Tag: comic-book

The Super Femmes

  By

★★
“Hardly super, thanks for asking…”

Running a crisp 58 minutes in its omnibus edition, this is a bit like Kung Fu Femmes. Both were originally web series, but have now made their way on to Amazon Prime, which is where I stumbled across them. This is rather less grounded, taking place in a world where superheroes and supervillains exist, doing battle in the usual manner. While not technically based on a comic-book, it might as well be – the poster makes that abundantly clear. The IMDb description calls it “filled with satire.” I’m not so sure, and think we probably need to have a talk about what “satire” actually is. Creator Garris seems largely to believe that simply repeating the cliches of the genre passes the bar. He’s wrong. There needs to be exaggeration of these tropes, and that’s largely missing here. Its absence leaves this mostly a bad comic-book, rather than being a parody of one. For example, adding visual effects like “POW!” to punches is hardly inventive, and certainly not satire.

The heroine is Cat Nips (Vanelle), who is investigating the mysterious disappearance of another superheroine, Smash Mistress (Caruana). She has been kidnapped by malevolent genius Mad Mort (Gordon), who has a machine which can absorb her powers, and inject them into his short-lived clones of Smash Mistress, which do his evil bidding. Not helping matters, the local superheroes group, led by The Smoking Cape (Paris), have gone on strike, to protest budget cuts proposed by the city’s mayor – who is actually their leader, in his daytime identity. What’s up with that? There’s also a guild of supervillains, though not everyone in it is happy at Mad Mort’s plans to take things over.

Occasionally, it does work, mostly when Garris pushes the boat out beyond the cliches into more imaginative territory. There’s the Golden Goddess, a retired superheroine now reduced to selling “magical” headbands on line. And some of the villains are entertainingly crap, such as Pasta Fingers and White Rapper Kid – not exactly useful powers. Things get thrown for a loop at the end with the unexpected arrival of a superheroine from the future, who states, “I’ve come from season three.” That’s the kind of self-referential nonsense which the series needs more of. It’s on considerably less solid ground when trying to take right-on jabs at, for example, the portrayal of women. Considering the costumes of the ones here, this comes off as empty cant.

The production here is low-end, but solid enough in most regards. That also applies to the performances, few of which are memorable in either direction. And that might be part of the problem: it’s all rather too low-key. If you think of comic-book movies, the characters which stand out e.g. the Joker (whether played by Jack Nicholson or Joaquin Phoenix, tend to be those that are over-the-top. But the delivery here skews more toward the prosaic, and character names like – and I wrote this down – “Sharon MaBooty” don’t go far enough towards making up the difference.

Dir: Dean Garris
Star: Vanelle, Leah Caruana, Roger Paris, Robert Gordon

Black Widow

  By

★★★★
“The name’s Widow. Black Widow…”

I said it in my review of Captain Marvel, but it probably bears repeating here. I’m basically completely unfamiliar with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Avengers: Infinity War? It may have become the biggest film in cinema history, but I’ve never seen it, and that’s par for the course. Of the 13 MCU films released since the beginning of 2015, I have watched just three. So if this required any prior knowledge, or information not present in the actual movie, I was going to be hosed. Another concern coming in, stemmed from one of those three movies: Captain Marvel. It was the epitome of the dumb comic-book film, and more a chore than a pleasure.

This had been long-delayed too, and that’s never a good sign, though it’s hard to blame the makers in this case. It was originally slated for release in May 2020, but of course, COVID-19 scuppered that, causing several reschedulings. The split release, simultaneously coming out in theatres and on streaming service Disney+, also came as a bit of a red flag. That’s because I’ve found films which debuted on streaming have largely been underwhelming. From Mulan through Wonder Woman 1984, as well as non-GWG entries like Godzilla vs. Kong and Mortal Kombat, the results haven’t impressed me. Could Black Widow buck the trend and deliver the summer box-office blockbuster which never happened last year? Well, if you counted the stars at the top, you’ll probably have worked out that it did, more or less avoiding the potential pitfalls. 

However, it has also become the first four-star film not to get our seal of approval. Put simply, while it delivered 2+ hours of very solid entertainment, I have no interest in seeing it again. To me, that is a key element in awarding a seal; the film must be one capable of getting (and standing up to) repeat viewings. This didn’t – though again, I want to stress I’d be more than happy to go see the future installments, which seem highly likely to follow. I think it was mostly a lack of emotional involvement which capped my appreciation for it. While a fine, well-crafted spectacle, that does work as a stand-alone film, I still felt like I had arrived in the middle of the show. For example, a relatively brief explanation of her origins in a nineties Russian sleeper cell is followed by “21 years later,” and that’s an awful lot of water under the bridge.

Clearly, a lot of significant stuff had happened in that time. Piecing the parts together, it appears the two “sisters” from the sleeper cell, Natasha Romanoff (Johansson) and Yelena Belova (Pugh), became part of the “Red Room” program to create super-soldiers. Natasha defected back to the West to become part of SHIELD, and killed Dreykov, the man in charge. But Yelena remained in the system, until an encounter with a gas that undid her mind-control. She sent a batch of the gas to Natasha, which brought her into the sights of Dreykov, who was not so dead as previously assumed. He is very keen to get the antidote to his programming back under control, but Natasha and Yelena decide to take the fight to him instead. However, they need to start by finding out the Red Room’s location, which will involve an awkward “family re-union” with their pseudo-Mom (Weisz) and crypto-Dad (Harbour).

I was talking to Dieter about the film, which he had already seen (in the cinema, the mad, impetuous man!). He said it resembled “a classical spy-ploitation movie, like Bond movies might look today, if there hasn’t been that strong change in style and towards more realism with the Craig era.” That raised an eyebrow for me, and certainly didn’t seem a typical Marvel film approach. But having now seen it myself, I can definitely see where that’s coming from. In particular, I felt that Dreykov (played by British heavy Ray Winstone) would have fitted right in as a villain from that ‘classic Bond’ era. His lair makes the one inside a volcano from You Only Live Twice look like a doll’s house, and he even makes the classic, “Now you are helpless in my power, let me over-explain things to you” mistake. Notably, there’s a scene early on where Natasha is watching Moonraker on her lap-top, so I very much suspect none of this is by accident.

A couple of other elements also seem to echo Bond. Natasha has a somewhat Q-like “fixer”, Mason (O-T Fagbenle), who keep her supplied and gets irritated by her more outrageous demands. Dreykov has a monstrous and hyperviolent sidekick; despite her gender, she’s not unlike Jaws, who appears in the Moonraker clip mentioned above.  Like him, she is won over to the side of good by kindness. There’s also a dry humour present, which does hark back to the days of Roger Moore. Much of this comes from Harbour’s character, but Yelena also has a self-effacing wit. For example, she rags on Natasha about her fight poses, though inevitably, subsequently finds herself in the same posture. After the dour Captain Marvel, a little appreciation of the underlying silliness which is embodied by the comic-book genre, goes a surprisingly long way.

Indeed, I would not mind if, as the post-credit scene implies, Yelena becomes Black Widow going forward. [Though that scene was all but entirely lost on me, I believe a change is needed, due to things which happened in films I haven’t watched… He said vaguely!] Pugh, whom we enjoyed seeing on this site in Fighting With My Family, brings a no-nonsense approach to her character that I really liked. Johannson may, despite her complaints, have been getting paid the big bucks here, but I’d rather see Pugh step into the PVC body-suit going forward. Admittedly, I’d also rather see more genuine stunt-work and less obvious CGI. While it’s understandable at some points, e.g. the climax, there were times where it felt like a character couldn’t walk down a corridor without it being rendered against a green screen. I think I may be shouting at clouds in this department, however…

All told though, it’s the first film I’ve seen in a long time which made me at least somewhat sorry I hadn’t seen it at the movies. It has been about 20 months since my last cinema outing, and I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever again miss the theatrical experience. Black Widow has proven otherwise, so we’ll see if this does translate into an actual movie-going experience down the road.

Dir: Cate Shortland
Star: Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, Rachel Weisz, David Harbour

Black Widow (2021)
Black Widow (2021)
Black Widow (2021)
Black Widow (2021)
Black Widow (2021)
Black Widow (2021)
Black Widow (2021)
Black Widow (2021)
Black Widow (2021)
Black Widow (2021)
Black Widow (2021)
Black Widow (2021)
Black Widow (2021)
Black Widow (2021)
Black Widow (2021)

Wonder Woman 1984

  By

★★
“Left feeling quite Cheetah’d…”

Before COVID-19 hit, this was scheduled to be the year’s biggest action heroine movie. Originally slated for a June release, it was the sequel to a film which earned a well-deserved $800+ million worldwide, and a similar return seemed within reach. But its opening was first delayed, and then it was announced the movie would only get a limited release, coming out in North America on HBO’s streaming service, HBO Max. Difficult times. But the sad fact is, this feels more like a contractual cash-grab. Even with the same star and director, it seems sadly lacking in genuine, emotional heart.

There are quite a few other problems. Firstly, this is set in 1984, because… Well, there’s no real reason. At least Captain Marvel gave us a fight in a Blockbuster Video store. Here, the period flavour seems limited to one Frankie Goes to Hollywood song, randomly dropped in at a party. Otherwise, it could easily be set now. Another issue is the sheer length. This is 151 minutes: that’s only 10 minutes longer than its predecessor, but it feels a lot more. Part of this may be because after the opening, you then have to wait for over an hour, before there is any further significant action. While I’ve not pulled out a stopwatch, the ratio of that to talk overall just seems considerably worse.

Then we have the plot, which centres on a magic hunk of rock, the Dreamstone, that grants one wish to anyone who touches it. Diana Prince (Gadot) naturally wishes for the return of dead lover, Steve Trevor (Pine). Mousy work colleague Barbara Ann Minerva (Wiig) wishes to be like Prince, a process which ends up turning her into supervillainess Cheetah. And eventually gives her a tail, making her look like a refugee from Cats. At least dodgy oil-baron Maxwell Lord (Pascal, who amusingly also appeared in the much-derided 2011 Wonder Woman television pilot) reads the fine print, and uses the Dreamstone to try and take over the world. Of course, the old saying, “Be careful what you wish for” comes into play. You just KNOW Diana’s wish will have to be revoked, parting her from Steve once again. Which would be okay, if it hadn’t seemed like a cheat all along, robbing their separation of any emotional impact.

As is, Steve seems almost entirely superfluous here. His main contribution is a poorly-considered scene where this resurrected 1917 aviator is able to fly a modern jet with no trouble or instruction. This seems about as plausible as a 1917 accountant being able to sit down at a desk and immediately use QuickBooks, and that’s ignoring completely the fact that the Smithsonian would exhibit a plane that’s fully fuelled-up and ready for take-off Hey, he does somehow have a hand in teaching Wonder Woman to fly. Elsewhere, it doesn’t help that every time I saw Lord, I kept expecting Baby Yoda to show up, and Wiig is hardly convincing as a plain Jane. Maybe one day, Hollywood will realize that it takes more than just slapping a pair of glasses on an actress.

Gadot is still very good, but there just isn’t anything close to the sense of passion which she brought to the character in Wonder Woman. Here, saving the world seems like a day job, rather than something done out of a fierce, unbreakable conviction. The action sequences are merely alright. There’s some surprisingly poor CGI (even on a non-cinema screen), and they often seem short on physicality, with a couple of exceptions. A battle between WW and Cheetah in the White House is well-assembled, and there’s an opening sequence depicting a young Diana taking part in the Amazon Games. If it were a series, I’d be watching every week – my money would be on American Ninja Warrior star, Jessie Graff, who plays one of the competitors. That was nice.

However, even this falls short, both in emotional and technical aspects, of the iconic “No Man’s Land” sequence. And thus we reach the crux of the issue: in just about every way, it’s not as good as the previous movie. That was a genuinely groundbreaking effort, in which everyone involved seemed fully invested, and which deserves to rank among the best of the new wave of comic adaptations, be they Marvel or DC. This tastes more like heavily generic comic-book fare, with a story too heavily reliant on convenient happenstance, supporting characters that distract rather than support, and a resolution that is not much more than a 21st-century version of Wonder Woman demanding, “Clap your hands if you believe in fairies.”

Philosophically, I was intrigued by her explicitly stating at one point, “I hate guns.” I recently finished The Boys, with its slew of malevolent superheroes. In that world, firearms were one of the few things that could level the playing field and give “normal” humans a chance. Guns are, simply, a great equalizer, and hearing the super-powerful express blanket disdain for them is… interesting. Similarly, we were expected to believe Barbara Ann is simultaneously so plain nobody sees her, yet can barely take two steps without getting creeped on. Look, I expect Wonder Woman to be pro-feminist. But a degree of consistency is apparently too much. For when given a wish for anything, the two lead women want a) to be hot, and b) their boyfriend back? I am woman, hear me… whine?

There are some positives. If not exactly period appropriate, Hans Zimmer’s score is effective and elevates a number of scenes. And the film does, at least, leave the audience on a positive note with a really lovely mid-credit sequence. However, it’s also telling that those 60 seconds are likely more impactful – and, certainly, more emotional engaging – than the other 150 minutes combined. It has been a long time since I’ve seen a sequel, with the same director and star, that has fallen so far short. Maybe The Matrix: Reloaded? All told, you would be better off just watching the trailer. It certainly provides a greater jolt of eighties energy than the movie has any apparent interest in delivering.

Dir: Patty Jenkins
Star: Gail Gadot, Pedro Pascal, Kristen Wiig, Chris Pine

The New Mutants

  By

★★★½
“The end of an era”

We live in a strange world in which Wonder Woman ’84 gets delayed again while The New Mutants is suddenly getting its release. Over the years, the story surrounding this movie has become more interesting than the one it tells. Originally, the film was scheduled for 2018 but didn’t find much luck. Director Josh Boone (The Fate in Our Stars) had the interesting idea of doing a Breakfast Club-type movie set in the Horror genre. After initial enthusiasm from the studio, execs pulled back, wanting to make the film more accessible, less horrific. Than the studio head at 20th Century Fox left, which led to changes at the script.

Originally, the film was supposed to play in the 80s (after X-Men: Apocalypse) and would have included Professor X and Storm. The script at hand seemed to depict the caretakers of the New Mutants in a very negative way. This is apparent when you see the character of Dr. Reyes (Alice Braga), the replacement for Storm. As the original X-men characters were always the heroes of the franchise, their appearances were skipped. But the success of the first part of Stephen King adaptation It (2017), led to a rethink, that the film should not abandon its scarier elements. The next thing to happen was the acquisition of 20th Century Fox studio by Disney (is there anything the House of Mouse doesn’t already own?) which meant that Dark Phoenix as well as The New Mutants were now Disney’s to deal with.

And obviously Disney didn’t care too much for Fox’s leftovers. Dark Phoenix went into cinemas last year with little fanfare, remaking a storyline that had already been told (and according to many, much better) in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006). The remake was a box-office failure – and this time the often overly negative criticism of fans, which I usually explain as Marvel fans who can’t stand that there is any competition for their beloved Disney films, might have been justified. I don’t know, because even I didn’t bother to watch the movie – and the X-Men movies were my entry into the Marvel universe. Why pay again to watch a story I saw 13 years ago, and own on DVD?

It seems to me that cinemagoers are tired of always seeing movies following the same old formula they have been watching, repeated again and again. That you can be successful by being different is proven by movies like Deadpool or Venom. The New Mutants tries to do something similar, but unfortunately, the caravan has moved on. After It and Netflix’s Stranger Things, the concept of the movie is nowhere near as original as it might have been a few years ago.

Based on Chris Claremont’s comic series from the 80s – at that time Marvel’s successful attempt to create a successful competing series to DC’s Teen Titans – New Mutants is about five misfits with the usual unusual abilities you know from the X-Men universe. Dani Moonstar (Blu Hunt) survives a catastrophe that killed her entire tribe, and wakes up in a hospital (which actually looks more like a nunnery!).

There, Dr. Reyes is trying therapy on four other mutants: Rahne Sinclair (Maisie Williams) who can turn into a were-wolf; Illyana Rasputin (Anya Taylor-Joy), Colossus’s little sister, who is able to jump in and out of the alternate dimension Limbo and can manifest a soulsword; Sam Guthrie (Charlie Heaton), who can move extremely quickly in the air and creating so extreme energy while being invulnerable in this situation; and Roberto da Costa (Henry Zaga), who can create when being excited solar energy, so he becomes actually burning hot. In the comics these characters are also known with their usual other names which are Wolfsbane, Magik, Cannonball and Sunspot but the movie never mentions these names.

Dr. Reyes intentions are to teach these young disturbed teens how to deal with their abilities and not hurt other people. It’s suggested by Reyes, they might then go to a school for gifted youngsters (hint, hint). Unfortunately, not all is as it seems and very soon the teenagers have to face their own anxieties and traumas. The evil power that killed off Dani’s people arrives at the facility and they are forced to work together to save Dani as well as defend their own lives and freedom.

Basically, this movie tries to go for a smaller scale, after a succession of X-Men movies that seemed to increase constantly in size. It’s a nice idea, and one I respect. This was even seen as the potential start of a new trilogy – although, which film nowadays isn’t? And I have to give the filmmakers this: at least they tried to do something different. That’s worth a lot in my book, considering we live in a time when Disney’s Marvel movies seem to be written and directed almost on autopilot (exception: The Avengers). Once a film series gets too big, the next logical step is to scale down. It can be a successful move: look at the James Bond movies, which seem to do so at regular intervals. However, it needs an audience that still cares. Unfortunately, I think that boat has sailed long ago for the X-Men. For most people, Logan (2017), Hugh Jackman’s final appearance in the role of Wolverine, was the last hurrah and end of the series.

There are a lot of good elements here. A darker, more sombre and psychological variation on the X-Men theme, it feels like Chris Carter’s TV series Millennium compared to his warmer, more sympathetic X-Files. This comparison is particularly appropriate, since The New Mutants was filmed in Vancouver, Canada, where the first few seasons of The X-Files were produced and here, too, the composer is Mark Snow.

The first half of the (fortunately not-too-long) movie – I really, really hate the lengthy running time of blockbuster movies today – focuses on the five misfits, their pasts and their relationship building. The second is when the action and the CGI comes into play, though is more restrained than you may be used to in these movies. The New Mutants really feels like the intimate stage-play of X-Men films. The main inspirations, apart from those already mentioned, seem to be the psychological drama Girl, Interrupted (1999) with Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie, as well as Buffy the Vampire Slayer – the latter is watched by the mutants a couple of times, and seems to correspond with things we see later. But, while I said that the new movie is more psychological, don’t think it’s deep, beyond “Well, I’ve got these superpowers, didn’t know how to control them, killed some people and now I’m kind of a wreck.”

But still… I kind of liked that this went a different route than the usual overblown extravaganzas. Anya Taylor-Joy as Illyana Rasputin, a.k.a. “Magik”, leaves a particular impression. Though I have to wonder why those in power found it necessary to change the backstories: Rahne (Williams) and Dani seem to be moving towards a lesbian relationship while the film subtly indicates that Illyana might have created the “limbus” (her magical world) due to sexual abuse as a child. Neither of this has any basis in the comics, it’s just Josh Boone overwriting existing lore, perhaps to make the characters more “realistic”. I don’t know why people do that. Is being kidnapped by a devil-like demon and being transported in some kind of hellish dimension not terrifying enough anymore? On the other side, the story of “Magik” has hardly been touched, so the possibility of a solo film that could dive deeper into the lore of the character still exists. Though I guess, we’ll never see this at all.

I stayed until the end titles were over. For, while the movie was not the best of the series (though far from the worst), I felt a little sad realizing this was finally, officially and really the end of 20th Century Fox’s X-Men films. The first X-Men, in 2000, ushered in a new era of comic book movies and introduced me to Marvel superheroes. And while we have seen all sorts of similar films since, I always had a liking for this franchise. They tried out new things, and wanted to be different from that what Disney/Marvel did. Sometimes they succeeded, sometimes they failed – sometimes they succeeded and the result was still not that great. It’s always easy to do the safe, secure thing and laugh all the way to the bank. It’s less easy to constantly try to reinvent oneself.

Regardless of what their respective qualities or flaws were, I guess I’ll miss them.

Dir:  Josh Boone
Star: Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Heaton, Alice Braga

X-Men: Dark Phoenix

  By

★★★
“I’m SO confused…”

I can’t believe there have been seven X-Men movies now. I think the last I saw was the second, which came out in 2003. Since then, there seems to have been a lot of mutants under the bridge, so to speak – and, it appears, some jiggery-pokery with timelines. That’s the only way to explain the death early on in this origin story, of someone I’m fairly sure was in the films I saw, which took place later in the chronology. Still, all I can do is presume it makes sense if you’ve seen the whole series, and on that basis this was fine. Indeed, by coincidence. we watched this the same day as Black Panther – and if I didn’t already know, I’d be hard-pushed to tell you which was a cultural phenomenon, and which was among the biggest bombs of the year.

It is the first Marvel feature since Elektra with a female lead, so there’s that. In this case, it’s Jean Grey (Turner), who is taken under the wing of Charles Xavier (McAvoy) after losing her parents in a car-crash triggered by Jean’s psychic talents. She joins the rest of the X-Men – though as Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) puts it, “The women are always saving the men around here. You might wanna think about changing the name to X-Women.” On a mission to rescue the crew of a crippled Space Shuttle, she absorbs a cosmic energy blast. This makes her incredibly powerful, yet also unleashes her insecurities, a situation not helped after she discovers that Xavier has been more than economical with the truth. Meanwhile, a group of extra-terrestrials led by Vuk (Chastain) arrives, seeking to use Grey and her powers. It becomes a race between them and the X-Men to find the runaway Grey.

Push comes to shove, I probably enjoyed this slightly more than Black Panther. It seemed less concerned about making statements, and more about simply providing entertainment. As mentioned, I have to take all plot-logic as read, and also that there’s an explanation for the biggest number of blue people in a film since The Smurfs Movie. I was here simply for large-scale, visually slick imagery, things blowing up and epic fight scenes, and on that level, I can’t say I was disappointed. Sure, the characterizations were often little more than obvious [for example, Grey comes from the “disgruntled orphan” school of superheroes], and Chastain is sadly under-used; that whole “not blinking” thing is sublimely creepy.

Yet it’s hardly alone among comic-book movie, in these or its other flaws, and I couldn’t find anything to justify the dire box-office fate suffered. Sure, it’s never going to be mistaken for a classic, and as a (supposed) wrap-up to the franchise, is probably unsatisfying to ardent fans. However, I am not one of those. As somebody who hasn’t seen an X-Men movie for seventeen years, this was the kind of overblown spectacle I expected – and, truth be told was wanting. Having watched rather too many over-inflated genre entries of late, that seek to be Very Important, I was fine with just seeing subway trains getting hurled around city streets.

Dir: Simon Kinberg
Star: Sophie Turner, James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain, Michael Fassbender

Cutie Honey: Tears

  By

★★★
“Battle Angel Cutie”

Or, perhaps: “What Blade Runner would have been like, if android Roy Batty was a good guy.” For this appears to be a mash-up of elements from that and Battle Angel Alita. While preceding the film version of the latter, it does seem to borrow elements of the manga, not least in its depiction of a future society where there is a strict, and basically vertical, division between the haves and the have-nots. After disease and pollution have pushed society to the brink, the rich and powerful live towards the top of a self-sufficient mega-city, under the control of ice queen Lady Jiru (Ishida) and her “Sodom” cyborg enforcers, leaving everyone else struggling for scraps down below. And leaving is a death sentence, due to the viruses infecting the outside world.

Falling from the sky, also just like Alita, is Hitomi Kisaragi (Nishiuchi), an android girl with the ability to transform, created by her scientist “father”, Professor Kisaragi. Witnessing this event is a young child, Hayami. Years later, he has become a journalist (Miura), and encounters Hitomi again as she stops a Sodom patrol from arresting an opponent to Jiru’s rule. He tracks Hitomi down, and requests her help in the resistance movement of which he is a member, telling her Jiru is actively causing the pollution which affects the lower levels. However, there are other members of their group, intent on taking more direct and violent action against the powers that be, and there’s also uncertainty over what happened to Prof. Kusaragi.

I really liked the look of this film: with the split between rich and poor, the style manages both to be sleekly neon and grimly dystopian, having its design cake and eating it too. Admittedly, the level of devotion to Blade Runner becomes almost slavish – somewhat ironic, watching this in November 2019, the month and year in which Blade Runner was originally set. However, I guess there are few if any better movies from which to lift. I also admired the maker’s willingness to go in a radically different direction to the previous Cutie Honey live-action adaptation, Gone is the cute bounciness, replaced by a dark, almost cyberpunk approach. It’s one best personified by the excellent performance of Ishida as Lady Jiru, who looks and acts every inch the part of an evil overlord.

The story-line, however, is severely underwhelming, with elements that are unconvincing when clear, and unclear when they are convincing. While we do get the expected confrontation between Hitomi and Jiru, the former has to deliver, with a straight face, lines of dialogue like “Because I’m incomplete, I never give up… Because I have defects, I will beat you.” Cue much rolling of eyes here. More generally, neither Hitomi nor Hayami provide enough to make you want to keep watching: Rutger Hauer and Harrison Ford, they most definitely are not. As a result, you’re left largely to admire the production design, while waiting for the next Jiru appearance. It’s not quite sufficient.

Dir: Asai Takeshi
Star: Mariya Nishiuchi, Takahiro Miura, Nicole Ishida, Sousuke Takaoka

Wonder Woman: Bloodlines

  By

★★
“I wonder what they were thinking?”

Having enjoyed the previous animated Wonder Woman film, this was a significant disappointment. It doesn’t seem to fit in to any established universe and loos designed more as a quick cash-in on the success of the live-action version, than existing out of artistic desire. It begins with a broken, modern-day update of the latter’s opening, with the plane of Air Force pilot Steve Trevor (Donovan) making a crash-landing inside the bubble which has protected Themyscira  over the ages. He’s desperate to return to tell the world about the demonic entities which attacked him, and Diana (Dawson, who played Artemis in the previous animated version) rebels against her mother and the decision of the other Amazons to imprison Steve, going with him to the outside world.

Except, there’s basically no explanation as to Diana’s revolt, beyond a throwaway line about a prophecy. And in the next scene, Diana is sitting in the back of a cab on the way to house of historian Dr. Julia Kapatelis. Demonic entities? What are they? With those entirely forgotten, the film then focuses on the doctor’s daughter, Vanessa (Avgeropoulos), who turns bad, becomes Silver Swan, and eventually teams up with Doctor Poison and a slew of B-villains, of whom I’ve never heard, e.g. Giganta, Cheetah, Doctor Cyber. They plan to attack Themyscira and profit from its technology, and to that goal have revived and powered-up Medusa, who ends up becoming more of a Med-zilla.

This is all full of ridiculous and contrived circumstances. For instance, Diana “forgets” the location of Themyscira. But – what are the odds – there’s a fountain from which she can drink, which will restore her knowledge! And Julia discovered the location in her research! Or, the dispatch of Medusa will turn everyone whom she has petrified, back to being human again. Hmm, must have missed that bit in the mythology. It will certainly lead to some very confused ancient Greek warriors, who suddenly find themselves inhabiting the 21st-century… It feels as if the writers were making stuff up as they went along, and repeatedly painted themselves into corners, from which they could only fabricate escapes out of thin air.

All of which I could take, were the animation decent. When in motion, it’s okay, and some of the action scenes work moderately well. But otherwise, it’s painfully basic, with characters’ faces not moving, except for their mouths. Up until Medusa appears, there’s no indication that any of the antagonists are able to pose a genuine threat to our heroine. Their ludicrously-named group, “Villainy, Inc”, feels like something out of a superhero spoof like Mystery Men. While the initial set-up make it looks like Vanessa will become Diana’s main opponent, she just ends up just another faceless minion.  As someone familiar only with the various adaptations and not the source comic-books, this wasn’t worth my time. Heck, even the unaired TV pilot was more entertaining. 

Dir: Sam Liu, Justin Copeland
Star (voice):  Rosario Dawson, Jeffrey Donovan, Marie Avgeropoulos, Adrienne C. Moore

Birds of Prey (film)

  By

★★½
“For flock’s sake…”

Or, to give this its full, rather misguided name: Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn). I am not convinced that films are improved by giving them gimmick titles including made-up words. It smacks rather of desperation on the part of the makers. Though this is… alright. It did not actively annoy me in quite the same way Captain Marvel did, but it is still disappointing. Robbie’s Harley Quinn was easily the best thing about Suicide Squad. She’s also the best thing about this, but it feels at a considerably lower level. All the edges seem to have been filed off, with Robbie (who produced this and came up with the idea) apparently intent on making her much more of a heroic figure than the barely-restrained psychopath I was hoping to see.

The main problem, however, is over-stuffing of storylines, with so many threads being weaved in, that they all inevitably suffer as a result. Let’s enumerate them. There’s Harley, who breaks up with the Joker, only to discover his protection was the only thing which had been keeping her safe. Detective Renee Montoya (Perez), whose case-load includes investigating crossbow vigilante killings, mob boss Roman Sionis (McGregor) and Harley herself. Sionis’s singer-turned-driver Dinah Lance, a.k.a. Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), who… Well, I’m really not sure what purpose she serves here. The crossbow killer is Helena Bertinelli, a.k.a. Huntress (Winstead), seeking vengeance for the death of her family. And Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco), a young pickpocket who steals and eats a diamond containing coded information sought by Sionis.

None of these are adequately developed, even Harley’s. Her story is adequately and brightly sketched out in an animated opening sequence, and then gets scant service as the script tries to keep all its balls, sorry, ovaries in the air. For the feminist leanings are probably the most painful aspect. As depicted here, the “emancipation” of the title seems less about building women up, than tearing men down. Virtually without exception, every male character is more or less a bastard, from the obvious ones like Sionis’s sidekick with a fondness for face-peeling through to Montoya’s former partner who stole credit for her work. Even the kindly store-owner turns out to be happy to sell Harley out. Is this emancipation? To steal from The Princess Bride: “You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.” 

Along those lines I was initially prepared to criticize Margot for pre-release statements, like it being “hugely important to find a female director for this.” However, that snippet is a bit misleading, since the full quote in context goes on, “…if possible. But at the end of the day — male, female — the best director gets the job and Cathy was the best director.” I’m fine with that. Though it has to be said, I’m not sure what made Yan the best, given her only feature before this was Dead Pigs, a comedy-drama about an incident where 16,000 deceased porcines were found in a Chinese river. But the direction here is serviceable enough: it doesn’t get in the way of Margot Robbie, which may be what the star  wanted all along.

The action is a bit of a mixed bag. There are a couple of very good brawls for Harley, most notably one in a police evidence warehouse (even if the cops seem curiously unwilling to draw and use their firearms. What is this, the United Kingdom?) where Robbie and her stunt doubles get to showcase some stellar moves. But the final fight has much the same problem as the plot in general. In trying to make sure each of the four fighting leads get their chance to shine (Cassandra basically cowers in a corner for the duration of it), the climax basically succeeds in selling all of them short. There is quite a nice “funhouse” atmosphere there, since it takes place in an abandoned amusement park, though it feels like some of the potential wasn’t fully developed.

It does seem to draw some inspiration from Leon, in the relationship between Harley and Cassandra, which is not dissimilar to the one between Leon and Matilda. In both, the adult is forced to tap into a previously unknown nurturing side after a  young girl is dropped into their care, though they are hardly the ideal parent. But probably the most obvious nod is at the end, where Cassandra pulls a very similar “ring trick” to the one which takes care of Stansfield at the end of Leon. As soon as she said it, I figured out what Cassandra meant, before Harley did. However, this maternal element does play into the softening of Harley, one of the disappointing aspects. Given the freedom of an R-rating. I’d have expected a bit more in the way of mature content than a potty mouth and some intermittently brutal violence. At times, it feels more like Robbie is cosplaying Harley, rather than playing her.

Robbie’s avowed aim was to make a “girl gang” pic, perhaps inspired by things like Switchblade Sisters, Faster Pussycat or the pinky violence genre. But what she didn’t bring from them, is that those all had strong leadership. There was no doubt that Tura Satana or Meiko Kaji were the stars: the films accordingly orbited around them and their fabulous screen presence. Her previous movies have shown us, Robbie can deliver that, which makes it all the more of a shame that she abdicated the throne here. Sadly, this ends up closer to an episode from the last series of Doctor Who, with its “very flat team structure.” Or to borrow from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, an anarcho-syndicalist commune where Harley and her pals take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week. Maybe the title, with its supposed heroine relegated to the tenth and eleventh words, was accurate after all.

Dir: Cathy Yan
Star: Margot Robbie, Ewan McGregor, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Rosie Perez

Birds-of-Prey-01
Birds-of-Prey-02
Birds-of-Prey-03
Birds-of-Prey-04
Birds-of-Prey-05
Birds-of-Prey-06
Birds-of-Prey-07
Birds-of-Prey-08
Birds-of-Prey-09
Birds-of-Prey-10
Birds-of-Prey-11
Birds-of-Prey-12
Birds-of-Prey-13
Birds-of-Prey-14
Birds-of-Prey-15
Birds-of-Prey-16
Birds-of-Prey-17
Birds-of-Prey-18
Birds-of-Prey-19
Birds-of-Prey-20
Birds-of-Prey-21
Birds-of-Prey-22
Birds-of-Prey-23
Birds-of-Prey-24

Valentine: The Dark Avenger

  By

★★★½
“An unexpected Valentine’s gift.”

It’s always nice when a film manages to surpass expectations. Coming in, I was thinking this was going to be nothing but a low-rent, dubbed, caped crusader flick. And, to be honest, that is exactly what it is: a low-rent dubbed, caped crusader flick. But it proved considerably more entertaining than, say, Terminator: Dark Fate, which I saw the same weekend, and which cost roughly a thousand times as much to make.

It has an interesting hook. Waitress Srimaya (Linden) is recruited by a film-maker, Bono (Settle, the only American in the cast), who wants to make a superhero movie that will be a positive role-model for the citizens of crime-riddled Batavia City. With no producer willing to back him, Bono opts to go the viral route. When he sees Srimaya’s martial arts skills in action, he brings her on board to star in videos where she goes up against and beats robbers, muggers and other street punks, clad in a fetching little mask and cape designed by stylist friend Wawan (Dagienks). But her actions bring her to the attention of crime lord, Shadow, who is carrying out a vendetta against the local police.

There’s a nice sense of progression through the film, with the heroine’s gear and costume improving from the pretty basic to the impressively nifty, as she and Wawan learn from her experiences, e.g. add more padding. It also is willing to kill off people you didn’t expect, and if the true identity of Shadow is something you might well figure out before the end, the reasons behind it are unexpected and well-considered. Even the dubbing didn’t irritate me, in the way it usually does – though this may partly have been been because I still put English subtitles on!

The main appeal is the action, however. Indonesian films have a reputation of late for being remarkably impressive, and if this isn’t quite The Raid or The Night Comes For Us, choreographer Robert Suwandi delivers the goods. Linden in particular, is better than expected, and I also liked the Suicide Squad-like trio of female henchmen used by Shadow. The directorial style does tend a little too much to the hyper in terms of movement and cutting, yet it also does a good job of meshing practical and CGI – better, indeed, than Terminator: Dark Fate. For the CGI is used to enhance, rather than replace the physical effects, in particular during a car-chase following a bank robbery.

My interest in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has steadily waned as it has become an unstoppable behemoth. Films like this, however, I find considerably more interesting.  Not necessarily because the stories they tell are particularly novel, just that they seem created out of a desire to tell those stories, rather than as cold, calculated commercial entities. I’d rather see a film with rough edges here and there, made with passion, than one which is clearly just a job for those involved. This movie is a good indication of why.

Dir: Ubay Fox, Agus Pestol
Star: Estelle Linden, Matthew Settle, Arie Dagienkz, Fendy Pradana

Captain Marvel

  By

★★½
“Hardly marvel-lous”

I had a couple of potential concerns going into this. Firstly, my general unfamiliarity with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This was film #21 in their Infinity Saga. I had seen seven. Would this be like trying to follow Game of Thrones‘s penultimate episode, after having missed two-thirds of what preceded it? Secondly, Brie Larson’s press complaints about movie critics being “overwhelmingly white male.” Yep, guilty as charged, m’lord. Would this questionable attitude – that your skin colour and genital configuration matter more than what you do or say – carry over into the movie?

Fortunately, neither turned out to be a significant issue. On the other hand, it’s still not a very good movie.

Oh, it’s occasionally amusing and sometimes reaches the level of moderately impressive spectacle. But the longer it went on, the less involved I was in it. By the time Vers (Larson), a.k.a. Air Force pilot Carol Danvers enters goddess mode and becomes Captain Marvel, all I could think of was, “That’s a silly-looking helmet.” To reach that point, we follow her as alien Vers gets captured by the enemies of her Kree species, the Skrulls. Their brainwashing attempts succeed in partially re-awakening repressed memories of life on Earth as Danvers. The Krulls are after a light-speed engine being developed there by Danvers’s mentor, Dr. Wendy Lawson (Bening). It’s up to Vers to stop them. Except, almost nothing is quite what it seems at first.

My biggest complaint is how the film relies entirely on dramatically convenient amnesia. I found it painfully obvious, the way Vers’s memories repeatedly dribble back in exactly the manner most appropriate for the plot. The most important elements left are until last, because story-line. The period setting of 1995 turns out to be largely pointless, beyond an excuse to throw a Nine Inch Nails T-shirt onto Larson. [I’ll admit, we did pause the Blockbuster Video scene, to try and recognize some of the VHS sleeves, such as Hook and Jumping Jack Flash] It could just as easily have been set now, considering Marvel vanishes at the end, not returning until Avengers: Endgame, as a mid-credits sequence makes clear.

The above would have been okay if the action had been top-drawer, and it isn’t. This is probably the area in which Battle Angel kicks Captain Marvel’s ass the hardest: almost nothing here has any impact, physically or emotionally. Overall, it just feels lazy: look no further than the most obvious choice of  No Doubt’s Just a Girl as the backing track for the final fight. That was about as cringey as the empowerment got; rather more annoying was the political subtext, of “What if we were the real terrorists?” I watched this literally immediately after seeing Ricky Gervais’s beautifully savage assault on Hollywood at the Golden Globes: “You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world.” This film would seem to prove his point.

Dir: Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck
Star: Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Annette Bening