Tag: b

Black Magic M-66

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★★★½
“Aliens meets The Terminator in a brisk, head-on collision.”

Shirow has certainly done his fair share of anime works that are regarded as classics – his best-known creation is probably Appleseed. This is from relatively early in his career; indeed, coming out in 1991 made it one of the first anime to be ‘properly’ distributed in the West [and, by that, I mean subtitled and not cut down for a child audience]. It centers on the titular pair of military androids, who are released after their transport craft goes down in the middle of a forest. The army cordon off the area, which draws the attention of Sybel (Sakakibara), a reporter, unwilling to let anything stand in the way of her story. She witnesses a hellacious fire-fight in which one ‘droid is destroyed, while the other escapes, and discovers the goal for the android is to kill the inventor’s young grand-daughter, Ferris. As the only person who knows the current location of the daughter, it’s up to her to save the child.

Barely half the length of an average movie, this fairly gallops along, towards an extended climax in a high-rise block, where Sybel is the only thing left standing between the relentless robot and its target. This is when the film is at is best, with action sequences that wouldn’t shame most Hollywood action movies. Less successful – in fact, basically absent (admittedly, no real surprise given the running time) – is any real effort at developing the characters. We know Sybel is focused, because she leaves her apartment with her camera, yet forgets to put on clothes. That’s about the extent of it, and she is the best-served of anyone in the film; Ferris, for instance, does little but squeal in an irritating manner. It’s also a product of its time: originally made in 1987, animation has changed radically in the more than two decades since, and the style now looks somewhat clunky, especially when it tries to simulate camera movement.

Still, the storyline holds up nicely, and given America’s fondness for remaking Japanese genre films, one wonders why they haven’t bothered to mine the animation vaults further [though Speed Racer probably acts as a good counter-argument!]. It’d certainly be very easy to see this as a James Cameron movie.

Dir: Masamune Shirow
Star (voice): Yoshiko Sakakibara, Shinji Ogawa, Yû Mizushima, Chisa Yokoyama

Bloodrayne II: Deliverance

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★
“Ah, this is why people hate Uwe Boll.”

Look, I speak as one of the few people on the planet who found the original Bloodrayne other than unwatchable dreck. So when I say that the sequel is a soporific, poorly-constructed, badly-executed waste of time and effort for all concerned, including the viewer – for God’s sake, listen to me. There is simply no rhyme or reason present here, right from the setting which goes from Middle Ages Europe to the Wild West without any credible explanation. Billy the Kids (Ward) is a vampire, kidnapping the local kids, in some kind of half-baked plot device that makes no sense, involving him waiting for the railroad to reach town, to spread his curse. I guess going to a town that already has trains would be too much work. Rayne has to round up a posse to take on Billy and his blood-sucking cronies. Y’know? For the kids….

Malthe is not an adequate replacement for Kristanna Loken. While there are some settings in which she would make an appropriate Rayne, this isn’t it. I can do no better than reproduce goatdog’s limerick on this issue:
She’s entirely too soft-spoken.
She pales next to Kristanna Loken.
She’s not half as pretty,
her accent is shitty,
and her ass-kicking skills appear broken.
Beyond that, even my usually forgiving nature kept stumbling into holes of logic. For instance, Rayne’s posse is mostly there because she blackmailed or threatened them, yet this apprarently creates immediate loyalty, to the point they are prepared to die on behalf of a cause they know basically nothing about. Similarly, there’s a newspaper reporter (Coppola): his third scene explains his presence, yet mostly makes you wonder exactly what he was doing in his first two scenes. The film doesn’t even have consistency of vampire lore: can they, or can they not, be killed with regular bullets? The film says no, but then…

It’s not just a bad vampire movie. Probably worse, it’s a bad Western. Overall, it’s just bad: I generally have more time for Boll than most people [National Treasure was much, much worse than House of the Dead], but even I cannot defend this on any level. The original had a lunatic sensibility, heaving everything at the screen it could find: it may not have made much sense, but you did remember it. The sooner I can forget this, the better-off I will be.

Dir: Uwe Boll
Star: Natassia Malthe, Zack Ward, Michael Pare, Chris Coppola

The Brave One

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★★★½
“Death Wish with female angst.”

Erica (Foster) has a very comfortable life: nice job as a radio host, imminent marriage to a doctor. This is suddenly destroyed in minutes, when she and her fiance (Andrews) are brutally attacked: he is killed, and she is left a nervous wreck, who sees a threat in every shadow on the city streets. A move to Kansas, while probably better for all concerned, would not be so cinematically or narratively interesting: instead, she buys a black-market gun for protection. A chance encounter on the subway unleashes her inner Bernhard Goetz and before you know it, she’s sweeping the scum off the streets, up to and including the crime lord whom even Detective Mercer (Howard) cannot touch, while simultaneously documenting the city’s reaction to her exploits on the airwaves. This brings her into contact with Mercer, since he is also investigating the vigilante slayings; his suspicions in this area gradually turn towards his new friend.

There’s obviously, more than an element of Death Wish here, though the heroine here is motivated, at least in part, by more than revenge. Foster is solid, as you’d expect – her character is an interesting parallel [or, in some ways contrast] to those she played in Silence of the Lambs and The Accused, and is hardly Charles Bronson. Jordan cranks up the psychological instability with more dutch angles than any film since Battlefield Earth, but the film is generally restrained, avoiding the more lurid angles, though it possesses a more than pessimistic opinion of the justice system. One does sense more could have been done with the media aspects: the resultant feeding frenzy, with the killer becoming a heroic figure to some, is only brushed against, and nothing much is made of the fact that her attackers videotape their crime. However, it’s still a credible slice of urban paranoia and disfunctionality. In many ways, its closest cousin is, perhaps surprisingly, The Dark Knight: to obtain closure, Erica has to decide, just like Bruce Wayne, how far into the abyss she is prepared to descend…

Dir: Neil Jordan
Star: Jodie Foster, Terrence Howard, Naveeen Andrews, Mary Steenburgen

Biohazards

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★★★

If you thought the novel was a quick read, I got through Biohazards during lunch, and that’s only with 30 minutes. Still, being a comic-book, we must cut it some slack, though I can’t say I find action (and there’s a lot of it here) is something that works very well in panel form, lacking the true sense of motion you get in cinema. That said, I still didn’t hate this first entry in the trans-Pacific entry, in which Kei and Yuri are sent to investigate the kidnapping of an industrialist’s mind by his rival [literally: it’s on a chip]. Adding a little spice, both companies are knee-deep in dubious bioweapons, so who is the real villain here?

It’s another different style, in some ways perhaps more Japanese than classic DP, though still with something alien to it, as if the artist had learned from one of those “Draw Manga” books. Which is less a knock on Warren than it probably sounds, being more an acknowledgement of how influential the Dirty Pair comics are [there was a time when manga was not to be found in Borders, y’know]. The in-jokes are actually more restrained than I remembered – and expected, after the very first page has a security guard singing the theme to Magnum of Love’s Destiny, a movie from the City Hunter series. But that was about it, unless “Power up the synthesizer, Neil” is a Rush reference? Hard to be sure…

There are some interesting nods to the original novels, such as Mughi’s ability to manipulate the electromagnetic spectrum, and Yuri’s Bloody Card weapon is almost exactly as described in Great Adventures. That may be the weakness here, in that Warren and Smith seem less intent on bringing anything new to the characters, than being faithful to the original texts. As the series progresses, however, that would become less of an issue, but while the first, this is certainly not the best, or most representative, of the US comics.

Story: Toren Smith and Adam Warren
Art: Adam Warren

The Blackburn & Scarletti Mysteries, Volume II, by Karen Koehler

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★★★
“Truly a book of two halves, Brian.”

Coincidentally, a year after the first collection, I find the time to read volume two; this contains two stories rather than two-and-a-fragment, but weighs in at about forty pages or so longer. Same price though, I am pleased to note… The first, Legion, takes our FBI agent and her semi-vampiric colleagues off to the post-flood city of New Orleans where a demonic force has been unleashed, which is capable of transferring its presence from one body to another. Hmmm…sounds not unlike Fallen, perhaps? That aside, I did enjoy this one thoroughly: the pace is good and, if the eventual destination of the entity is not perhaps a surprise (it’s quite close to the pair, shall we say), it makes for some great set-pieces. The best of these involves a church where the possessed victim is resting up, which results in a hellacious battle that’s genuinely exciting. The story elements are tidied up nicely too, leaving this a self-contained and effective tale.

However, despite the second story possessing a great title – The Phantom of the Soap Opera – I was much less engaged by it. The set of a daytime TV drama is plagued by mysterious ‘accidents’ of an occult nature, which leads to the pair re-uniting in order to investigate, triggered by a call from an old friend of Scarletti’s. There is just not enough meat on the bones of this one, though perhaps Koehler wasn’t happy with it either, since there is a lot of back-story added here. Indeed, to such a degree that it burdens the main characters, and its relevance to the main plot is doubtful. I’m also growing rather disillusioned by Blackburn’s relationship to the Jackal, the full vampire who saved her life in volume one; Koehler is treading dangerously close here, to the cliches which eventually sank the Anita Blake series.

Another small peeve was a surprising number of typos in the volume, such as “a traveling bad slung over one shoulder.” Though I’m far from immune to these myself [even if you can only have the ‘u’ in ‘colour’ when you pry it from my cold, dead hands, dammit], and I did smile at one, when Blackburn was served by a “gun-chewing waitress.” I’d be sure to leave her a good tip. Overall, not quite as good as the first compilation, though that’s largely down to the second story – individually, Legion rates a ****, but Phantom only **, getting stuck in a morass of its own making. While that leaves the review ending on a disappointing note, Blackburn remains an engaging heroine, and if Koehler can get back to more action-oriented writing in the next volume (as she showed herself eminently capable of in Legion), I’ll be waiting eagerly.

Beautiful Beast

  By

★★★
“The Beast is yet to come…”

Debate raged over this one. Chris reckons lead actress Shimamura was, at some point, a man. I’m not quite so convinced, but the mere thought certainly gave the sex scenes here an added edge of creepiness. Given the lengthy such sequence which occurs about five minutes in, I feared this was going to be no more than an itty-bitty titty-fest. Fortunately, after getting that out of his system, director Ikeda (Evil Dead Trap) settles down and delivers a gritty bit of nastiness, occasionally teetering on the edge of sadistic.

Ran (Shimamura) comes to Japan, and makes an immediate impression by assassinating a Yakuza boss and his associates, while they dine in a restaurant. Escaping the scene, she hides out in the restaurant owned by Yoichi (Yamato), and thanks him for covering for her with her body. About three hours later – or maybe it just seems that way – she moves on with the rest of her mission, which is to extract revenge on those responsible for the death of her sister. To this end, she works at the same hostess club as her late sibling, and waits for opportunity to present itself. However, the remaining target (Hakruyu), aware of his peril, kidnaps Ran’s friend Chun Li, and uses her to lure Ran out of the darkness.

The results are clearly inspired by the Zero Woman series, also about an angst-ridden hitwoman, and certainly have their moments. The finale, unfortunately, is not one of them, where instead of the bullet-propelled shootout against an entire Yakuza gang, we get something a lot less entertaining. The movie also features one of the most extreme instances of a boom-mike appearance that I have ever seen [it’s when Chun Li returns to her apartment to pick up some cash. At least, I think it’s a mic, since we couldn’t come up with any other credible suggestions]. Otherwise, however, it was less soft-pornish than we feared, and is played straight up and down, with the gangsters appropriately boorish, yet not stupid. More action would have helped, yet not without its merits. But if anyone can confirm or deny Chris’s theory about Shimamura, we’d like to hear from you…

Dir: Toshiharu Ikeda
Stars: Kaori Shimamura, Hakuryu, Takeshi Yamato, Takanori Kikuchi

Burial of the Rats

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★★★
“That whirring sound you hear, is Bram Stoker spinning in his grave.”

This can only be described as utterly mad. Bram Stoker is kidnapped by a group of bikini-clad female vigilantes, ruled over by “the Pied Piper’s twisted sister” (Barbeau), who can control rats with her flute (when not decapitating them in her rodent-sized guillotine, I kid you not). He is coerced into becoming one of them because the Queen decided his writing skills could aid their PR skills, striking fear into their targets with his eye-witness accounts of the raids where the extract vengeance on evil men. Of course, one of the clan (Ford) falls for him, but when she is captured by the authorities, her colleague must mount a raid to rescue her. Meanwhile, Stoker’s father is trying to find his son. Oh, and I did I mention the topless ballet which is apparently the women’s chief source of entertainment? No wonder Barbeau permanently wears a pained expression. [Though she now looks back and says, “It was great fun but even at the time I was able to stand back and think, this is bizarre.”]

Obviously, it’s stupid as all get out: I didn’t realise Bram Stoker had a heavy American accent, while these rats apparently have piranha DNA, judging by the speed they turn their victims into skeletons – actually, I think they’re all the same skeleton… Still, as a lurid B-movie, it’s entertaining nonsense. Might have benefited from more OTT direction, to lift it up into the realm of something like The Perils of Gwendoline – I can’t help wondering what someone like Ken Russell might have done with this. As is, it boasts good production values [Corman was among the first to take advantage of cheap Eastern bloc labour and materials] and a couple of half-decent swordfights – especially when you consider most of the cast were likely chosen for their physical attributes more than their physical ability. There’s cameo appearances from B-movie icons Nikki Fritz and Linnea Quigley, but I didn’t notice them until the end credits. Taking it seriously would be a huge mistake: taking it with some beers and a pizza makes much more sense.

Dir: Dan Golden
Stars: Kevin Alber, Maria Ford, Olga Kabo, Adrienne Barbeau

The Blackburn & Scarletti Mysteries Volume I, by Karen Koehler

  By

★★★½
“The X-Files meets Hellsing. In a very dark alley.”

Take an FBI agent with some psychic ability, January Blackburn, and partner her with part-vampire Catholic priest, Dorian Scarletti. Intrigued? Me too. That’s the premise of the three stories in this book, where our odd couple investigate paranormal crimes around the US. The results are somewhat uneven, yet with much promise: Blackburn is probably a more interesting character, possessing both great inner strength, and quirks that make her vulnerable and more human. In contrast, Scarletti, thus far, seems a bit like a “vampire by numbers”, with all the standard moping around, relationship angst and so on, too familiar to be of more than passing interest. Though, must say, his weapon of choice – hundreds of cross-shaped throwing knives inside his coat – is worth cool points in my book (even if I presume he doesn’t go through airports).

The structure of the book is also somewhat irritating, bipping back and forth between present and past. For example, one scene has our pair undercover at a strip-club run by werewolves(!), where the residents have discovered Blackburn’s true nature and rush towards her to… End of chapter: cut to Scarletti in Victorian London, befriending the Elephant Man during the Ripper murders, for the next ten pages. “Aaargh!”, went this reader, skimming furiously. That’s a shame, because when Koehler sticks to the modern era, the stories are real page-turners, which on at least one occasion, made me late to work after lunch. The world it depicts has a huge amount of potential, and has clearly been well-thought out. In particular, the second story, The Hyde Effect, is a fabulous piece about killings in Boston that might – or might not – be werewolf-related. And that’s another good thing about these stories; the author is not afraid to mix occult and prosaic explanations.

As yet, Koehler is best known for her Slayer series, a lynchpin of the “industrial gothic” movement. [The protagonist there, Alek Knight, turns up in the third story, a smart bit of marketing!] But I see no reason why this shouldn’t become even more popular, if she concentrates on what makes her stand out from the field. Blackburn certainly has the potential to surpass Anita Blake as a horror-action heroine of literature. Let’s just hope Koehler, unlike Laurell K. Hamilton, can keep the soft-porn out.

By: Karen Koehler
Publisher: Black Death Books, $14.95

Backlash

  By

★★½
“Come to sunny Trinidad! Enjoy the beaches! And kill people!”

I think it may be more infuriating to see a film that could be great, but blows its chance, than one which falls short in every aspect. Such is Backlash, a film with enough potential to flirt with greatness, before settling for mediocrity. Let’s start with the good stuff. Danielle Burgio is a stuntwoman, who doubled for Carrie-Anne Moss in the Matrix sequels, and it’s a striking resemblance – especially when the producers here pull Burgio’s hair back, and deck her out in a black tank-top (below, left). She has presence, agile grace and undeniably looks like she can kick butt. I was also amused by the two assassins on her tail: one (Levrone) is tall and taciturn, the other (Kim) short and feisty, and they’re a fun combination to watch.

In the middle lies the action. While some fights work nicely, too often (particularly between Burgio and Kim) they are an obvious sequence of blocks, with blows having no impact – some parts of the car chases are clearly shot at an extremely sedate pace. The script is nothing special either; I hoped a woman, writer Caitlin McKenna, could bring fresh aspects, yet the story here is tired and old. CIA agent Skye Gold (Burgio) is compromised, targeted for death and forced on the run, leading to the usual “Who can she trust?” issues we’ve seen a million times before. There’s little new here of note; the film, indeed, largely abandons Gold for a lengthy chunk in the middle, deciding to focus on the assassins’ approach to the base where she’s hiding out.

It is, however, the lumpy, leaden direction that kills this, the sense of pacing wrecked by frequent cuts to what feels painfully like stock footage from the Trinidad & Tobago Tourist Board. The use of badly-fitting music jars too, and works against the film, distracting rather than enhancing atmosphere. It seems the aim is something Andy Sidaris-esque, putting an action heroine in an exotic location to get chased by bad guys, but the results here seem much more forced and artificial (and if anything, increases my respect for Sidaris – whatever his flaws, the style is very easy to watch). I’ll happily keep an eye on Burgio whose career, with the right project, could explode; this, however, is definitely not it.

The DVD is available from MTI Home Video on November 21st; it’s in widescreen and includes a behind-the-scenes featurette and a music video.
Dir: David Chameides
Stars: Danielle Burgio, Robert Merrill, Kevin Levrone, Lauren Kim

Big Bad Mama II

  By

★★½
“Non-threatening mayhem and a healthy dose of gratuitous skin.”

A Roger Corman production. Those four words cover much turf, both good and bad; this inclines toward the latter, simply because it takes an interesting premise, and goes next to nowhere with it. It’s less a sequel to, than a remake of the 1974 film, also starring Dickinson, which is generally believed to be superior. However, that isn’t on heavy cable rotation this month, so you’re stuck with the follow-up. Dickinson plays Wilma McClatchie, evicted from her home by uncaring businessman Morgan Crawford, and whose husband is killed in the process. She and her daughters Billie-Jean and Polly take up a life outside the law, but when Crawford makes a run for governor, their crimes take on a political perspective, as they aim to sabotage his campaign.

However, this is far too flimsy a production to support any social subtext, and while there’s certainly plenty of ammunition expended, the action scenes have almost no impact at all [though there’s an amazingly enthusiastic bit of blood squibbing at the end that is memorable]. Brisebois and McCullough, playing her daughters, are there largely to add skin to the production, though have a certain naive charm – incidentally, I suspect Dickinson’s nude scenes were body doubled, unlike the original film. Given she was in her mid-50’s by the time this was made, it’s understandable. She still has undeniable presence and that’s what keeps the film ticking; Culp has fun with his role as a journalist, hot on the family’s trail.

There’s a fairly useless subplot in which they kidnap Morgan’s son (Jeff Yagher) and turn him to a life of crime – I’m sure the presence of the nubile daughters was in no way an encouragement. Naturally, however, it all ends in a massive gunbattle, but given the generally fluffy nature of proceedings, it’s not much of a spoiler to say that Big Bad Mama III remains a possibility. [Hell, the ending of the original pretty much ruled out a sequel, logically speaking] How old is Angie Dickinson these days?

Dir: Jim Wynorski
Stars: Angie Dickinson, Danielle Brisebois, Julie McCullough, Robert Culp