, to fund her medical treatment. I presume that’s a lot of money in local terms. After failing to do so by legitimate means, they team up with a dubious pal, Padlock (Asante), to hijack and rob a bus as it rolls through the countryside. There are four rules he tells them they must abide by. Keep to the plan; speed is key; don’t get caught; and…  Well, he can’t remember the last one, but it probably doesn’t matter, does it?

Of course, it inevitably turns out to be the most crucial of all: “Always have an exit plan.” The lack of planning in this department leaves them stranded in the bush alongside their increasingly aggrieved victims, who are beginning to suspect the guns used on them might not be real. Worse is to follow, when the real robbers who maraud along that section of highway arrive, with weapons which are very definitely not fake. Oh, and the police show up too, leaving the sisters increasingly out of their depth as rookie criminals. Meanwhile, their black sheep and criminal uncle, Bob Pinto (Berko), holds court over his thugs, and complains about.. Just about everything.

This is packed with local colour, though it feels surprisingly accessible to a Western audience. Some things, it appears are universal: when Bibi and Kiki go to their local church to ask for help, the minister apologizes, saying, “The church just bought me the latest Mercedes. That has reduced our finances. But, we stand with you in prayer.” On the bus, in-journey entertainment is provided by a child preacher, Prophet Awukye (Samuel Yaw Dabo, in a scene-stealing performance). He unwittingly encourages the siblings, just when they’re having doubts about their crime, by telling them, “Whatever mission you’re embarking on today, you’ll triumph with ease… If you fail, then, there’s no God.” There’s a generally cynical attitude towards organized religion here, if that isn’t already obvious. 

It is kinda loose, in the sense that I expected Uncle Bob to play a bigger part than he does – for example, by having direct ties to the genuine robbers. Similarly, there’s another career criminal on the bus, but he proves rather superfluous to the plot as well. Technically, there are some odd audio dropouts at point, and there were points where the subtitles just give up, translating a multi-sentence rant into a few words. But generally, this looked impressively polished, and I bought into the performances across the board, far more than I expected. I laughed out loud on more than one occasion, and found myself genuinely invested in seeing the sisters succeed. So I’m not going to complain if the way it ended, perhaps felt a little too tidy.

Dir: Kofi Asamoah and Peter Sedufia
Star: Salma Mumin, Fella Makafui, Richard Asante, Mikki Osei Berko

Gate of Ivrel, by C.J. Cherryh

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

Once upon an unspecified time, somewhere in the cosmos, a human-like, space-faring race called the qhal (or Qujal, in a later dialect) stumbled upon, and subsequently greatly extended, a system of high-tech Gates, a relic of a vanished civilization, which permitted instantaneous travel to other planets and other times. Fearing that travel into the past would prove dangerous, the qhal forbade it; but they used the Gates to travel extensively in space and future time, building up an empire that oppressed and exploited the various despised other races they encountered. This gave them much wealth and power (and universal detestation from others) –until somebody eventually tried past time-travel. The resulting cataclysm (only dimly surmised in the theories of the subsequent scientists) reached as far as the Gates themselves reached, and proved to be an apocalyptic warping of space-time that destroyed civilizations and worlds in its path. But the Gates themselves survived. We learn all of this from an omniscient narrator in the first part of the Prologue.

The other parts of the Prologue are excerpts of various (fictional) documents. In the Journal of the “Union Science Bureau,” we learn of the formation of a team charged with traveling through the Gates, for the sole purpose of closing or destroying them permanently on the far side, to prevent a repeat catastrophe. (Since nobody knows how many Gates there are, this may be a multi-generational task until the last one is reached; and it’s surely going to be a lethally dangerous mission.) Written on a low-tech, medieval-like world, a short text in the Book of Embry tells us that on “the height of Ivrel” still stand ill-regarded, rune-marked “Staines” [stones] of Qujalish origin and still imbued with their “sorceries,” which if touched produce “sich fires of witcherie as taken soul and bodie withal.” This place and others such are sought by those with Qujal blood, recognizable by gray eyes and tall stature, who are thought to lack souls, but “by sorceries liven faire and younge more yeares than Men.”

Finally, a longer passage from the Annals of Baien-an recounts how, “In the year 1431 of the Common Reckoning,” five strangers supposedly from the distant south came to the northern realms, one of them a tall, light-colored young woman named Morgaine (who was thought to be Oujal). They persuaded the northern kings to make war on “…the witch-lord Thiye… lord of Ivrel of the Fires;” but near Ivrel, the great northern army of 10,000 men was unaccountably nearly annihilated, and the five were blamed for the disaster. All of them but Morgaine vanished without trace; pursued, she fled south and supposedly died at another place of Qujalish “Stones,” afterwards called Morgaine’s Tomb. “Here it is said she sleeps, waiting until the great Curse be broken and free her.”

Our story proper begins about 98 years after the disaster at Ivrel, when we meet young (about 20, from later clues) Nhi Vanye –the first name is the clan name, the second the personal one. He’s the out-of-wedlock son of a clan chief, grudgingly taken into the latter’s citadel because his mother, a lady from a hostile clan taken in a raid, died giving birth to him; but (as we learn later) he’s been persecuted and bullied by his two half-brothers from childhood on. By the second page, he’s in serious hot water with his father after a sword-practice bout turned deadly, leaving one half-brother dead and the other badly injured. Outlawed, disowned, dishonored and cast out, he no longer has a clan or a livelihood. His one hope is to try to work his way southward (through the territory of his half-brothers’ mother’s clan, whose members will want to kill him on sight) to an area where he has kin.

We skip over the details of that slow trip, but by the second winter of his outlawhood, surviving by hunting (and stealing what he has to) he’s close to the border –but also close to the unchancey vicinity of Morgaine’s Tomb. And when he wounds a deer, and the fleeing animal blunders through the Gate, it opens on the other side. A century before, Morgaine desperately rode into the Gate, and horse and rider have been held in suspended animation, but now, as she rides out from legend into Vanye’s reality, for her it’s as if she’s been gone just for a moment. And (being, as we can guess, part of the Union Science Bureau’s afore-mentioned team) she still has the same goal on her mind. By the following morning (long story, but sex doesn’t play any part in it; there’s no sexual content in the book), due to the complicated mores of his people, Vanye finds himself oath-bound to service as her vassal for a year. (The old kings had given her “lord-right.”) So this is to be a “quest narrative,” and hers is to close however many Gates there are, starting with taking out the Gate of Ivrel. (On this world, that’s the main Gate; the other two depend on it, and can’t survive without it.) The latter goal is now, perforce, Vanye’s as well. And Morgaine’s grimly committed to seeing it through, if it kills them both (which it very well may).

This is a tale of action and adventure, hardship and danger in a rugged land, with escapes, betrayals and subterfuge. Vanye’s a trained warrior, and Morgaine packs some high-tech weapons that she knows very well how to use; that’s fortunate, because there will be plenty of enemies in their path. Thiye’s still alive, and still ruling in the Ivrel area (and with power and domains greatly increased since the debacle a century ago). But there’s also the problem of clan chieftains who hate and fear Morgaine, or who would like to get their own hands on Qujal “magic” (or both); and a surprise enemy waits in the shadows…. It’s also a powerful tale of complex, nuanced characters, facing very high-stakes moral choices as they struggle with conflicting values, obligations and emotions. While Vanye is our viewpoint character and maker of the most significant choices, and it’s his head we’re inside, it’s Morgaine who’s the center of the tale, and her determination that drives it. (We can fairly say that she’s the protagonist; and she makes decisions too, or bears the pain of decisions made.) Cherryh’s world-building is superb, her plotting impeccable, her prose deft and evocative, and she delivers an emotional impact that’s almost breath-taking. I wasn’t even remotely prepared for how rich and rewarding this novel is!

Though this is the opener of a four-book series, there’s no cliff-hanger; the immediate situation here is brought to closure. But though I intended at first to read this as a stand-alone, I’m now in it for the long haul.

Note: Andre Norton’s two-page Introduction to this DAW printing is spoiler-free, and basically just an eloquent appreciation of the author’s literary achievement here. But though the accompanying map was made by Cherryh herself, it’s crudely-drawn, with hard-to-read place names, and hard to refer to due to its small size. And while Michael Whelan is a leading cover artist in the field of speculative fiction, his work here doesn’t reflect any actual scene in the book, and gives the wrong idea about Morgaine’s character; she doesn’t dress at all revealingly under her fur cloak, and doesn’t act like a sex object!

Author: C.J. Cherryh
Publisher: DAW, available through Amazon, only as a paperback. There is an e-book available of the whole series. 
Book 1 of 4 in The Morgaine Cycle.

The Seasoning House

  By

★★★
“Sour and bitter in flavour.”

This is a nasty and grim piece of work, after which you will probably feel like taking a shower. However, I actually mean this in a (grudgingly) complimentary fashion, because it’s clear that director and co-writer Hyett was aiming for exactly that. Well done, I guess. Doesn’t mean I have to like it though, and this is not a film I have any interest in revisiting. It takes place in an unnamed part of the Balkans (though my money is on somewhere in Serbia), during the ethno-religious wars which tore apart the region in the late nineties. All manner of highly unpleasant things went on: here, it’s a brothel in which kidnapped women are forced to service militiamen.

Working for the man who runs it, Viktor (Howarth), is a deaf-mute girl, whom he has named Angel (Day). She was also abducted, and could only watch as Goran (Pertwee) and his men killed the rest of her family. In some small amount of good fortune, Viktor has taken a shine to Angel, and so her duties are of the housekeeping kind, rather than being raped on a daily basis. But the things she sees, as she scurries around the air-ducts of the decrepit building, are the stuff of nightmares. Things come to a head after a platoon show up, assaulting the closest thing to a friend she has, Violeta (Walton), who already had her pelvis broken during a previous session. For the soldiers’ commanding officer is Goran…

This is where, mercifully, the worm turns, with Angel using her secret passages to avoid capture, as she takes out Goran’s men. The first, in particular, is a spectacularly brutal death by pointy object, which feels extremely cathartic. Thereafter, it does a decent job of not having her go toe-to-toe with larger and stronger opponents. The cramped spaces of the air ducts act as a great leveller in this regard, right up until the end. Well, almost the end. Because the final act has her trying to get help from the locals, and is a fraught endeavour in itself. I was reminded in this aspect of a certain other horror movie, though I don’t want to be any more specific there. 

The first hour in particular is a little too close to torture porn for my taste. It’s not necessarily especially graphic, though not pulling its punches. However, it still makes for uncomfortable viewing, and the abuse seemed, to me, to go on beyond what was necessary to make its point. A lot of credit to the production designer, who created sets which feel like you can taste the dirt and the sweat. Effective stuff, without question. Again: not to my particular taste, and I would have preferred it if more time had been spent on Angel making Viktor, Goran and the other bastards get their extremely well-deserved just deserts. Instead, I’ll be over in the corner, turning on this fire-hose.

Dir: Paul Hyett
Star: Rosie Day, Sean Pertwee, Kevin Howarth, Anna Walton