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Les Aventures Extraordinaires d’Adele Blanc-Sec

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★★★½
“Indianette Jones and the mummy’s tomb.”

Good to see Besson back in the director’s chair. Outside of the kids’ Arthur series, the only movie he personally helmed in the 2000’s was Angel-A, but Besson has been delivering action heroines for 20 years. Most obviously with the hugely-influential Nikita, but also in The Messenger and, to some extent The Fifth Element and Leon. Here, he goes back to just before the first World War, where journalist Adèle Blanc-Sec (Bourgoin) is kinda like a proto-Lara, whizzing around the globe in search of adventure. She heads to Egypt to grab the mummy belonging to Ramses’s physician: she’s been working with Prof. Ménard (Nahon), who has discovered how to bring the dead back to life, and wants to use the arcane knowledge the mummy possesses to help her sister, who has been in a coma for five years. But Ménard, unwilling to wait, tests his powers on a prehistoric egg: the resulting pterodactyl escapes from the museum where it is housed, and terrorizes Paris. Detective Caponi (Lellouche) is on that case…

This is a light, frothy confection of a film, that cheerfully whizzes around, and is clearly not to be taken seriously. Witness the scene where Adèle attempts to ride the pterodactyl off to death row, where Ménard has been sent, after being deemed responsible for the beast’s carnage. “It can’t be more complicated than a camel,” mutters our heroine, and one senses some of the Gallic humour may have been lost in translation. What’s left to enjoy are the broader strokes: caricatures like a moustachioed detectives or a big-game hunter, a beautifully-constructed recreation of the period and a heroine who is decades ahead of her time. Adèle is supremely self-confident, feisty and unstoppable, and former weather-girl Bourgoin makes you really root for her. Oddly, the highlight is perhaps a tennis match with her sister, that is simultaneously funny (it starts as a traditional 1910 women’s tennis match and ends up…not), tells us about Adèle, and terribly tragic.

More of that would have been welcome, as the film is too breezy for its own good, with none of the other scenes packing any emotional wallop heavier than a feather pillow. That’s a shame, as Besson has shown himself more than capable of that – maybe all those kids’ films have softened him? As a result, what you have here is something that’s a cinematic crêpe: sweet and tasty, undeniably pleasant to eat, yet not the slightest bit filling.

Dir: Luc Besson
Star: Louise Bourgoin, Gilles Lellouche, Philippe Nahon, Nicholas Giraud

The Apocalypse Code

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★★★½
“Proof that cheerily mindless action pics are not the exclusive domain of Hollywood.”

About ten minutes into this, as another large explosion filled the screen, Chris turned to me and said, “Is this a Michael Bay movie?” While it isn’t, confusion is understandable: this is just the kind of dumb action film for which he is renowned, featuring basic plotting and large-scale mayhem. Terrorist Jaffad is just about to sell four nuclear warheads he has hidden in major cities worldwide back to the Americans, when his entire compound is taken out, at the command of a mysterious figure known as “The Butcher.” FSB Agent Marie (Zavorotnyuk), who had previously been working undercover to get to Jaffad, just manages to escape the slaughter, and is now assigned to track down the Butcher, by getting close to his financial advisor, Louis (Perez). Jaffad gave parts of the eleven-digit code that can be used to detonate the devices, to trusted colleagues in Italy, Norway and Malaysia, and Marie needs to find the code before the Butcher.

Expensive by Russian standards, yet relatively cheap ($13.5m budget) by American ones, this certainly provides bang for its buck, whizzing around the globe like the Bond movie it mostly wants to be, while putting its heroine in a selection of glamorous costumes and wigs (prefer blondes? Marie can provide for you too, as shown in the pic at lower-right). Shmelev has a good visual eye for proceedings, shooting and framing the action with some beautiful work, and makes the most of his locations. Zavorotnyuk has good screen presence, and I liked that no-one made much mention of her sex; she’s just another agent. It gets bonus points simply through its origins, which confer a different approach – when the Americans show up (though it’s difficult to tell, since everyone speaks Russian), they aren’t particularly good or bad, just there.

However, the plot is not novel at all, the efforts to give Marie backstory are near-laughable, and once the novelty of the Russian heroes wears off, the script has little to offer: significant fragments don’t make much sense, and other scenes seem to be there, just to prove the makers actually went to the locations. Action-wise, it’s somewhat of a mixed bag; it seems pretty clear the lead actress isn’t doing much of the action herself, but there’s a nice fight at the end between Marie and the villain, in front of the console which can be used to detonate the bombs, as a self-destruct timer counts down. You can also enjoy a gun-battle on a boat, and Marie stocking the corridors of a hotel [you’ll understand why I spelled it like that, hohoho].

It originally came out in Russia more than three years ago, and I’m a little surprised the film apparently hasn’t had any kind of official release in the UK or US. It’s glossy, well-produced nonsense, that completely fails to engage the brain or heart, yet kept me adequately interested for 105 minutes, with plenty of eye-candy [note to Chris: I mean the exotic locations, darling…] and giant fireballs. While I’ve already forgotten much of what happened in this, it is as good a stab at creating a female Jason Bourne as anything Hollywood has yet managed.

Dir: Vadim Shmelev
Star: Anastasiya Zavorotnyuk, Vincent Perez, Vladimir Menshov, Oskar Kuchera

A.F.R.I.K.A.

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★★
“Thelma & Louise go to Korea, and leave their intelligence at home.”

Ji-Won (Lee Yo-Won) and her friend So-Hyun (Kim) make a trip to the seaside, borrowing a car from a friend. However, the auto turns out to have a couple of guns in it, lost by a gangster and cop in a poker game. The weapons come in handy when the girls need to escape from some assailants, but when they are joined by a manic waitress with no sense of gun-control, the now-trio find themselves on the run from police. A clothing-store owner with a grudge, completes the quartet, as they try to make their way back to Seoul – and they are pursued not only by the cops, also by the previous owners of the guns, who need to get them back to prevent issues of their own. Conversely, their exploits and subsequent media attention are getting them fans of their own, with the titular website (it stands for Adoring Four Revolutionary Idols Korea Association) extolling their virtues and provoking copycat crimes.

The main problem here is a film that can’t work out what it wants to be. Comedy? Thriller? Social satire? Drama? Action? There are elements of all those genres here, and most of them show occasional flashes of potential; yet none of them are done well enough to prove particularly memorable. The women largely come across as flimsy characters, with little in the way of background or even distinguishing traits, and there’s hardly any kind of a character arc for them, though I enjoyed the subversive message of “personal empowerment through fire-arm possession” – it’s especially surprising from a country like South Korea, where guns appear to be very strictly controlled [“You are only allowed to own a gun for hunting purposes, and the few who do, have to keep these guns at the local police station. When you want to hunt, you go to the police station, check your gun out, hunt, and return it to the station when you’re finished.”]

Even exploring this angle, of gun culture in a land without guns, would have been a potentially intriguing approach. Instead, there’s hardly any dramatic impetus, even when the tensions mount between the four girls over where their crime spree should take them next. Instead of building, the film peters out at the end, and is nothing more than forgettable commercial entertainment, slickly-made and unsatisfying.

Dir: Shin Seung-Soo
Star: Lee Yo-Won, Kim Min-Seon, Cho Eun-Ji, Lee Young-Jin

Alice in Wasteland

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★★
“Washing-up proved marginally more interesting.”

Ok, that brief is a little harsh, but it is true to say by the end, I had opted to double-task, and was watching this while I stood over the sink in the kitchen. It wasn’t as good as I expected: I was hoping for something along the lines of Faster, Pussycat, and instead got a turgid, over-extended crime drama. While it has all the right aspirations, the yawning chasm between that and its execution would require several days’ trip by mule to cross. Alice Wynn (Sondrup) is part of an armored-truck robbery, only to find herself double-crossed and left for dead by corrupt cop Jill Robbe (Beisner). Alice vows to recover the loot and take revenge on Robbe, and won’t let anyone – examples include her late mother’s boyfriend, psychotic pimp Ramrod or his Swedish assassin – stand in her way.

It’s not as good as it sounds, with the low-budget impediments and a largely amateur cast providing almost permanent blocks to success. About the only thing it shares with Faster, Pussycat is a complete lack of actual nudity – and unlike that, this doesn’t make up for that shortcoming in charisma. There are some amusing moments, such as adverts for a non-dairy product called “Pusé Whip”, or a film called Kill Jill, yet most of the individual scenes seem to solve little purpose except to get you to the next one – they’re just not very interesting on their own.

I did quite enjoy the two leads, with both Sondrup and Beisner surpassing the minimum necessary “Oomph” for their roles – the final scene together is perhaps the best thing about the movie (save the Swedish assassin). However, I don’t come into films expecting “the minimum necessary,” and when the other aspects largely fall short of even that mark, I have to confess that disappointment, and a resulting decision to get on with some housework, were the result. I’m left with the feeling that some things are perhaps best left to the professionals.

Dir: Lasse Jarvi and Peter Schuermann
Star: Roxane Sondrup, Michelle Beisner, Major Mandolin, Adam Ryan Villareal

Angel of Death (2009)

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★★★½
“A star is born? Well, at least a potential one.”

After making an undeniable impact strapped to a car bonnet in the second-half of Grindhouse, Zo…Hang on, let me find the right key on the keyboard… Ah, there we are… Zoë gets to do some actual ‘acting’, rather than playing a stuntwoman called Zoë Bell [Way to go, Tarantino!] Thios started as a web-based series of ten episodes, but is now available on DVD, which is how we watched it. Bell plays Eve, an assassin whose personality radically changes after she is stabbed in the head. She starts to see one of her victims – a young girl – and as a result, decides to go after those who ordered the death. Needless to say, her manager and handler Graham (Poth) is not impressed by this sudden burst of morality, and neither are those who have now become her target, including up-and-coming gangster boss Jake Abel, who sends his minions out to take care of her before she takes care of him.

As an action actress, Bell is unquestionably better at the “action” part than the acting. Not that she sucks at the latter, but one senses she needs more experience with regard to the thespian side of things. This is her first time having to carry a film while playing a character, and thst sometimes is obvious – it’s particularly interesting to contrast Bell and Lucy Lawless, who turns up in a supporting role as Eve’s next-door neighbour. The script also fails to make a convincing case why she makes the switch – maybe it’s the head-injury, but that’s a bit too deus ex machina to work well, and as this barely runs 70 mins, it’s not exactly something they needed to cut out.

Still, this is all redeemed by some excellent action, with Bell (obviously) doing all her own work. She has a short, compact fighting style that looks great on the camera, and there’s a real sense of hardcore energy to it, that makes them fun to watch. Having seen her start off by getting stabbed in the skull, and literally walking away, establishes Eve nicely as an unstoppable force, who can take a licking and keep on ticking. Wisely, Etheredge appreciates that without a stunt-double, there’s no need for quick cutting, and gives the viewer a chance to appreciate her skills. The result is an entertaining B-movie that will hopefully lead to bigger and better things for Bell, who might just become a genuine star down the road.

Dir: Paul Etheredge
Star: Zoë Bell, Brian Poth, Jake Abel, Justin Huen

The Avengers (film)

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★★½
“An object lesson on all the things which can go very, very wrong on the journey from script to screen.”

Film-makers really need to let the sixties go, especially when it comes to mining TV schedules and turning them into movies. The Mod Squad, Thunderbirds, Wild Wild West: the remainder bins in Walmart are littered with the DVD corpses of failed attempts. While it’d be a massive stretch to call this incoherent mess anything like a success, it does have some merits, not least in the casting of Fiennes and Thurman as John Steed and Emma Peel. If undeniably different to Patrick McNee and , it still works, despite the unfortunate efforts to shoehorn in a romantic relationship between the pair; one of the things that made the original series work was the lack of this, with Steed and Peel being strictly business. Thurman, in particular, appears to be working her way towards The Bride territory, with a similarly wide range of funky costumes. In that light, much of her performance makes a great deal more sense.

Sadly, very little else of the movie does, though one wonders how familiar those whose reviews ripped into it were, with the original series – things like henchmen in teddy-bear costumes would fit in there, yet seem idiotic in isolation. The version as released was hacked down from 150 minutes to 89, and I suspect much of the excised footage is in the middle, since that’s where what remains falls apart completely. Sir August de Wynter (Connery) has taken control of the weather, and is using this to blackmail the world’s governments. It’s up to our suave, sophisticated duo to stop him: Peel goes up top to defuse the controlling device, while Steed stays down low, to face de Wynter in hand-to-hand combat. This might have worked better, if I didn’t keep thinking, “Sean Connery is five years older than my Dad.” While there is more to the plot than this, it’s an aspect of the film where more cutting would likely have been welcome.

The style is nicely captured, and Peel stands as the equal of Steed, in no way secondary or subservient to him, as is shown in a marvellous sword-fight between the two. Thurman has no problem at all handling the action side of things, and we even get two Umas for the price of one, thanks to a cloning subplot which is never fully developed or explained [part of the hour left on the cutting-room floor, I suspect]. It seems that the individual pieces were all in place: however, the disaster movie which resulted [budget, $60m; US box-office, $23m] shows that the road to cinematic hell is paved with good intentions.

Dir: Jeremiah Chechik
Star: Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman, Sean Connery, Jim Broadbent

Ayane’s High Kick

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★★★
“Because every Japanese schoolgirl wants to grow up and become a professional wrestler. “

Ayane tries out for the All-Japan Women’s pro-wrestling federation, but is rejected. However, on the way home, she meets a mysterious trainer, who recruits her for his indie group, promising that if she does well, AJW will likely pick her up. What Ayane doesn’t know, is that her trainer has no interest in pro-wrestling, but wants to use our heroine’s lethal leg skills to make her a kick-boxing champion. Ayane eventually discovers the truth, literally in the ring at her first bout; after the inevitable struggles, she wins, in spectacular style, but vows to quit the sport. However, her victory grabbing the headlines infuriates a rival, who turns up at Ayane’s school to issue a challenge. Which is not good, since the vice-principal is just looking for an excuse to expel her.

This is full of the usual OTT mugging familiar from light-hearted anime fare, such as Project A-ko, and is clearly not to be taken seriously. That said, there are some nice references and cameos, not least by Manami Toyota as the reigning AJW champion – in the subtitles, she’s referred to as ‘Toyoda,’ which I think is probably just an alternative translation, rather than an effort to avoid a lawsuit, since she’s portrayed in a positive light. However, this angle seems to be seriously diluted in the second episode, where Ayane is more fully engaged in her role as a kickboxer.

The fights use all the trickery available to animation to enhance them, though a passing Chris commented, “Looks like Speed Racer,” due to all the lines in the background when portraying movement. That said, they’re used because they work, and the results are quite effective. Less successful are the too-broad attempts at comedy, and outside of Ayane, the characters don’t really grab your attention, such as the schoolmate, or “whiny lesbian” to quote the passing Chris once again. That said, I was entertained for fifty minutes: the version released here has two episodes, and the way it finishes seems to imply more to come – however, nothing seems to have been made. That’s something of a shame; seeing the Japanimated dreck which clogs up the shelves in Best Buy these days, I wish Ayane had gone on for a few more rounds.

Dir: Takahiro Okao
Star (voice): Yûko Miyamura, Akio Ôtsuka, Kumiko Nishihara, Maria Kawamura

Angel-A

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★★★½
“Emotional Battle Angel.”

Andre (Debbouse) is at the end of his tether, owing large amounts of money to at least three separate gangs. He decides to end it all by leaping off a Parisian bridge into the Seine below, but is beaten to it by the tall, leggy blonde, Angela (Rasmussen, who you may remember in a bathroom stall with Rebecca Romijn-Stamos in the opening of Femme Fatale). His suicide forgotten, he jumps in to save her, and as they sit, dripping on the river-bank she vows that she will repay his selfless act by taking care of him. This may not be quite the way he expects; for example, she hijacks a negotiation with one of the mobsters to whom Andre owes money, marches upstairs and emerges not long afterwards, the debt apparently forgiven and with tens of thousands in bonus cash. Just as important as resolving his pecuniary problems are the emotional ones which plague Andre, and Angela is perhaps even more adept at addressing those: his lack of self-confidence, trust issues, an inability to give or receive love and so on. She sees the good person who is buried very deeply, and slowly teases it out. For her name is almost literal: she’s an angel, sent down to save Andre from himself.

After six years where he was involved in writing a dozen film and producing even more, this was Besson’s first film as director since The Messenger. Nice to see him back, and the decision to shoot the entire film in black-and-white adds to the fairytale feel, though sometimes it feels more like a Calvin Klein commercial than anything else. The contrast between the 5’10” Rasmussen, towering over the 5’5″ Debbouse like an Amazon, is also unique, and it’s the former’s attitude that makes it qualify here, in a way reminiscent of Run Lola Run. Angela is as relentless as a force of nature, and will let nothing and no-one get in the way of her mission; in this way, she also reminds me of Leeloo in The Fifth Element, or even Mathilda from Leon.

In terms of action, it’s more understated than I’d like: Angela could certainly kick the ass of everyone else in the film, but never needs to get out of second gear. However, the emotional content of the film is considerable, never more than in a single shot that seems endless, where Angela makes Andre stare into a bathroom mirror and look at himself for, probably, the first time in his life. It’s a beautiful moment of impressive heartfelt exposure, laying bare Andre’s soul and exposing the human heart beating inside the scam artist. If not quite the badass-oriented remake of Wings of Desire I was hoping for, it proves very satisfactory and a unique romantic fantasy. I hope Besson doesn’t forget to showcase his own talents as a director more often in the future.

Dir: Luc Besson
Star: Jamel Debbouze, Rie Rasmussen, Gilbert Melki, Serge Riaboukine

The Angelmakers

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★★★
“When the Blue Danube turned red…”

You wouldn’t know it to look at the sleepy Hungarian village of Nagyrév [population: 872], but there was a time between the world wars when this was the murder capital of the world. Between 1914 and 1929, an estimated three hundred people were poisoned to death, using arsenic obtained by boiling down flypaper. The great majority of the murders were committed by local women, who wanted rid of their husbands; the local midwife, Julia Fazekas, was the source of the lethal materials. This was in an era when divorce was all but impossible, and many marriages were arranged; Julia offered a quick and painless (for the wife!) escape from a life of abuse and a loveless relationship. Since she was the closest the village had to a doctor, and her cousin was in charge of filing the death certificates, she and her accomplices got away with their crimes.

All good things must come to an end, however. It’s unclear what triggered police action, but Fazekas knew the game was up, and by the time the police knocked on her door, she’d used her own poison to commit suicide. 26 of her associates, however, were taken to court; eight were sentenced to death, seven to life imprisonment and the remainder to various terms in jail. Eight decades later, Bussink returned to the village, and found some inhabitants still alive, who were around at the time, such as the 93-year old Rosika, in whose pantry one of the murderers hung herself from a nail. Her family then used the nail to hang bacon up.

It’s an not uncommon moment of gallows humour in the film (which puts the death-toll lower, at “only” 140). While Bussink initially met some resistance from the locals, they seem happy here to open up to her; the women, in particular, view past events with phlegmatic resignation. Maybe there’s something about Hungarian ladies; see also Vera Renczi, who murdered 35, including husbands, lovers, and a son early in the twentieth century, and of course, Countess Erzsebet Bathory. However, the film never really does more than scratch the surface, and the running-time is padded unnecessarily by shots of the local countryside, rather than providing more historical background. There’s a pointed, if very clumsy, allusion to modern times, with a local folk-dance club discussing the problems they have with their husbands.

The overall effect is to open the door on a largely-forgotten corner of murderous history, but Bussink doesn’t shine much light into the dark corner. There was word of a movie based on the topic, to star Helen Mirren, which shifted the location from Hungary to Yorkshire, with Anna Friel and John Hurt also involved, and Jon Sommersby Amiel as the director. [Curiously, Friel recently played Countess Bathory in another film] That was first announced in August 2006, but IMDB still shows it as “in development”, so who knows. I suspect the Hollywood fantasy will be nowhere near as bleakly murderous as the reality, somehow.

Affair on Nolandia

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★★★★

A number of the other reviews of this I read were somewhat sniffy and it’s often largely dismissed by DP fans, which surprised the heck out of me, as I though this was, in the main, highly-enjoyable entertainment. The pair are sent to locate a missing girl, who may be tied to a shuttle-crash where the pilot screamed the ground was shifting just before the accident. By the time they arrive, their client is dead, and the girl has holed up in a remote forest, filled with strange life-forms. They’re not the only ones after her either, and I think it’s giving little away to say that the results of the investigation include destruction on industrial levels.

In some ways, this is superior to Eden, though the animation is not one of them. The storyline wins out for imagination, despite a frantically expositional scene where the film derails from one plotline to another in about 30 seconds. This is, however, where the action also kicks into overdrive, with Kei having to take on an apparently-unstoppable opponent, while Yuri has to chase after the villain, by any means necessary – using at least five different modes of transport to do so [taxi, bicycle, foot, motorbike and powered roller-skates, if you’re counting!]. The intercutting between these two, separate yet simultaneous, sequences is splendid. Oh, and Yuri wields the Bloody Card,

It’s in sharp contrast to the middle of the film, where they’re searching for the girl in the forest, where they cram in dream sequences and hallucinations; the pair’s clairvoyant ability also makes a rare appearance in the animated version of the show. The creators also tossed in some gratuitous nudity, which will keep fans of Kei happy, going beyond the usual ‘cheesecake’ elements of the show, not least in one tenticular sequence which appears to have strayed in from an entirely different genre of anime entirely. However, this showcases some impressive imagination, with a trippy quality that blurs the line between reality and hallucination, where unicorns run through the trees, and you can water-ski through outer-space. And then, as we all have come to expect from our heroines, blowing it up. :-)

Dir: Masaharu Okuwaki
Star (voice): Kyôko Tongu, Saeko Shimazu, Toshiko Fujita, Masaru Ikeda

a.k.a. Affair of Nolandia