Tag: 0-9

1 More Round

  By

★★★
“I am Jim’s Complete Lack of Surprise.”

Reading the comments on YouTube, there’s an awful lot of “inspirational” and “motivational” to be found there, and these are not wrong. This is as template-based a sports movie as you can imagine, to the point that it feels almost more like a Victorian melodrama, in terms of its saintly heroine, fighting (literally) for what she believes in. This sort of thing would normally be completely ludicrous, and isn’t helped by James Schafer’s soundtrack, which leaves no orchestral cliché uncued. However… I found a genuine sincerity on display here, helped by a very good performance from Stone, and this really sells the sub-Hallmark conceit at its core. Her character believes, so you do. 

She plays up-and-coming amateur MMA fighter Jackie DeSpain, whose life has issues. She lives with her junkie sister Marie, whose little daughter Grace (Darling), is simply as adorable as a boxful of kittens. This situation preys on Jackie’s mind, causing her to lose a fight against Kate ‘The Killer’ Kinsella, much to the concern of her trainer, Hank (Wade). For when I say “lose”, we’re deep in “beaten to a pulp” territory. Though a positive is, this brings her into contact with hunky doctor Oliver (Akers). After Marie overdoses, Grace is taken away by the authorities, but if Jackie can just win enough fights to turn pro, then maybe she can convince a judge that she should have custody of her niece, while Marie rehabs. 

You should easily be able to figure out from the above, where everything is going to go the rest of the way, and the film does not deviate from that template an iota. Will there be training montages? Could there be an injury threatening to derail Jackie’s plans? Might there be – oh, I’m just speculating here – blossoming romance between Jackie and Oliver? I’ll never tell. But despite the resolute predictability of proceedings, I remained engaged to a greater degree than you would imagine. Lyde has directed a number of films we’ve reviewed here, most recently Scarlett, also starring Stone, and the action here is good. If the MMA fights are somewhat stylized, they’re still credible, and have more impact than I was expecting.

There is, however, a curious lack of any antagonist here: just about everybody is nice: even the social worker who whisks Grace away into the care of the state is quite apologetic about it. Kinsella is likely the closest, yet she is more of an obstacle than an enemy, vanishing completely from the film between her fights against Despain. Despite the lack of dramatic conflict, and a large dose of the review tagline (top) as things wound there way forward, I bought into Jackie’s situation, and unquestionably found myself cheering her on. While this may be the simplest of stories, I found it executed well enough to overcome the limitations of its plot.

Dir: John Lyde
Star: Melanie Stone, Jasen Wade, Isaac Akers, Rosie Darling
[The film is available now on YouTube and is embedded below]

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

1572: The Battle of Haarlem

  By

★★★
“Better the devil Kenau…”

This feels a little like a Dutch cross between the stories of Joan of Arc and William Wallace. It’s a couple of centuries later than either, taking place (as the non-Dutch title states!) in the 16th century. The Spanish armies of the Catholic King Philip II were sweeping across Europe, reaching as far North as the Netherlands. Some cities capitulated; others resisted. Among the latter was Haarlem (to use the Dutch spelling), where legend states a woman called Kenau Simonsdochter Hasselaer led an army of 300 women in defense of the city. The more prosaic reality is that she may have helped in fortifying the defense, though the amount of reliable historical data about her is scant in the extreme.

When has that ever stopped film-maker – hence the Wallace comparisons, who is similarly lost in the mists of time. The Joan of Arc similarities are in the heroic defense of her homeland against foreign invaders, though there’s less of a religious subtext for Kenau. In this version, one of her daughters, Gertrude (Smit) is burned at the stake after being caught vandalizing a Catholic church, and it’s partly this which triggers Kenau into action: I guess that’s a little like Boudicea as well. Initially, she is reluctant to take action, and the city is almost sold out to the Spanish by its corrupt leader. However, it’s all almost too convenient in the subsequent events, which portray Kenau as a brilliant strategist, always one step ahead of the enemy.

To a certain extent, this is fair enough: it’s a heroic story, painted in bold strokes, without much subtlety. The Spaniards, especially, come over as borderline caricatures, all lecherous villainy. About Kenau’s sole weakness is being over-protective of her other daughter, Kathelijne (Harmsen), refusing to let her become her own person, romance a hunky mercenary soldier, or assist in some of the more dangerous missions, such as sneaking out of the city to hijack a supply convoy. Otherwise, there’s precious little resistance, with the wonderfully-named governor, Wigbolt Ripperda (Atsma), putting up only a token argument against Kenau running things. There are likely one too many heroic cliches, such as the rousing speech she gives, when the women have a chance to leave the besieged city.

If questionable from a historical perspective, I still have to admit I was entertained to a fine degree, with the production values being better than I expected – Hungary stood in for the Netherlands during shooting. There is no shortage of action, either on the battlefield, or in the shape of other incidents. Even as someone who knows almost nothing about the history of this period, it’s all rather rousing. Hendricks delivers a sufficiently committed performance, and this helps paper over some of the points where her character feels like it came from about 400 years later in history. Not a movie you want to think about too much, I suspect – especially since the truth is that Haarlem ended up surrendering, with thousands of its residents beheaded or drowned. Awkward.

Dir: Maarten Treurniet
Star: Monic Hendrickx, Sallie Harmsen, Barry Atsma, Lisa Smit
a.k.a. Kenau

19 Girls and a Sailor

  By

★★
“I only see eight girls…”

The rather salacious title is actually a direct translation of the original Yugoslavian one: it seems to be hinting at an adult movie whose name was A Girl and 19 Sailors. The reality is, naturally, rather different. It’s a war movie, set in the final days of World War II, when the local partisans were fighting the Nazis. A group of women, under the command of Milja (Birkin) are given the task of escorting injured soldiers to safety, including “The Spaniard”/ He’s a partisan leader whom the Germans want to capture, in order to offer him in a prisoner exchange. It helps they have an informant in the partisans, helping them funnel their opponents to a precise location.

It’s a largely by-the-numbers war story, except for most of the protagonists being women. The main exception is Sailor (Gainsbourg), who has two of the partisans fall for him, including the second-in-command, Irena (Rozin). This angle largely negates the surprisingly forward-thinking approach of the plot as a whole, promoting the belief that women are too flighty and easily distracted by matters of the heart to make good soldiers. It’s a shame, as they seem largely competent and able to handle themselves. Well, except for the scene where a bunch of them suddenly decide to go swimming, and are then surprised by the appearance of a German platoon. I rolled my eyes at that a bit as well.

I’m not quite sure what two of France’s leading stars at the time are doing, suddenly appearing in an otherwise very Yugoslavian production. Even a local review seemed perplexed (all hail, Google Translate…), and was equally confounded by the director, who up until that point, had basically made documentaries. He certainly does not appear to have much of a handle on the dramatic elements, generating almost no tension out of what should, one would imagine, have been a good foundation for a thriller. Narrow escapes; fierce gun-battles; tension over the identity of the traitor in their midst. Oh, all of these exist, yet they feel little more than check-marks of obligation, and hardly anything about this will stick in your mind.

After losing a few supporting characters, but nobody of particular note, we reach the finale, where the women are trapped with no apparent escape route. Until, that is, one of them suddenly remembers the existence of a cave offering safe passage. Fortunate amnesia. This is, of course, where we get another expected element – the heroic sacrifice of certain people, mounting a rearguard defense which allows their sisters-in-arms to make their escape, and also reveal the identity of the Nazi informess. The scenery is wild and untamed, and the photography does a decent job of capturing this. The same can’t particularly be said about the characters, as these never become much more than women in uniform. Or not in uniform. That works too.

Dir: Milutin Kosovac
Star: Jane Birkin, Serge Gainsbourg, Spela Rozin, Dina Rutic
a.k.a. Ballade à Sarajevo or Devetnaest djevojaka i jedan mornar

9 Bullets

  By

★½
“Copy of a copy of a copy.”

While this is not an “official” remake of Gloria, it’s so damn close that I have no problem considering it as one. Writer/director Gaston seems to have… um, a bit of a track record in this area, shall we say. She previously appeared here by directing Beyond the City Limits, a film with such a strong resemblance to Set It Off, that it was released on DVD as Rip It Off. Some might call that a particularly appropriate title, and here, she once again seems to be sailing quite close to a lawsuit. It was purely by coincidence we watched this, the weekend after seeing the two versions of Gloria, and Chris took only a few minutes to call it out.

It’s definitely the worst of the three, and I write that as a fan of Lena Headey. She has done sterling work in things such as Game of Thrones and Gunpowder Milkshake, among others, so to see her in this mess is almost tragic. I almost can’t be bothered to provide a recap – a link to my Gloria review would suffice – yet here we go. A man is caught stealing money from organized crime, so he and his whole family are liquidated, except for young son, Sam (Vazquez). He escapes with an iPad that’s crucial to the mob’s operation, and is rescued by neighbour Gypsy (Headey). They go on the run from the henchmen seeking to recover the iPad, and Sam gradually breaks down Gypsy’s chilly facade, despite her ties to the criminals, being an old flame of its boss, Jack (Worthington).

Ouch. But… but… Sam has a dog! And Gypsy is a retiring burlesque dancer, now writing an autobiography! It’s totes different! No. No, it isn’t. Especially since neither of these are significant. The only relevance of the latter seems to be to allow Headey to show that she still looks pretty good in her late forties (pasties, please: this isn’t some cheap exploitation vehicle). Meanwhile, Sam manages the genuinely impressive feat of managing, somehow, to be more annoying than the kid in the original, burbling on in a child genius way about his booming cryptocurrency portfolio. Yeah, that aged like milk.

Despite Headey’s best efforts, there’s no aspect here which wasn’t done better in both the original, and the remake starring Sharon Stone. Even the new stuff falls flat, such as a weird and almost irrelevant subplot where they steal an already stolen car with a hooker (Anthony) in the back seat. None of the relationships are convincing, and the only moment that has any intensity does not involve any of the main characters. It occurs after Gypsy drops off the dog at the cabin belong to friend Lacy, played by veteran actress Barbara Hershey, who demonstrates an admirably no-nonsense approach to their pursuers. Please, do not even get me started on the finale, where Gypsy literally turns out to be bulletproof. When a film leaves you thinking, “Who came up with this shit?”, it’s never a good sign.

Dir: Gigi Gaston
Star: Lena Headey, Dean Scott Vazquez, Sam Worthington, La La Anthony

7 Women From Hell

  By

★★½
“Circling hell”

About the only review online I found for this, said it “may be the worst movie released in 1961.” I can only presume the writer of that statement has never seen The Beast of Yucca Flats. Even if I admit its weaknesses, Seven is nowhere near the same league of badness. Indeed, it starts off well, depicting the sudden invasion of Papua New Guinea by Japanese forces in 1942, with “enemy” civilians being herded into interment camps. The ones on the women’s side are a multi-national bunch, including Australian Grace Ingram (Owens), several Americans including Janet Cook (Craig), a German widow Ann Van Laer (Sylvia Daneel), Frenchwoman Claire Oudry (Darcel), and mixed-race nurse Mai-Lu Ferguson (Pilar Seurat). 

Initially, life is just about tolerable, with the camp commandant being mostly reasonable. But after he is killed in a bombing raid, his sadistic deputy takes over. When one of them knocks out a guard who tried to rape her, the women escape with the help of the camp doctor. But life on the outside is little better, especially with the Japanese in pursuit. Let’s just say, it doesn’t stay at seven women for very long. Without a compass, their odds of finding their way to safety are slim. Fortunately, they come across a downed American airman who has one. The bad news: he tells them their intended destination has already been abandoned. Then they meet the estate of German-Argentinean farmer Luis Hullman (Cesar Romero). Though is he as friendly as he initially appears to be?

It is important to realize this is very much a product of its era, when Hollywood was supremely disinterested in action heroines. We were still several years before even the arrival of Honey West on televisions, and there were few cases at the time where a female-led story-line would not be driven primarily by romance. It’s on that basis that the rating above has to be seen, cutting it some slack for the time in which it was made. By modern standards, sure, it’s fairly weak sauce. But the climax, where the women discover the truth about Luis and take action, feels progressive for the time. These women are – again, for the era – remarkably independent. They don’t need to be rescued by men: indeed, they’re the ones doing the rescuing of the airman.

The weakness is mostly on the character front, as outside of their nationalities, the protagonists are not given anything like an adequate amount of depth. The script doesn’t seem to know what to do with them once they are outside the confines of the prison camp either, at one point resorting to a bathing scene which had me rolling my eyes at the indignity of it all. Credit for not making the Japanese irredeemably villainous, though I’m not convinced the shooting location of Hawaii is an adequate stand-in for Papua New Guinea. Definitely not the worst movie released in 1961, by quite a considerable margin.

Dir: Robert D. Webb
Star: Patricia Owens, Denise Darcel, Margia Dean, Yvonne Craig

The 355

  By

★★★
“Mission reasonably possible”

I went into this preparing to hate it. There had been red flags all over the place, such as star and producer Chastain coming out with comments about her movie like, “It’s very important for society. We’ve moved against the status quo, and we’re creating our own narrative for it. The film is, in some sense, a political act.” Uh-oh. No film is ever “very important for society.” It’s a film. The good news, however, is this is perfectly watchable without worrying about such things. While it may have been created as a female-led story, it’s much more identifiable as a generic spy romp, in which the protagonists roam the world in pursuit of some threatening item, on which the bad guys want to get their hands. Hooray for the equality of mediocrity!

In this case, Item X is a black box that lets its owner do anything at all on the Internet, from hacking emails to crashing planes. It was found in a raid on a Colombian drug lord’s lair, where it came into possession of a soldier who now wants to sell it. Initially, a deal is brokered to sell it to the CIA, and agent “Mace” Browne (Chastain) is sent to Paris to complete the transaction. However, the meeting goes badly wrong, so Browne has to team up with a United Nations of other intelligence operatives, to stop it falling into the wrong hands, which could bring about unspeakable horrors. Such as nobody being able to post their thoughts on Twitter.

It’s all rather predictable, and quite remarkable how, after being cut off by the CIA, Mace is still able to commandeer aircraft and whatever other resources she needs. As the tagline above suggests, it’s all more than a bit evocative of another spy franchise in tone, though in most ways, feels like a Good Value version thereof. Chastain isn’t quite Tom Cruise; Nyong’o isn’t Simon Pegg; and so on. There’s not a great deal of emotion to be found either. The only one who feels properly human is Cruz, and her character is a psychiatrist, unfortunately entangled in the operation, rather than a field agent. The others feel more like high-functioning AIs, programmed to do their jobs.

The action scenes, however, are thoroughly professional and well-staged. There are some early chases around Paris which are approaching top tier, and plenty of bullet-spraying action for the finale. Though Chris has asked me to inform you that, if you have a hand-to-hand fight on a balcony, the rules of action cinema require someone to go over the edge. She was disappointed by the wilful disregard to tradition shown here. In general though, this was acceptable entertainment, and outside of a couple of sentences of dialogue, did not seem obviously preachy. That title, however: painfully obscure, and not explained until far too late. Still, this likely did not deserve the dismal box-office fate which it suffered. Perhaps the audience’s refusal to buy tickets to see it was, in some sense, a political act?

Dir: Simon Kinberg
Star: Jessica Chastain, Penélope Cruz, Diane Kruger, Lupita Nyong’o

9-Ball

  By

★½
“A load of balls.”

Oh, dear. There’s part of me which thinks this is what you get when you try and make actors out of pool players. For the star here, Barretta, is one of the top women cue artists in the world. She’s joined here by cameos from a couple of bigger pool stars i.e. people even I’ve heard of, in Jeanette ‘The Black Widow’ Lee and Allison Fisher, and you can’t really expect much out of any professional sportswomen, in terms of acting ability. However, she isn’t that bad, though this may just be relative to some of her fellow cast members. And, to be fair to the actors here, you could be an Oscar-winner, and still not be able to do anything with the wretched script, which is little more than a parade of cliches, when not being a shameless advert for the American Poolplayers Association and its leagues.

Gail (Barretta) is the daughter of a pool player, who saw Dad stabbed to death in the street in front of her house. Taken in by creepy Uncle Joey (Hanover), Gail has clearly inherited some of her father’s skills, and Joey makes her turn them to his benefit, hustling suckers for money in bars. But, of course, Gail has dreams of her own, meeting Nice Guy™ Mark (Kochanowicz), and wants to leave Joey to head out on her own as a professional player. Hence the largely pointless cameos by Lee and Fisher, advising Gail how to achieve her goal. Joey isn’t happy at the prospect of using his cash cow, and beats up Gail, who absconds with his “retirement fund”. Though initially sent to jail, he gets bailed out, and the time spent inside hasn’t exactly improved his temper.

I was really hoping for considerably more, and better filmed, pool. It’s  closer to being a Lifetime TVM with occasional interludes of the sport. And on the (sporadic) occasions we see Gail in action, we mostly see her striking the cue ball, or the target ball going into the pocket – hardly ever both in the same frame. What’s the point of having one of the world’s top players in your movie, if you rarely see them making their pro-quality shots?

It all builds towards an APA team tournament in Las Vegas, which at least. is a little better in this regard. Though that only shows up in the last ten minutes, leaving precious little room for any kind of tension to built. We gallop through it, to a final shot which don’t realize is the final shot, until after it has been pocketed. Even Joey’s subplot is hustled off-screen with an absolute minimum of excitement, despite him turning up at the event with a gun. There are possibilities in the idea, which I won’t deny: after all, pool is one of the few games where men and women can compete on equal terms. But they are painfully squandered by the wretched direction and script. As bar sports action heroine movies go, I guess we’ll have to wait for the Fallon Sherrock biopic.

Dir: Anthony Palma
Star: Jennifer Barretta, Kurt Hanover, Mark Kochanowicz, Jennifer Butler

3 Heroines

  By

★★½
“Largely misses the target”

As the Olympics get under way in Tokyo (COVID permitting – this is a pre-scheduled post!), it seems an appropriate point to review this, which tells the story of the 1988 Indonesian women’s archery team. They became the first ever from their country to win a non-exhibition medal at the Olympics. This was quite a big deal, considering at the time, the population of the country was 175 million, and they had been competing in the games for 36 years without any success. However, the resulting movie manages to be more like a soap-opera with arrows than the thrilling sports movie it should be, considering they clinched their medal with a sudden-death shoot-out against the might of Team USA.

They do get that aspect right, but I’m less certain about the veracity of some other elements. For example, much is made of coach Donald Pandiangan (Rahadian), “the Indonesian Robin Hood,” seeking redemption for having missed the 1980 Olympics due to a boycott. Omitted is the awkward fact he did get to take part in the 1984 Olympics… and came 43rd. Anyway, he has the task of licking into shape the trio of potential candidates: Lilies Handayani (Islan), Nurfitriyana Saiman (Lestari) and Kusuma Wardhani (Basro). The archers have their own range of issues to deal with as well, such as an unsupportive family, who just want them to settle down, marry (their choice, naturally), and get a good job. It’s basically a class in Sports Movie Cliches 1.0.1, with the stern, disciplinarian coach butting heads with his young charges, who just want to sneak out. [I was amused to see the local cinema playing Arnie classic, Commando!]

It does have a certain naive charm, and is so sincere about itself that you can’t complain too much. I think the pseudo-musical number into which the three heroines break, complete with singing at their hairbrushes, demonstrate the good natured and non-threatening approach here. But it’s more than two hours long, and the ratio of drama to sport is far too heavily tilted towards the former. Even when we get to Korea, it doesn’t help that in those days, Olympic archery wasn’t the dramatic, head-to-head knockout contest it later became. That would have been way more exciting to watch, than all teams shooting simultaneously, as depicted here.

The director does his best, and the shoot-off is likely the film’s most effective sequence. Though if I was American, I might be offended by its portrayal of one of their athletes shoving an Indonesian rival to the ground during the competition. I am fairly sure this did not happen, instead being fabricated for dramatic effect. But since I’m British, I don’t care. Our gals finished a plucky fifth. Mind you, I can imagine the South Korean women’s team who actually won the event – as they have every single Olympics where it has taken place – are probably wondering, “Where’s our movie?” I guess it goes to show, being a plucky underdog is just more cinematic. Sorry, Korea.

Dir: Iman Brotoseno
Star: Bunga Citra Lestari, Chelsea Islan, Tara Basro, Reza Rahadian
a.k.a. 3 Srikandi

36 Husbands

  By

★
“Save yourself!”

I have so many questions. Not the least of which would be, how the hell is this ranked a 7.3 on the IMDb? I do note a sharp division among the sexes: male voters gave it a 3.3, while women an 8,3. What can I say? I now know the meaning of the phrase, “Bitches be crazy.” It did, however, cause me to consider my opinion on one topic. There is a school of thought which says that films that intentionally try to be bad, cannot succeed. In the past, I’ve tended to disagree: the Sharknado franchise, for example, certainly has its moments. However, this is a good counter-argument; it’s not just trying to be bad, it strains towards its goal like a constipated elephant – and with much the same end result.

The problem here is, the makers seem to think that to make a parody, you simply have to be worse that what you’re parodying, and that’s where their invention stops. “Look at how shitty we are! Isn’t that funny?” No. No, it’s not. The target here appears mostly to be sixties spy-films, with three heroines (Pasch, Bianchini and Nourney) trying to stop – or at least, delay – World War III, through methods that are almost entirely unclear. Yet I’m really not sure tismakers have ever seen an example of what they’re supposed to be parodying. They possibly just suck at film-making, though I’m sure they and their pals had a fine time globe-trotting to make this.

I’m not sure which are the worst elements. A smugly self-indulgent script which is simply too damn meta for its own good. Line delivery from the three leads that could be improved by replacing them with a text-to-speech program. Or the cringeworthy musical numbers which seems to have escaped from open mic night at your local college coffee house. The makers appear to have a group called Bright Blue Gorilla, whose songs are about as terrible as you would imagine a group with that name to be.  Actually, my mistake. It’s the kung-fu. Definitely the kung-fu: feeble wet-noodle limb-waving, which makes Honey West look like like Michelle Yeoh’s greatest hits. And they don’t even have an ocelot here.

My brain shut down after 20 minutes and I had to physically step away. When I resumed, the rest was little improvement though I will say, the use of one actor to play triplets was surprisingly well-done. If only the rest of the film had remotely approached that standard. I gave serious consideration to simply bailing, and pretending the whole thing did not exist. But if the existence of this review manages to save one person from making the same mistake as I did, then my sacrifice will be worthwhile. So, I persisted, right through the eight-minute credit crawl, including what seems like a picture of every single person involved in the production. Further proof, as if any were needed, confirming the largely vanity nature of this project.

Dir: Michael Glover
Star: Christa Pasch, Roberta Bianchini, Nadine Nourney. Dominic Anglim