Tag: 2021

Never Back Down: Revolt

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★★★½
“The women are revolting!”

The “underground fighting” subgenre is among the most macho of action films, so it’s interesting that this entry doesn’t just feature a female protagonist. It’s also written and directed by women, with the lead villain also from that gender. It’s a particularly novel twist, considering the previous three installments in the Never Back Down franchise were, by most accounts, competent yet entirely generic, male-dominated movies. I say “by most accounts,” since I’ll confess to not having seen them. This is both a positive and a negative, I think. It means I can go into this with no preconceptions or expectations. On the other hand, it also means I can’t compare it to the rest of the series.

The latter is perhaps less important since it seems to be a sequel in name only, without any characters or story-line carrying forward. The heroine is Anya (Popica), a Chechen refugee now living in London with her brother, Aslan (Bastow), who takes part in those underground fights. After failing to throw a fight, he finds himself thirty grand in debt to some very nasty people. But Anya, who’s no novice with her own fists, gets an offer from swanky promoter Mariah (Johnston) to help pay off the arrears with a trip to Italy. Naturally, it turns out to be a front for “fight trafficking”, with the female participants held against their will, and shipped off to Albanian brothels, when they can no longer battle for the amusement of rich patrons. The title tells you the rest of the plot.

Madison isn’t without an action pedigree, having directed rather good short, The Gate, starring site favourite Amy Johnston. That’s currently being shopped around to become a feature; fingers crossed that happens. In the meantime, this would appear to match its predecessors in being competent, yet entirely generic. Everything unfolds exactly as you would expect, if you’re at all familiar with this kind of thing. It’s the kind of film where you can pop into the kitchen for 10 minutes without pausing it, make a sandwich and a cup of coffee, and return, safe in the knowledge that you’ll still be able to follow the plot perfectly well. I can neither confirm nor deny having done exactly that.

While predictable, it’s never dull though. Popica doesn’t appear to have any particular martial arts background, yet is decent enough to pass muster (even if you wonder what someone like Amy Johnston might have done in the part). There’s a laudable and complete lack of romance here, just the sibling relationship. I could probably have used some more action, even if the quality of what there is, is decent. I particularly liked the fate meted out to the chief guard. The size issue, inevitably present in mixed-gender fights, is overcome by having him held down by two women in a bath, while a third shanks him very enthusiastically. In comparison, Ghislaine Maxwell Mariah seems to get off easy, just when I was looking forward to her getting her just deserts. Still, solid enough to leave me anticipating what The Gate feature might be like.

Dir: Kellie Madison
Star: Olivia Popica, Tommy Bastow, Brooke Johnston, Nitu Chandra

The Burning Sea

  By

★★★½
“Oil and water clearly don’t mix”

I’ve enjoyed most of the recent Norwegian entries in the “disaster porn” genre. Films with titles like The Wave and The Quake, have delivered all the mayhem you could want, while doing a better job of characterization than their Hollywood equivalents. This is the first with a heroine, and provides a similarly slick mix of spectacle and emotion. The central character is Sofia (Thorp), an engineer for an undersea robotics company. When working on a sunken oil rig in the North Sea, she finds evidence indicating a massive geological slip is about to occur. Eventually convincing the authorities to take it seriously, they evacuate the area. Before that can be completed, the disaster occurs, and her husband, Stian (Bjelland) is trapped on a sinking platform. 

With the aid of her helicopter pilot sister-in-law, Sofia goes to the rig after an official rescue mission is rejected. Getting Stian out is just the start. For the oblivious authorities now plan to deal with the massive pollution threat by setting it on fire. [Hey, it is called The Burning Sea after all…] And that may not be the end of their problems either. It is relatively restrained on the destruction: despite that title, the inflammable ocean only occupies a few minutes of screen time. However, it feels considerably more grounded than most of its kind, with a ‘hard science’ basis which gives proceedings plausibility. Obvious disclaimer: I am not a geologist. However, factual accuracy aside, I respect the effort. 

I do still have some questions. The most… ah, burning one is the rather cavalier way Sofia abandons her young son Odin in an oil company office, with barely a word, so she can catch her ‘copter of doom. Scandinavian parenting must be very different, that’s all I can conclude. In general though, it is this very mundane nature of the protagonists which is the film’s strongest suit. Sofia, Stian, her colleague Arthur (Larsen) and even the inevitable oil company exec, the appropriately named Mr. Lie (Floberg), all seem real. Sure, they are heroic. Yet their bravery feels as if it comes from a combination of their personalities, with the difficult situations in which they are placed. 

I would have liked to have seen more of the destruction, to be honest. While what there is, is effective, this feels as if a lot of it takes place in the distance or even over the horizon. On the other hand, a lot of the movie was clearly shot on genuine oil production facilities, again adding weight to the realism. For disaster porn, it’s all surprisingly grounded, and that alone is refreshing enough to make it stand out in the field. You can imagine Sofia simply going back to wirk on Monday morning, and probably not even bothering to explain to Odin why Daddy has a large bump on his head. Or why the price of petrol on Norway just tripled overnight. 

Dir: John Andreas Andersen
Star: Kristine Kujath Thorp, Henrik Bjelland, Rolf Kristian Larsen, Bjørn Floberg

Witch Hunt

  By

★★★
“Not-so sunny spells.”

This is set in the everyday world – but with one major tweak. Witchcraft exists, and has been outlawed in the United States by the 11th amendment. Now, government agents from the BWI seek out witches, using tried and true methods from the middle ages (the “sink test” is exactly what it sounds like), and punish those found or suspected to be practicing witchcraft. But those opposed to this have set up an “underground railroad” to smuggle the targets over the boarder to Mexico. Teenage girl Claire (Adlon) is part of one such family, courtesy of her mom Martha (Elizabeth Mitchell); Dad is out of the picture. Claire is rather ambivalent about their activism, since she just wants to fit in at school. But the arrival of Fiona (Cowen) and her little sister, siblings whose mother was burned at the stake, forces Claire out of her professed neutrality,. Especially as the investigation of the unrelenting BWI Agent Hawthorne (Camargo) gets closer to home.

This was on wobbly territory in the first half, with a few storyline flaws. Why are witches outlawed? Was there some 9/11-like incident to trigger the crackdown? And why has the government built a wall to keep them in? If they want to leave, surely that’s a victory for everyone? I was also amused that, at least initially, it appears all witches are redheads. Because, as we all know, gingers have no souls. :) There was also a scene in which schoolgirls Claire and Fiona hang out in a bar: hey, this society may hate witches, but they’re clearly more relaxed about teenage drinking. However, that scene was also where the film suddenly “clicked”, as they discussed whether the ending of Thelma & Louise had been censored because they were witches. For whatever reason, thereafter I felt in tune with what the film was trying to do. The film may have been more than a little clunky with its social metaphors, yet it was still an interesting universe to depict.

This seems to ramp up markedly after Hawthorne shows up, putting an all-too human face on the hatred, and providing a good antagonist – something largely absent in the early states. There’s a very politeness to him which makes his actions all the more menacing – a little like Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds. The updating of old-time mythology surrounding witches also works very well: the modern version of the sink test involves the school swimming pool and, in a nod to the “kinder, gentler” era, scuba apparatus. Though as it turns out, this isn’t infallible: albeit without consequence or impact. All told, there are plenty of interesting ideas here: however, the movie falls short of merging them into an effective whole. If the generally decent performances do help paper over some cracks, there are enough still apparent, and the end result is actually a little infuriating. I suspect a moderately near-miss like this has a greater sense of unfulfilled potential than a complete disaster.

Dir: Elle Callahan
Star: Gideon Adlon, Abigail Cowen, Elizabeth Mitchell, Christian Camargo

The Blades Girls

  By

★★
“Not as sharp as I hoped.”

This takes place in early 15th century China, when Zhu Di (Zhang) had taken over the throne from his nephew, Wen Du (also played by Zhang), forcing the latter to go into hiding. Zhu is protected by his all-female Imperial Guard, under the leadership of Qing Lian (Xu). Actually, all seven of them have the surname Qing, which confused the heck out of me at first. But it actually makes sense, as they were taken in as babies, and brought up for the express purpose of protecting Zhu Di. Anyway, he gets word that Wen is to be found in a house of ill-repute, and send the Qings after him. Lian is injured in the raid, but her life is saved by Li Gexiao. When she returns to Zhu, however, he’s having none of it and orders her to kill Li, knowing he is actually the dethroned Emperor Wen. Lian opts not to carry out the emperor’s orders, and so the remaining Imperial Guard sisters are sent out by Zhu, to make her pay for her disloyalty.

As the still at the top shows, they certainly look the part, and are impressive when doing the slo-mo thing, marching around, clad all in black and with their capes flying behind them in the breeze. I also can’t complain about the overall production values to be found here. This looks like a reasonable amount of money was spent on it: period pieces are never cheap, and the costumes, buildings, etc. here look decent. However, this never manages to rise above the level of something you’d have on in the background as eye candy. Firstly, the action is not very good, with a style closer to the Western approach, of fast cuts that appear designed to conceal either a) the participants’ lack of skill, or b) that nothing particularly much is going on. Even in quantity it’s deficient, with large chunks where it’s too chatty. That’s if you can get past the opening narration, which left me feeling as if I should be taking notes for a history mid-term.

It doesn’t help that the other six Qing’s are pretty much interchangeable, with no real personalities to speak off, and only about three expressions between the lot of them. Despite the lengthy flashback to their training as kids, I never got much of a sense of sisterhood, which makes the final act kinda suspect. Not helping matters, and consigning it firmly to the “below average” category, is an ending which comes in the shape of another info-dump, then heading abruptly into the end credits, before even 65 minutes have passed. It thus feels less like a complete movie, than a pilot for a show on the Chinese equivalent of the CW. By which I mean, all style and precious little substance, beyond a romance that never manages to be more than lightly convincing. And like CW shows, it probably looks better in the trailer than the reality.

Dir: Wang Bin
Star: Xu Zilu, Zhang Dake. Hou Meng, Zhu Meixuan

Arisaka

  By

★★★★
“The wilderness strikes back.”

The heroine here, Mariano (Salvador), has to count as the baddest bitch I’ve seen in quite a long time. In terms of being a sheer, unstoppable force, she’s right up there with Jen from Revenge. There’s an absolute moral compass at play here, which combines a stoic refusal to harm the innocent, with utter ruthlessness when it comes to punishing the guilty. And she is judge, jury and especially executioner, when it comes to determining who’s who. Of particular note, most action heroines tend to kill only when directly threatened. Here however, once Mariano has decided you’re on the wrong side, death can come for you at any moment, without the need for any further provocation.

She is a Filipino police officer, part of a convoy taking the vice-mayor of a town to testify against a drug cartel. In particular, he’s going to name names of those in authority who are working with the cartel. Naturally, this can’t be allowed to happen, and it’s no surprise when the convoy is ambushed. Mariano is the sole survivor, and takes possession of the official’s cellphone, which contains the incriminating evidence. It’s not long before Sonny (Confiado), the cartel leader shows up, demonstrating a ruthless approach to the situation, and none too happy to discover he’s one short in the corpse department. He and his lackeys, including one of Mariano’s colleagues (Acuña), enter the jungle in pursuit of the wounded fugitive. She gets help from a young indigenous girl (Romualdo) and her family, but doing so exposes them to Sonny’s brutal wrath.

That’s when the gloves come off, thanks in part to Mariano being led to a stash of World War 2 weapons, left behind when local soldiers were trying to escape the Japanese. I’ll admit to raising an eyebrow at this. Would such weapons really be in perfect working order, after 75 years in a tropical jungle? Hey, I’m no expert. [Despite running this site, I haven’t even touched a gun since moving to Arizona in 2000!] With that as a given though, what follows is some remarkably splattery head-shots, as Mariano works her way through Sonny’s henchmen, and up to the inevitable confrontation with the man himself.

Interspersed in this are flashbacks to her back in the big city, being ordered to shoot someone entirely on the say-so of her boss, to prove her loyalty to her colleagues. That is about the extent of insight into Mariano’s character the film offers, but it’s enough to work, since actions here definitely speak louder than words. Indeed, the audience is likely better off than the heroine, getting subtitles for the native dialogue, a language which Mariano doesn’t speak. The intent is typically clear enough, even if a few scenes did leave me a little uncertain as to their purpose. Overall though, the result is an engrossing and always interesting watch, which doesn’t hold back, and takes no prisoners. Much like its central character.

Dir: Mikhail Red
Star: Maja Salvador, Shella Mae Romualdo, Mon Confiado, Arthur Acuña

Huge Shark

  By

★★★
“Girls with flare-guns”

Over in my non-GWG life, I’ve been on a bit of a kick of Chinese animal attack movies lately. These are kinda their version of SyFy original movies, though usually do have slightly better production values. I mean, how can you resist titles like The Bloodthirsty Bees or Big Octopus? Most are disposable fun, but I was surprised to find this one qualified for inclusion here. Two reviews out of one viewing? I’m fine with this. Especially, as initially it didn’t look particularly relevant, or even interesting. Four people on a boat trip, all of them ending up (largely through a series of poor choices) in the water. There’s the title creature in the area, so they opt to head for a nearby small boat, left abandoned because its occupants became a shark appetizer.

I didn’t like this very much at the start, with 3/4 of the characters being far more irritating than anything else. I was expecting the only man, Zhou Tianming (Huang), to be the focus. But, in a pleasant surprise, the film does not hang around, and disposed of him quickly. Indeed, barely by half way (although at only 68 minutes, this is never going to outstay its welcome), we are down to just one person left. The good news is, it’s the only non-irritating human, Shen Xin (Zhao). She’s a doctor and also comfortable in the water, being a good surfer and swimmer. These skills will be helpful, and the rest of the film is a marked improvement.

It is obviously inspired by things like The Shallows, particularly in the way Xin ends up stuck on a small, rocky outcrop. But I particularly liked the way the director did not feel the need to jazz things up thereafter, with flashbacks or the heroine bonding with a passing seagull. There’s nobody for Xin to speak to, so the rest of the film has almost no dialogue, and the silence adds to the tension. That’s especially the case during the night scenes, which are lit just well enough to make it seem that shadows are lurking everywhere around the rock, without requiring a pair of night vision goggles. 

It’s not hard to figure out where it’s going, especially after she gets her hands on a can of petrol and a flare gun. Though the kicker at the end – there’s usually a final moment in these films, where you think the creature is dead, then see its eggs or whatever – was definitely an unexpected treat. Overall, there’s half a good movie here, with Zhao making an effective and appealing heroine, once she gets the chance to be (translation: once everybody else in the film gets eaten). I understand the need to demonstrate the threat the shark poses. But I would really not have minded in the slightest, if they’d cut out all the soap-opera stuff about Tianming dumping his girlfriend, in favour of showing more from Xin’s battle for survival.

Dir: Huang Zhaosheng
Star: Zhao Yihuan, Huang Tao, Hong Shuang, Luan Mingyuan

Aileen Wuornos: American Boogeywoman

  By

★★
“Till death do she part.”

Almost twenty years after her execution, Aileen Wuornos remains a cultural icon. A very rare example of a genuine female serial killer, she was killed by lethal injection in 2002, after being convicted of six murders, and confessing to a seventh. The following year, Charlize Theron won an Oscar for her portrayal of Wuornos in Monster, though for me, the film about the killer which is the best, is Nick Broomfield’s, Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer. It certainly deserves to be ranked among my favorite documentaries of all time, along with its post-execution follow-up, Aileen Wuornos: Life and Death of a Serial Killer. Any other version is going to have an uphill struggle in comparison, and this peters out into a trashy, tabloidesque tale, with perilously little connection to reality.

It does have an interesting structure, with a Broomfield stand-in (Sturgeon) interviewing Wuornos, the night before her execution. At this point, the killer is played by Ashley Atwood, and the make-up crew have done an amazing job, along with Atwood’s capturing of her target’s mannerisms. Wuornos then tells the interviewer the story of her short-lived marriage to yacht club president Lewis Fell (Bell), almost five decades her senior. During this, she confesses to several murders, including that of her brother, though the interviewer pulls her up, as her version doesn’t align with the known facts. This “unreliable narrator” element has potential, but is rapidly discarded – a shame, as what the film offers instead is rather pedestrian.

Overall, it’s not much more than a truish-crime take on pot-boilers like the Poison Ivy franchise, in which attractive young gold-diggers embed themselves in families, before revealing their murderous natures. Here, the young Wuornos (List), considerably more attractive than the Death Row version, charms her way into marrying Fell after just a couple of weeks, much to the concern and chagrin of his daughter, Jennifer (Hearst). We’ve already established Wuornos’s violent tendencies, and these escalate until she murders the family lawyer, who threatens to expose what he has uncovered about her past, unless she takes his cash offer and leaves town. It all builds to a late-night confrontation on a boat in a storm, which I’m fairly certain is entirely fictional.

Farrands has carved out a niche for himself in this kind of not-so-true crime movie, his previous subjects having included Ted Bundy, the Manson killings and O.J. Simpson. Maybe they are more than a shallow skim, with stories which are not largely made up, and provide more insight into their subjects. This has little to offer, and doesn’t have the enjoyably salacious elements of Poison Ivy, even when Aileen is consummating her marriage to her husband. If it had told the story of Wuornos’s whole life, especially with more from Atwood, it could have been worthwhile, especially if embracing the uncertainty around her version of events. Instead, the only real positive result was discovering the two Broomfield documentaries are on YouTube. Guess what I’m watching tonight.

Dir: Daniel Farrands
Star: Peyton List, Tobin Bell, Lydia Hearst, Hamish Sturgeon

Yakuza Princess

  By

★★½
“Anyone for Brazillian sushi?”

The above odd combination is actually a fairly accurate assessment of what you have here. It’s a Yakuza action-thriller… but rather than being set in Tokyo or Osaka, is relocated to the Brazillian city of Sao Paolo. As an introductory credit helpfully informs us, this has the largest Japanese population of any city outside Japan. The story concerns two separate people’s quests for their pasts, which (to absolutely no-one’s surprise) turn out to be intertwined. One of these is Akemi (MASUMI), who as a young child was the sole survivor of a 1999 massacre of her Yakuza family back in Japan, was subsequently spirited away by allies and is now living in Brazil. The other is Shiro (Rhys-Meyers), an amnesiac who wakes up in hospital with no clue as to how he got there or his identity, except for a Japanese sword.

Also in the mix is Takeshi (Ihara), a Japanese mobster, who discovers Akemi’s location and heads to Sao Paolo to track her down. But what are his intentions? What are Shiro’s intentions? Indeed, what are anyone’s intentions? For this is a film which plays its cards very close to its chest, in a murky world where loyalty is hard to establish, and may not be what it initially seems. This makes for a rather frustrating viewing experience, since we are largely in the dark – along with the heroine, in all fairness. Still, Akemi and Shiro don’t even meet up until after 40 minutes have passed; up to which point, this has felt like two separate movies, taking place in the same location.

There’s also some stuff about the sword Akemi wields eating souls, though this can largely be ignored without impact. It all adds up to a rather excessive 111 minute running-time, and would likely have been helped by some choice editing. The action is occasionally not bad, but is definitely hampered by an editing style, which refuses to have the camera pointed in the same direction for longer than half a second. What the film does mostly have going for it, is solid cinematography, which makes Sao Paolo look like a side-street in Blade Runner. But outside of scraps of Portuguese dialogue, I didn’t get much Brazillian flavour, rendering the setting somewhat pointless.

There are some interesting or appealing moments, such as where Shiro sits down with a couple of veteran Yakuza to watch an old samurai flick, or Akemi’s escape with him over the roof-tops. However, there’s a lot of walking about and chit-chat, before we eventually get to the meat of the matter, and it’s not enough to sustain broad interest. I suspect it may have been better if the film had concentrated on either Akemi or Shiro, both in terms of providing greater focus, and in slimming down the running time. For what results here is something which seems a bit bloated, yet despite that, doesn’t imbue its characters with enough depth.

Dir: Vicente Amorim
Star: MASUMI, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Toshiji Takeshima

Suga Babies

  By

★½
“The drugs do work”

As usual, I begin with the normal disclaimer, that I’m about as far from the target audience as you could imagine. For this is an inner-city story about a drug war between three rival gangs in South Carolina: the Guardians, the Dynasty and the GeeChees. That said, however, there have been other films, with not dissimilar themes, which I have enjoyed. Most obviously, I am not the target audience for Pam Grier’s seventies output either. But those still kick ass. Even among the modern entries, there have been ones like Candy, which have felt authentic in their depiction of urban life. This, on the other hand, feels more like a no-budget hip-hop video.

About the main positive is that nobody makes a particular fuss about the Guardians being an all-girl gang, under the loose leadership of Naomi (Mott). They’re just part of the landscape, and everyone accepts that. The cause of the war is a new drug called sugar. In an odd twist, this actually makes people who take it better. We are told it literally cures cancer. I genuinely LOL’d at that. However, the interest of the authorities is limited to a spokesman for Big Pharma, who expresses concern at the street muscling in on “their” turf. It might have been interesting if it turned out Big Pharma had secretly released the drug to the GeeChees for distribution, as a test of its effectiveness. Sadly, not much is done with the concept, with this largely being an excuse for more black-on-black crime.

Indeed, that social crisis is expressly referenced during one of the multiple sequences of “The Buzz”, some chat-show. These really add very little, and the same goes for the supposed “courtroom” scenes. As well as being woefully unconvincing, I don’t think I ever worked out quite who was on trial, or for what. It’s all horribly disjointed, for example a lengthy scene that’s just multiple people picking up drugs from a motel room. Add in sequences which genuinely are no-budget music videos, and the dramatic pickings became painfully thin. There’s just one scene that has any impact. Mouse (McCoy) gets picked up by the Guardians and is found to be dealing sugar for the GeeChees. Her impassioned explanation that she did so because sugar helped her family, is certainly the movie’s emotional high-point.

According to the IMDb, the director had made eight feature films since her first in 2020. That’s an admirable work ethic, to be sure. But I can’t help thinking that churning out fewer movies might lead to an increase in their quality, because this definitely feels rushed, in almost every aspect. Maybe this is what the target audience wants? But it would be patronizing to believe their standards can be satisfied with this kind of thing. On the other hand, this wasn’t even the worst thing I watched today (hello, Battered), at least reaching a bare minimum of technical competence. However, that’s scant praise for any movie.

Dir: Felicia Rivers
Star: Diamond Mott, Patrice Jennings, Shakeela Koffey Scott, Samantha McCoy

Battered

  By

★
“Of unsound mind.”

My first surprise here was that this clocks in at a crisp 44 minutes. That’s an awkward length for any film: too short to be a feature, but most festivals that accept short films will balk at a submission of that length, when the time could instead be used to accept three x 15-minute entries [as someone who runs a festival, this is definitely a consideration]. Quite how this got distribution, I’m therefore not sure; but there it was, sitting on Amazon Prime. However, less than two minutes into the viewing experience, I found myself thanking my stars the running time was so brief. Because this is hamstrung by the worst audio I’ve seen on any film in several years. When even an envelope being opened sounds like a burst of automatic gunfire, you’ve got a problem, and there’s hardly a scene here where this aspect is not bad enough, as to be an unbearable distraction.

It is something of a shame, since it has at least the germ of a decent idea. Piper (Paris) is in an abusive relationship, one that ends up with her being sent to hospital. On her release, she joins a support group for similarly battered women, who share video diaries, as part of the healing process. However, revenge eventually becomes part of their therapeutic activities, taking out their anger on the men who abused them, and these prove viral successes. There is potential for exploration here, not least in the way social media can create and inflame a lynch mob mentality – with the potential for it to spill over into the physical world too. Of course, for that exploration to work, you’d firstly have to be able to tolerate dialogue which sounds like it was recorded either in a wind-tunnel or a diving chamber. Not helping matters: characters that might harbour dreams of some day developing and blossoming into shallow stereotypes. And that’s just the women. Do not get me started on the men.

Then there’s a philosophical argument to be had here. We can all agree it’s wrong for men to beat up women. But this movie seems to make the claim – without much in the way of counterpoints being made – that it’s perfectly fine for women to beat up men. Because social justice. Or #MeToo. Or something, it’s unclear. This could be a viable approach, even without coherent and explicit debate, if the film engaged the lizard brain, and made the violence justifiable, even on a visceral level. Yet it fails to do that either. Instead we get a number of scenes which frankly border on the exploitative, offering a dubious counterpoint to the female empowerment narrative being pushed. Ugly camerawork and performances that, at best, do little more than propel forward the story, are other aspects which left me underwhelmed. It also ends in an abrupt and unsatisfying manner, as if Leslie eventually realized this was going nowhere. Shame it took him 44 minutes to reach that point.

Dir: Lewis Leslie
Star: Mia Paris, Paula Marcenaro Solinger, Carly Jones, Heath C. Heine