Tag: four-star

Wanted

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★★★★
“Girls just wanna have guns.”

This is probably a borderline Girls With Guns flick, but Angelina Jolie is the nearest thing we have to a legitimated action-heroine superstar: Lara Croft, Mr. and Mrs. Smith and now this, where her character, the uber-assassin Fox, is certainly the most interesting in the film. Office drone Wesley (McAvoy) discovers his true heritage is in The Fraternity, a group of killers who surgically remove bad elements from society, as their names come up encoded in a cloth woven by a mystical loom. However, one of their number has gone rogue, and Cross (Kretschmann) is now taking out his former colleagues, one by one. Recruiting, training and using Wesley, is the only hope they have to stop the renegade.

Based on a comic-book. That phrase covers a whole spectrum of results, good and bad. Here, this means hyperkinetic action scenes with only a tenuous connection to reality. If you’ve seen the director’s previous work – such as Night Watch and its sequel Day Watch – you’ll know what to expect, and he gets to crank it up here, with a significantly-bigger budget, and a better cast. There are some brilliant set-pieces, not least the sequence where Fox rescues Wesley, and also a fabulous sequence on a high-speed train. It plays like a high-octane remix of Office Space and The Matrix: not, perhaps, up to the brilliant levels of either, yet an interesting hybrid that is still a great deal of fun, in a highly-caffeinated way.

Less well known, this is not Tikmanbetov’s first piece of Girls With Guns cinema, as before coming to Hollywood’s attention with Night Watch, he also did The Arena, a remake of a Roger Corman movie. The original had Pam Grier – the remake, didn’t, and let’s leave it at that. Fox is rather different from the incarnation in the comic [closer there to Halle Berry than anything], yet still has more backstory than Wesley, on her tattooed arms alone; while a sequel seems likely, it looks unlikely to involve her, and that’s a shame. Still, when you see Jolie climbing out on the bonnet of her high-performance sports-car, and blazing away like a heavily-armed hood ornament, you’ll understand exactly why it qualifies here.

Dir: Timur Bekmambetov
Star: James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Thomas Kretschmann, Morgan Freeman

Dangerous Acquaintances

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★★★★

It’s been at least a decade since I read this – probably more – but it is still a thoroughly-enjoyable read, and a major improvement in just about every way (plotting, art, pacing, imagination and characterization) over the first stab. Of particular note is the solid way in which the two separate threads of the story are woven together. While on holiday, Kei and Yuri bump into Shasti, a former colleague of theirs in the WWWA. She was actually an android, who went rogue after a criminal’s personality was implanted into her, part of a (failed) experiment to see if it would help with his capture to have her think like him. She’s now apparently leading a group of “freedom fighters” who are planning to hijack a luxurious space-liner, crammed with VIPs and new technology. Has Shasti gone all political? Or, if not, what is she up to?

She’s certainly a formidable opponent, even when outnumbered 2-to-1: she’s stronger, faster and more resilient than both Kei and Yuri, thanks to her cybernetic upgrades. However, it’s her attitude which really rubs our heroines the wrong way from the beginning, her multiple artificial personalities making her capable of kicking your ass brutally one second, then apologizing humbly for doing so, the very next. And that’s before she gets the “upgrade” to the character of an amoral, psychopathic career criminal. The body-count thereafter is large, and messy to the point that it’s a good thing this is a black-and-white comic. However, this lends a real sense of threat to proceedings, giving a sense that Kei and Yuri are themselves in danger – rather than just the local civilian population, as is usually the case.

There’s not as much reliance on the original comics – no Mughia, Lovely Angel ship or Bloody Card – with the Toren and Smith developing their own world instead. I’d really love to see this turned into a movie, and with the advent of CGI, it would no longer be prohibitively-expensive as it was when the story originally came out. It has some lovely twists, plenty of action and a great antagonist for our heroines to take on. An adaptation worthy of the name.

Story: Toren Smith and Adam Warren
Art: Adam Warren

Hard Candy

  By

★★★★
“More threatening than girls with guns: teenage girls with scalpels. Gentlemen: cross your legs.”

This is almost unbearably creepy, in two different directions: however, it’s almost impossible to discuss this film in any meaningful way without spoilers, so you have been warned. The danger of online predators is well-known, and when fourteen-year old Hayley (Page) agrees to meet photographer Jeff (Wilson), who is in his thirties, alarm bells are ringing. They reach a piercing level after she goes to his house, starts drinking vodka and flirting outrageously. However, the tables are abruptly turned: she’s spiked Jeff’s drink, and he wakes to find himself tied-up, and entirely at Hayley’s mercy. He soon finds out that’s a quality she is very definitely not inclined to provide.

So, who do we sympathize with? The paedophile? Or the psychopath? Pick your poison, and it’s the kind of bravely ambivalent film I love, for Jeff is far from the usual cliched portrayal of a child-molester: rather than a sleazy old man in a dirty mac, he’s charming, well-spoken and educated. Which makes him far more dangerous, of course. Though he meets his match in Hayley, and it’s a brilliant performance by Page. We have absolutely no idea whether any of what she says is true, regarding herself (is she 14, or is that part of her act?), her family or even the apparently-damning evidence she finds of Jeff’s paedophile tendencies. The last is perhaps an error on the film’s part, since it’s at its best when we’re less certain as to whether Jeff deserves the horrible fate Hayley has in store.

Oh, yes: horrible. Armed only with a medical textbook, a bag of ice and some sharp objects, she prepares to make sure that Jeff will not bother any other little girls again. Cue the film’s second, and most critical, mis-step, as it pulls a punch which would have made this an instant evil classic – you sense Takashi Miike, whose Audition this most closely resembles, might not have backed off. From here, the film does stray into implausible territory, with Jeff spurning several chances to escape, or overpower Hayley [who looks about 95 pounds]. However, that doesn’t really diminish from a film that has the guts to ask a lot of questions which seem to have easy answers, and then confront us with a reality that makes things more complex than we’d wish.

Dir: David Slade
Star: Ellen Page, Patrick Wilson

Women of Ninja Warrior

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★★★★
“Proves that action heroines come in all shapes and sizes.”

With somewhere north of two hundred cable channels to surf through, a show has about ten seconds to grab our attention. When we spotted Ninja Warrior on G4 Tech TV, I thought it would probably be one of those anime series. I couldn’t be more wrong. It’s actually a sports entertainment series from Japan, where competitors go through four assault-course type stages, of increasing toughness. It’s pretty brutal; in the decade the show has been on the air, only two of the 1,800 entrants have made it all the way to the end. However, it’s presence here is due to the spin-off for female competitors, which is being broadcast, also on G4, as Women of Ninja Warrior; the Japanese title Kunoichi translates, more or less, as “female ninja.”

It’s gone through six tournaments since its 2002 debut. Most participants in WoNW are Japanese, obviously, but Kyra Gracie, member of the famous Brazilian fighting family, plus Romanian Olympic gymnasts Catalina Ponor and Oana Ban, have also entered – with mixed results, shall we say! It plays almost like a straight-faced version of MXC. The original Japanese commentary is sub-titled, albeit badly: even non-speakers can tell it’s often out of synch or poorly-translated, and sometimes reveals the fate of a contestant before it happens. The vast majority clearly take it seriously – though perhaps not quite as seriously as the men, where it appears half the contestants have built replicas of the obstacles in their back-yards, in their quest for glory.

The tests here, however, are aimed more at agility than strength, such as Domino Hill (top, right) a precarious test of balance on increasingly-unstable block. They certainly remain extremely challenging: the first tournament was so brutal, that only two competitors made it past stage one, and neither survived the first obstacle on stage two. Only one woman has ever completed the course, the “Queen of Ninja Warrior”, G-Rockets dancer Ayako Miyake, and she has done it an incredible three times, despite adjustments made after each tournament. That’s hasn’t stopped Miyake, who has whizzed up the final stage (bottom, left) without apparent problem, netting her the grand prize of two million yen (about $20,000) per show, and making the tiny (5’2″, 90-pound!) dancer something of a celebrity. She’d be great as Kei if they ever did a live-action version of Dirty Pair Flash.

As a show, it is simply phenomenally watchable, especially for such a simple concept. You just get sucked in, cheering the competitors on as they give their all, struggling against the fiendish contraptions to avoid being dumped into the icy waters at Mt. Midoriyama – literally, as the contests often take place in December, with the second enduring snowy outbursts! It’s such genuine emotion and exertion on view. Okay, some of the wipeouts are spectacular, in a “F___ me! Rewind that!” kinda way, but while that may lure you in initially, you eventually find yourself rooting for them not to fail, which is where it differs from MXC. High-fives were exchanged when Miyake cleared stage four for the first time, and we realised that we actually cared. Few TV shows – and even fewer “reality” ones – have ever had that effect on us.

Cool Cat, by Dan Leissner

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★★★★
“Sex, drugs and funk ‘n’ soul, in a throwback to the future of action heroines.”

My review of this is somewhat delayed, because the book spent two months inside what remained of our car, after a nasty accident on the freeway. It was finally rescued, and the next chance I got was actually on a plane going to Las Vegas – fortunately, it appears as though the book was not cursed, and I survived that trip intact. Chris actually got to read this one first: she made note of Leissner’s frequent usage of the word “Undulating”, to describe everything from the landscape to the heroine’s figure. Me? It’s a good word, one you don’t get to use too often, so more power to him there. The heroine in question is Cat Warburton, the semi-estranged daughter of an industrial tycoon, who works as a secret agent for an agency of uncertain origins. Her intended vacation goes awry, and she finds herself knee deep in a plot involving black militants, white supremacists and – this’d be a spoiler if it weren’t mentioned on the back cover – aliens from outer-space. She’ll need all her talents, if you know what I mean, and I think you do, to survive.

It’s clear the style is intended to reproduce pulp potboilers of an earlier year: it’s never made clear what era it’s set, but I’d say mid- to late-70’s, if pushed. It’s equally cinematic though, set to a Motown-esque soundtrack, and half the fun is working out who’d play the various roles: Charlize Theron for Cat? Or Uma Thurman? Sybil Danning, twenty years ago, would have been perfect. Though whoever it’d be, would have to be entirely comfortable with their body, since there’s hardly a scene where Cat is not showing more or less flesh. That brings me to one of the odd points: there’s an awful lot of sadistic torture scenes, almost all the victims being female characters – this sits uneasily with the generally liberal viewpoints on sexual liberation, drugs and race.

However, qualms about such sequences aside (and the elderly matron beside me on the plane seemed quite intrigued by them), the plot does also career a little too far out of control towards the end. The whole “alien” angle seems superfluous at best, and I’d probably have preferred it not be invoked at all, since the rest of the plot stands on its own quite nicely – it feels as if Leissner doesn’t have enough faith in his own script. Still, as soon as I picked it up, I was hooked, and even once I got off the plane, was reading it every chance I could get. It’s enormous fun, and Cat is a great heroine, whose skills are beyond compare: she’s smart, strong, independent, and capable of kicking your ass, with or without weapons. Exactly the kind of heroine, Hollywood would never be able to cope with, in fact.

By Dan Leissner
Publisher: Midnight Marquee, $20.00
The book is available on Amazon.com

Grindhouse

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★★★★
“Bringing a new meaning to Girls With Guns… “

Grindhouse harkens back to an earlier time, when the only way to see cult or obscure movies was at your local fleabag cinema or drive-in. There was an entire industry of low-budget studios, like AIP, set up to create product for these outlets: knowing they couldn’t hope to compete in the areas of stars or general quality, they resorted instead to the old stand-bys of sex and violence. They flourished, roughly from the sixties to the end of the seventies, but the steady rise of home-entertainment media spelt their death-knell – at least as far as theatrical releases went. However, their films were an influence on many film-makers, and some of them have teamed up to bring you this love-letter to the genre, of the sort probably not seen for a couple of decades.

The structure closely mimics the original double-features, with an opening trailer, Rodriguez’s entry, Planet Terror, three more trailers, and then Tarantino’s film, Death Proof. What you take away from these will largely depend on what you bring: a knowledge of the low-budget horror, action and SF genres will enormously increase your enjoyment here. But, really – can anyone possibly resist the lure of a trailer (directed by Rob Zombie) for a film called Werewolf Women of the S.S.? With Sybil Danning? Udo Kier? And Nicolas Cage playing Fu Manchu? Where do we queue?

Planet Terror is a zombie flick. That’s really about all you need to know – but if you insist: the accidental release of gas from a military base causes the local population to turn into ravenous monsters. It’s up to pissed-off go-go dancer Cherry (McGowan) and her former boyfriend (Freddie Rodriguez) to take care of the issue before the entire world gets infected. The result is a phenomenally-gory homage, to a genre which has undergone something of a renaissance in the past couple of years. It’s clear that Rodriguez the director has a great love for these works, and brings all his favourite moments to his work here.

There’s a fine sense of escalation, from the relatively-subdued opening, through to the insane climax, in which Cherry – now fitted with an automatic weapon in place of a limb which was torn off her during an earlier attack – takes on an entire army of the undead. Ludicrous? Over-the-top? Nonsensical? Hell, yes. Wouldn’t have it any other way. About the only weakness is a tendency to go overboard with the trappings of grindhouse flicks, such as missing reels, scratched film, etc. far beyond the point at which it’s amusing. We get it. I said, we get it. Thank you. Fortunately, the DVD should have the “restored” i.e. un-screwed with version.

Despite McGowan, the second entry is really what pushes this into action-heroine territory. It pits Stuntman Mike (Russell) against three women, who have taken a classic car out for a test-run. Now, the first half establishes that Mike is a total psychopath – basically, he’s a serial killer, who uses his vehicle as a way to murder and get away with it. However, when it comes to his latest victims, he may have bitten off more than he can chew as they include a professional driver (Rosario Dawson) as well as a stuntwoman (Bell), both enjoying a couple of days away from the film on which they’re working.

This section has the usual problem of Tarantino movies: he’s in love with his own dialogue, especially during an immensely-talky first half. And making the problem worse, the words never seem like they’re coming out of the characters’ mouths, but it is all too easy to imagine Quentin Tarantino saying them. Self-indulgent, meaningless drivel, full of pop culture references, he believes will make you think, “How clever!” – unfortunately, the result is closer to “What a poser!” This gets old really quickly, and when things get going in the second half, it’s a blessed relief. If you need to use the bathroom, quite likely in a 195-minute event like this, early on in Death Proof is definitely the time. You won’t be missing anything at all, and I suspect it might have been better if the two directors here had swapped scripts.

To the film’s credit (or, at least Bell’s) when that happens, the results are amazing. There’s a car-chase which is among the most genuinely scary in cinematic history, with Bell, apparently unsecured, sliding around the hood of the car as it’s pursued and shunted by Mike. [Sadly, no pics appear to be available online] Bell is a New Zealand stuntwoman in real-life – she doubled Lucy Lawless in Xena for several series, and also worked with Tarantino on Kill Bill – and that shows, in a sequence which proves that CGI can’t yet reproduce the impact of real metal on real metal. Of course, it also helps that the characters shut the hell up, and stop wittering on about Quentin’s favourite movies.

If the set-up is somewhat contrived, the result, which also shows Mike up as the snivelling bully he is, more than justifies the end, and is a startling endorsement of vigilante girl-power at its most brutal. It’s a shame it took so long to get there, and Planet Terror is definitely the more enjoyable part of the double-bill; however, Zoe Bell has moved from obscurity to center-stage with impressive grace. If she can show acting skill as well (here, she appears largely to be playing herself, to be honest), stardom beckons.

Dir: Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino
Star: Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodriguez, Kurt Russell, Zoe Bell

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

Project Eden

  By

★★★★

If you’re going to start with Kei and Yuri, this is as good a spot as any; it may not be the first entry in the series, but requires no prior knowledge at all. Even complete novices will be up to speed by the pre-credit sequence, which sees them – oops! – destroying an entire space-station after they decide to pursue the bad guy, rather than handling the explosive suitcase with which he has tried to distract them. They’re then sent to investigate some strange happenings on a mining planet, which is being plagued by attacks from monsters. They discover that the creatures are the results of failed experiments by Dr. Wattsman, who has plans to force nature’s hand, by making the next evolutionary step beyond mankind. Meanwhile, gentlemen thief Carson D. Carson is there, for his own reasons.

Pop-culture nods go to everything from James Bond through Star Wars to Aliens, though the female leads helps give familiar scenarios a fresh air. It’s clearly not to be taken in total seriousness, for example, Kei and Yuri pausing mid-mission to take baths (though like everything else in the show, it’s no more than PG-13 rated). The action is frequent, particularly towards the end, with some monumental battles between the girls and Wattsman’s monsters, accompanied, as is the entire film, by a smooth jazz-funk soundtrack [not normally my cup of tea, I’m still whistling Over the Top, days later]. There’s also some surprisingly touching stuff between Carson and Yuri, though he is always firmly in the back seat. Naturally, it’s Kei who has an eye for him, a constant factor through almost every version.

Technically, it’s as nice as you’d expect from a theatrical feature – it was originally part of a double-bill at cinemas with Bat and Terry, an animated film about baseball players which is all but forgotten now. Project Eden (a title used solely in the West: I’m looking at the Japanese LD, which just says Dirty Pair: The Movie) does look somewhat dated, and to be honest, the plot wouldn’t really stand up to serious inspection [Wattsman apparently runs his massive industial-scientific complex with the help of one guy, his butler, Bruno]. But as a semi-spoof, say along the lines of Our Man Flint, it works very nicely and is solidly entertaining, with slick production values and a good sense of fun. It is also a fine demonstration of one of anime’s strengths, the ability to give full rein to unfettered imagination, and create a world where anything can happen.

Dir: Kôichi Mashimo
Star (voice): Kyôko Tongu, Saeko Shimazu, Katsuji Mori, Chikao Ôtsuka

Affair on Nolandia

  By

★★★★

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

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

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

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

a.k.a. Affair of Nolandia

Lady Vengeance

  By

★★★★
“Revenge is a bitch…”

This film may need two viewings. First time up, I was irritated by an apparent lack of coherence – which was particularly annoying, since the non-linear storyline seemed almost completely superfluous. Second time round, it bothered me less though remained, perhaps deliberately, disorienting, and I still doubt the need for it. But the re-view left me better able to appreciate the great central idea, a chilling meditation on justice, revenge, the thin line between the two, and the effects on those who become involved. The final part of Park’s loose trilogy (after Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy) is the story of “kind-hearted Geum-ja” (Lee), who spends 13 years in prison, for the heinous murder of a young child. Except, she isn’t guilty, and spends the time forging alliances which will help with her new goal: revenge on the real perpetrator (Choi).

The pace is stately, rather than adrenalin-driven, yet there’s no denying its place here. Much credit to Lee for a great performance in a complex character, capable of huge sacrifice in her quest for redemption: she cuts off a finger in front of the victim’s parents, and has to be physically restrained from removing more. Yet it seems that her charity and good deeds, such as donating a kidney to a fellow prisoner, may be part of her vengeance. And then, when her goal is within grasp…she steps back to allow others, perhaps better-motivated, to take her place. Or is the opportunity that she offers a poisoned chalice? The questions asked have no easy answers; neither proponents of capital punishment, nor those opposed to it, will find it comfortable viewing. By the end, there are no victims left; everyone is guilty – to use the old Sex Pistols line, no-one is innocent.

he DVD was released by Tartan Video USA on September 26th, and includes an interview with Park, a ‘making of’ documentary, and no less than three commentaries. Nice job! For more information, visit the Tartan Video USA site.
a.k.a. Sympathy for Lady Vengeance
Dir: Park Chan-Wook
Stars: Lee Young-ae, Choi Min-sik, Kim Si-Hu, Nam Il-Woo