Tag: d

Doomsday

  By

★★★½
“McResident Evil”

Basically every review I read of this has started off by stating it’s a cross between…well, perm any three from Mad Max, Escape From New York, Aliens, I am Legend, 28 Days Later and Resident Evil, depending on how well-informed the writer is about the action and horror genres. That’s fair enough: there’s no denying that Marshall has chosen here to create a film that is as much as compilation of influences as anything, and this therefore falls short of his previous work, The Descent, which went places few recent horror films have gone. However, most reviews sniffily stop there or, worse still, engage in petty cinematic snobbery: witness Jeff Otto of ReelzChannel.com – I’m not going to do him the honor of linking to the piece – who says, “Not pre-screening this one was a smart move on Universal’s part. It has no need for critics because the people who will enjoy this movie are very unlikely to possess the cognitive skills or attention span to read a review anyway.” I came up with several witty rejoinders to that, but opt instead for the tried and tested one of, fuck you, Jeff Otto. For sometimes you don’t want something that pushes the boundaries of cinema; the films listed in the first paragraph are (mostly) classics, and if you’re going to steal from anywhere, steal from the best.

In the near future (next week, actually at the time of going to press), Glasgow falls prey to the Reaper virus, which is exactly what it sounds like. The government in London deal with the problem by building a 30-foot wall along the border and sealing off Scotland – which is basically the approach taken by the government to problems in Scotland since, oh, about 1707. [Hello, born there!] 30 years later, however, the virus breaks out in London, and all of a sudden, the information that people are still alive in Scotland, suggesting they found a cure, is now of more than academic interest. To get the cure, they send Eden (Mitra) up North, to find Kane (McDowell, appearing in about two scenes, then taking his salary and leaving), who might just have the solution. However, things do not go as planned, needless to say, not least because Glasgow is inhabited by nothing but psychopathic thugs with poor dress sense and bad skin, stuck in the past. So, no change, then. [Hello, not born there – East Coast Scotland, represent!]

It’s clear that Marshall has a strong interest in action-heroines, having not only directed The Descent but also written Killing Time. Mitra also has something of a track record, having been one of the live-action Lara Crofts for Eidos a few years back. Here, however, she comes across as more of a Kate Beckinsale wannabe – my first reaction when I saw the trailer was this it was Kate. That works better in Underworld or Resident Evil, where the setting gives us reason to believe that the central character has special powers of one kind or another; as a straight-up action heroine, Mitra is just not physical enough to convince. This may perhaps explain the limited amount of physical action she does; a fight against another woman warrior, appears to have been edited with a weed-whacker, but another, in which she goes one-on-one with an armored knight, is pretty decent.

It all builds to a monumental car-chase, though you have to suspend disbelief there, as apparently Bentley cars will start right out of the crate, even if they’ve been sitting there for thirty years. You can also plough them through an exploding bus, amongst a litany of other torments, and they’ll come out the other side with barely a scratch. Again, if you’re going to ground your film in the ‘real world’, admittedly a questionable concept given the plot synopsis above (and I haven’t even got to the more outrageous elements yet!), then mis-steps such as these should be avoided. They’ll just give the more moronic end of the critical fraternity – paging Jeff Otto – blunt objects with which to whack your film about the head, as they ride off on their high horse. They only bothered me slightly, since I was already in full-on disbelief suspension, and since the resulting car-chase was cheerfully destructive, I’m inclined to give it some slack.

There’s also a certain point at which it’s clear that Marshall is operating tongue in cheek: it may be the sign on the Glaswegian bus which reads ‘Out of Fucking Service’, or in the castle where Cane and his followers have regressed to medieval times, yet have left up another sign, this one saying ‘Gift Shop’. Or that two of the soldiers in Eden’s party are called Miller and Carpenter: the directors of Mad Max and Escape From New York being George Miller and John Carpenter, of course. Or the elaborately choreographed ritual of human flesh-eating, like an Archaos show [there’s an 80’s reference for you!], set to a song by punk icon Siouxsie and the Banshees. Though the immediately-preceding use of Fine Young Cannibals was, I admit, a bit much. Still, let go, don’t expect the atmosphere of The Descent – this is much closer in tone to Marshall’s preceding Dog Soldiers – and just enjoy the gloopy violence or slabs of black humour which pepper the film, and you’ll have a more than adequate time.

Dir: Neil Marshall
Stars: Rhona Mitra, Bob Hoskins, Craig Conway, Malcolm McDowell

Dark Queen

  By

★★
“So bad, it’s borderline painful – yet we will remember this, albeit for all the wrong reasons.”

Let me be perfectly clear: one of the above stars is purely for entertainment value, since this is one of those movies which is so bad as to become enjoyable, purely on that level. There is hardly an aspect of this film which is not badly-executed: the script is badly thought-out, the performances are almost without exception woeful, and the continuity has to be among the worst of all time. One actress goes from a colored top and no bra, to a bra, to a white top and no bra, in successive scenes, while another enters a pool in a bikini, comes out topless, and five second later has the top back on and is dry. We laughed like drains, I tell you. Oh, you want the plot? Mousy scientist Helen (Kitchen) is trying to find a brain chemical that will unleash humanity’s psychic powers, using imprisoned serial-killer Horn (Marks) as her source. Even though the resulting chemical is green and glowing, in a way not seen since Re-Animator, she decides to test it on herself. This unleashes her alter-ego, Cassandra, who embarks on a plot to enslave mankind to her will. It’s up to her assistant Gary (Klitzner), along with a homicide detective (Rivers) to stop her.

Where to start? Kitchen is about the least-appalling thing the film has to offer, struggling bravely with two roles so under-developed that an Oscar nominee would have problems making them watchable, and occasionally manages to look like something other than a low-rent Xena. We’re convinced Klitzner is gay, which makes his success with just about every one of the laideez in this film, utterly implausible. Meanwhile, Marks’ psychopath chews scenery at a fearsome rate, making the later works of Anthony Perkins a masterpiece of understated subtlety in comparison. Our son strolled in while we were watching this, and was quite taken with Rivers [right, bottom] and her breasts – at that moment, being unveiled for his pleasure. He gave the breasts two enthusiastic thumbs-up, but then, he didn’t stick around for the rest of the movie. Score one for the wisdom of youth there.

It should be entirely clear which series the distributors of Dark Queen are hoping you’ll mistake their film for an entry in. In reality, this is not fit to lick Natasha Henstridge’s boots; it’s really much closer to Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, yet as such, is still a dismal failure – that whirring sound you hear is Robert Louis Stevenson spinning in his grave. However, even as it fails on just about every cinematic level, fans of bad cinema may find this has its merits. However, even there, it may still divide opinions: I had rather more fun with this than Chris [she, on the other hand, liked the midget-vampire movie, Ankle Biters, which I found almost unwatchable]. You can certainly sense where they were aiming with this; however, the execution is, frankly, so awful as to drain any potential from it, almost entirely.

Dir: Ken LaVan
Star: Tian Kitchen, Sean Klitzner, Michael Marks, Sheyenne Rivers

Domino

  By

★★½
“Domino Toppling”

“This is based on a true story…sort of” is how the pre-credit disclaimer goes. Which does, at least, show far more honesty by Tony Scott than the usual claims in such things – Blair Witch and Wolf Creek shuffle their feet nervously. Unfortunately, my response would have to be, “This is a watchable movie…sort of.” Scott brings his usual, hyper-kinetic style to the table, but I was prepared for that and so didn’t mind it. No, the major problem was the derailment of the film from the potentially fascinating and probably unique character of Domino, into yet another heist movie. So instead of any insight into personality, we get to watch a bunch of gangsters and low-lives, of whom Domino is merely one, double-cross each other. It’s an hour of watching the corpse of Barbaro being beaten, if you get my drift; even Scott has been here before, to better effect, in True Romance.

When it concentrates on our heroine, however, it’s eminently watchable, Knightley demanding attention in a way where her obvious lack of physical bulk becomes almost irrelevant. [I was surprised to see how the real Domino was similarly wispy, as the photo on the right shows.] Her finest moment is probably during sorority hazing at college, where her tormenter viciously criticizes her figure. Domino coolly stares back, pauses and asks, “Have you had a nose job?” Bemused, the girl says “No” – Domino sucker-punches her in the face. Twice. The incident sums up the feisty, take absolutely no shit attitude of the character brilliantly, and bounty-hunting becomes an obvious, logical choice of career.

She gets a job with Ed Moseby (Rourke) and Choco (Ramirez), who track down people who’ve skipped bail for bondsman Claremont Williams III (Delroy Lindo) – Ed and Claremont are based on real people, who worked as technical advisors on the movie, Choco is apparently a fabrication. Together, they become an efficient team, aided by Domino’s skills both with weapons and in street psychology. However, Williams has a plot to steal $10m from a Las Vegas casino, which goes badly wrong, not least because two of his chosen patsies to take the fall, are actually the sons of a mob boss. It all ends in a massive gun-battle at the Stratosphere Tower in Las Vegas, where everyone is after the cash and survival.

The film is filled with distracting stunt casting in the minor roles. This includes Christopher Walken, Mena Suvari, Lucy Liu, Jacqueline Bisset, two guys from Beverly Hills 90210 playing themselves, Macy Gray, Tom Waits and even Jerry Springer, though the episode of his show here is far duller and more earnest than the real thing. Walken is, inevitably, the only one to make much of an impression, playing a reality TV producer who wants to make Domino a star. He’s described as having the attention span of a ferret on crystal meth, probably an adequate metaphor for the film as a whole. It lacks the patience to stay with and develop any of the characters, so sniffs around them for two minutes, before scurrying off to find someone else instead.

I should probably comment on how close the film is to the real story of Domino Harvey: not very. She was the daughter of Laurence Harvey (star of the original The Manchurian Candidate) and his fashion-model wife. She was expelled from multiple schools as a child and is rumoured to have tried her hand at modelling, though the evidence for this is questionable; certainly, the catwalk catfight shown in the film appears to be an outright invention. She was, indeed, a bounty hunter, albeit not for long – maybe a couple of years, around 1994-1995. That’s about where the film and truth part company. In sad, actual fact, Harvey had been fighting with chemical abuse issues for years, and was found dead of a drug overdose in June 2005, while awaiting trial for distributing meth.

It doesn’t seem as if the life of a supermodel turned bounty hunter would be in much need of embellishment. But I guess when you sign Richard Kelly, the writer of Donnie Darko, for your script, you’re not looking for cinema verite. That said, this still seems like a wasted opportunity, relegating Domino, who should have been the focus of the film, into just another sidelight. Hell, even the impressive skill with nunchakus, demonstrated earlier on by Knightley, is largely abandoned. Scott’s earlier Man on Fire was much more successful, as it stuck with Denzel Washington’s character throughout, and a similar approach here would have paid dividends. In fact, the plot there, where a bodyguard hunts relentlessly for a kidnapped little girl, would have acquired an entirely new set of resonances with a woman playing the bodyguard. Memo to Scott: if you’re going to base a film on someone’s life, and still make stuff up for it, please use the opportunity to enhance, rather than distract from, the subject matter.

Dir: Tony Scott
Stars: Keira Knightley, Mickey Rourke, Edgar Ramirez, Lucy Liu

Dirty Pair OAVs

  By

★★★★

dpovaBack before such things were easy, conversion of videotapes from NTSC to PAL were done by recording the picture off your TV screen with a camcorder. Needless to say, this had its downside: any time the screen went dark, you got a reflection of the converter’s video-room, usually with him creeping around quietly. I mention this, because my first encounter with Kei and Yuri was back when an unsubtitled camera copy of The Ultimate Halloween Party strayed across my eyes. I was hooked. And twenty years later, it still plays beautifully, a mini-masterpiece in 24 minutes, that is funnier, contains more action and is just superior entertainment than 95% of shows currently on television.

The format is relatively simple, but an infinite universe allows almost infinite scope for development. Teenage trouble-consultants Kei and Yuri jet about the cosmos, investigating crimes from drug-dealing connected to an underground fight club (Revenge of the Muscle Lady), young delinquents who hijack a planet (The Prisoner’s Troublesome Revolt) or a civil-war on a planet which some people don’t apparently want to end (Red Eyes are the Signal of Hell). Obviously, given you’re barely talking twenty minutes of story by the time you extract opening and closing credits, so there’s nothing complex, and you can usually spot the villain well before Kei and Yuri do. The animation is also about the level of quality you’d expect from a mid-80’s straight-to-video anime: serviceable enough.

But what works are the straightforward entertainment aspects. This is action-SF with tinges of humour, and a couple of central characters who swan around the galaxy in what are basically space-bikinis, engaging in gun-battles with their enemies. It clearly isn’t meant to be taken seriously, doesn’t take itself seriously, and is perfectly content to be nothing more than a bit of mindless fun. But there are occasional moments of subtlety, such as Sleeping Beauty, where the Pair find a young girl who witnessed a murder but has been in cryogenic slumber for twenty years. The final scene there has surprising poignancy. That’s the exception rather than the rule, which is unabashed entertainment.

Dir: Katsuyoshi Yatabe
Star (voice): Kyôko Tongu, Saeko Shimazu

The Doll Squad

  By

★★
“Less an inspiration for Charlie’s Angels than the early works of Andy Sidaris.”

To describe this as eagerly anticipated would be… well, wholly wrong, actually. I’ll tell you how long the DVD has sat on our shelf: I bought it on honeymoon; we got married in July 2002. Not exactly required viewing, then. And having seen it, I can see why: while not as bad as we feared from the trailer, it’s remarkably dull. Mikels claims the concept was stolen by the creators of Charlie’s Angels, but going by the execution here, the word he’s looking for would appear to be “rescued”, not stolen. Sabrina Kincaid (York) assembles an all-girl team to find and take out the evil mastermind who’s blowing up American rockets. Quite why they must be girls is never quite explained; it’s down to Big Bertha, the government computer that assigns missions, and apparently values fashion sense over ability.

It’s really the middle where this falls apart, among near-endless scenes of the team running around an island in jumpsuits and white, high-heeled boots, getting captured, escaping and running around again. This is, as it sounds, remarkably dull, and outside of Sabrina, no attempt is made to give any of the other members any significant character traits. That’s a shame, especially since you’ve got Tura Satana, one of the most memorable action heroines of all time in Faster Pussycat. Here’s she’s reduced to a pastie-wearing cypher, who provides the film’s entire, insignificant skin quota. If you’re hoping this film makes up for in nudity what it lacks in most other areas, you’ll be disappointed.

There are some minor pleasures to be had: York isn’t bad, and her team has no qualms about dropping someone, then adding a bullet or two for good measure [Though this isn’t necessary when you feed them high-explosive liquor] And the soundtrack is perhaps the best thing about the film, being 91 minutes of Grade-A, seventies cheese. However, on the whole, this is more a chore than a pleasure, and Mikels doesn’t do much here to redeem his name as one of the poorer B-movie directors of the time.

Dir: Ted V. Mikels
Stars: Francine York, Michael Ansara, Sherri Vernon, Tura Satana

D.E.B.S.

  By

★★
“Teenage lesbians! With guns! How could they go wrong? Well…read on.”

As Kim Possible proves, there’s certainly scope for a high-school action heroine who has to save the world from evil. Unfortunately, here, the potential largely gurgles down the plughole, in favour of a smug, self-satisfied romantic comedy, that manages to be as bland as a film about teenage lesbians could be. Amy Bradshaw (Foster) gets a perfect score on the test hidden within the SAT, and is recruited into a spy academy; there, with her classmates (Good, Ritchie and the always amusing Devon Aoki), she carries out secret missions, wears plaid skirts and agonises over her relationship with her boyfriend.

So far, so good. Then, by unlikely plotting, she meets and falls for evil mastermind, Lucy Diamond (Brewster), and decides to quit school for Lucy. But does the road of true love ever run smooth? This, unfortunately, is where the film goes off the rails entirely. While I’ve no problems with homosexual love stories – okay, especially where the protagonists are cute and female – Robinson abandons wit for a series of cliches, causing nothing but slow boredom. Originally a ten-minute short, it doesn’t appear any additional ideas went into the script, meaning it’s good for about ten minutes of fun. Logic is all but non-existent, even in the “ironic” D.E.B.S. world: for example, the teachers can teleport around, but at the end, are unable to get past a locked door.

The action isn’t too bad initially, with a sprightly shootout in a restaurant. However, that’s your lot, save the “daring” lesbian angle. Though, being mainstream cinema, it’s just a couple of clothes-on kisses, and bad, unconvincing romance is no fun, regardless of a character’s orientation. This aspect is so po-faced and politically correct – it is, clearly, supposed to be taken Very Seriously – that proceedings come to a grinding halt, while what appears to be the director’s iPod on shuffle plays as a witless soundtrack. Look! An Erasure song! How appropriate! ‘Cos, y’know, they’re gay. Kill me. Kill me now. Then bring me a copy of Naked Killer.

Dir: Angela Robinson
Star: Sara Foster, Jordana Brewster, Meagan Good, Jill Ritchie

Don’t Play With Fire

  By

★★★½
“A grim cinematic road-accident; hard to watch, yet harder to stop watching.”

This bleak, nihilist view of 1980’s Hong Kong ran into severe trouble with local censors, for its depiction of the colony as populated solely by violent brutes. Leading these is Pearl (Lin), a teenage girl who redefines the term “troubled”, and whose brother (Lo) is a cop with a short fuse. She witnesses a hit-and-run accident and browbeats the three kids involved into joining her in a relentlessly-escalating series of violent escapades. When they find themselves in possession of 800 million yen belonging to gun-smugglers, you just know things are going to go wrong. And they do: pointedly, Hark finishes the film with photos taken during the 1967 riots in the colony. Make of that what you will…

Right from the start, with Pearl sticking pins in the head of a mouse, the film doesn’t shy from depicting cruel behaviour, particularly towards animals, and there’s hardly a sympathetic character in the film. Pearl does at least have some justification for her lack of morality, and her attempts to weld her new “friends” into something like a team, or even a family are touchingly pathetic. At one point she suggests they’ll escape to Canada and live happily ever after, which is definitely not going to happen. However, the film swerves wildly around, leaping from plot to plot with little coherence, though censorship may explain why certain threads, such as the bombing campaign, seem especially underdeveloped.

Whether robbing a gang of Japanese tourists, or taking revenge on a banker who gave them bad information, Pearl is the lynch-pin who keeps the movie focused, and when she departs, the interest level drops noticeably. Still, if you’ve only seen Tsui’s subsequent, more fantastic films, the venomous realism will be a shock. Keep an eye out for him in an uncredited role as a toilet attendant(!), as well as fellow directors Ronnie Yu and Stephen Shin.

Dir: Tsui Hark
Stars: Lin Chen-chi, Lo Lieh, Albert Au, Paul Che
a.k.a. Dangerous Encounters of the 1st Kind

Dragon Blue

  By

★★½
“Into each generation a rubber-suited monster slayer is born…”

When the island site of a proposed resort starts seeing mutilated bodies turn up, they call in Feng Shui specialist Mayuko (Tanaka) to investigate. However, as she herself discovers, she’s no ordinary psychic, but the next in a line of guardians dedicated to stopping demons from entering the human world. With the aid of some conveniently informative dreams, a down-to-earth cop (pro-wrestler Mutoh, known in the West as The Great Muta) and a sword she finds underwater, it’s up to Mayuko to stop the Hellmouth from openi…er, save the world.

Despite careful thought clearly having gone into the back-story and related folk legends, this wastes time meandering around before its climax, where Mayuko finally gets her powers by snapping her rock crystal power bracelets [incidentally, available at Trash City :-)] It probably doesn’t help that the monster is…well, let’s say that despite the involvement of Steve Wang, it’s no coincidence that this was released in the US by ‘Rubbersuit Pictures’. Though its relentless interest in human women – particularly topless ones – is amusingly reminiscent of B-pics like Humanoids from the Deep, that sound you hear is the Creature from the Black Lagoon sniggering.

This lacks the necessary enthusiasm which would counter the obvious budgetary restrictions. While possessing a smattering of sex and violence, the film as a whole is overly restrained, well-mannered and simply too damn polite to be of much interest.

Dir: Takuya Wada
Star: Hiroko Tanaka, Keiji Mutoh, Tomoroh Taguchi, Ryo Hayami

Dangerous Prey

  By

★★★
“Daft, but entertaining, soft-porn angle on Nikita.”

If you must stab someone with a knitting needle, you should take time to work out what to say afterwards. Instead, Robin (Whirry) comes out with the immortal line, “Knit the devil a sweater, asshole”, which is not a one-liner that’ll go down in cinema history. But like Fatal Conflict, this is a Lloyd Simandl film, the man perhaps most worthy of inheriting Andy Sidaris’ girls-with-guns crown in the 1990’s. And as such, this is no disaster.

When the arms-smuggling shenanigans of Robin’s boyfriend get her sent to jail, she is busted out by a secret project which turns women into assassins, who seduce men before killing them. Robin is none too impressed with the idea, but Dr. Drexel (Laufer) has implanted a device that can kill her on command. After an impressively sleazy opening, which mixes sex and violence to heady effect, this has more in common with the women-in-prison genre. For example, Robin has to deal with current top bitch Tanya (Hunter, Miss Canada 1988) who is unhappy to have competition. It’s no surprise to discover the two end up, er, bosom buddies as they, um, bust out. There’s certainly plenty of eye-candy, with the women showing all the expected devotion to personal hygiene.

Whirry is actually pretty convincing, and Hunter acquits herself well, in the face of a script that hardly bothers to motivate her character. Laufer, on the other hand, appears to have been instructed to extend the running time. By. Saying. His. Lines. As. Slowly. As. Possible. However, best of all is a cameoing taxi-driver (Ahmed Rahim), whose quirky character almost steals the film, though it’s not explained why an Indian is driving a Czech cab. The action is sound if unspectacular gunplay, plus occasional cool moments such as Robin’s concealment of a razor-blade. Overall, the impact falls short of the potential, but as a B-movie, it’s solid, knows its limitations, and works within them.

Dir: Lloyd A. Simandl
Star: Shannon Whirry, Ciara Hunter, Joseph Laufer, Beatrice de Borg

Dragon Chronicles – The Maidens of Heavenly Mountain

  By

★★★½
“Cool!” battles “Eh?”, and comes out ahead – albeit only after a lengthy struggle.

Going in, I knew this had a reputation for incoherent plotting, but after 10+ years watching HK movies, I figured I’d cope. Wrong: I sank within two minutes. An incomprehensible opening voiceover makes this feel like part 17 of an ongoing series; from there on, characters, sects, and magical kung-fu abilities (such as Shifting Stance, which lets you blink in and out of reality, or the self-explanatory Melting Stance) arrive with rush-hour frequency. Basic principle: various factions struggle for martial arts supremacy. Central to these battles are four women, who initally fight among themselves, before realising they must band together to face the ultimate enemy. If I said more, I’d be engaging in wild speculation.

The fact that you don’t really know who is good, evil or any point in between does hurt the film, and every scene with dialogue seems to make things worse. Just to confuse things even more, Brigitte Lin plays two of the women, though Cheung Man perhaps does best as the feisty, light-hearted Purple, whose ambitions exceed her actual skills. Lose any desire to understand what’s happening: the sets and costumes are spectacular, and the fights are imaginative, despite cheesy visuals, and sound effects that appear to have been lifted from Return of the Jedi. Instead of following the plot, try to copy the cool magical gestures of the characters. We did. :-) Maybe some day, we too will be able to regenerate a torso from the severed stumps of our legs…

Dir: Chin Wing Keung
Star: Gong Li, Brigitte Lin, Cheung Man
a.k.a. Semi-Gods and Semi-Devils