Tag: d

Ditched

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★★
“No-one is innocent”

Paramedic Melina (Sila) regains consciousness to find herself in the back of her ambulance, along with her patient, Franson (Loranger), and the rest of the crew in various states of health. The vehicle had gone off the road and fallen into a ravine, along with the accompanying police car. It turns out they were transporting Franson and another prisoner to hospital when the crash took place – and it quickly becomes apparent that what happened was far from an accident. A posse of camo-clad hunters close in on them, led by Caine (Gray). Their mission to make all the vehicle’s occupants, both criminal and otherwise, pay for the sins of their pasts. They’ve brought with them the wronged parties in question, to exact bloody revenge.

An interesting idea, undone by a script which never manages to address basic questions, and which relies too much on ridiculous coincidence, necessary so that the film can happen. I mean, what are the odds of every person taking part in the convoy having a lethal secret hidden in their past, for which they escaped justice? I also am impressed with the organizational skills shown by the ghillie-suit wearing vigilantes. We can’t even get half our family to commit to a birthday party venue, never mind everyone trekking out to the middle of nowhere to take vengeance. Then there’s Melina’s concussion, which appears to have no impact at all five minutes later. On the other hand, she miraculously goes from needing to have explained to her, that a gun will stop someone “doing bad things,” to being a thoroughly competent operator of firearms.

The enemy outside are, initially somewhat menacing, at least when they are in stealth mode. Probably inevitably, given the nature of the plot, they eventually switch into unnecessarily verbose, with Caine the biggest culprit in the category of verbal oversharing. [I’m still trying to work out what the “quick and painful” death he orders at one point would be like: surely it’s one or the other?] I did enjoy some messy and vindictive violence, executed in gratifyingly practical ways. For example meted out by a chainsaw, or a shotgun, first to the groin, then to the face. The ending is admirably bleak, if not unexpected – and, again, relies on remarkable happenstance.

Sila does show some promise, and I liked how nothing much is particularly made about her character’s native American heritage. Such normality is exactly how it should be. Melina has a personable nature, and operates in a common-sense way, refusing to panic despite the increasingly bizarre and threatening situation in which she finds herself. There’s hints that unleashing Franson might be the only way to counter their attackers; this might have merited further discussion, though from this site’s point of view, we are happier to let Melina be her own saviour. We would also have been happier to have seen her part of a totally different script:  oh, well, maybe next time.

Dir: Christopher Donaldson
Star: Marika Sila, Kris Loranger, Mackenzie Gray, Lee Lopez

Double Threat

  By

★★½
“2-for-1 is not always a great deal.”

If Ryan looks familiar, that’s because she is. She starred in Survivor – no, the other film by that name – and also 626 Evolution, making a fairly decent impression in the former, and let down significantly by the approach of the latter. There, she was billed as Danielle Chuchran: not sure if the name change is a result of marriage, or simply a realization that “Ryan” is a lot easier to remember. Whether you will want to is a different matter: she’s likely the best thing in this, and when it appears, the action is decent. There just isn’t enough of it, and the stuff between the set-pieces ranges from mediocre to cringeworthy.

It begins in a convenience store, where Jimmy (Lawrence, who a very long time ago, was one of the kids in Mrs. Doubtfire!) is chatting up the pretty clerk, Natasha (Ryan). Two armed mem show up: before Jimmy can blink, Natasha has killed them both, grabbed her bug-out bag and exited. A stunned Jimmy decides not to stick around, and drives off, only for Natasha to pop up in the back. Turns out the store was a front for the mob to launder money, and she had skimmed $600,000. They – in particular, the boss’s son, Ellis (Joy) and his top fixer, Ask (Olivieri) – are out to make an example of her. Yet there’s one big twist which might work in her favour: Natasha has a split personality. 

There’s Nat, the sensible, quiet one. Then there’s Tasha, the unrepentant bad-ass who can take very good care of herself. Jimmy has to try and figure out what to do, and with whom, when all he really wants to do is get to the ocean and scatter the ashes of his late brother. Meanwhile, Ellis is bickering with Ask, and being brow-beaten with his father. If this all sounds like a lot: it is. The film basically tries to do too much, and ends up doing little of it justice. It’s the male characters who drag it down: Jimmy is vanilla pudding, while Ellis is a whiny little puppy. Just pit Ask against Nat and Tasha, and be done with it.

Ryan does know how to handle herself in action. The best sequence has her taking on two thugs in hand-to-hand combat, while Jimmy fails to figure out how to operate a gun. This is imaginative and well-done, using her agility, speed and flexibility to counter their strength. On the other hand, then there’s the bit where she steals a bow and a horse from some LARPers and… Sorry, I’ve lost the will to type it out. The film needs to pick a tone and stick to it, Stanley not being able to pull off the shifts necessary. That’s even aside from qualms about the glib use of mental illness as convenient plot device, Nat or Tasha showing up exactly when needed. I hope Ryan can find a better vehicle for her talents, since she deserves better. 

Dir: Shane Stanley
Star: Danielle C. Ryan, Matthew Lawrence, Kevin Joy, Dawn Olivieri

Decoy: The first American policewoman

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“Down the line, you name it, we’ve done it. Today, tomorrow, next week, we’ll pose as hostesses, society girls, models – anything and everything the department asks us to be. There are 249 of us in the department. We carry two things in common wherever we go: a shield, called a potsie, and a .32 revolver. We’re New York’s finest. We’re policewomen.”
   — Patricia Jones, Episode 1

If you asked people what was the first American TV show to feature a policewoman, I suspect not many people would get the answer correct. Some might go with Cagney and Lacey. Others might be able to dig a little further back into their memories, and come up with either Get Christie Love! or Police Woman. Maybe some would include The Mod Squad. But the actual pioneer dates back more than fifteen years before Angie Dickinson began patrolling the streets of Los Angeles. The honour goes to Beverly Garland, the star of Decoy. While now largely forgotten, the show ran for 39 episodes on syndicated television, from October 1957 through the following July. It was also one of the first shows to film on location around New York, and the footage of those scenes is a remarkable time-capsule of life in that era.

Garland was already a well-established actress, her career having started with a role in 1949’s noir classic, D.O.A. She was Emmy-nominated for for her work on 1955’s Medic, and  around the same time, was employed on a number of occasions with B-movie legend Roger Corman. Two of those films have already been covered here: Gunslinger and Swamp Women. I will not, however, be covering their work together on It Conquered the World… She later said of Corman, “Roger was always very professional, except when it came to putting us up in a good hotel or giving us a decent meal.” On that basis, the humdrum tedium of a television series might have come as a welcome break, albeit with a punishing schedule that offered little slack. She fell ill one week, during the filming of episode “Across the World”, and rather than pause filming, the script simply was rewritten to minimize her involvement.

With a lot of voice-overs, the style feels reminiscent of Dragnet, which had been a very popular show for most of the fifties. Each episode opens with a stern reminder: “Presented as a tribute to the Bureau of Policewomen, Police Department, City of New York,” and centre on the cases worked by Patricia “Casey” Jones (Garland). As the title suggests, most of them involve Jones going undercover in some guise. That covers an extremely broad range of assignments, from a photographer to a junkie, a nurse to a blackmailer, a high society girl to a prisoner. However, some of the episodes do not require such subterfuge, though there is a tendency for these crimes she is given for investigation to be fairly gynocentric, e.g. trying to find a delinquent father.

As well as the voice-overs, Jones would quite frequently break the fourth wall and address the audience directly – the quote at the top of the article is one such monologue. It feels quite groundbreaking, and is definitely helped by Garland’s commitment to delivering lines which, in other hands, could potentially seem cheesy. I was also genuinely impressed how gritty and, on occasion, dark the stories were, especially considering the era. Death is a frequent visitor, and the topics concerned get heavy, including drug abuse, mental illness and domestic abuse. While everything more or less ends up all right in the end, in that the guilty receive their just deserts, there is considerably more moral gray than I expected. Considering each episode is typically only 24 minutes long, they pack a lot in, and still manage to achieve a considerably emotional wallop on occasion.

Outside of Garland, there were no real “regulars”. The IMDb lists the next most frequent actors, such as Frank Campanella, who played Lieutenant Cella, as appearing in only three episodes. However, there were a lot of faces who made guest appearances, that would go on to more significant roles later in their careers. Those include Ed Asner, Peter Falk, Larry Hagman, Diane Ladd, Al Lewis and Suzanne Pleshette. They helped the show receive warm reviews, Billboard praising Garland in particular: “Aided by a versatile acting range – and a camera-soothing face which combines the high-cheekboned femininity of Greer Garson with the sexiness of Sophia Loren – she manages to be simultaneously a convincing New York City cop and the kind of girl who would make a charge account at Cartier’s worthwhile.” They proclaimed, “Not since Marilyn’s famed walkaway in Seven Year Itch has the camera ogled such a distracting New York pedestrian.”

It’s difficult to be sure whether or not the show was a success, operating as it did outside of the traditional network in the syndicated marketplace. The pre-sales appear to have been brisk with one bulk pre-release sale covering half of the $1.2 million cost for the entire 39-episode run. However, in May 1958, as production was drawing to a close on the first season, the plug was pulled on further episodes, allegedly because producers lacked sufficient funds to continue. The concept of a series about a policewoman would go back into the vaults for years, but Garland would continue her career over the coming decades, both in television and movies. She eventually became the go-to actress when a mom was needed, filling that role in My Three Sons, The Scarecrow and Mrs. King and Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.

Her legacy in this show stands the test of time surprisingly well. While it may feel dated in a number of aspects (there’s so much smoking!), the character of Casey feels decades ahead of its time. There’s no fluff, in the sense of romantic liaisons: indeed, we know very little about Jones’s life outside of the force. The short-form approach just doesn’t have time to mess around with extraneous filler like that. While it frequently deals with moral issues, the show doesn’t use itself as a platform to lecture the viewer: you’re left to draw your own conclusions. Certain recent works could learn a thing or two there. She’s respected by her colleagues, and it’s no surprise Garland would say that women often told her she inspired them to join the police force. It’s a show that deserves more recognition than it has received, and with many of the episodes in the public domain, is ripe for rediscovery.

Divided We Fall

  By

★½
“Failed to sustain my undivided attention”

We begin with the usual disclaimer for films of this kind: middle-aged white guys like me are not the target audience. However, I think it’s fair to say that concepts like story-telling and character development are not limited to any particular race, colour or creed, so I still feel equipped to offer an opinion on these aspects. Though, actually, what felt like it worked best here was its strong sense of place. I’ve never been to the projects in Jamaica, New York (though Chris grew up elsewhere in the same borough of Queens). But the film does a good job of showing you that environment; it certainly works better than the (largely token) efforts to convince you some scenes take place in Miami, or even Moscow.

I guess loosely, it’s the story of Keisha (Diamond) and her all-female gang, whose robberies and other action kick of an escalating series of retribution and other incidents. For it turns out the target of the robbery was a front for the Russian mafia, who are none too happy about being on the receiving end of criminal activity themselves. They send a team of enforcers over to find the culprits and wreak retribution. Meanwhile, Sha (Brown), the local boss of drugs and other illicit things, gets summoned to Miami and made an offer he can’t refuse. Finally, the feds are sniffing around, drawn by all the carnage, and to make matters worse, turns out the boyfriend of one of Keisha’s crew is in the FBI.

There is a lot going on here: to be frank, far too much. It runs 107 minutes, yet would probably need at least twice that length to do justice to all of the threads (and the above is by no means an exhaustive list). I tried my hardest to keep track of exactly who was doing what to whom, and why. But the Russians were about the only ones who seemed to have a clear motive and acted towards it. We also come in with the story feeling like it’s already in progress, and Keisha spends half an hour or so introducing us in voice-over to the various players, making her own character and aspirations feel very much like an afterthought, when they eventually turn up.

It is really the brutally obscure plotting which sinks this. The camerawork is occasionally impressive, and compared to other entries in the genre I’ve seen, the production values are mostly decent – the courtroom scene looked like a proper courtroom, though some of the FBI offices did feel rather… residential, shall we say! The ending isn’t even a proper ending, just a vague cliffhanger where the Russians head to Miami. I’ll confess to having drifted off about 70 minutes in, but like a good, conscientious reviewer, I rewound the movie (well, the digital equivalent of “rewound”!) and watched the rest again. The sad thing is, it didn’t make very much more sense when I was fully awake.

Dir: Jamal Doctor
Star: Yellow Diamond, Pritti Militant, Levar Hosten, Shamel Brown

The Draka and the Giant, by Liane Zane

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Literary rating: ★★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆☆½

Liane Zane brings her Elioud Legacy trilogy to a rousing and powerful conclusion in this novel, which was actually my favorite of the three. (Full disclosure at the outset: Liane, who’s a Goodreads friend of mine, generously gifted me with a paperback ARC, because she knew I’d really liked the two earlier books. No promise of a good review was offered or requested; this book amply earned that on its merits.)

This is definitely a series that needs to be read in order. Our story here opens in medias res, and readers who begin here won’t have much knowledge of the premise or the situation –nor, especially, of the characters and their relationships. You really need the context of the first two books to fully appreciate this one. (With that context, though, it becomes a wonderful capstone to the arch the author has crafted!) However, for the benefit of readers who haven’t read either of those books nor my or others’ reviews of them, and who may not have seen the book description either, the titular “Elioud” are human-angel hybrids (matings between the two races having begun before the Flood, and some unions –or rapes of humans by fallen angels– supposedly continuing to occur). Depending on their degree of angelic inheritance, Elioud may have special abilities that most humans do not, and may be quite long-lived (as in, centuries) as well. Those who are aware of what they are may choose, like other humans, to knowingly serve God or Satan (or, also like many humans, to imagine that they can just ignore that whole conflict and be neutrals). But for those on one side or the other, the term “spiritual warfare” may be a lot more literal than it is for most believers.

Near the beginning of the series opener, the three heroines of the trilogy, a close-knit trio of cross-national friends in their early 20s, all of them both working for their respective countries’ intelligence services and involved on the side in a sub rosa vigilante operation of their own against sex traffickers and predators, met three long-lived Elioud warriors, who revealed to the ladies that they also have angel ancestry. Together, the six of them were involved in fighting the nefarious plots, continued across the first two books, of the fallen angel Asmodeus, who’s now set himself up as a cult leader for a sect of brain-washed humans who call themselves bogomili, after a medieval heretical sect (but who are a lot more malevolent and murderous than their earlier, peaceful namesakes). The other aspect of the series plot is that each member of these two trios felt a strong attraction to a member of the other one. It wasn’t hard to predict that each of the three novels would focus on one of these pairs, and that the course of their romance would be an important plot strand. So here, Beta Cerna and Andras Nagy take center stage.

For me, in the previous books, these two characters had always seemed the least interesting and appealing, largely because I didn’t really know them. Indeed, Beta (short for Alzbeta –she’s Czech) is hard to get to know. She’s a “lone wolf” with very few friends, and a brusque manner that can come across as practically feral. And because Andras is big, strong and taciturn, and mostly inclined to obey orders, it’s easy to fall into the trap of subconsciously dismissing him as not very smart or sensitive (though that’s a great mistake!). But here they come into their own; we see them as the complex and special people they truly are. The previous book ended with Beta arousing a sleeping, half groggy Andras for an unexpected sexual encounter in his bed –and then vanishing before morning. When this book opens, none of the other five main characters have seen her for three years (so it’s now 2018). But we soon learn that there’s been more of a reason for her disappearance than her commitment issues. Much is going on, and Asmodeus (and his fellow demon Yeqon. whom we met in the second book) are exponentially ratcheting up their plans, which won’t bode well for humanity if they come to fruition. But the Archangel Michael (directed, of course, by God, though here He operates offstage) has plans too….

Many of the strengths of the preceding books are evident here also. Zane realizes the settings well (events take place in several European countries), and flavors the narrative with glimpses of the various customs, languages, folklore and cuisine of the nationalities represented. Her characters are round, vivid, dynamic, and distinct (every one of the six main characters have their own unique personalities, rather than being clones of the others, but the supporting characters are also clearly drawn). There’s a strong good vs. evil conflict (with a recognition that we wage this conflict in our own hearts, not just with other people), with high stakes and a lot of dramatic tension. Though this isn’t commercial “Christian fiction,” it’s fiction written by a Christian (the author is a practicing Roman Catholic) and the basic message is Christian. (As in much supernatural fiction, the angels vs. demons conflict is a metaphor for the spiritual conflicts of the real world.) My one quibble here is that our heroes and heroines don’t pray much in crisis situations (and they’re up to their eyeballs in the latter, which would do wonders for my prayer life!). But that’s a fairly minor point. It was also actually easier for me to achieve “suspension of disbelief” here than in the first two books, despite the continuing murky points of angelology/demonology, and the ramping up of Elioud powers here (the mating of two Elioud warriors enhances their abilities). Perhaps that’s because by now I’ve gotten more used to my Elioud friends and their fictional world. :-)

Bad language here is minimal. There are some references to lewd and disgusting sexual behavior (Asmodeus and Yeqon hang out in Amsterdam’s red-light district, and their sexual attitudes are what you’d expect from demons), and one instance of premarital, though not casual, sex; but Zane doesn’t emphasize the former any more than she has to, and the latter is explicit only up to a point. (Basically, the romantic content is quite wholesome, and a wedding –I’m not saying whose!– is one of the more moving scenes in the book.) This is definitely the most violent book of the series, though, with two major pitched battles and a body count through the roof, not all of the casualties being bad guys. However, fans of action thrillers won’t mind this, and fans who like their heroines tough will love Beta. (She’s a deadly accurate shot with both a pistol and a long gun, but her favorite weapons are her chain whip and her karambit, a hooked originally Indonesian knife modified as a switchblade, which she finds it soothing to flick open and closed when she’s nervous, the way some people tap their foot. :-) )

While this is, like the others in the trilogy, a thick, substantial novel, at 525 pages it doesn’t feel a bit overly long; I was immersed and interested immediately, and stayed so for every page. It’s also a highly evocative read emotionally, with some beautiful writing and imagery in places (and some very grim images as well). I’d enthusiastically recommend it to fans of supernatural fiction with Christian themes, of action thrillers or action heroines (or heroes), and of paranormal romance.

Author: Liane Zane
Publisher: Zephon Books; available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Dinosaur Hotel

  By

★½
“Should have gone extinct”

Roughly ten minutes into this, it was clear I’d made a terrible mistake. I’ve seen my share of wretched creature features in my time, and this is down near the bottom of the barrel. It does have an interesting, if totally ludicrous idea. Five women are invited to a remote hotel, to take part in a game-show, competing for a prize of £100,000. Among them is struggling single mother Sienna (Wunna) who, unable to find a baby-sitter, takes her two kids with her. As the cover ever so subtly suggests, the game has carnivorous dinosaurs roaming the hotel and grounds, and “winning” simply means not getting eaten. Naturally, Sienna’s two kids also disobey Mum’s instructions not to leave the room.

There are only two things stopping this from being any good. Unfortunately, those are the budget and a complete lack of film-making ability. Wunna isn’t bad, as the competitor on whom the movie focuses. There were points at which I found myself teetering on the edge of actually giving a damn about her, and the other women are competent enough to pass muster. However, it was a horrendous mistake to have Sienna’s two kids played, it appears, by her two real kids. Professional child actors are bad enough; amateurs like these (“What. Was. That?”)  are completely unwatchable. The Games Master (John) delivers his lines with more emotion, and he’s a robotic eye in the sky.

I suspect the two issues mentioned above interact with each other. By this I mean, the depiction of the dinosaurs is so inept, it hamstrings the director in terms of what he can do. Shot of extinct, hungry reptile. Shot of contestant looking terrified, and probably screaming. Thoroughly unconvincing shot of reptile eating contestant. Rinse. Repeat. There’s no sense of escalation or real development, beyond one of the competitors being a plant. Oops, I’ve spoiled it. Sue me. There’s a (rather unconvincing) gun found at one point, and that might have been an interesting way to develop things, with various “power-ups” being available. The writer couldn’t be bothered, apparently.

Mind you, the same goes for just about every other aspect of the script too, including the logistical one of how no-one has apparently noticed dinosaurs roaming rural England. As a result of this laziness and general incompetence, everything unfolds in utterly predictable fashion. The dinosaurs refuse to eat the children, and the film can’t even be bothered to play by its own rules. It has repeatedly been stressed that as far as winners go, to borrow a line from Highlander, there can be only one. Then, at the end… Nah, never mind. And that’s aside from the question of how the winner is going to get paid after the person running the event has been eaten. Oops, more spoilers. But if you still wish to watch this, after everything I have said above, a) I have failed at my job as a critic, and b) you deserve whatever results.

Dir: Jack Peter Mundy
Star: Chrissie Wunna, Chelsea Greenwood, Alexander John, Ruby Wunna

District Queens

  By

★★
“Queen of the East.”

The latest stop in our ongoing tour of female-driven urban crime movies brings us to the nation’s capital in Washington, where the police are celebrating just having taken down a leading light in the city’s organized crime industry. Now, they set their sights on a new target: the gang led by Racine Robinson (Vaughan) and her two daughters, Kat (Crosby) and Candy (Bethea). These might prove a tougher nut to crack, since the Robinson crew have a harsh, zero tolerance policy to anyone who messes with them in the slightest, yet also gathered local support during the coronavirus pandemic. Indeed, Racine is so popular in the neighbourhood, a run for political office is not out of the question. However, she has rivals, who have more than a passing interest in seeing her taken out of the picture – albeit for very different reasons, in order to make room for them to rise up.

This is a real grab-bag of elements, ranging from those which work very well, to those which are almost unmitigated disasters. To start on the positive side, there’s a callous disregard for human life here that’s genuinely disturbing. Even if the CGI splatter is far from convincing, head shots abound. And unlike some entries, the women in this one have no issue getting their hands dirty, for even the most trivial of reasons e.g someone tossed water at them. The guns they tote on the cover aren’t just for show. There are plenty of strong female characters on both sides of the law, from the Robinson family through Police Commissioner Stallworth, to dirty cops who have no issue shooting someone in cold blood and planting a gun on them. Perhaps the most impressive is Jada (Simmons), who looks like she actually would pop a cap in you for looking at her the wrong way. Even if there are points where I wondered if I was watching a black Russ Meyer movie, there are worse things as influence.

These good points are, unfortunately, outweighed heavily by the other side of the scale. Some of them are par for the course, such as the way the movie appears a vehicle for the makers to tout their pals’ music, businesses or whatever, in a painfully obvious way. The shaky technical elements are also unsurprising, with a “police station” that is little more than empty rooms. Audio is, as usual, the main culprit: there are points where two sides of the supposed same conversation will sound radically different. The main problem though, is a script which has no idea of the direction it wants to take, once it has set out its pieces on the chess-board. Scenes happen, with little or no connection to each other, and supporting characters drift in, drift out or (more often) get gunned down, without ever establishing relevance. Throw in embarrassingly amateur lesbian canoodling, without delivering any actual nudity, and you have a film which swings wildly from “That’s actually well-done” to “How could they include this without cringing?” every couple of minutes.

Dir: Roosevelt Jackson
Star: Rochelle Vaughan, Kathleen Vaughn Crosby, Stacie Bethea, Sasheen Simmons

Don’t Say Its Name

  By

★★
“Snow better than mediocre.”

I was going to start this with a warning to try and avoid reading other reviews of this before watching it, because it felt as if, without exception, they all included spoilers for a significant plot-point, that wasn’t actually revealed until deep into the movie. Heck, the IMDb synopsis does it too. However, having sat through the entirety of this bland piece of indigenous folk pseudo-horror, all I can say is “Meh.” You do you: it’s probably not as if it’s going to have much impact, because it’s hard to spoil something which already smells past its best before date.

It takes place on a remote Canadian reservation, where the body of a local activist is found on a road, apparently the victim of a hit-and-run accident. Local sheriff Betty Stonechild (Walsh) is trying to investigate, with the limited resources available to her, and deputizes former soldier, now a local tracker, Stacey Cole (McArthur) to help her. It’s not long before other bodies start appearing in more mysterious circumstances. For example, a surveyor for a mining company, looking to move into the area – something to which the car victim was vehemently opposed – is brutally slain, within feet of a work colleague. He can offer no clues as to what happened, beyond reporting an odd smell and a crow circling menacingly overhead, immediately beforehand.

The problems start with the characters, where both Stonechild and Cole are right out of the box of overused tropes. The former is a single parent, trying to bring up a teenage nephew, for reasons that may have been explained, but which failed to make any impact on my recollection. The latter, worse still, is affected with the kind of PTSD common to movies, which has no effective impact on them, and appears to exist solely as an excuse for lazy writing, instead of developing a rounded personality. The rest of the players are similarly underwhelming. While the film is clearly sympathetic to the local native population, its messaging is clunky at best, reaching its worst point during what feels like a five minute YouTube rant.

The positives are mostly on the technical side, with some nice photography of chilly yet beautiful locations, and decent use of both practical and CGI effects. The two heroines have decent chemistry, and at least we don’t have any unnecessary romantic threads, for either of them: Cole’s way in particular of dealing with unwanted attentions is laudably brusque. It’s not enough to salvage a plot, which spends too long getting to where it wants to be, and isn’t particularly interesting once it gets there. It does offer one amusing moment, after they find the creature responsible and discover to their bemusement it is impervious to their bullets. Otherwise, there is precious little here to stick in the mind, and it feels more like a drama with an agenda, dressed up in genre trappings to become a sheep in wolf’s clothing

Dir: Rueben Martell
Star: Sera-Lys McArthur, Madison Walsh, Julian Black Antelope, Samuel Marty

Date a Bullet

  By

★★★½
“Sympathy for the devil.”

Alright, this needs some background first, so I’ll try my best to give the necessary information. Date a Bullet is a two-part spin-off movie from Date a Live. This was originally a light novel series, that became a manga and then an anime series. The last-named started in 2013 and is currently in its fourth season: it also previously got a pair of OVAs and one movie. This is the second film, though is essentially two episodes that were put together, and released in cinemas as a movie, despite a very short length of 50 minutes.

Date a Live was (and still is) as bonkers a basic premise as anime shows can be. A catastrophe 30 years ago causes spirits to appear in our world – until now, always in the form of beautiful girls. What are the odds? If the spirit is stressed or aggravated, she causes earthquakes and natural disasters. A little advice from me: how about the defense services NOT attack at the very first sight of such a spirit? Just an idea… A secret organisation protecting mankind from them has figured out a new way of dealing with these girls. The young, naive student Shido has to approach them, built up confidence and go on a date with them. When he kisses them he “seals in” their powers by doing so. This usually results in the spirit stopping being dangerous and moving into Shido’s home (where are his parents?). For the remainder of the episodes he is busy, trying to cope with school, the emotional needs of the girls and cooking for them all.

I guess there’s something that show wants to teach young Japanese men how to deal with girls. The whole secret organisation’s spaceship team (lead by Shido’s younger sister?) is trying to figure out the best of three responses for Shido when talking to the girls, and usually chooses the worst possible. Hilarity ensues. But somehow I couldn’t feel anything for Shido except for pity, dealing with all these girls wanting so many different things from him. It can’t be easy to be one of those beloved students in what we call nowadays a “harem anime”. There are plenty more of these where this comes from! The show is based on the idea of a so-called dating-app or game that helps train your dating skills before going into the wild, where untamed femininity can overwhelm an innocent, anxious Japanese boy. The idea is not the worst: I could have used such a tool when I was younger!

But this is a different beast, because it deals with the extraordinary character of Kurumi Tokisaki (Sanada), who is really different to all the other girls Shido met in the main show. Usually, meeting a girl spirit meant that, to cut a long story short, Shido would kiss the girl, or she, enchanted by Shido’s friendliness would kiss him – it has to be voluntarily. She’d join his harem, while they all crave his attention, everyone wanting a piece of him, his time, physical contact and so on. Not Kurumi. When she first appeared in the show, she seemed the girl spirit of this half-season, so to speak, but then quickly turned the tables.

While the other girls might be complicated and have problems, like feeling unloved, being shy and, in one case, not even being into men, there always was a solution. Kurumi is… different: Shido soon found out she was there to sexually arouse him, so she could “eat him”. We can argue about the not-so subtle subtext: male Japanese anxiety about a sexually demanding and active woman. In the very same episode, some boys make sexually charged comments about her, she lures them into the shadows… next the blood is dripping from the walls.

Yeah, cute-looking Kurumi in sexy red-black lingerie is a killer, a femme fatale and if I’m not mistaken (correct me if I’m wrong), falls into the popular category of the “yangires”, female psychotic anime characters that can go on a bloody rampage at the slightest provocation. She is the killer shark among Shido’s girl. But then, she never becomes part of his actual haremm because they never kissed. Innocent Shido would have been dead meat. There may be a hint of Kurumi being abused in her former life; it could just be me, trying to read between the lines.

In a show that follows the usual rules of harem anime, a character like this is almost a provocation, riding roughshod over those unwritten rules. Kurumi is a force to be reckoned with. Her left eye features the yellow dial of a clock: with her magical calling of “Zaphkiel”, an angel that can manipulate time and appears as a giant dial, she can actually turn time around. By shooting her gun into her own head she can replicate herself and create as many clones of herself as she wants. Magically she appears to be independent, she can appear wherever and whenever she wants.

For most of the show she has been the “punch clock villain”, someone you could expect to appear sooner or later in the show. Though she seems to soften her attitude to Shido, after her first encounters with Shido, where he unsuccessfully tried to reason with and find an emotional angle on her – that worked with the other spirits. In one episode, she goes on a date with him, only to be shot by a superior version of herself at the end, This clone was obviously trying to fulfill her supressed romantic desires. In a late season 3 episode, she even helped him travel back in time to prevent a catastrophe that would send one of his girlfriends on a later revenge trip against the other girl spirits.

Okay. On to Date a Bullet , which is exceptional in the Date a Live universe as it tells a story with Kurumi as the main character. There’s no Shido to be found here, none of the harem girls or supporting characters appear, It’s as if you took a bad Bond girl and gave her a solo movie. So, quite unusual! So, what’s the story? Kurumi finds herself in an alternate world where she is told she is in a battle royale. The winner gets a wish, and might even be able to return to her own world. As she is being told by a small girl who functions as comic relief, that the combatants are all “half-spirits”, Kurumi in her no non-sense manner declares her in quite clear terms that she considers herself a full spirit, not a half one. Then there is the character of the White Queen, an especially dangerous ghost she will sooner or later have to face.

The movie is well-made, though the DVD is definitely too expensive for just ran 50 minutes. It’s entertaining enough, though as expected, too short to build up much tension. But it also serves mainly to show that Kurumi has a heart, too. Flashbacks show a younger Kurumi when she was alive and in school with the one friend she had, Sawa Yamauchi, dreaming of how it will be when she will have a boyfriend. While you can easily guess who the White Queen is, Kurumi shows during the story how tough and no-nonsense she is. She is thankful for help, but this doesn’t mean she’s so naive as to trust you immediately. She has a softer side, too, saving a little cat that plays a special role in the story, and at the end seems to have found a pet that might accompany her in future. Though why she killed her best friend in the past, remains unanswered.

The film helped understand the character a bit better and gave her the limelight she deserves. I wouldn’t say we know everything about Kurumi Tokisaki now though. The character stays interesting and as Date a Live with its funny situations and cute/sexy girls is something of a guilty pleasure for me, I look forward for a dubbed version of season four, and discovering what kind of role Kurumi will play in it.

Dir: Jun Nakagawa
Star (voice): Asami Sanada. Asami Seto, Kaede Hondo, Mariya Ise

Dune Drifter

  By

★★
“Any similarities are purely coincidental. “

This is likely an admirable effort in terms of its budget. The IMDb estimates it costs $100,000 and it looks like Price squeezed every cent – or, since it’s British, penny – out of that. To give you some idea, also per the IMDb, “Sections of the film were shot during the Covid-19 United Kingdom lockdown with just the occupants of the director’s flat. The director’s girlfriend doubled for any actors and WhatsApp voice notes from cast members were used for any extra lines of dialogue.” This is the kind of thing that can only be respected. Which is why I feel a little bad about having to give this an underwhelming review, because… truth be told, it’s kinda boring. 

It takes place in a future where Earth is at war with an alien race, the Drekk. A platoon of two-man fighter craft are on their way to the planet of Erebus. However, they emerge from hyperspace into the middle of a battle. The ship, crewed by Yaren (Aitkens) and Adler (Sparrow), is damaged and forced to crash land on the planet’s surface. Yaren is badly hurt in the process, and to make matters worse, they are not the only craft which had to make an impromptu descent. There are a number of Drekk present in the area as well, posing an additional problem as Adler tries to attract help and, when that fails, locate the necessary parts to repair her ship and let it take off for home.

This sounds rather more interesting than the reality, which involves a lot of Adler wandering around, talking to herself. She occasionally encounters Drekk – though never more than one, and I’ve a strong suspicion they were all the same actor (Dwyer-Thomas). They’re not particularly alien either, that notion hardly enhanced by the Drekk sporting what look uncannily like army surplus gas-masks. The most effectively unearthly element may be Erebus, whose part is played very impressively by the black rock landscapes of Iceland, where the film spent a week shooting. But I think things take too long to land on the surface. There’s an excessive amount of chit-chat between the ships on the way to their destination, none of which is relevant to the meat of the story. 

Despite its setting on an alien planet, the title isn’t an attempt at a Dune knockoff, unlike the previously reviewed Planet Dune. Indeed, Price regrets using the name, precisely for that reason. Other moments provoke some eye-rolling: the Drekk exhibit stormtrooper like accuracy, while it’s nice to know that future spaceships appear to run on Linux circa 2012, and can use spare parts from craft belonging to alien races. Lacking any sense of escalation, the story doesn’t so much reach a climax as just end. While Sparrow portrays the heroine with a no-nonsense approach, prepared to do whatever is necessary to survive, a good attitude can only take a movie so far. The budget here is less an issue than the script.

Dir: Marc Price
Star: Phoebe Sparrow, Daisy Aitkens, Simon Dwyer-Thomas, Alistair Kirton