Tag: 2009

Wonder Woman (2009)

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★★★½
“A little short of truly Wonder-ful.”

Often forgotten in the critical acclaim for the live-action feature, is the animated film released by Warner Brothers in 2009. It wasn’t an enormous hit – plans for a sequel were scrapped due to its slow sales – but is worth a revisit in the the wake of Gal Gadot’s subsequent portrayal. There are some strong overlaps in the two films’ plots: in both, the crash-landing of pilot Steve Trevor (Fillion) kicks off the Amazons’ re-connection to mortal mankind, and Ares (Molina) is the common villain.

The most obvious difference is the time-frame; rather than the middle of World War I, this takes place in the present day. Additionally, Ares is initially in Amazon custody, escaping with the help of Persephone, an Amazon he has seduced to his side. Diana (Russell) is tasked with re-capturing the god before he can bring about  Zeus’s first goal is to remove the bracers, put on him by Zeus, which limit his powers. They can only be removed by another god, and he seeks the help of his uncle, god of the underworld Hades (Oliver Platt). That done, he raises an army, including the Amazonian dead, and attacks Washington, which causes the President to launch a nuke at Themyscira, believing it to be behind the attack. It’s up to Diana to stop Zeus, and to Steve to stop the missile.

There are chunks of this which are really good, not least the action. Those scenes had to be trimmed down to avoid an R-rating (rumblings of that version getting a release, have yet to be proven true), and what remains is beautifully animated, yet brutal at the same time. This perhaps reaches its peak with the battle through Manhattan between Diana and Ares’s warrior-son, Deimos (below), which for my money is the equal of anything in the live-action film. The relationship between Steve and Diana is another strong suit, helped by strong voice-work from both actors. I think the contemporary setting helps, too, avoiding the rather obvious gender politics angle shoehorned into the more recent film, in favour of more subtle consideration of such points [I was impressed that even the traitor Amazon is given a philosophical motive for her betrayal, and it offers pause for thought].

However, there are other aspects which seem very poorly thought-out. After defeating Deimos, who commits suicide rather than reveal anything, Diana gets a medallion off the corpse. Next scene, they’re sneaking into Ares’s lair. Uh, what? It feels almost as if there was a chunk missing, a feeling enhanced by the relatively terse 75-minute running time. Perhaps this also explained the whole “invisible jet” thing – something wisely abandoned entirely by the live-action film, since it never made much sense. Here, it shows up with no explanation, later firing invisible missiles.

The final battle also relies upon too much contrivance (oh, look: someone pulls a spell out of thin air to free the Amazonian zombies), though at least Ares here proves a worthy adversary, unlike in the live-action film, where he was close to the weakest link. Still, even if it’s perhaps aimed at a younger audience than your humble author, and was missing the sense of awe generated by Gal Gadot’s sword-swinging, this was entertaining and well-made. Worth a look.

Dir: Lauren Montgomery
Star (voice): Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion, Alfred Molina, Rosario Dawson

She’s Crushed

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★★½
“An object lesson about not sticking your dick in crazy.”

Playing somewhat like a more brutal version of Fatal Attraction, this sees Ray (Norlén) help out the girl next door, Tara (Dickinson) with some heavy suitcases she’s trying to move into her car. From this eventually stems a one-night stand between the pair, made all the more unfortunate by Ray’s girlfriend, Maddy (Wehrle) being stranded by the side of the road with a flat, while the pair do the dirty deed. Ray then discovers Tara’s darker side: and when I say “darker side”, I mean she makes Alex Forrest of Fatal Attraction look like a bunny-boiling beginner. With the aid of a condom from their dangerous liaison, she frames him for the rape/murder of his boss, forcing him to help her get rid of the body. And Tara is only getting warmed up. Wait until she gets her hands on Maddy…

Unlike Attraction, there is never any sense of doubt as to the woman’s sanity. Right from the get-go, it’s perfectly clear that Tara is barking mad, and likely already a killer; those suitcases mentioned above seem to contain the body of a previous victim. There’s some backstory about a severely-abusive father – one whose abuse of Tara continues right to the present day – and a mother in an asylum. It’s not really necessary, especially following the scene where we see her shaving her armpits with a carving knife. After that, very little more has to be said. Of course, she’s a relatively high-functioning psycho, in that Tara can come over as perfectly normal in everyday conversation. This, and her physical attractiveness, do make Ray’s interest seem somewhat plausible, along with the shrewish nature of his current girlfriend, although there’s so little build-up to Tara’s night with Ray, it’s a bit eyebrow-raising.

Indeed, events unfold in a way that’s rather too obvious for the first hour, with Tara alternating wildly between over the top Generic Loony (TM) and eye-blinkingly adorable, without any particular impact or development. Only after she kidnaps both the target of her affection and his girlfriend, does this achieve a degree of disturbing brutality, far beyond what Attraction depicted. And that’s exactly the territory which low-budget films need to inhabit, in order to succeed (or, at least, be memorable): where Hollywood fears to tread. If you’re not crinkling your toes up by the end of that sequence, you’re not paying attention. Does that 10 minutes justify the existence of the entire film? I’d likely need some convincing of that, and for a supposed military veteran, Ray finds it remarkably difficult to escape from the clutches of not exactly powerful Tara. At least, until the plot requires it, anyway.

Bonus points to the makers, for their use of videos on a Youtube channel, “taraiscrushed”, as a viral promo for the film telling Tara’s backstory, beginning more than three years before it was released. That’s planning ahead…

Dir: Patrick Johnson
Star: Natalie Dickinson, Henrik Norlén, Caitlin Wehrle, Keith Malley
a.k.a. Crushed

Diamond Dawgs

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★★
“Car trouble.”

It’s hard to believe a film rated two stars exceeded expectations, but when I saw this had scored just 1.7 out of ten on the IMDb, I was braced for something much worse. I mean, cross off the friends of the cast and crew who scored it a “10”, and 72% of voters have given it the lowest mark possible. Make no mistake, this isn’t great. It’s not even good. But this is not quite as irredeemably bad as that score would imply.

The story concerns the car thief gang of the title, including Ciara (Johnson) and Pretty (Manning), who work under the heavy thumb of South Central (Núñez). They target a party being held by rappers High Rollaz, not realizing the trunk of one car lifted contains the only copy of a master tape for the High Rollas latest album. The trio, led by Millions (Green), start to follow the Dawgs’s trail, only for things to get complicated when Ciara and one of the High Rollaz fall for each other.

Made in 2009, the production values here are shaky at best, with the video in particular not having aged well. You could likely record better quality footage on a medium-end phone these days, and the sound might well be improved, too. The story is woefully thin: there are scenes which either stay far beyond their purpose (unless that purpose was to showcase one of the rap songs on the soundtrack), or don’t appear to serve any purpose at all. The action, such as it is, is very poorly-executed: the Dawgs do very little actual crime after the opening sequence. Basically, rob the party and that’s it.

And, yet… On a couple of occasions, the film did surprise me. For instance, there’s one scene where South Central forces one of his minions to play Russian Roulette, and it’s genuinely disturbing. Núñez’s acting experience is apparent, and weirdly, his performance here reminded me of Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s portrayal of Negan in The Walking Dead (which, obviously, it well pre-dates). There’s the same sense he’s entirely unhinged, and could go off into insane violence at any moment. We also get the Most Unexpected Star Trek Reference of All-Time, when a drug dealer says of his product that it will, “Get you high, like Captain Kirk… The young Kirk, the one getting all the alien pussy.” I laughed, anyway.

I’m certainly not the intended audience here, yet I can’t imagine even its target would be able to look past the shoddier aspects, despite what feels like a certain veneer of urban authenticity to the dialogue and characters. It plods on, entirely as you’d expect, to the final face-off, when the High Rollaz try to execute a deal with South Central and his crew, for the return of their tape. I sense the actresses here were chosen more for their visual appeal – it seems most of them were models – rather than their acting ability. Though since they get precious little to do here, it’s very difficult to tell whether or not they have any talent. They do nail the “looking pretty” thing, close to impeccably.

Dir: Chris Rogers
Star: Sherina Manning, Azur-De Johnson, Will Green, Miguel A. Núñez Jr.

Scream of the Bikini

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★★★½
“It is a regular adventure!”

This appears to have been filmed somewhere in South America around 1966, then “poorly translated and dubbed by Germans”. The truth? It’s a modern spoof, a loving re-creation of the sixties Eurospy thriller, featuring two gun-toting leggy lovelies, Bridget (supposedly “Jasmine Orosco”, but actually Wedeen) and Sophia (“Paola Apanapal”, Larsen), who are international fashion supermodels by day, and jet-setting bounty hunters and secret agents by night. They acquire a microchip, capable of storing a whole one kilobyte of data – more than all the computers of Interpol and the Pentagon combined! – which embroils them in an evil plot to unleash wholesale devastation on the world’s population. As you do.

It absolutely nails the tone on just about every level, from the fashion styles through the washed-out palette of an elderly print and super funky sixties soundtrack, to the poor dubbing and English-as-a-second-language translations. “A death cult!” burbles one of our heroines – “The worst kind of cult,” adds the other, helpfully. It’s a genre ripe for parody, but it’s clear that Scholl – a theater director – as well as his cast and crew, have an abiding affection for their subject. It probably will help to have seen at least some of these kind of movies, and it’s likely the greater your familiarity, the more you’ll get out. Though even those whose knowledge is no more than a viewing of, say, Barbarella, should still have enough expertise to mine a decent amount of amusement.

It definitely reminded me of The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, though the target there was 50’s SF/horror. That was also somewhat more polished, and perhaps did a slightly better job of sustaining itself over the entire feature-length; there are spots here, particularly in the second half, where the script seems to run out of ideas. But just when your interest drops to a dangerously low level, a line of dialogue or a scene will pop up out of nowhere, that’s laugh out-loud funny,  and you’re back to being engrossed once more. If you’re a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000, you’ll know the way this scatter-gun approach works, and that such an angle will generally result in considerable misses, as well as hits.

It can be a difficult task to pull off: when you go out there with the deliberate intention of trying to make a “cult” movie, more often than not, the results will end up self-absorbed and inadequate. [Compare, say, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and the abomination which was its follow-up, Revenge of the Old Queen] I think the genuine affection mentioned above is a big help. While this is a parody, it’s a warm one, and you don’t get the sense it is laughing at this kind of film, so much as with it. In many ways, I probably found this more entertaining than many of its targets; an awareness of its own stupidity goes a long way to mitigating the flaws.

Dir: Kiff Scholl
Star: Kelsey Wedeen, Rebecca Larsen, Darrett Sanders, Kimberly Atkinson

First Squad

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★★★
“The first Russian anime mockumentary, I presume.”

firstsquadA strong concept here. Indeed, perhaps too strong for a feature which runs not much over an hour, credits to credits. It’s set in 1942 Russian, when Soviet forces are struggling to beat back the Nazi invasion. Behind the mundane warfare is a supernatural struggle, with both sides using occult methods to their advantage. The German Ahnenerbe group [which was a real thing] seek to revive the spirit of Baron von Wolff, a knight from the Middle Ages and his ghost army, while Section Six of Russian intelligence, put together a team of psychics as a counter-measure. The Soviet squad is wiped out, safe for 14-year-old Nadya (Chebaturkina), but the Russians have created a machine which allows her to enter the afterlife, and contact her late colleagues. With a battle looming which both sides know will be a “moment of truth” – a tipping point in history – the lines are drawn for a confrontation in both the real and paranormal fields of conflict.

Animated in Japan, but with a Russian cast and crew, the film also includes live-action interviews with “historians” and “veterans” designed to give the impression this is based on actual events, beginning with historically plausible stories and gradually moving into the occult. It’s an interesting idea, though some viewers may find these interludes take them out of the story, and you wonder if the time would have been better spent progressing things – some elements just end without resolution, such as the Nazi twins sent to assassinate Nadya. It feels almost like a pilot for a series, doing a good job of building characters or setting, and pointing the way forward; it’s better at asking  questions than answering them, as part of a complete story. The final fight between Nadya and the Baron is disappointingly short, despite the heroine’s apparent skill with a sword, though I did appreciate her colleague Zena’s enthusiastic use of a flame-thrower.

It’s a rich universe, with potential that is undeniable, and its share of effective sequences, such as when Nadya is being pursued through the streets of Moscow by the Nazi twins, or skeletal “zombie knights,” riding into battle, in a way which reminded me of Amando de Ossorio’s Blind Dead movies. On the other hand, the apparently unfinished nature of the storyline is a shame, with an excess of loose ends and ideas that are set-up and never executed. After seven years, I think the chances are sadly slim of ever getting a sequel that will address this problem, and what you’re left with is a somewhat frustrating exercise in impressive imagination. The entire film has been made available by the distributor on YouTube, if you are interested in seeing more, after watching the trailer below.

Dir: Yoshiharu Ashino
Star (voice): Elena Chebaturkina, Michael Tikhonov, Ludmila Shuvalova, Damir Eldarov

The Graves

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★★
“Home cooking isn’t necessarily more tasty.”

thegravesI must confess to being drawn in to this 2009 film partly by the “local interest” factor, it being an entirely Arizona-grown product. This is obvious – indeed, painfully so – in the early going, which includes a plug for a comic-store chain and a performance by a local band, as well as a particularly cringe-inducing cameo by some of the director’s own comics. Mercifully, the film rapidly moves on to the actual plot. This has sisters Megan and Abby Graves (Grant and Murray) head out for a spot of sibling bonding, before one moves from Phoenix to New York. Their road-trip takes them to a diner where they’re told about a nearby ghost town, Skull City, the site of a former gold-mine. Megan – the more outgoing and confident – is all for it; Abby is less sure, but is eventually convinced. What they don’t know, is that the mine is the home of a very nasty cult of religious psychos led by the Reverend Abraham Stockton (Todd), and even the friendliest of locals (Moseley) can turn out to be potentially lethal.

I appreciated the straightforward and unpretentious nature of this: it’s the two girls (really, it’s almost entirely Megan who’s the proactive one, with Abby only really good for running and screaming, with a side-order of quivering in terror) against the world. The story is thus largely to the point, though they might as well have disposed entirely with the unseen demonic entity subplot, since it doesn’t add anything, given the effects budget was apparently largely limited to hearing it consume souls… Unfortunately, that poverty extends to quite a few other aspects. For example, the mayhem has a tendency to happen just off-screen, which is never satisfactory at the best of times, and the use of obvious CGI blood only draws attention to this shortcoming.

The performances are a bit over the place too. I enjoyed Todd, who chews scenery to good effect, from the moment he stalks into the diner, a terrified young girl in tow. He seems to have a handle on the comic-book tone for which Pulido is going. The rest of the cast? Not so much, particularly Moseley, who seems to think that putting a fake pig’s nose on equates somehow to exuding menace. He’s wrong. The two leads fall somewhere in between: while they’re okay, the characters are never much more than generic cyphers. At least Pulido was wise enough to dump the hand-held video camera which infects some of the early going: a good rule for the use of such being, it’s never a good idea. I’ll admit half a star of my grade is likely the kick I got out of seeing places I know, such as scenes filmed at the late, lamented venue, The Sets in Tempe.  Take that away and sad to say, there isn’t enough meat on the bones of its potential. The moral here is, just because you can make a film, doesn’t mean you should….

Dir: Brian Pulido
Star: Clare Grant, Jillian Murray, Bill Moseley, Tony Todd

Lady Ninja Kaede 2

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★½
“Secret technique, reverse dildo return!”

ladyninja2I am uncertain whether this is related to the other Lady Ninja series, or if it’s an entirely separate series. I’m leaning towards it being independent, as there appear to be magical overtones here, that weren’t present elsewhere. But just to confuse matters further,while this is on Netflix at the time of writing, there’s no sign of part one. Perhaps, if I’d seen that, this would suddenly become entertaining? Nah. Pretty sure it wouldn’t make a difference. This is slightly elevated over its predecessor by not being a po-faced ninja story with soft-porn sex scenes. It is, in fact, a barking mad ninja story with soft-porn sex scenes. What? You want specifics?

The heroine, Kaede (Akatsuki), is basically a member of the sex police, punishing those who are too lustful. There’s a religious sex cult who have combined the penises of three men into one supercharged dildo, leaving them with an apparent gaping void at the crotch. After fulfilling her first task, or retrieving the hyper-dildo, it’s up to Kaede to fix things, by finding the three donors and having sex with them, which restores their genitals. She is accompanied on her quest by a gay samurai.

Not included in this film. Any significant ninja-ing by Kaede; what action there is, is more carried out by the samurai. And, contrary to the sleeve, nor is she tied up at any point, so any bondage fans will be particularly disappointed. There is, of course, plenty of aardvarking, as Joe-Bob Briggs used to put it, and actually, I can’t say I minded the performances too much. The division of the population into those for whom sex is positive and those for whom it’s negative, reminded me (bizarrely!) of a Japanese medieval take on Cafe Flesh, Kaeda supposedly being on the anti-sex side, but in reality being the most active of anyone.

There are moments of twisted creativity that made this not unwatchable, and there’s a mad aesthetic here that could be appealing if you’re in an undiscerning mood. But if you’re looking for any kind of action beside the horizontal variety, you are going to be extremely disappointed. Finally, I did have to snort derisively at subtitles during the magic ceremony which referred to “Casper Howser”, who is presumably Doogie’s occult-inclined brother. I imagine that should instead have been “Kaspar Hauser”, a 19th-century German figure with mystical significance, about whom Werner Herzog once made a movie. Bit of a toss-up whether distributors Tokyo Shock did not know, or just did not care.

Dir: Takayuki Kagawa
Star: Luna Akatsuki, Kazu Itsuki, Yuka Sakagami

Mother

  By

★★★½
“The truth? You can’t handle the truth!”

motherBong is best known in the West for recent SF film, Snowpiercer, and also for monster movie The Host, but this, which came between those two, is somewhat less of a genre piece. A woman, known only as “Mother” (Kim), lives with her… intellectually-challenged, shall we say, shy son Do-joon (Won) in a small Korean town, making her living as a seller of medicinal herbs and grey-market acupuncturist. When a local schoolgirl is found dead, with one of Do-joon’s golf-balls next to her, he’s immediately the prime suspect, and the police investigation doesn’t bother looking much further. His lawyer is no help, and when the easily-fooled Do-Joon is browbeaten into signing a confession, it appears the case is closed. The only one still convinced of his incident is his Mom, who begins a quest, along with her son’s semi-delinquent friend, Jin-Tae (Jin), to find the truth behind the murder.

Be careful what you wish for, could be the moral of the story here, for the results of Mother’s investigation might not necessarily be what she wants to find. The film deliberately keeps the question of Do-Joon’s guilt or otherwise unresolved, almost until the very end. I suspect any Hollywood version of the same story would not have the guts to walk that tight-rope for as long, and it’s that tension between the audience’s uncertainty and Mother’s absolute, unwavering commitment to, and belief in, her son’s innocence, which largely keeps this interesting as things move forward. You desperately want her faith to be justified; I’ve been in a similar situation, someone I know having been arrested and charged with multiple murders, and denial is an entirely natural reaction. I can only imagine what it’s like for a mother, but in this case, her relentless and fearless pursuit of the real killer is what moves the film into our territory.

It’s not perfect, with neither the opening nor the end being as strong as the middle section deserves, and the resonance of Kim’s history as an actress is largely lost – I wasn’t aware she had spent much of her career in Korea playing the motherly type. There are also moments of strange irrelevance, such as when the cops taking Do-Joon away, are involved in a car crash, for absolutely no reason; it’s not referred to at any other point in the film, and seems a pointless diversion in a film that’s probably overlong, at 129 minutes. However, there’s enough meat here, and a very good central performance, to overcome the weaknesses, and make for an interesting and uniquely independent twist on the female detective sub-genre.

Dir: Bong Joon-ho
Star: Kim Hye-ja, Won Bin, Jin Goo, Yoon Je-moon

Clash

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There used to be a review of Vietnamese movie Clash here, along with the movie’s trailer. However, in what can only be described as a bit of a dick move, Johnny Tri Nguyen, one of the film’s stars, submitted a takedown notice for the trailer. Yes, the trailer: footage specifically created and intended for promotional purposes. We emailed him politely asking how we could resolve this amicably. That was over a week ago. Not even the courtesy of a reply.

So, as a small protest at Nguyen’s high-handed and counter-productive actions, we’re pulling all reviews of films in which he appears from the site. I’m sorry to the rest of the cast and crew – particularly the action heroines whose presence is why the films were reviewed here to begin with. But if he’s going to behave this way, and act to shut down legitimate and reasonable coverage of his films. I’m happy to oblige.

Dir: Le Thanh Son
Star: Ngo Thanh Van, Johnny Tri Nguyen, Hoang Phuc, Lam Minh Thang
a.k.a. Bẫy Rồng

Killer Biker Chicks

  By

★½
“Vanity kills.”

killerbikerchicksOh, dear. I’m sure those involved with the production and their mates loved this. To anyone on the outside… Much less so. However, the problem is not actually the concept, of an all-female biker gang, which had a long, disreputable B-movie pedigree, going back at least to the sixties, with Herschell Gordon Lewis’s She-Devils on Wheels and similar films. The women here operate under the leadership of “Mother” (Gorlano), and in something apparently inspired by Sons of Anarchy, run a garage/bar that doubles as gang HQ, from where they also deal meth to passing truckers (and midgets), while taking their tops off at random intervals – in particular Baby Doll (Roth). Possible related: there may be a strip-club that’s part of it, but the film is vague on the details of their infrastructure.  The movie starts well enough, with them out in the desert torturing a man who had done one of them an unspecified wrong, dousing him in gas and setting him on fire.

If the film had stayed here or hereabouts, things would have been significantly better. But the next time we see them, their numbers are inexplicably reduced to a level where they could have their gang meetings in a phone-box. Worst still, writer-director Redding instead chooses to dilute his material with a bunch of truly dreadful supporting characters, who range from superfluous down to the point that you will be praying for a power outage to save you. In the former category are a passing band, Glam Puss, whose van breaks down on their way to a gig, and who have to hang out at the ladies’ establishment for a couple of days. They do actually provide the only genuine laugh in the film, with their reactions to a story from Mother’s earlier years. Further down the scale, at “gratingly cliched,” are a pair of corrupt cops who spent their time hassling and shaking-down citizens, when not hanging out at a strip-club, whose owner is played by Ted V. Mikels, the infamous director of some god-awful works we’ve covered here before. That the makers think him deserving of a cameo should be seen as a warning of what to expect.

Right at the bottom of the barrel, however, are the “comedic stylings” of Rusty Meyers as Hawksmeir, an Azerbaijani tourist. Within two minutes, you’ll be left with deep appreciation for the comparative subtle understatement that was Borat – indeed, through in a Chinese store-owner who is less convincing than Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and you’ve got something which is embarrassingly unfunny at best, and quite possibly offensive [and, don’t forget, I’m someone who loves Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS, so do not offend easily]. Almost as annoying is the soundtrack, which appears to consist largely of bands who put the director on the guest-list or something, and is rarely less than aggravatingly intrusive. These, together with random acts of motiveless (and, apparently, pointless) violence by Mother and her crew, dominate proceedings until the last quarter, where a drug deal with another biker gang, the Rebel Cocks, goes wrong, leading to the final confrontation.

Great B-movies take interesting central characters, then put them in situations that drive the storyline forward, and possess a consistent style and approach that complements the content. This merits a marginal passing grade on the first category, but fails utterly at the second, and Redding appears to use every special effect available on his camcorder, resulting in a lurid mess. A decent idea ends up chewed into pulp, then vomited out onto your screen.

Dir: Regan Redding
Star: Brenna Roth, Sara Plotkin, Sarah French, Rose Gorlano