Tag: 2011

Julia X

  By

★★★
“Battle of the sexes.”

juliaxA date appears to go badly wrong for Julia (Azlynn), when her companion (Sorbo) turns out to be a serial-killer who has been using Internet dating sites to find the young women he targets. However, it turns out the tables are eventually turned, for Julia and her sister Jessica (Willis) are every bit as monstrous, who have been luring in and killing men, as a result of the abuse they both suffered at the hands of their father. But Jessica is a bit fed up of taking a back seat to her big sis, and wanders across the street to kidnap a victim of her own (Moore). But Julia’s captive is not exactly prepared to give up his liberty without a fight.

Nice bit of casting against type for Sorbo, whom we’re used to seeing in more heroic roles. He’s quite effective in a Patrick Bateman-esque way (American Psycho, if you’d forgotten), and this is certainly an equal opportunity film, in terms of the copious violence inflicted both on and by women. The last third is not much more than the two leads battering each other forcefully through the entire house, with extreme and escalating aggression. It’s the kind of thing which I should love. So why does it all feel relatively unaffecting and forced?

It may be because the scenario unfolding requires almost industrial strength idiocy from the main characters. Sorbo’s killer, for example, is so sloppily incompetent, it’s a wonder he managed to pull off his first murder without accidentally killing himself. The sisters aren’t much better, and we’re not given much of a reason to root for Julia and Jessica either. I get the feeling the reveal of them being psychos as well is supposed to “matter”, but it has next to no impact at all. The backstory offered for the sisters is pretty trite and cliched too; maybe it would have been better off if they’d begun with that, and we’d been brought along with the siblings on their journey, to the point where murder apparently started to make sense.

What does work, fortunately, is the action, which is well-staged and crunchy. The film doesn’t linger on the pain with sadistic glee, as it could; this is wise, since if the makers did, some scenes would likely be hard to watch. Instead, there’s an almost Looney Tunes element to the mayhem, particularly in the way the protagonists are able to take a pounding, and bounce back with an even more enhanced vengeance, like a human version of an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon. On the whole, I’d not have minded at all to see this deliberately outrageous aspect played up, highlighted particularly by a beautifully ironic use of The Carpenters’ soft-pop anthem, Close To You. For the film arguably doesn’t do enough with its script or characters to make the viewer interested in taking them seriously.

Dir: P.J. Pettiette
Star: Valerie Azlynn, Kevin Sorbo, Alicia Leigh Willis, Joel David Moore

Queen of the South vs. La Reina Del Sur

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reinaqueen

“She’s a woman in enemy territory. All women are in enemy territory for centuries, but in this case, this is particularly accentuated because the drug-dealing world is a very machista, hostile environment. Here, the survival of a woman in enemy territory is even more spectacular. That’s the original challenge of the novel — to ensure that in a machista, violent world, which is the territory of men — that in such a world where the women use the weapons of men, they use the intelligence and penetration of a woman. The challenge is for her to do more than what men do in those circumstances and for her to become the boss of men.”
— Arturo Pérez-Reverte

There have been two, significantly different televisual adaptations of Arturo Perez-Reverte’s novel, La Reina Del Sur (you can read our review of the source material here). The first, was a Mexican telenovela that ran for 63 episodes during 2011. However, this summer saw the premiere of an American television series based on the same novel, which played on the USA Network. This covered 13 episodes thus far, and finished its first run last month, with the network agreeing to a second season next year. Let’s take a look at both shows: their similarities, differences, strengths and weaknesses, starting with the Mexican version.

reinaLa Reina Del Sur
★★★
“The reina in Spain, stays mainly in the plain.”

The impact of La Reina Del Sur probably can’t be exaggerated. Right from the first episode, screened in February 2011 on Telemundo, it was a smash hit. The premiere drew the network’s biggest ratings ever for a first episode, and perhaps surprisingly, the audience was almost equally split between men and women. The following week, viewers increased by almost 20%, and beat all English-language stations in the 18-34 demographic. The final episode, on May 30th, was the most-watched program in Telemundo’s 19-year history – and again, was watched by more men than any show on TV at the time. Though since surpassed, it was also the station’s most-expensive production, shot in five countries and budgeted at $10 million, So if you’re expecting cheesy drama, you’re going to be surprised – at least somewhat.

It tells the story of Teresa Mendoza, whose life is thrown upside down when her boyfriend, El Guero, is killed by the organized crime gang for which he has been flying planes. She trades his notebook to the head of the gang, Epifanio Vargas (Zurita), in exchange for her help escaping to Spain. There, she gets a job as a waitress in a brothel, and gradually works her way up to running the place’s books. She begins a relationship with a smuggler, and learns the ropes of the trade from him, only for tragedy to strike. While trying to out-run the authorities, their boat crashes into rocks, killing him and leading to her being sent to prison.

reina2In jail, she links up with Colombian Patricia O’Farrell (Urgel), who knows the location of a huge cocaine stash, hidden by her late boyfriend from the Russian mafia. On their release, the pair work out a risky deal with Oleg Yasikov (Jiménez) to sell it back, giving them the cash to set up in the drug business, with Yasikov’s help. However, this attracts unwelcome attention from two fronts. The DEA start sniffing around, with the help of the local cops. Potentially more lethally, Epifanio is now on the political rise, and Teresa’s existence represents an unwelcome loose-end that must be tidied up. Not least because the DEA are interested in getting her back to Mexico to testify against him.

According to del Castillo, the entire series was shot in just seven months, which is an extremely quick pace: it works out at more than two episodes, or over an hour of new footage, every single week. At one point, the star required medical treatment for exhaustion. Arturo Pérez-Reverte, author of the source novel (whose work also inspired Roman Polanski’s The Ninth Gate), helped extend the material, a very necessary task given the 63 episodes the show lasted. Not having read the book myself, I can’t comment on what was added, but having read Werner’s scathing review, seems like the telenovela is superior to the novel, and has certainly made its heroine a more sympathetic character.

The two areas where it works best are Teresa Mendoza’s character arc, and the supporting cast. With the story unfolding over such a long period (by English-language TV standards), the former kinda creeps up on you. It’s only near the end, when the show includes a number of flashbacks to what Teresa used to be like, that you realize how drastically she has been changed by events. The plucky yet naive young woman to whom we were initially introduced has gone, replaced by a thoroughly hard-bitten woman, She learns the hard way that trust and affection are traits that can get you – or your loved ones – killed in her chosen profession. Frankly, the trail of dead bodies left behind Teresa in one way or another, is so high, her belief she may be cursed begins to seem credible.

reina3I also liked the background characters. O’Farrell is a hard-drinking, coke-snorting, flagrantly bisexual party girl, yet still vulnerable and insecure at her core. She’s played by Urgel, who looks like a supermodel version of Brienne of Tarth, taller than most of the men on the show [Per Google, she’s officially 5’7″, but as this pic of her, del Castillo and male star Ivan Sanchez shows… someone’s not telling the truth] Another woman Teresa meets in jail, who becomes a key part of her team is Marcela, known as “La Conejo” (the rabbit). She looks like she wouldn’t say boo to a goose, but actually poisoned her husband and his mother. Alberto Jiménez, as Yasikov, seems to be channeling Lee Van Cleef. Finally, DEA agent Willy Rangel, shows up early, vanishes in the middle, then comes back to be pivotal at the end, drinking coffee from his Union Jack mug.  Given this show is a marathon, not a sprint, having these to sustain interest is likely a necessity.

It is disappointingly low-key in terms of action: Teresa’s first boyfriend teaches her to shoot, as shown above. But after using it to escape early peril, she doesn’t fire another round until the final battle. To be honest, even the efforts at generating tension are only sporadically successful, and this is more drama-than thriller-inclined. There are some moments of plotting which don’t ring true either. Apparently, in Spain, police procedure means than when someone confesses to having hired a hitman, you then let them wander off upstairs on their own to, oh I dunno, tidy up or something. Such mis-steps are likely inevitable at some point though. All told, I found it acceptably entertaining, with a lot less time spent on torrid romance than I expected, and anchored by del Castillo’s sound performance.

Finally, in a bizarre element of life imitating art, Kate del Castillo subsequently became involved with notorious fugitive Mexican drug-lord El Chapo, after Tweeting about him in 2012. Turns out he was a fan of La Reina Del Sur, telling her, “That series that you made, I saw it and I loved it. I’ve seen it many times—you’re a great actress in it.” He authorized Kate to begin work on a film version of his life story, before his break-out from jail in July 2015. Subsequently, she traveled to Mexico, along with Sean Penn, to meet El Chapo, a trip which Penn later chronicled in a heavily-criticized article for Rolling Stone. The relationship brought del Castillo scrutiny by the Mexican government, including an investigation for involvement in money-laundering. As of July, this was still ongoing…

Star: Kate del Castillo, Cristina Urgel, Humberto Zurita, Alberto Jiménez

Queen of the South
★★★★
“Don’t mess with Tex-Mexicans.”

I’ll likely have less to say about the American version, because thus far, it has run barely 20% of the length of its predecessor, and tells far from a completed story. It is, however, radically different to this point in a number of ways. The most obvious is the shift in Teresa’s destination from Spain to the United States. This has caused some complaints among fans of the series and the novel, yet seems entirely understandable, given this is aimed squarely at the mainstream American market. While she’s still running from her boyfriend’s former employer, with a book containing a wealth of incriminating evidence, that information plays a more significant part here, becoming the McGuffin which drives the final third of the first season.

queen2The other major difference is one of focus. Teresa (Braga) has, to this point, not risen very high at all up the ladder of the drug business. There’s some obvious foreshadowing that she will, in that her “spirit animal” is an impeccably-dressed version of herself. But that appears well off into the future. For now, the real “Queen of the South” so far is Camila Vargas (Falcon). She’s the separated wife of Epifanio Vargas (de Almeida), who runs the American side of the business. She seizes an opportunity presented by Epifanio’s political campaign, and is working on going into business entirely on her own, dealing directly with the Colombian cartels. Needless to say, this does not sit well with her former husband, and when she discovers he is also after Teresa – no more than a low-level runner in her Dallas, Texas organization – her interest is inevitably piqued.

So far, it has not been at all interested in romance, unlike LRdS, where Teresa’s various boyfriends and entanglements were a significant part of the show. This may develop down the road: for now, US Teresa has been too busy trying to survive. Likely as a consequence, she has also directly slain more people than Mexi-Teresa at the same point. The first came as the result of a drug deal/heist gone bad, and you could make a good case for self-defense. The killings in the final episode, however? Not so much. I sense she’s going to be considerably more “hands on” than LRdS, where Teresa delegated all the dirty work to her minions [I may be wrong, but I don’t recall her killing anyone personally until the shoot-out in the final episodes]

Where Queen really scores, however, is in its production values. Despite the solidity of the performances, Reina always felt like a soap-opera: largely enclosed in its sets and constrained by a budget that, while unprecendented by telenovela standards, was still low by comparison to American TV. That isn’t the case here: at its best, this even goes beyond television and has a cinematic feel, comparable with the likes of Traffic or Sicario. I particularly liked the use of music, which was certainly a lot more appropriate than the jaunty Norteño awfulness which permeated LRdS. [I should point out, my tolerance for country & western is equally low!] The electronic beats used here instead, felt a bit reminiscent of Miami Vice, or perhaps Giorgio Moroder’s work for Scarface, both of which are certainly relevant.

It’s a grittier version of the drug life too. In LRdS, you largely felt one or more degrees of separation from the harsh realities involved, with the drugs almost an abstract construct. There’s no such escape here, right from the opening episode when a drug mule has the packages she’s carrying burst in her stomach, with fatal results. But the biggest ace the show has so far is Vargas – a character not present at all in Reina, and neither in the book as far as I can tell. She’s part chess player, part grim reaper, with a voice which sounds like honey being slowly poured over sopapillas. She’s a fascinating, complex creation, beautifully portrayed by Falcon, and we’d have happily watched an entire series focused entirely on her.

Certainly, it’ll be interesting to see where the story develops from here. The first season ended with Epifanio ascending to the governorship of Sinaloa, and immediately exercising his new-found power, calling in the military against the cartel his ex-wife had just taken from him. Meanwhile, Teresa suffers a heart-breaking personal loss, yet rises above it to tell Camila, “I don’t work for you any more.” And, to nobody’s great surprise, there was a shock final twist, revealing something which wasn’t all that much of a shock, Reina having prepped me for it (albeit, a lot later there than in episode #13).  None of which diminished my interest in the next season, slated for summer 2017. While fans of the telenovela may choose to differ, I think any neutral would likely agree that this is a more polished and effective rendition of the story.

Star: Alice Braga, Veronica Falcon, Peter Gadiot, Joaquim de Almeida

queen3

Good Morning, Killer

  By

★★
“And I still don’t know the significance of the title.”

gmkBased on a 2003 novel of the same name by April Smith, I can’t speak to the novel. but this TV movie doesn’t do enough to differentiate itself from… Well, from anything else to be honest; the overall impact here, is of a not-exactly superlative episode of one of those three-letter acronym shows Chris enjoys watching [star Bell was part of one such – JAG]. After a young girl is abducted from a shopping mall, FBI special agent Ana Grey (Bell) and her colleagues have to try and locate the perpetrator, who appears to be a previously-unknown serial predator (Jordan), who kidnaps his victims and rapes them over a period of time, tormenting their families with telephone calls, before releasing the traumatized victims with a chilling reminder, “You won’t forget me.” Meanwhile, Ana is having relationship issues, both with her boyfriend, fellow detective Andrew Berringer (Hauser), and a colleague who doesn’t appear to appreciate the need for intra-departmental loyalty.

It’s hard to know quite where to put the blame for this one, but I think it’s mostly on a poorly-written script that, particularly, in the first half, wanders around without focus. If they had established the characters first, on both sides of the case, they could then have incorporated the relationship stuff, but instead, it feels as if you are supposed to care about these people, before the film has given you any reason to do so. Maybe you are supposed to have read the book first? If so, I didn’t get that particular memo. Perhaps it doesn’t help either that this is based on the second Ana Grey book – the first remains unfilmed – an over-zealous attention to remaining faithful to the source may explain why the makers don’t bother to explain as much as they should about who anyone is.

Bell is competent enough, and the second half of the film is generally an improvement, concentrating more on the case and less on the soap-opera bubbles. In particular, the perp’s fondness for taking pictures of his victims during their ordeals, is a chilling element that comes over well in the film. However, there are some glaring loose ends, such as the fate of the homeless man who is, apparently, a key witness, and the climax, which sees Ana taken hostage by the prime suspect, doesn’t exactly provide a great deal of confidence in her abilities as an FBI agent. It seems to be going for a Silence of the Lambs vibe there; it doesn’t come anywhere close, and you can only presume a great deal was lost in translation from page to screen, given this is part of what appears to be a fairly well-regarded series of books.

Dir: Maggie Greenwald
Star: Catherine Bell, James Jordan, Cole Hauser, Genevieve Buechner

The Big Bad

  By

★½
“What big eyes you have…”

bigbad1Few things are more irritating than a film where the characters clearly know what’s going on, they just refuse to let the audience in on it, jabbering away to each other in cryptic dialogue that obscures more than it reveals. Not that a movie’s script has to lay everything out from the start, or can’t be subtle. But if you are going to go for an understated approach, this has to be tempered with sufficient well-handled exposition, that the viewer can understand who the players are, and care about them and their role in proceedings as they unfold. It’s here where this falls down, repeatedly. There’s one conversation which ends with the heroine, Frankie Ducane (Gotta), being banged on the head and shoved into the trunk of a car. Who did this? Why? Where is he taking her? None of these questions are ever adequately answered, and I reached the end of the film, with only a vague idea of who Frankie was, or her situation.

As the title hints, and her fondness for swigging shots of liquid silver emphasizes, this is a werewolf movie, with Frankie on the bloody trail of Fenton Bailey (Reynolds), the man responsible for her current situation. There’s an apparent clock running – at one point, we see a notebook with “3 DAYS LEFT” written in important-sized letters, but like so many elements here, its significance is never explained, and there no sense of any particular impetus to the plot resulting from it. Mind you, this is a film which is happy to spend quite a bit of time with Frankie chatting to a girl in a bar – apparently populated entirely through a casting call at the local roller derby bout – in an effort to discover what she knows about Fenton. This probably goes on far longer than necessary, but you have to respect a film which is prepared to let things unfold at their own pace, even if the audience might be tapping pointedly on their wrists and making hurry-up sounds.

What does work, better than the plot, is the atmosphere, feeling like a modern-day version of a Grimm Fairy Tale, with Gotta making a decent enough Red Riding Hood – one more interested in vengeance, than visiting Grandma with a basket of goodies. Frankie’s dagger proves quite an effective equalizer, and proves much needed when she wakes up from her trip in the trunk, to find someone has an eye on her eyes, as it were. This sequence was probably the most effective, in terms of being a modernized legend, even though its relevance is dubious. It’s an infuriating failure as a whole, feeling too much like a short film needlessly stretched to feature length (though at 78 minutes, barely so), without enough thought given to whether it possesses sufficient meat to sustain its running-time.

Dir: Bryan Enk
Star: Jessi Gotta, Jessica Savage, Timothy McCown Reynolds, Alan Rowe Kelly

Earthkiller

  By

★½
“In space, no-one can hear you yawn.”

earthkillerIf one and a half stars is likely kind, I know how much work goes into micro-budget film-making, and this is clearly a labour of love. However, if ever there were evidence more than that is needed… this would be it. At some point in the future, an android, “Helen” (Kurtz), reboots to find herself on a space-station with no memory of why she is there. It turns out, she was part of a mission sent to the space-station, involving a massive weapon located there, capable of creating a black hole and destroying the Earth below. Some want to destroy the weapon; others want to set it off, in order to fulfill religious prophecy. Helen initially assists the former side, but as her memories return, it turns out that may not have been her originally programmed mission. As well as the fanatics, there are also nanobot-infected zombies [I think – my notes grew a bit vague on the details of some elements, as my interest waned!] who must be avoided or fought, for Helen to make her way through the station to the Doomsday device’s location.

Which would be okay, if the film-makers could deliver anything approaching the productions values necessary for this kind of epic science fiction. Instead, we get what feels like the same three sets, shot repeatedly from slightly different angles, in a touching and severely-flawed belief that no-one will notice; “zombie” make-up which looks like an Alice Cooper look-alike contest got left out in the rain; and perhaps one of the worst “acting” performances of the decade. Though, I have to say, this does not belong to Kurtz, who acquits herself adequately as a robot. She spends the first 20 minutes of the movie naked, for no reason ever satisfactorily explained, and I wondered is she was going to go all Lifeforce here. Kurtz is – how can I put this? – more reminiscent of Tilda Swinton than Mathilda Maym and it’s about the least erotic nudity you can imagine, but I kinda respect her and the director for that. Anyway: no, the acting Razzie for this one gives to whoever is playing her boss, who delivers his lines with considerably less enthusiasm than the zombies. It’s certainly memorable; unfortunately, for all the wrong reasons.

Throw in poorly conceived and badly-executed CGI blood (something I generally dislike, as rarely used except out of laziness), exposition that manages to be uninteresting during the minority of the time when it is intelligible, and digital effects that run the gamut from acceptable – the space-station exteriors aren’t bad – to 8-bit video game, and you have something which even the best will in the world can’t save. Sometimes, reining in enthusiasm is good; sometimes, realizing you aren’t yet ready for public consumption is better.

Dir: Andrew Bellware
Star: Robin Kurtz, Lisa Marie Fabrega, Stacey Raymond
a.k.a. Total Retribution

The Godmother

  By

★★★
“Romain in place”

godmotherDefinitely not to be confused with the upcoming film starring Catherine Zeta-Jones as Colombian drug-queen, Griselda Blanco, this is likely a much gentler piece of work. Jennifer (Anderson) in an English teacher, happily married to a Romanian accountant, Radu (Bucur) and with a young son, David (Iamcu). But her life is turned upside-down when her husband is arrested, for it turns out his main job was keeping the books for the area’s top mobster, Spanu (Alex). To prevent him from testifying, Spanu sends his goons after his accountant’s family, and Jennifer has to rely on her wits to survive. Eventually, she decides the best form of defense is attack, and sets up her own criminal organization, with some unlikely help in the shape of the local cops, some of husband’s book-keepers, and a former mobster turned monk.

It is, of course, all entirely implausible: in reality, a scenario like this would end in only one way, and would be neither gentle nor amusing. Fortunately, Spanu is largely incompetent, to the extent that it’s inconceivable how he could ever have made it to the top of the criminal underworld, and his minions are little better. Still, given that conceit, I spent most of the movie with a goofy smile on my face, watching “fish out of water” Jennifer coming to terms with her situation, and the oddball characters who surround her – the gangster monk, who spends most of the time drinking heavily and/or floating in the pool, was probably the most amusing. Though I do feel this missed a trick, not having a heroine whose character was located somewhere between Mary Poppins and Nanny McPhee, with a steely determination and implacable sense of propriety, e.g. scolding the villain for his poor table-manners. Still, Anderson brings a peppy likeability to the role. though the wrap-around section, concerning two street kids apparently finding her diary, doesn’t fit well with anything else.

It’s filmed in a mix of Romanian and English, which is a bit flaky at times, since some of the characters are clearly not acting in their native tongues. However, the script holds the threads together nicely, and even manages to find a way for the heroine to triumph – such an obvious conclusion, it doesn’t even count as a spoiler – that is not entirely contrived or impossible. Without giving too much away, it involves “turning” an operative sent into her camp, with the help of a strange medical student who sells body-parts on the side. While I’d like to have seen more action, that isn’t the real focus; however, it does show occasionally surprising invention, that allowed this to skate around its weaknesses.

Dir: Jesús del Cerro, Virgil Nicolaescu
Star: Whitney Anderson, Velea Alex, Stefan Iancu, Dragos Bucur

You’re Next

  By

★★★½
“Home not-so Alone”

yourenextErin (Vinson) goes with her boyfriend Crispian (Bowen) to meet his parents and the rest of his relatives at the family home, where the parents are celebrating their anniversary. There’s some friction between Crispian and his brother, but proceedings are even more rudely interrupted when a group of three masked psychopaths, who have already killed the two residents at the house next-door, turn their attentions to this residence. Armed with crossbows and machetes, and having blocked cellphone service, there seems little or nothing anyone can do, but wait to get picked off by the assailants. However, it turns out that Erin’s upbringing in Australia was an unusual one: her father was part of a survivalist group. As a result, what she does have, are a very particular set of skills, skills she has acquired over a very long career. Skills that make her a nightmare for people like the home invaders. Hang on: why am I suddenly typing with an Irish accent?

For a cheerfully cheap (the budget was only a million dollars) little feature, disguised behind a generic title – I confused it with No-one Lives, and a hat-tip to Dieter for straightening this out! – what we have here is actually effective and brisk. Though I’m not sure it merits the “black comedy” designation I’ve seen attached to it in various places: it’s straightforward home invasion stuff for the most part, even if we do discover a specific motivation for the attack. I’m not sure if that weakens or strengthens the movie. In terms of generating fear, a more effective approach is probably taken by The Strangers where, when asked why they were doing this, the response is simply, “Because you were home.” What does stand out, and why it qualifies here, is that Erin is, far and away, the only genuinely competent character in the film, and becomes increasingly impressive as the film develops. Initially, she’s as shocked as everyone else; once that has worn off, she first begins to take defensive measures, then gradually moves into offensive mode. By the end, the tables have been turned, and she’s the one doing the hunting.

The main problem is the attackers who, to be honest, are a bit crap, staggering around and falling for every trap like the burglars in Home Alone. Their complete lack of guns is also a bit odd: despite Erin’s background, this is set in America, not Australia, where such weapons would be a lot harder to come by. If you can get past these elements, and it’s not too hard to do so, there is plenty here to appreciate, especially for horror fans: genre icon Barbara Crampton plays the mom, director Ti West has a cameo as a resolutely non-commercial film-maker, and there is also one large tip of the cap to Night of the Living Dead, about which I can’t say any more. While the movie may not aspire to great art, not every work has to. Sometimes, knowing your limitations is the key to working within them, and that’s so here.

Dir: Adam Wingard
Star: Sharni Vinson, ‎Wendy Glenn, ‎Adam Wingard, ‎AJ Bowen

Deep Gold

  By

★★½
“Sea minus.”

deep goldI love reading IMDb reviews where half are “totally brilliant film-making!” [obviously by people related to the production, who have generally reviewed nothing else] and half are “worst movie ever!” More than half the votes here are either 10’s or 1’s: of course, the truth lies in the middle. This is proficient, with occasional aspirations to competence, along with some nice production values and scenery, yet founders mostly on a bad script, partly on a misguided belief that filming underwater is interesting, in and by itself. That probably hasn’t been true since Jacques-Yves Cousteau hung up his Undersea World snorkel at the start of the eighties. Maybe these sequences worked better in 3D, as originally shot?

It’s the story of two sisters, Amy (Pham) and Jess (Ong): the former is a free-diving champion, but the latter refuses to go into the sea [there are reasons for this, explained in flashback; they are, however, irrelevant. Of course, her hydrophobia is an obvious foreshadow of the movie’s climax]. Amy’s boyfriend is in the Air Force, but vanishes along with his plane, transporting a cargo of gold back to Manilla. The Air Force suspect he and Amy may have staged the disappearance to solve their financial problems, and so the sisters head for where reports indicate the aircraft went down. Which isn’t anywhere near where the search is taking place. Hmm. There, they team up with a local businesswoman (Prudent), and also travel journalist, Benny Simpson (director Gleissner pulling double-duty), only to find they are not the only people interested in recovering the golden treasure.

I’m not the only person to have reviewed this and been reminded of the work of Andy Sidaris, with which it shares a tropical location and actresses cast more for their looks than their variable thespian abilities. This does have a glossier sheen; on the other hand, if you’re hoping for any nudity, look elsewhere. I think the main problem is the old “acting in your second language” issue, which appears to be the case for most of the cast. Pham has to do most of the heavy lifting, and nails only about one line in three, with others sounding more as if they are delivered through phonetic translation. When things are in motion and SCUBA-free, the film fares rather better. The action scenes are decently staged, the pick likely being Amy getting chased around a library by a slew of thugs, though the final ship-board encounter is nicely done as well. However, embarrassing sloppiness counters this, such an abduction scene where it looks like the same henchman climbs into the car twice, once in the back and once in the front, while Amy’s hands mysteriously get bound, albeit with the sort of constraint she can literally shake off.

It works mostly as a very nice promotional piece for the local tourist board, and if you’re looking for something pleasant looking and possessing absolutely no depth, you could do a lot worse. However, the more you look at this in detail, the more you will likely find yourself going, “Hang on…”, and that’s even before a final credits sequence where the actual local mayor reveals some kinda important storyline information. It’s just another part of a plot which strains even my credulity, and leaves the movie, if not sunk, certainly holed below the waterline.

Dir: Michael Gleissner
Star: Bebe Pham, Jaymee Ong, Michael Gleissner, Laury Prudent

Lady Ninja: Reflections of Darkness

  By

★★
“Weapons of mass seduction.”

ladyninjaThis has more than slight echoes of the Female Ninjas, Magic Chronicles series, sharing the feudal setting, along with similar… unconventional attack forms by the protagonists. That’s unsurprising, since both are apparently based on Ninja Tsukikagesho, by Yamada Futaro. And, just to confuse matters further, the IMDb states that part 6 of FMMC shares the title here. Whether this might be the IMDb getting confused, I can’t say. I wouldn’t blame them if so, because the entire plot here is more muddled than enlightening. It takes place in the 1730’s, when Shogun Yoshimune and his deputy, Muneharu, were struggling for control. As a way of fomenting dissent by embarrassing him, Muneharu drags out the Shogun’s former concubines; to stop this, Yoshimune sends a group of his top female ninjas, under Tsurugi (Abe), to kill the women before Munharu’s men can get to them, triggering a ninja war. Complicating matters, turns out one of the concubines may have had a bastard son by Yoshimune, and whoever gets proof of that lineage will really hold the whip hand.

However, the script gets bogged down in murky shenanigans, with poor differentiation between too similar characters – not helped by people pretending to be other people on more than one occasion. It might sound bad to say this, but when it seems 90% the men have the same hairstyle, and 90% of the women have the same hairstyle… Well, I could have done with a scorecard, shall we say. Instead, save perhaps for Tsurugi, who does get painted with a bit more depth, the only way you can tell them apart is by the special magical attacks, the names of which are conveniently yelled out as part of their execution, and which are certainly the most memorable aspect of the film. This starts with – and I wrote these down to be sure I got them right – the “Ninja Snake Penetrator,” then proceeds through “Ninja Milk of Death,” “Icicle Sword” and the “Echo-blade Weasel Attack,” before climaxing [and I use the word advisedly] with the “Memento of the Full-bloom Lotus” – not quite as innocent as it sounds. However, the action sequences are generally forgettable, even including the flurry of second-tier digital effects unleashed as a result of the special attacks.

The plot certainly has its share of twists and turns, but I can’t say I was enthralled by many of them, and the end result just doesn’t gel into anything more than very sporadically interesting. Just as with FNMC, fifteen years earlier, this proves that you need more than marginally inventive magic to make for an entertaining movie. Maybe it helps to have read the source novel, but I can’t say there’s enough here to make me put in any effort to that end.

Dir: Kôsuke Hishinuma
Star: Mari Abe, Shô Nishino, Yuri Morishita, Rika Miyama

Agency of Vengeance: Dark Rising

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★★★
“Hello, film poster. You appear to have my full attention.”

darkrisingThis makes a great deal more sense when you realize it’s actually a sequel, not only to Cymek’s earlier Dark Rising, but also the TV series that followed. The US/Netflix title and blurb cunningly manage to avoid mentioning this, which certainly explains the sense that you have walked into the middle of a story. For instance, none of the characters are apparently fazed by the fact that interdimensional portals have opened, allowing all manner of icky creatures to enter this Earth’s realm from a “Dark Earth”. It’s up to the Rising Dark Agency, a Government department [apparently staffed by about six people] to keep the resulting mayhem in check. Chief among its operatives are Jason Parks (Cannon, a dead-ringer for Dolph Lundgren) and Summer Vale (Kingsley, also the director’s wife), whose combination of human and demon DNA you have probably noticed on the poster. And are perhaps still staring at.

Anyway, beginning with the munching of Summer’s fiance by a giant worm during their wedding ceremony, this installment sees the arrival of wannabe deity Mardock, who appears to be trying to target Summer, as the biggest threat to his/her/its rise to power. As the RDA investigate, they also come under attack, and it’s up to the small band of survivors, along with demonic nerd Bulo (Nahrgang), to try and prevent the resurrection of Mardock. But before they get there, they discover that somebody left for dead in a previous episode, might not be quite as deceased as thought, and has now switched sides, largely out of bitterness at being abandoned.

At the risk of blowing my own trumpet, I did a much better job of explaining the plot than the film does, and it’s less a story that you follow, than one where you cling on to the roof-rack, presuming that it will all make sense, or at least come to a halt eventually. Hard to know how much blame is the makers, and how much the marketers for not mentioning all that has gone before. However, if you’re prepared to cut that aspect some slack, there are aspects that are fun, not least Kingsley, who seems to spend half the film in her underwear for one thinly-generated reason or other. It’s all in good fun though, and the non-serious tone is generally very obvious, most particularly in Bulo, though his character occasionally veers close to the line where endearing becomes irritating. It’s nice to see a matching villainess as well, with a similar… ah, taste in costumes, and I’ll confess that despite a budget well short of the imagination, overall, I was entertained, and left with a non-zero interest in going back to check out the previous installments. Hopefully, they will make rather more sense than this one.

Dir: Andrew Cymek
Star: Brigitte Kingsley, Landy Cannon, Julia Schneider, Nug Nahrgang