Tag: four-star

The Hunt

  By

★★★★
“Don’t believe the political hype.”

This was a genuine and pleasant surprise. The original release was pushed back due to some severe controversy: not many films get Tweeted about by the President of the United States, who stated this was “made in order to inflame and cause chaos.” Needless to say, the studio ended up riding that publicity when the movie eventually came out. The current pandemic ended up trumping that (pun intended), so the film hit the home markets, just a week after its theatrical release. To my surprise, it’s considerably more nuanced than the “Red State vs. Blue State” concept I expected. And Gilpin has clearly put her GLOW training to good use, becoming quite the thirty-something bad-ass here.

It is, at its heart, another variant on The Most Dangerous Game, with a dozen people being kidnapped from their everyday lives, and taken somewhere that looks much like Arkansas, to be hunted by the rich for sport. The film is very good in the earlier stages at disconcerting the viewer by shifting their focus: you’ll settle in with one character, only for them to be wiped out in brutal fashion. Gilpin’s character, Crystal Creasey, isn’t even seen until more than 25 minutes in. But she makes up for her late arrival in no uncertain style, quickly establishing that the people behind the hunt, led by Athena (Swank), might have made a mistake by selecting Crystal as their entertainment.

What I found interesting is how even-handed this is. Yes, it’s about the elite hunting common people, and on its surface, i.e. the trailer, could be seen as Democrats hunting Republicans. But they’re hardly depicted as heroic, and indeed, it turns out, there’s considerably more to this. The whole thing started as an off-colour joke by Athena that got out, causing the wrath of #CancelCulture, as propagated through social media and conspiracy circles. She then decided, if we’re going to be blamed for something we didn’t do – why not do it anyway, and targets those who were her harshest critics on social media? Neither side gets out unscathed: not the liberals with their virtue signalling and hypocrisy, nor the conservatives with their paranoia and self-deceit. Yes, it is certainly guilty of picking at the raw scab which is the divided state of the nation (something for which the media, in general, must take much of the blame).

But the horror movie as social commentary is something that has been around for at least fifty years, since Night of the Living Dead.  As I’ve previously made clear, I’m fine with that, providing the film works regardless. And you could safely ignore all the satirical aspects, and you’d still have something among the upper tier of movies inspired by The Most Dangerous Game. It all builds to a kitchen battle between Crystal and Athena, that for sheer savagery, is one of the best woman-on-woman brawls I’ve seen since Kill Bill, Volume 2. Providing you are not too blinkered in your political views, the payoff here should be worth putting them to one side for ninety minutes.

Dir: Craig Zobel
Star: Betty Gilpin, Ike Barinholtz, Amy Madigan, Emma Roberts

Guns Akimbo

  By

★★★★
“Don’t bring a spork to a gunfight!”

Harry Potter, this is not. If it’s difficult to separate Radcliffe from the hero of the movie franchise, this is the kind of film which should help considerably. He plays Miles, a computer programmer and online troll, who trolls the wrong people. Specifically, the ones who run Skizm, an increasingly popular and hyper-violent online streaming service, which broadcasts death-matches between contestants. For his sins, Miles is knocked out, and wakes to find himself with guns bolted to both hands. He is now Skizm’s latest contestant, going up against their reigning champion, Nix (Weaving). And to encourage him, the man who runs the game, Riktor (Dennehy), has kidnapped Miles’s intermittent girlfriend, Nova (Bordizzo). To survive, he’s going to need help from a most unusual source: Nix.

This is the kind of incessantly kinetic, brutal action film that you’ll probably either love or hate. I was pushed firmly into the latter company by Samara Weaving, who is a coke-snorting, chain-gun wielding, spiky package of undiluted and venomous awesome. While Miles is the nominal lead character, Nix was considerably more fun to watch, and also has the better character arc. For example, her actions have considerably better motivations, considering Miles is basically trolling for the LOLs. There’s plenty of her in action to appreciate too, pushing this out of the “supporting girl with gun” category into qualification. I haven’t yet seen Birds of Prey, but suspect Weaving would have been an admirable alternate to Margot Robbie.

I’m interested, if somewhat confused, about the moral message being sent here – or whether there is one at all. It’s both condemning the audience for violent entertainment… while, very clearly, feeding that same appetite. Any sense of intellectual superiority over the masses is similarly undercut by the extremely low-brow humour. Have you ever considered how hard it would be to go to the bathroom with your hands locked around firearms? Me neither. But with his writer’s cap on, Howden clearly has. Yet this does help insulate the film from suggestions of hypocrisy, its broken spiritual compass and disjointed one-liners a fitting match for the ADHD and morally bankrupt world it is depicting. Though the most implausible thing here, might be the way Miles’s fuzzy slippers stay on. I can’t even go down the stairs without mine making a bid for independence from my feet.

The action is almost non-stop, and the blood flows in rivers, to the point that it becomes almost a caricature of the more extreme end of video-gaming. It’s staged fairly well, though does occasionally topple over into the manic style of editing which is the bane of modern cinema. Things build towards the expected climax, in which Miles and Nix mount an all-out assault on Riktor’s headquarters, delivering one final shot of adrenaline-powered hyper-mayhem to your lizard brain. If not all the characters receive quite the fate you want, there’s enough here to make me believe Weaving has action heroine superstar potential.

Dir: Jason Lei Howden
Star: Daniel Radcliffe, Samara Weaving, Natasha Liu Bordizzo, Ned Dennehy

A Good Woman is Hard to Find

  By

★★★★
“Hammer time!”

2020’s first seal of approval goes to this uber-gritty Irish film, starring Sarah Bolger, whose most familiar to us from Into the Badlands. While her GWG creds there are overshadowed by the likes oE Emily Beecham, safe to say Bolger makes up for lost time here. She plays single mother Sarah Collins, who is struggling to come to terms with the recent, unsolved murder of her husband. Barely managing to make ends meet, her life is upended when entry-level criminal Tito (Simpson) breaks in, seeking sanctuary. He has stolen some drugs belonging to top boss Leo (Hogg), and offers Sarah a cut of the proceeds if she’ll act as his safe-house. Very reluctantly, she agrees. Needless to say, it doesn’t go as they plan.

And that’s putting it very mildly. I won’t spoiler it, but there’s a reason she ends up visiting a hardware store, and weighing up whether an axe or a hack-saw is better suited for her “project” [the correct answer, it appears, is both…]. Yet, the character arc from mild-mannered mother who basically won’t say “Boo!” to a goose, into someone capable of going about with a bowling-bag of highly unpleasant content, is remarkably plausible. Because it’s almost all driven by fierce maternal love for her two children, one of whom has been traumatized into muteness by witnessing his father’s murder. Sarah will do anything to protect and provide for them, and as motivation for taking up a criminal lifestyle, it’s a far sight better than we got in the similarly themed Widows or The Kitchen.

It also does not soft-pedal its violence. The extended sequence where Sarah goes over the edge and becomes a killer for the first time, at one point almost teeters into farce with her first choice of weapon. But the further it goes on – to the point of death and beyond, the grimmer it gets. I was reminded of the line spoken by Macbeth: “I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er.” This is made clear from the opening scene, which sees a gore-drenched heroine taking to the shower, setting the scene for its subsequent savage tone. We only find out the source of the blood later, and it won’t be the last time it gets spilled.

It’s a spectacular performance from Bolger, portraying a woman who is ground down to almost nothing, before finding fate presenting her with an opportunity – albeit one which comes with a frightening cost in terms of her humanity. Yet her portrayal manages to take the audience along with the character on that journey. The rest of the cast pales in comparison, though it probably doesn’t help that non-British audiences may need subtitles for some of the dialogue; even I was going “What?” at some points, particularly for Tito’s lines. Still, neither that nor some suspiciously convenient skill with a firearm (likely a necessary contrivance) are sufficient to derail a thoroughly successful slab of Irish noir.

Dir: Abner Pastoll
Star: Sarah Bolger, Edward Hogg, Andrew Simpson, Jane Brennan

Crawl

  By

★★★★
“The shark was otherwise engaged, torturing Blake Lively…”

I have to say, I’m neither an expert on that strange sub-genre of “animal horror,” nor am I a particular fan of it. I’m mainly looking for a movie that can give me a suspenseful time in the cinemas. This is becoming more and more difficult. Partly because in by my time of live, I have has seen quite a lot of movies, of all sorts; but also because I feel modern film makers have forgotten how to create real suspense and a feeling of slowly rising and constant terror in movies.

Mostly we are left with nonsensical pictures of man-killing animals that seem to have supernatural abilities. Usually it’s played for laughs because of all the silliness that comes with these kind of movies. That’s a pity. Sure, as a cinema-goer you can’t expect the greatness of classics like Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) or Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) an ymore. But is it really that difficult? Create a modicum of interest for the main characters; introduce the predator; put the future victims in an isolated spot with the animals; and play with the ambiguity of the question as to whether said territory is safe at the moment – or not! That’s not rocket science, folks!

But for that you have to take the movie and the characters of your story seriously and the timing of every scene is essential: You’ve got to know where you set up your “beats”. How long can you ratchet up suspense before you’ve got to deliver? Where do you put the shocks, without which you can’t do a good horror movie? Do you put in a little bit of humor and to what degree? When is it time to give some relief to the audience, e. g. with character or relationship moments which seem obligatory background for these kind of stories? Whom do you kill? Whom do you have survive? And should you kill off the family dog or not? 😉

Alexandre Aja is a French film-maker who has got to show his talents across very different horror movies. His great High Tension, a psycho-thriller produced by Luc Besson, was followed by a The Hills Have Eyes remake, the good but not great Kiefer Sutherland vehicle Mirrors and later the (consciously) ridiculous Piranha 3-D. After a good start, in recent years it seemed as if he had lost “it” a bit. So, the offer from producer Sam Raimi to film an original story by Michael and Shawn Rasmussen came at the right time.

While the script has a few humorous moments (if you’re looking for them), it plays its story straight and Aja also focuses on creating genuine suspense and danger. Yet he also delivers in the important categories of shock and gore – something not really that evident from the trailers. That makes sense: you won’t show your climaxes in a trailer of an action movie. I’ve to say my expectations were pretty low when going into the movie. As a fan you know the score, so can a film still get you? To my surprise and delight, this was not only able to do that but also surpassed my expectations by far. But let’s start with some background info on what I want in such a movie.

Though you never expect a character study, I’m always happy if the characters get enough backstory or character traits, that they don’t appear as totally bland, two-dimensional audience stand-ins. That’s definitively true for Crawl‘s main actors Kaya Scodelario and Barry Pepper. Neither had that much luck with past roles: Scodelario, I remember from the Maze Runner movies but hardly seemed to register anywhere else much. I think I saw Pepper last with a supporting villain role in the True Grit remake (2010). I also need predators I like and respect. Some animals won’t really work for me, e. g. bears are simply too sympathetic. But for my money reptiles of all sizes always deliver the goods. And I’ve got an enormous respect for crocodiles or alligators.

Next, the simple but effective story in a nutshell. Florida, hurricane time. Swimmer Haley Keller (Scodelario), who just failed in a swimming competition, receives a phone call from her sister She’s worried because she couldn’t reach their dad. Neither sister has had much contact with him, since their mother and father divorced; he was Haley’s former trainer, leaving their relationship no on the best of terms. The streets are beiing closed due to the dangers of the approaching hurricane and the rising water levels.

After finding her father’s house abandoned, save for his dog, Haley drives on to their former family house which he was renovating. Following the sound of a radio, she descends into the derelict cellar where she finds Dave, her wounded father (Pepper), who tells her that two alligators have entered the cellar through the drain. While they have some sanctuary in the cellar, they have to make an escape, due to the rising water that is coming up through openings in the cellar floor…

This may sound maybe a bit dry (pun not intended). But, believe me, the screenwriters and Aja have used every trick in the book to push and pull us, the audience, emotionally through our seats, in the same way the alligators push and pull the two likable yet imperfect protagonists through their surroundings. I was very pleasantly surprised about the high level of suspense and tension here. But also how the important ingredients mentioned above were perfectly blended together. The movie really creates suspense and grisly anticipation – yet also doesn’t forget that audiences need moments of relaxation so they can breathe a little, before the next furious attack or moment of extreme danger arrive. It’s a very well-written and executed entertainment, showcasing a kind of story-telling we don’t see much any more.

That said, the movie doesn’t reinvent the wheel. I personally wouldn’t be surprised if the Rasmussens saw two other recent animal horror movies with female leads: Burning Bright (2010) told the story of a young woman, locked together with her autistic brother in a house with a wild tiger by her evil uncle during a hurricane. And, of course The Shallows (2016, is it really already that long ago? It feels as if I saw the film just a couple of weeks ago…), which showed us Blake Lively on a rock in the rising water off an unknown beach while a blood-thirsty shark circles. As a matter of fact, both of these movies would make for a good triple-bill with this. And once Crawl comes out on DVD, it will find its place directly next to them on my shelves!

What is it about all those young women fighting predators with large pointy teeth? I’m no psycho-analyst but I guess it has something to do with the re-integration of certain character traits into the female psyche. Whatever these may be. I do remember an early trailer when The Shallows came out that had a voice-over of what sounded like a life coach trainer, encouraging the Blake Lively character. I wonder if the idea of the father who trained his daughter to extraordinary achievements was inspired by that trailer?

Actually, this movie goes a different way from some recent action-heroine movies, that looked to discredit father figures or put them in a negative light. Haley may have felt betrayed by her parents divorce and her father “abandoning” her. Yet during the course of the story, she finds out that her parents were not as happy as she thought and that her dad, who always loved her and believed in her, is just a normal guy. [Though I must credit him for absolutely convincing me how every household needs a utility belt for hand tools!] Having to survive and fight for what is left of her family, with the support of her father makes Haley overcome her own anxieties, through facing more than one deadly situation. Certainly, crawling through the drain by which the reptiles came into the house evokes quite distressing birth trauma… That’s a very positive message. After so many negative portrayals of father figures and “family values”, I found this a highly sympathetic and, for 2019, unusually traditional depiction.

But it only has to work – and it does that very well. We are not immediately tossed into shock-infested seas, there’s a nice build-up, so when the gators appear they evoke the desired audience reaction.Haley and her father have enough back story that you are on their side and want them to survive, while at the same time worrying if they will make it. Despite being just that just 90 minutes, the movie is full of ideas of how the imprisoned father-daughter couple could get help from outside (which leads to an unpleasant looter-reptile encounter) or escape the cellar and the house. It really plays with giving you hope, just to take it away again. One of my favourite moments is when Haley and Dave make it to an escape boat outside, when the levees break and a wave of water throws them back into their house – only one floor higher. Well-timed elements of humor, such as Haley’s reaction when normal house spiders fall on her face, help make for very satisfying entertainment.

A fascinating side-fact is that the movie was shot in Belgrade, Serbia, which doubles for Florida perfectly. And a little “tidbit”: Scodelario’s and Pepper’s family name in the movie is “Keller”. For German cinema-goers that’s extremely funny as “Keller” is the German word for “cellar”. But one last question: will the dog survive? Watch the movie to find out! It gets four well-earned stars from me. Your mileage may vary, but honestly I think it’s on the same level as The Shallows, which also scored highly with me. So, if you enjoyed that, this should be right up your (flooded) street.

Dir: Alexandre Aja
Star:  Kaya Scodelario, Barry Pepper

Girls With Balls

  By

★★★★
“Guess a new domain name is needed…”

Lurking behind one of the most cringeworthy titles I’ve ever seen, and a trailer that’s not much better, is a very pleasant surprise. Well, at least if you’re a fan of the “splatstick” genre, mixing over-the-top gore and comedy: Peter Jackson’s Brain Dead is the pinnacle of that genre. I certainly am, and consequently found this a real hoot. Girls volleyball team, the Falcons, are on their way home after their latest victory, when they end up diverted into a small town, populated entirely by inbred rednecks (or the Gallic version thereof). After an encounter in the hotel, they find themselves getting a night-time visit, and are soon being hunted down by the village’s residents. However, the biggest psycho may not be among the locals…

Afonso does a great job in depicting the heroines with broad strokes. You quickly establish the egotistical star player Morgane (Azem), up and coming star Jeanne (Daviot), nerdy M.A. (Balchere), etc. They’re all overseen by their distinctly non-athletic coach (Solaro), who treats them as if they were one big, dysfunctional family. Yet these internal tensions often threaten their literal survival. It was clear to me (if not many reviewers!) that Afonso is parodying the slasher genre: he takes it to such extremes, with the girls bickering over boyfriends even as their pursuers are mere feet away. That’s where this differs from the other “women’s sports team in wilderness peril” movie – yes, it’s a genre… well, there are two – Blood Games, which took itself seriously. He does an equally nice job with the villains. For example, rather than having hunting dogs, there’s one local who pretends to be a dog, playing the sound of hounds baying over a bullhorn.

It’s just one of the many times where this film subverts the audience’s expectations, not least in having heroines with their own set of flaws. Also included there is the country-and-western singer who hitches a ride on the team’s camper van, interrupting proceedings to offer sardonic commentary on proceedings. “The players on this team were all kind of hot”, he sings at the start, going on, “Another thing they have in common, is that they die before the end.” [Is he telling the truth? I won’t say…] Inevitably, of course, there’s a rather dumb scene where the girls use volleyballs to attack their enemies, and the climax doesn’t actually stick in the mind as well as many of the scenes which preceded it. The attack chihuahua, or the headless corpse that Just. Won’t. Die.

If you took this seriously, it would potentially be thoroughly offensive – though it’s entirely equal-opportunity in its approach there. Men, women, gay or straight: no-one here gets out alive. Just, for the love of all that is holy, skip the dubbed version on Netflix, and watch it subtitled. I caught a few seconds before lunging for the remote control, and my ears may still be bleeding.

Dir: Olivier Afonso
Star: Tiphaine Daviot, Manon Azem, Louise Blachère, Victor Artus Solaro

Anna

  By

★★★★
“Luc Besson’s Greatest Hits”

Before getting to the film, we probably have to address the elephant in the room: the rape accusations against Luc Besson. Though police investigations have finished, with the allegations unproven, they definitely have damaged Besson’s reputation. While in Europe, the basic rule remains “Innocent until proven guilty”, in Hollywood a mere accusation in a newspaper headline or online can potentially destroy a man’s career these days. And while some people are guilty of the crimes of which they were accused, I personally strongly doubt that the small, overweight, apparently introverted Frenchman is a serial rapist.

Honestly, if I go by what I heard about countless actors and directors working in Hollywood today, I probably wouldn’t be able to watch any movie. The logical thing for me is to separate a creator and what you know about them (or perhaps, think you know) from their work. Beethoven is said to have been a terrible, unsympathetic misogynist but his music is great. Klaus Kinski was one of the most controversial actors of the 20th century, with a reputation for unpleasantness at best; yet there is no doubt of his acting genius that shines through almost any movie he made in his life.

Right now though, a whiff of suspicion, and you are already dead to Hollywood. Besson might be slightly safer, as he is not part of the business there, and lives in Europe. But I wonder if the allegations may have led to some kind of semi-sabotage by his distributor in the US. For hardly any cinemagoer seemed to have known about his new movie, Anna. Even though I was told the film got some TV spots on cable channels and a trailer in cinemas, it seemed marketing was seriously toned down, and the movie rushed out of cinemas shortly after release.

[Note from Jim. I can confirm this. We were on holiday in Scotland when it came out. By the time we returned to Arizona and got over the jet-lag, it was basically gone. Anna opened in 2,114 screens. Three weeks later, it was on… 92. I still haven’t seen it, which is why I was glad Dieter stepped in with a review]

There seems almost to be some kind of unspoken agreement just to bury this movie quietly. Heck, even here in Germany the film wasn’t advertised apart, from the online trailer. I definitely didn’t see a trailer for it at the cinema, or big posters for it anywhere. If I had not consciously looked out for this movie, due to being a fan of Luc Bessons work over the last 36 years, I probably wouldn’t even have known about it.

But to put things in a more objective perspective: over his entire career Besson has had only two real successes in the US: One was Leon (1994), which made Jean Reno a big star and started the career of Nathalie Portman; the other was Lucy (2014), the break-through film for Scarlett Johannson, now the highest-paid actress in Hollywood. Heck, even now-loved cult movie The Fifth Element (1997) (originally supposed to be a two-parter!) was considered a flop in America at the time of release. What has always been Besson’s bread and butter is the rest of the world. Though in the beginning he had some detractors in his own country for a style which was seen as “Americanized” and “not really French enough”.

Nevertheless, it seems kind of strange when looking at the box-office numbers of Besson’s movies in the last few years. Lucy was an international success, that in the US alone made $126 million, while Anna closed with takings of under $8 million.  It’s easy to create conspiracy theories looking at these numbers. But in between came Valerian and the City of the 1000 Planets (2017). Despite being the most expensive European movie ever, with a budget of about $178 million, took a disappointing $41 million in the US (though made its costs back in the rest of the world). And yes, some of his movies never were commercial successes – regardless of their quality – such as Adele Blanc-Sec (2010), The Lady (2011) or the sequels to his Arthur and the Invisibles animated movie.

Why do I mention all of the above? I guess, because I think that Anna may be a turning point in Besson’s career – perhaps more than you may think. Valerian seemed to have cost his French Eurocorp studio money, despite pre-sales and – according to Besson – only a small financial investment by Eurocorp itself. It seems that about two-thirds of the company are now in the hands of foreign investors, and they don’t want Besson to continue in the chairman’s seat of his own company. With Valerian under-performing, and Anna a theatrical flop despite a modest budget (reportedly around $35 million), we could be looking at the last big movie of Luc Besson.

Sure, he has always shown that he can make effective and very good movies with small budgets such as his debut movie, The Last Battle (1983) or Angel-A (2005). Indeed, maybe the quality of his movies increases, as his budget decreases. But the big question is if the 60-year old director really wants to start again from the ground up, especially given his age. He’s not the youthful punk he started as. In Europe (or at least France) he is what Spielberg might have been in mid-90s Hollywood. But then Spielberg grew up and matured; can Besson do that? Does he even want to? I also think you can compare him with contemporary James Cameron, a famous director who now mostly has others direct his productions. Certainly, I don’t think Besson has to prove anything to anyone, anymore.

With all that said, how is Anna? Answer: surprisingly good. I went into this movie not expecting much at all (going from the quasi non-existent marketing). Yes, it’s true, it’s not one of the “greats” of Besson, and he also doesn’t re-invent the genre wheel with this. If you have seen his classic Nikita (1990) which has been exploited by Hollywood ad infinitum, and her spiritual successors Atomic Blonde (2017) and Red Sparrow (2018), you know the story. And knowing these kind of movies, you’ll be familiar with a story arc, you can figure out from the very beginning.

But then, I don’t hear anyone complaining about the 1000th Marvel movie following the same paths of its superhero predecessors. In the end, the question is how the cook combines the ingredients to bake his cake. And this cake tastes good – but definitely not great. While the DNA of Nikita is everywhere, it never reaches the fine and poetic quality of that movie. It feels like a modernized remake, with Besson obviously having seen Sparrow and Blonde too, and saying to himself: “I can do better!”

And I think, subjectively, he mainly succeeds. Red Sparrow was a very heavy, slow-burning spy movie without what I would really call action scenes. Atomic Blonde had impressive action choreography, which Besson definitely tried to top here – up to the individual viewer, whether or not he succeeded. But Blonde also had, at least for me, a strange, difficult to figure-out ending, and characters which were all cool, to the point of emotionless. My feeling is that Besson took the best elements of all these movies – the intrigue of Sparrow; the action of Blonde – and combined it with his own style.

What I always notice when watching one of his movies, is that Besson can be an incredibly visual director if he wants. He knows how to do great mise-en-scéne, how to give his movies a lot of kinetic energy. The scenes are not too long, but also not so short you can’t invest yourself into them emotionally. He inserts moments of genuinely funny humor and sometimes almost kitschy emotional scenes, that are a component of his own unique style – and, unfortunately, usually not to be found in American action movies. And when he gets playful, the editing and the music of his “house composer”, Eric Serra (Nikita, Leon, The Fifth Element, and many others), join each other in a perfect marriage that’s just incredible fun to watch.

Do I sound too enthusiastic? I don’t think so. Besson is an excellent director. This doesn’t exclude him from creating flawed movies or average scripts; yet even his failures are – at least for me – still more satisfying and interesting than an average “successful” conveyor-belt Hollywood movie. He is an almost classic storyteller, telling his very own stories, depending on what he focuses his current interest on in the moment. One quality I think I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere, is his ability to lead actors. All of the performances here, including Evans, Murphy and Mirren are very good. But the one that really impressed me is supermodel-turned-actress Sasha Luss, who previously played a smaller role as an alien in Valerian.

She’s not perfect: Luss playing a poor Moscow-wife selling “matroshkas” on the market, can’t disguise what a beauty she is. Compare that to Anne Parillaud’s ugly punk-girl-duckling in Nikita who only turns into a beautiful swan later in the movie. Still, Luss comes across as very charismatic, believable as a model (not a stretch!) and seductress, as well as a murderous killer for the KGB. Honestly, I was really impressed: for me, she gives a better performance than the enigmatic but also somewhat bland Jennifer Lawrence in Red Sparrow.

But then a talent of Besson is being able to insert some “emotionality” into his characters. This adds just enough to make them appear more believable than many similar characters in Hollywood movies. Here, he even manages to make Helen Mirren’s role, playing a cold-hearted merciless KGB trainer and mentor of Anna, comparable to Lotte Lenya in From Russia with Love and Charlotte Rampling in Red Sparrow, into an oddly likable character.

What seemed a problem for some cinema-goers was the non-linear storytelling of the movie. The film jumps a couple of years ahead, a few months back, another year forward and so on, allowing it to surprise the audience with some unexpected revelations. I personally had no problems with that – but some people don’t like to use their brains at all when watching a movie. Their loss. :) Where I’d say Besson fails is in what I call the “model photo shooting scenes”. Here, he overdoes it so much, to the point you wonder if he intended to make a satire about haute couture. These scenes come across as exaggerated and almost cringe-worthy. Fortunately, they don’t occupy too much of the film’s running-time.

The basic story is of a trained secret agent who works for one side, becomes a double agent, then is essentially only working to get back their personal liberty, and isn’t a new one. This plot goes back at least as far as Triple Cross (1966), a WWII-spy movie from Bond director Terence Young, with Christopher Plummer, Romy Schneider, Gert Fröbe and many others. The comparisons to Nikita really write themselves. There are many similarities to the movie that, 29 years ago, more or less signified Besson’s breakthrough out of arthouse cineaste circles. Despite this, they are different, probably due to a different contemporary zeitgeist, which made the movie an interesting viewing experience for me.

Gone is the girl who never had a choice, as Anna originally applied to work for the KGB by herself – though ends in a situation where she can’t quit. This makes for a different dynamic to Parillaud in Nikita, although I also don’t really buy the emotional and psychological interest in being a killer for the state here. Nikita was a desperate girl, slowly breaking apart through having to follow the orders of her handler while wanting a normal life with her boyfriend. Anna comes across as a hard professional: she is not just Nikita but also “Victor, nettoyeur” in one person, andcomes off as remarkably cold-blooded.

In one scene, a not unsympathetic, shy Russian who is an illegal arms trader confesses his love for her; she kills him in the moment she has the relevant information. Then there is that scene in a restaurant, which makes the similar scene in Nikita look like a Disney movie in comparison. Anna leaves a room full of bloody corpses behind her; the word “overkill” sprang immediately into my mind! A normal “relationship” with her girlfriend seems possible; but Anna hardly seems to care for her, since said friend is mainly a cover. At the same time she has passionate sex with Evans and Murphy, and calls them her family. But is this just another deception? You never know if she cares for anyone at all, or if she is just manipulating everyone around her emotionally and sexually, for use later in her intricate plan.

That may be the weakest point in Anna’s character. She is just bigger than life, out-fighting, out-manipulating, out-smarting and out-sexing anyone. Somehow, Nikita seemed much more grounded in reality, and more believable because of that human character. Anna is purely professional, always ahead of the game, even when you think: “Well, now she is done!” You wonder why she needs all these complicated components of her plan, when she seems quite capable off killing off half an army of KGB-employees [And you definitely don’t want to play chess with her!]

Other aspects: It’s nice to have actual Russians speaking real Russian in a movie. I had a hard time when watching Red Sparrow with all these Hollywood actors speaking English with Russian accents. It just sounded fake. The solution here is much better: You have Russian actors speaking Russian, maybe the main actors say a thing or two in Russian, then you change to the “normal” language. I didn’t feel that it broke the illusion, since it was well enough established that the characters were Russian. Kudos also to Alexander Petrov, who plays Anna’s original Russian criminal “boy-friend”, Piotr, an especially unsympathetic human being. It’s an important and effective role, letting the film establish a feeling of reality before it shifts into the more fantastic spy genre we know and love. John le Carré it ain’t!

Some production credits stood out for me. Shanna Besson, one of Luc’s daughters did the stills photography for the movie, and his wife Virginie Besson-Silla seems to have been involved in some capacity. Responsible for the car stunts is David Julienne, who has worked for some Besson productions already in the past. I suspect he is related to Remy Julienne, the famous driver responsible for all the great car chases in the Bond movies of the 80s and also some Jean-Paul Belmondo films. [There was a major issue between Remy and Europacorp, after a stunt went wrong during the filming of Taxi 2]  As mentioned, the music of Eric Serra, is as remarkable as ever, and I had a big smile on my face when in one specific scene he directly referenced a melody from his own Nikita soundtrack. I notice and appreciate little things like that.

Visually the film is – as can be expected from a Besson movie – stunning and top-notch. There are some beautiful shots of cities and once again Besson reminds us why people love Paris so much. Unlike so many modern secret agent and action movies, Anna leaves you with a real sense Besson and crew jetted around half the world to capture as many beautiful images as possible for this movie. The end titles included thank-yous to the cities of Moscow, Belgrade, Guadalupe, Milan and – of course – the studios of Paris. 

Unfortunately, Anna is a commercial flop right now. Sure, the film is less than subtle, and Nikita stays unchallenged as a genre icon. We might have seen this kind of story a bit too often recently – and probably will again next year when Marvel’s Black Widow comes out. But among the modern entries in the genre, it is easily one of the best. Besson doesn’t quite reach the quality of his formative years as a director, and I doubt he ever will. But as typical genre fare, even if exaggerated in the depiction of its female main character, this is solid entertainment, and should be enjoyed as such.

I just hope this isn’t Besson’s last movie, since he is still better than most of those trying to walk in his footsteps. We’ll see!

Dir: Luc Besson
Star: Sasha Luss, Luke Evans, Cillian Murphy, Helen Mirren

What Keeps You Alive

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★★★★
“Predatory lesbian.”

In the modern, politically-correct era, it’s less common to see a film which has a sexual minority as an unabashed villain. Something like Basic Instinct got a lot of flak at the time, and would likely be rejected out of hand by gay-friendly Hollywood these days, as would Silence of the Lambs. So it was kinda refreshing to see a movie which brings us an unashamedly psycho lesbo in the form of Jackie (Anderson). Yet it’s not her sexuality which makes her evil, though she does feel she was “born this way” – or, as Jackie puts it: “It’s nature, not nurture.”

Certainly, the warning signs are there early, when she and her wife Jules (Allen) go for a first anniversary weekend in Jackie’s remote family cabin by a lake. Strike one: we rapidly discover Jackie is a fake name, something she hadn’t told her other half. Strike two: singing a song to Jules with lyrics like “There’s a demon inside / Blood, let it out.” Strike three: telling a story about a childhood hunting trip and a deer, ending in the line, “I just stood over it for the next 20 minutes and I watched the life slowly fade from her eyes.” If you’re not hearing alarm bells ringing loudly, you’ve clearly not seen enough movies. Jules, blinded by love, is about the only one apparently oblivious to the foreshadowing.

To the film’s credit, it doesn’t stretch this out [the trailer, below, is similarly open about the dynamic here], and it’s not too long before Jules is propelled off a cliff to her apparent doom. Except, by the time Jackie meanders down to the foot, ready for a tearful call to the authorities, the body has gone. The fall wasn’t as fatal as intended, and the rest of the film plays like a two-person version of Revenge, with Jules deciding, “I’m not going to let you do it again.” For did we mention Jackie’s first wife? Or the childhood friend who ‘drowned’ in the lake? Because she certainly does…

Almost inevitably for the genre, some suspension of disbelief is needed here. The injuries suffered by Jules in the initial fall are all but forgotten by the end, and there’s other foreshadowing which seems less than subtle, such as the very obvious gun hanging on a wall And was Jules a failed medical student? There’s one line of dialogue hinting towards that, and it would go some way to explaining a number of things. Couldn’t it perhaps have been made clearer?

Yet these are minor issues, which certainly did not impact my sheer enjoyment of this very much. There are two excellent lead performances, in addition to solid work by Minihan, which cranks up the tension impeccably – a rowing race across the lake is a particular highlight. It all makes for a sharp improvement on the director’s previous feature, It Stains the Sands Red – which also starred Allen and put her character in similarly perpetual peril – and is a fine example of a B-movie that punches above its weight.

Dir: Colin Minihan
Star: Hannah Emily Anderson, Brittany Allen, Martha MacIsaac, Joey Klein

Dance of Death

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★★★★

“Not backwards in high heels, yet still highly impressive”

This one might sound familiar, as I did previously review it about four years ago. But it deserves, and gets, a fresh analysis, due to my having recently had the chance to watch it in a way much closer to how it was originally meant to be seen. This version was purely subtitled, rather than dubbed, and in particular, had a 2.35:1 ratio print, rather than the previous 4:3 atrocity which meant that half the time, one or other fighter in the (numerous) battles was cropped off the side of the screen. This made it feel such a radically different movie, it took an hour for me to realize I’d actually seen it before. And it was all the better for the new look.

There were aspects which still befuddle me, such as most of the plot. Why, exactly, is Angela Mao pretending to be a boy? It’s completely unconvincing, and entirely unnecessary to the story-line. No-one ever discovers her true gender: it’s almost as if this were originally written for a man, then they got Mao, and in all the excitement, forgot (or, alternatively and equally credibly, couldn’t be bothered) to change the script. The rest of it is an odd mix. It’s partly vengeance with Fei Fei (Mao) out to pick up enough martial arts skill to take revenge on those who killed her family. Yet this sits alongside slapstick comedy which you’d not expect given the title, such as the two kung fu masters – one drunk, one stoner – whom she tricks into sharing her talents, or the villain with the world’s tiniest fan whom she defeats on her way to the big bad.

This time, those elements didn’t bother me anywhere near as much, and even if they had, I’m willing to forgive an enormous amount when the fights are so acrobatically inventive – the hand of Jackie Chan, who was a stunt co-ordinator here, might have something to do with this. Yes, it’s almost retro, even for its time. For by this point, in 1976, Bruce Lee’s shooting star had already blazed across the sky of martial arts cinema, and the Peking Opera approach was quickly being replaced by films based on his harder hitting style. Yet the long takes and fluid choreography used here have an undeniably elegant rhythm to them. I previously wrote that this movie reminded me of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and that’s one element which hasn’t changed between these viewings.

The steady progression in Fei Fei’s talents also remains notable, as does the blizzard of different styles of kung-fu, from crane through dragon to monkey, as well as less traditional approaches such as the.. ah, “flatulence fu” which shows up at one point. The graceful skill which Mao demonstrates in virtually all of these – save the intestinal variety, I’m pleased to say! – is truly a joy to behold, especially in this format, which allows you to appreciate it all the better. If there’s a more impressive vehicle for her talents, I’ve yet to find it.

Dir: Chuan Lu
Star: Angela Mao, Shih Tien, Shiao Bou-Lo, Chin Pey

Hell on Route 666, by Dan Leissner

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

At the very end, of the characters says to Cat, the heroine, “Will someone PLEASE tell me what this was all about!” I can kinda sympathize with them: I think it’s safe to say this defied expectations, though I must stress, in a good way. It’s close to 12 years since we were first introduced to Cat; not sure what Dan has been doing in the interim, but I was delighted to find a second volume had finally arrived. Re-reading our review, I probably should have been less surprised: the original managed to have a plot combining “black militants, white supremacists and aliens from outer-space.” I had managed to forget the last, so was expecting merely another funky escapade of seventies style, sex and violence.

Yes… and no.

Initially, it seems almost like a cross between Dennis Wheatley and Russ Meyer, with Cat investigating and infiltrating a Satanic cult based around heavy metal group 666, whose teenage fans are being mind-controlled into committing increasingly heinous crimes in the name of the Devil. But the further on we go, the more outrageous things get. 666 are entirely discarded, with a Devil-worshipping rock-band becoming positively mundane. We end up heading for territory that’s more like the Book of Revelations adapted by H.P. Lovecraft – oh, yeah, and throw in a demonic version of Bumblebee from Transformers, because… Well, just because. Except, Lovecraft wouldn’t have a kick-ass heroine like Cat, breaking limbs and hearts with equal confidence. Or an all-girl commando platoon. Or quite so many pairs of tight jeans, inevitably worn low on the hips…

I did have some issues in the opening third, mostly because Cat wasn’t all that likeable, to be honest. Not sure if I’ve changed, she’s changed or the world has changed, in the twelve years since the first novel. Probably a bit of each. She seems to spent an inordinate amount of time stoned, dressing/acting to attract the male gaze, yet simultaneously resenting it. “Jeez! What a bunch of low-lives,” is a sentiment she expresses at one point; “Shit! Just look at them… bunch of no necks and beer-bellies. God, I hate this crap!” at another. Apparently, she’s the only one allowed to overtly express any sexuality. She certainly has no qualms about seducing a boy of “barely 16”. Reverse the genders there, and it would play rather differently, to be sure.

It was only later, I realized, perhaps this might be deliberate – expressing a darker side to Cat may be why the Satanists were so keen to bring her over to their team. However, I prefer my heroines a bit less… whiny! Still, even in this difficult first third, Leissner packs a wallop, particularly with his chilling descriptions of the mind-controlled terrorism. And the deeper we get, the more Cat relies on her actions to define her. That, and the continually escalating apocalypse make for a real downhill avalanche of a read, one that eventually becomes entirely unstoppable. Dan promises we won’t have to wait until 2031 for the next installment. He’d better live up to that, or I’ll be swinging past to know the reason why.

Author: Dan Leissner
Publisher: Midnight Marquee Press, available through Amazon, for now only as a paperback. I received a review copy in exchange for an honest opinion.
Book 2 of 2 in the Cool Cat series.

Alita: Battle Angel

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★★★★
“Mechanical Pixie Dream Girl.”

Depending on your definition, this is perhaps the most expensive action-heroine film of all time, estimated at more than $200 million before tax incentives. Given the fate of live-action adaptations of manga in the West, most recently Ghost in the Shell, this was always going to be a risky investment, even with the name of James Cameron, the most successful movie-maker in history, attached as a producer. At one point, people were predicting a bomb of Mortal Engines size. While Alita seems to have escaped that fate, it’s going to have to do very well in both China and Japan, the two remaining territories, if it’s to turn any kind of profit, never mind start a franchise.

That’s a shame, because this is a solid, well-made piece of science-fiction, which does a particularly good job of creating a massive, epic world on the cinema screen. Rodriguez has been squeezing every penny out of his budgets since El Mariachi, and while there may not be much apparent overlap between Alita with Shark Boy and Lava Girl, the latter franchise was excellent training for RR in meshing computer graphics with actors. Sin City also laid similar groundwork, and helped set up the director with the chance to go big or go home. And there’s no doubt: Rodriguez went big. This was my first cinema trip of 2019, and was fully justified.

Having recently read the original manga, I was struck by how faithful the film was to most aspects. Right from the get-go, with Doc Ido (Waltz) finding the shattered remains of Alita (Salazar) on the scrap-heap below Zalem, there were shots which could have been story-boarded by the graphic novel. [Again, something Rodriguez also did in Sin City] Ido, in particular, looks exactly like I imagined him, and the same goes for Vector (Mahershala Ali), the shady power behind the scenes in Iron City, as well as Zapan and the rest of the bounty hunters.

The story is generally quite faithful, too. After her rescue, Alita tries to recover her past memories, becomes a bounty-hunter, falls in love with human boy Hugo (Johnson), takes up the brutal sport of Motorball, and experiences personal tragedy. However, the order of the events is shifted: in the manga, the tragedy is what spurs her entry into the Motorball arena. The film also adds Ido’s ex-wife, Chiren (Connolly), a character who was not in the comics, though does appear in the OVA. Here, they had a disabled daughter named Alita, who was killed by one of Ido’s Motorball goons. It’s a rather clunky subplot, which doesn’t add particularly much, beyond explaining from where Alita v2.0’s body came.

There has been much debate over Alita’s eyes, which have been CGI-increased in size to an extent rarely if ever seen in a live-action film. Of course, she’s a cyborg, so whatever. However, it is still something of a distraction, even though it appears they’ve been toned-down in size from early trailers, where it appeared her eyeballs would have occupied most of her brain’s frontal lobe. The eyes are one of the hardest things to get right with computer graphics, and when it isn’t, the results can be horrible, as with the resurrected Peter Cushing in Rogue One. This is better, and at some moments does enhance things, basically acting as a megaphone for Alita’s feelings. However, it also plays into the film’s main weakness: an apparent lack of genuine emotion. I’ll circle back to that a bit later.

As a spectacle, this is grand, offering sweeping vistas of a future world, densely populated with people, things and those in between. As an action movie, it works pretty well too. The two best set-pieces are the bar-brawl where newly-registered bounty hunter Alita proves her worth to her colleagues, and the Motorball game, where everyone else taking part cares only about killing Alita. There’s a palpable sense of progression in her skills over the course of the film. Initially, she’s clearly raw and unfocused, but after she is paired with her “berserker” body… [Inevitably, it has been the subject of PC whining, about it looking ‘too feminine’] Hoo-boy. By the end, she’s a weapon on mass destruction, regardless of the opponent’s size.

And speaking of the end, one frequently-heard bit of criticism is that the ending is too “open,” apparently fishing for a sequel. I can’t say I felt that way at all. There’s certainly scope for more movies, apparently involving Alita going after the mysterious Nova. Yet the main thread of the film, involving Alita and Hugo, is definitively wrapped up. In comparison, say, to Marvel films, which almost inevitably have an in- or post-credit sequence blatantly signposting the next film, this felt conclusive. While there is perhaps need for a greater sense of escalation, or a bigger climax (that Motorball battle is trivial in its consequences), I’m largely baffled by complaints about the “lack of a genuine ending.”

As mentioned above, a more significant issue is that I hardly “felt” anything for any of the characters. Ido – stuck between paternal instincts of protection and a desire to allow Alita self-determination – perhaps came the closest. The relationship between Alita and Hugo is supposed to provide the film’s emotional engine. But between the former’s CGI make-up and the latter’s generic blandness, it doesn’t make much of a dent. There’s a scene where she literally tears out her heart and gives it to him: everyone, including the film itself, seems faintly embarrassed by the whole incident. Worse still – minor spoiler – the movie even goes so far as to kill a dog, without generating more than a blip of impact. Somewhere, John Wick shakes his head, sadly.

I was initially concerned about the PG-13 rating – not least because the first trailer before the film was for UglyDolls [an animated movie “about acceptance, diversity, joy and friendship” according to its site]. I needn’t have been: this is more From Dusk Till Dawn Robert Rodriguez than the Spy Kids version, with a gleeful approach to the semi-mechanized carnage. For I think it helps on the censorship front, that most of the carnage in inflicted on cyborgs, who are largely able to take a licking and keep on ticking. The manga was heavily into black market spine-ripping; here, it’s mostly limbs, which is slightly more kid-friendly, I guess.

In the end, this is just about everything for which I could have hoped. While I don’t necessarily agree with all of the artistic choices, the positives greatly outweigh the weaknesses. Although this is a low bar (hello, Speed Racer), it’s certainly the best manga/anime adaptation to come out of Hollywood. It’s a world I’d love to see explored further: whether Rodriguez and crew get the chance to do so or not, will remain in doubt until the final box-office figures arrive. Fingers crossed.

Dir: Robert Rodriguez
Star: Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz, Keean Johnson, Jennifer Connelly