Tag: 2021

The Way

  By

★★½
“Well, I did not see THAT coming…”

I think it has been a long time since a film has so completely yanked the carpet out from under me. We might have to go back all the way to David Lynch’s Lost Highway, and that was 1997. So it has been a while. I’m not sure if it works here. It did in Highway; I’m just uncertain whether Khalili is as good a film-maker as Lynch. It’d likely require a second viewing to decide, and I wasn’t that impressed elsewhere to justify a repeat. I will remember it though, and that’s more than can be said for many of the films I review here. So it was not a complete waste of time. 

It’s the story of Jane Arcs (Jane), whom we first meet as she is on death row, preparing for her execution. Over a decade previously, she had killed another woman during an underground mixed martial-arts match, and was subsequently sentenced to death for it. Initially bitter and still filled with rage, in jail she met Qi Gong Master Xin (Wong), and learned from her how to manage her emotions, through both physical and mental training. Now, Jane is considerably more at peace with her imminent death than others around her. Most notably, guard Max Stone (Watson), who has come to care for Jane over the previous 13 years, and will go to any lengths to stop her being executed. 

This is, at least for the first hour, more of a redemptional drama than anything. There are a lot of flashbacks to Jane’s life on the outside, and we see what happened there. First, there’s the fight in question: while undeniably brutal, I am still not sure why it was deemed a capital crime. That’s especially so, given the extenuating circumstances which we then see, going a long way to explaining why Jane was overflowing with anger at life. Oddly – and this is another Lynchian touch – Watson also plays Ben Jorden, the father of Jane’s child on the outside. Otherwise, though, it’s a fairly straightforward story, albeit one that leans heavily into cliché. For instance, Xin often sounds more like a fortune cookie, saying things like, “The only respect you need is self-respect.”

And then… Wait, what just happened? You will take a few minutes to figure that out, and even when you do, you may well not be able to wrap your head around it adequately. I even Googled for an interview with the director, hoping to get some explanation. No dice – and in the end, it may be better that way. I suspect it might well fall short of satisfying. By the end, I was left with a furrowed brow, and it’s perhaps a little unfortunate. For if the story is otherwise too obvious and with gaps in its logic, I did appreciate the performances. Jane puts over an inner strength that is impressive. Shame it is so thoroughly overshadowed by the abrupt left-turn towards the end.

Dir: Dastan Khalili
Star: Eli Jane, Kelcey Watson, Joan Wong, Lorenzo Antonucci

No Way to Escape

  By

★★★
“Just deserts.”

This is a sprightly and energetic Chinese knock-off, borrowing heavily from Resident Evil and Aliens in particular. There’s a research lab deep underground, in the middle of the Gobi Desert, which has suddenly gone radio silent. The research they were doing there was… well, I’m not 100% certain quite what it involved. While a lot of the dialogue in this is in “English”, I’m using quotes advisedly. Especially on the scientific front, it seems to be more of an enthusiastic word-salad, like “by chance, precise data from the gamma variable appear,” throwing jargon about radiation and DNA splicing into the mix, in lieu of anything coherent. Anyway, it seems Ohm Technology are into some fairly shady shit, to nobody’s surprise.

A group is sent out to find out what happened, and more importantly, bring everything back on line. The only man who can do it, apparently, is Doctor Haven, a kinda autistic super-scientist, who’d like to get his hands on the data. To protect him, three Lara Croft-alikes are assigned: leader Bai Zhi (Yu), the flirty Bi Jiao (Wu); and veteran Gui Che (Xu). Also coming along are a bunch of cannon fodder, and leader of the mission, Principal Gabon (Ger), who is clearly evil because he’s played by a Westerner. They haven’t even reached the base before they encounter the local fauna: scorpions that can swim through human flesh like water. So if you stand on one, it’ll pop out the top of your head.

These are, at least, only normal sized. But when the expeditions enters into the base, the women are appalled to discover this isn’t the rescue mission intended, with any survivors being ruthlessly gunned-down by Gabon’s men. [Those foreign devils…] Turns out he intends to seize the technology and use it for nefarious purposes, but not everyone is in favor of this. The heroic trio rebel, Dr. Haven refuses to get the systems running again, and even some of his own men decide they can’t in good conscience take part in Gabon’s plan. All of which would be merely morally interesting, if it weren’t for the F-sized version of the scorpions roaming the facility due to leakage of gamma rays. Or something.

You’d be hard-pushed to identify anything new or particularly innovative here. But it keeps moving, without significant downtime, and there’s enough background to make it feel more than you’re just watching a video-game. For instance, Bai Zhi is there partly to look for her fiance, who worked at the base before he suddenly vanished. There’s also a lot more interaction between the characters and the monsters than we usually see in this kind of thing. Though the quality of the combination FX is uneven, and the editing of the action is sometimes choppily incoherent. No great matter. This is a film pitting soldiers against freakin’ giant scorpions, and firmly checks the boxes of what you would want and expect from such a production. 

Dir: Yun-Fei Lu
Star: Sai-Chu Yu, You-Xuan Wu, Dong-Mei Xu, Dieter Ger

This review originally appeared on Film Blitz.

Ebony Hustle

  By

★½
“Credit where credit is due…”

When the best part of a movie is the opening credits, we have a problem. That’s the case here, with an 007-influenced montage that feels as if it cost more than the entire rest of the film to put together. However, by that point, the movie was already on thin ice, because the volume of the music was roughly three times that of dialogue in the pre-credit scene. Lunging repeatedly for the button on the remote is always a red flag for any indie movie, and proved accurate here. The same goes for the gratuitous name-checking of much better black heroines, such as Christie Love and Cleopatra Jones. They just draw attention to the deficiencies here – not that they are hard to see.

The unusually named heroine (Lamb) is a former stripper turned insurance fraud investigator, and unwillingly accepts a case to look into the disappearance of 16-year-old girl, Ny’Kia (Elizabeth). She had become part of the retinue of former gangster turned pastor, Caleb Truth (Chandler, who looks like you ordered Snoop Dogg on wish.com). He is supposedly a reformed character, and speaks all his lines in rhyme. This is an affectation which grows steadily more annoying, every time he speaks. It seems it may even have irritated the makers, because that thread – which I’d have thought would have been the main plot – is ended, alongside Truth’s doggerel rapping, with relatively little trouble by Ebony, when there’s still half an hour to go.

The remaining time is largely filled by Ebony’s romantic entanglements. She’s a highly predatory cougar, which seems something of a double standard, considering the way she goes after Caleb Truth, for activities that aren’t really that different. There are also far too many unconvincing FaceTime conversations, though at least these are largely free of the audio issues which infect many of the face-to-face scenes. There is one which does work, between Ebony and former husband, police detective Wayne (Stevenson), both expressing regret over their shared past. Both actors are convincing, and it offers a rare moment of emotion which feels genuine here. It helps it’s understated and quiet, standing in sharp contrast to the shrill yelling and show-boating which permeates just about every other moment.

I can see where the makers were trying to go. It’s just that they managed to ignore all the elements which made black heroines of the seventies so memorable. Here’s a clue, it wasn’t flirty chat-chat with younger men over the telephone. Not to say the likes of Foxy Brown weren’t sexual creatures: it just never felt it was their main raison d’etre. Here, it feels like… well, Ebony may have left the strip-club, but the strip-club never left Ebony. Her crime-fighting trails in, a long way behind and seeming little more then an afterthought. Any time this feels like it might be achieving its ends, something happens – such as Ebony’s boss appearing, an early contender for worst actor of the year – and it all comes crashing back to earth.

Dir: Jamezz Hampton
Star: Michelle l Lamb, Andrew Chandler, Ryan Elizabeth, Joel Stevenson

The Secret Weapon

  By

★★★½
“Woo’s the boss.”

After enjoying The Kill List, I thought I’d dip my toe again into the new wave of Thai girls with guns films with this, and it’s another solid entry. As there, the main influence seems to be Hong Kong action cinema of the nineties; this in particular falls into the category of “heroic bloodshed.” But there’s a clear nod to Nikita as well. Joy Phaendin is a soldier whose father, Maj. Gen. Phaendin (Sawasdee), is a member of a special operations team, killed while on a mission. Filled with a desire for revenge, Joy signs up for the same unit, under the command of Maj. Gen. Nakhom (Midaim), and becomes a “Busaba” for the government. This is “A person without a name, without a face, without friends, without a history.”

Being one requires absolute obedience to three rules. #1: When accepting a mission, you have to complete it without any hesitation or question. #2: Do not leave any trace that will lead back to the organization. #3: If you need to give your life on a mission, you must do so. The training is particularly brutal. When it comes down to the final two candidates for the spot, they’re ordered to kill each other. Joy is saved here by the other girl, known only as #34 (Wongtipkanon), taking her own life, the two women having formed an attachment. Joy a.k.a. #29 is then tasked with taking out, one by one, the organization who were responsible for her father’s death. Or so her commanding officer says, anyway.

You will not be surprised to learn that this is hardly the truth, the whole truth or nothing but the truth. When she spots a tattoo matching her father’s on one intended victim, Joy realizes there’s more going on that she has been told, and pulls her shot. From here on, it’s a wild ride of betrayal, deceit and counter-deceit, as well as an awful lot of slow-motion – again, it’s clear the makers have seen a lot of John Woo films. A good rule of thumb is, don’t believe anything the film tells you. This is true straight from the off, with a fifteen minute sequence where Joy is playing the part of a property agent, that is not what it seems. 

Thereafter, much the same applies, and it does become a bit of a stretch. Having one character “come back from the dead” is pushing it; when it happens more than that, you’ll get a sad shake of my head. It’s a pity, since there is a good deal here to admire, such as its bleakly downbeat attitude which goes through to the rolling of the credits. Yoosuk is okay in the action scenes; she’s more than okay when being super-intense. For example, when marching towards the bad guys, spraying automatic gunfire, with the blood of someone dear, spattered across her face. Enthusiastic squibbing is the order of the day too, and I was definitely left interested in seeing further examples from this promising new source.

Dir: Nopachai Jayanama
Star: Pichana Yoosuk, Napassakorn Midaim, Wanchana Sawasdee, Ticha Wongtipkanon

Divide & Conquer

  By

★½
“If this is empowerment…”

There are times where I regret my choice of pastime. It means I end up watching things for this site that I would never give the time of day, given the choice. This is one such, having endured the almost physically painful experience which was Hellfire, starring the same three lead actresses, and to which this appears a loose sequel. In this case, Mercedes also took over directorial duties, and… it’s actually somewhat of an improvement. Still not good, by any objective standards, let’s be clear. Yet there’s a punky and unrepentant attitude that clearly doesn’t care what I, or anyone else, thinks. Put it this way, if you want a film which includes close-up shot of the director having a pee, here you go. Offense is its raison d’etre.

The story has (loosely) Greek goddesses Lilith (Divine), Athena (Peach) and Toxie (Mercedes) roaming the blasted hellscape of Tromaville, taking on the evil forces of misogyny and white supremacy, mostly through the superpowers of really bad acting and highly deliberate offense, it would appear. This probably teaches its peak with a recreation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy in a strip-club. It feels as if Mercedes simply threw every idea of questionable taste she could come up with into her script, and filmed the result, largely using her pals. If you want a puppet, voiced by Troma movies head honcho Lloyd Kaufman, sitting on the toilet and delivering a lecture on artistic freedom. Again: here you go.

There’s even stuff here I can’t describe, without getting down-ranked by Google for explicit content. Trust me. There is certainly an aesthetic here, and it’s one to which Mercedes is clearly 110% committed, and personally too. [Is it exploitation if you’re doing it yourself?] But it’s not a style which overlaps more than fractionally with my tastes. I’ve been a fan of Troma since back in the days of Toxic Avenger (its star Torgl has a supporting role as creepy motel owner N. Bates). That looks like a Christopher Nolan movie in comparison to Divide & Conquer. Philosophically, I tend to have a different view of empowerment. To me, it doesn’t mean women copying the worst of male behaviour, as seems too often the case here e.g. rape.

There are times when restraint is not necessarily a bad thing. If you drop F-bombs every second word, eventually people are going to tune you out, and this is pretty much the cinematic equivalent. About half way through, as the story meandered its way to, then past, a confrontation with a geriatric Adolf Hitler and his pet werewolf (there’s a phrase I didn’t expect to be writing today!), I simply lost interest. There’s only so much toilet humour, potty-mouthed dialogue and amateur acting I can take in one sitting. This provides an all-you-can-handle buffet of those things, with enough left over to feed your entire family the next day. I prefer something a little less in your face. Quite often here, literally.

Dir: Mercedes
Star: Irie Divine, Knotty Peach, Mercedes, Mark Torgl

Vengeance Served Cold

  By

★½
“More like undercooked. “

At the age of fifteen, Madison Michaels saw her prostitute mother beaten and killed by Renegade (Cross), a vicious local pimp. His homicide goes unpunished. Ten years later, Madison (Linton) is a counsellor, trying to help drug addicts and hookers get off the streets. She discovers that Renegade is still abusing women, and gets no help from the police, with Detective Straker (Williams) saying he can do nothing based on her hearsay. Against the advice of her friends and sister Lydia (Jeffries), Madison hatches a plan to take the pimp down, and clean the streets of thus piece of scum. Naturally, it doesn’t initially go quite as planned, with the trap set for Renegade backfiring, followed by betrayal from an unexpected direction. 

Even at seventy-five minutes long, this somehow manages to outstay its welcome in short order. On a shallow level, I eventually understood why Renegade may not have been prosecuted, yet the explanation falls far short of being fully convincing. It is still more than we get, in terms of a reason why Madison waited ten years before deciding to take any action. It’s not like she or Renegade went anywhere. Sure, she’s learning martial arts from her (not particularly awe-inspiring) sensei. Yet the level which she has reached doesn’t seem, for example, to reach any kind of critical threshold, such as the one necessary to take down a sadistic street thug with no moral qualms. In two minutes, I came up with a better plot: Madison went away, joined the army, and is now back, armed with the skills she needs to take on Renegade.

The poverty of the production too often gets in the way. Witness, for example, the penultimate scene, which was clearly filmed on a windy street, resulting in the dialogue being inaudible over the breeze rattling across the mics. Walmart sells a variety of wind covers for microphones at a cost of less than ten dollars. That this was, apparently, beyond the movie’s resources, tells you all you need to know. Similarly, the supposedly “brutal” death of the heroine’s mother consists of not much more than the actress lying on the floor with her eyes open. As a result, this rarely manages to approach a convincing depiction of life on the streets.

Some slight credit is due to Davis for exercising restraint on the soundtrack. It actually feels like it belongs to a proper film, rather than the director’s Spotify on random, as is usually the case in these films. This is not enough to overcome a script that simply does not have enough going on, even at the short duration present. There’s no particular sense of escalation, and what should have been the climactic face-off between Madison and – let’s remember, since the movie seems all but to forget this – the man who killed her mother in front of her, falls flatter than a day-old crepe. To continue the culinary metaphor of the title, I’m sending this one back to the kitchen.

Dir: Shaan Davis
Star: Kameka Linton, Aviator Cross, Chyrod Williams, Brandy Jeffries

Stowaway

  By

★½
“Doesn’t hold water.”

I had quite forgotten that Rose was part of John Wick: Chapter 2 in 2017. That should have been a gilt-edged opportunity on which she could have built over the following years to become a top action actress. But she managed to squander the chance, getting herself fired from Batwoman, and then making a series of largely unimpressive vehicles, which came and went without any impact. Perhaps it’s a symptom of insanity, in the sense of repeating the same action, hoping for a different result, but we keep reviewing them here. The Doorman, Vanquish and now this, which is certainly not going to rejuvenate anything. Its sole point of note is more or less it being a home invasion movie, which is set on a ship.

The heroine is Bella (Rose), who gets a call out of the blue, informing her that her long-estranged father has died, and left her a boat. This isn’t any boat either. It’s a $10 million, ocean-going yacht, much to her astonishment. Taking advantage of it, she crashes out on it one night. The next morning, she awakens to find it heading out to sea, the craft having been hijacked by her late father’s former associate, Meeser (Grillo), and his two henchmen. They are intent on breaking into the safe on board, which they believe contains $80 million in gold. Bella’s presence on the boat is just as unexpected to them, as they are to her, and threatens to pose a major problem in their plan to crack the safe and scuttle the ship.

This really does the bare minimum in just about every area. The villains are the Leader, the Psycho and the Nice One, while the only surprising thing about Bella is that she finds someone willing to have a one-night stand on the boat [really, that crew cut does nothing for me]. We get far too much creeping around the boat, though when the heroine does go toe-to-toe with one of these ex-military guys, she’s inexplicably able almost to match them. Though I did laugh at her response when she’s asked where she learned to fight, spitting back “Prisoner Cell Block H,” a joke likely lost on most non-Australian viewers.

It all proceeds in an utterly predictable fashion. Show Bella a picture of your family? You’re dead. Call the coastguard? You get a visit from Capt. Oblivious. The contents of the safe come as a shock only to Meeser and company, and once you’ve seen the explosives intended to scuttle the ship, there are no prizes for guessing things will end in a poorly-rendered and thoroughly unconvincing CGI explosion. Even Grillo, one of the more reliable of B-movie bad guys, isn’t able to do anything to sail this vessel out of the doldrums in which it quickly is becalmed. It begins to look like Rose’s career may be irreparably holed below the waterline, and is certainly sinking fast. I think that’s probably enough nautical metaphors for the time being.

Dir: Declan Whitebloom
Star: Ruby Rose, Frank Grillo, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Luis Da Silva Jr.
a.k.a. The Yacht

Ouija Japan

  By

★★
“Battle Royale, with cheese.”

This is a film with a really interesting idea; unfortunately, it’s one where the execution (and, indeed, the executionS) is not good enough to do it justice. There are just too many missteps to consider it successful, in more than intermittent spurts. These begin with having a heroine called Karen (Sekiya). I’m not sure if writer/director Kato is aware of the implications that name now has in the West, but I did spend much of the film waiting for her to ask to speak to the manager. Here, she has moved to Japan with her husband (Abe), and six months in, is having trouble fitting in. She’s struggling between her limited knowledge of the local language, and the bitchy behaviour of the other local wives, led by Akiyo (Kodaka).

She does have one friend, Satsuki (Chiba), who has her back. Still, it’s with some trepidation that Karen agrees to go on an overnight trip with the group. She has good reason to be concerned, as a session with Kokkuri-san, the Japanese version of the ouija board, brings down the wrath of a local fox spirit. In an rather odd development, the spirit pits the 16 people present against each other, in a Battle Royale style hunt from which only one can survive. As an added, technological twist, each gets an app on their phone, where they can, in effect, trade their own life-energy for power-ups, such as weapons or the ability to see what other players are doing.

In the right hands, with the right actors, and the right budget, this could have been immensely satisfying, perhaps along the lines of the glorious slaughter which was Tag. I’m unsure Kato is the right hands, am certain these aren’t the right actors, and it definitely needs more money to deliver on the concept. The story unfolds in an awkward mix of English and Japanese, and a lot of the time, the actors seem to be reciting their lines phonetically. Sekiya is the main problem: it says something that Chiba delivers a more convincing performance in English, her second language, than Sekiya manages in her native tongue. Even discounting the knee-jerk reaction to her name, you’re given little reason to root for Karen.

I would have been happy to forgive much of the above, had the carnage been up to much. There are no shortage of actresses in Japan who know their way around a fight sequence. I guess they were all otherwise engaged the weekend this was shot. Even at the lower end of the budgetary spectrum, the likes of Hard Revenge Milly or High Kick Angels show what can be accomplished. This rarely reaches the level of competent, and the whole app mechanism feels more like an excuse for lazy plotting. Quite what the fox spirit – which is, incidentally, just someone in a mask – gets out of this is equally vague. For a first draft of a script, this is excellent. For a finished movie, not so much.

Dir: Masaya Kato
Star: Ariel Sekiya, Miharu Chiba, Eigi Kodaka, Takeaki Abe

Scavenger

  By

★½
“Not even worth it as scrap.”

This should be right up my alley. For it’s a grungy, post-apocalyptic story of revenge, which is heavy both on the carnage and the nudity. Throw in disapproving reviews containing lines like, “Downright nasty movie that takes all the worst bits of exploitation cinema and proudly puts it on display,” or “Scavenger is truly appalling,” and you’ll understand why it was fast-tracked for viewing. However, the weird thing is… those reviews aren’t wrong – it is a bad movie, just not for the reasons they espouse. The bigger problem is simply poor execution, in a way that manages to take the sex ‘n’ violence, and make it all painfully dull. Of all the cinematic sins, that’s one I find hard to forgive.

It takes place some years after a non-specific apocalypse, which has left cannibalism as the sole source of meat. Muscle cars, lingerie and cassette tapes are, apparently, still plentiful. Roaming this wilderness is Tisha (Churruarin), part bounty-hunter, part nomadic butcher. She accepts a commission from an old woman, to hunt down the scumbags who made her a whore and ruined her life – the usual. Tisha accepts, even waiving her normal fee. However, on arrival at the house of ill repute run by Luna (Lanaro), she quickly finds herself on the staff. She’s going to need to find a way out before she can complete her mission. It’s also going to get considerably more personal before all is said and done. 

I suspect the above sounds more fun than it really is. Part of this may be the dubbing, which appears to be both written and performed by people for whom English is a very distant second language at best. However, the main issue is simply far too many periods when zero of interest happens. Basically, after Tisha arrives at Luna’s, absolutely nothing of importance happens for a good half hour. Unless you consider the heroine being subjected to various indignities, up to and including being peed on, as “important”. In a film which runs only 71 minutes including credits, it’s a criminal waste of time, and the film has little or no chance to recover thereafter.

Its death nerve twitches feebly down the stretch, with some enthusiastic gore, Tisha wielding a bizarre weapon like a giant mixer to disembowel people. Yet it could do no more than provoke a slightly raised eyebrow. There are a couple of elements I did like: the heroine is not your typical post-apocalyptic babe; Churruarin has a rough edge to her presence that works in this setting. Generally, the set design is good too, selling the scenario effectively. These both need to be in the service of a considerably better script – one apparently less dedicated to enacting the bizarre sexual domination fetishes of the film-makers, which I do not share. ‘Truly appalling”? I probably wouldn’t give it that much credit, to be frank. 

Dir: Eric Fleitas, Luciana Garraza
Star: Nayla Churruarin, Eric Fleitas, Sofia Lanaro, Jose Manuel Solis Vargas
a.k.a. Carroña

Ditched

  By

★★
“No-one is innocent”

Paramedic Melina (Sila) regains consciousness to find herself in the back of her ambulance, along with her patient, Franson (Loranger), and the rest of the crew in various states of health. The vehicle had gone off the road and fallen into a ravine, along with the accompanying police car. It turns out they were transporting Franson and another prisoner to hospital when the crash took place – and it quickly becomes apparent that what happened was far from an accident. A posse of camo-clad hunters close in on them, led by Caine (Gray). Their mission to make all the vehicle’s occupants, both criminal and otherwise, pay for the sins of their pasts. They’ve brought with them the wronged parties in question, to exact bloody revenge.

An interesting idea, undone by a script which never manages to address basic questions, and which relies too much on ridiculous coincidence, necessary so that the film can happen. I mean, what are the odds of every person taking part in the convoy having a lethal secret hidden in their past, for which they escaped justice? I also am impressed with the organizational skills shown by the ghillie-suit wearing vigilantes. We can’t even get half our family to commit to a birthday party venue, never mind everyone trekking out to the middle of nowhere to take vengeance. Then there’s Melina’s concussion, which appears to have no impact at all five minutes later. On the other hand, she miraculously goes from needing to have explained to her, that a gun will stop someone “doing bad things,” to being a thoroughly competent operator of firearms.

The enemy outside are, initially somewhat menacing, at least when they are in stealth mode. Probably inevitably, given the nature of the plot, they eventually switch into unnecessarily verbose, with Caine the biggest culprit in the category of verbal oversharing. [I’m still trying to work out what the “quick and painful” death he orders at one point would be like: surely it’s one or the other?] I did enjoy some messy and vindictive violence, executed in gratifyingly practical ways. For example meted out by a chainsaw, or a shotgun, first to the groin, then to the face. The ending is admirably bleak, if not unexpected – and, again, relies on remarkable happenstance.

Sila does show some promise, and I liked how nothing much is particularly made about her character’s native American heritage. Such normality is exactly how it should be. Melina has a personable nature, and operates in a common-sense way, refusing to panic despite the increasingly bizarre and threatening situation in which she finds herself. There’s hints that unleashing Franson might be the only way to counter their attackers; this might have merited further discussion, though from this site’s point of view, we are happier to let Melina be her own saviour. We would also have been happier to have seen her part of a totally different script:  oh, well, maybe next time.

Dir: Christopher Donaldson
Star: Marika Sila, Kris Loranger, Mackenzie Gray, Lee Lopez