Tag: g

Grindhouse

  By

★★★★
“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

The Great Adventures of Dirty Pair, by Haruka Takachiho

  By

★★½

While in English, this came out in Japan, since it was part of a series of translations of popular works, intended as an aid for people learning the language. As a result, the book comes with translation notes at the back explaining, for example, what the phrase “We’re encased in a transparent sheathing of ultrathin reinforced polymer” means. Though I note the word “lesbian” is, apparently, deemed unworthy of further translation. It’s a swift read; discounting the notes, barely 125 pages long, and they’re not large pages either – a lunch-hour might suffice, if your boss gave you a few minutes grace.

The plot is somewhat Project Eden-like; they head to a planet to investigate what initially seems to be an act of industrial espionage, only to uncover a far more lethal threat. It’s a thin work, yet still manages to divert too much from the plot: I mean, do we really need to know their vital statistics? The result is eminently forgettable, despite a couple of cool moments, such as when the pair’s clairvoyant activities, the main reason for their 3WA recruitment, are demonstrated. “Something blazed in the back of my eye. It was a flash of pure white light. Then a dizzying feeling of walking on air, followed by a tingling ecstacy. Everything went white. An image appeared. It appeared like a picture painted on a immaculate canvas. It went out. In a twinkling, color returned to my consciousness.“

The ‘Bloody Card’ – perhaps more famous in the US comics than the anime – also makes an appearance, and it’s also interesting to note that the name of the villainous group behind operations is Lucifer, the same as was used in Dirty Pair Flash: Mission 1. But it’s just too disposable and light to be worthy of significant note. Though the civilian death toll as a result of their actions in this novel – as noted previously, largely due to some terribly bad luck; here, involving a crashing space-ship and a major city – comes in at a brisk 1,264,393. Well done!

Author: Haruka Takachiho, translated by David Lewis
Publisher: Kodansha English Library

Guardian of the Realm

  By

★★★

“Why do villainesses get all the best clothes?”

They may be good girls or bad…

Despite a male hero, this qualifies since the very significant second lead and the villain are both female, with the former, in particular, worthy of our attention here. It’s set in the near-future where the group CORE, including agents Josh Griffin (Levy) and Alex Marlowe (Dempsey), keep humanity safe by executing demons that pop through portals from the dark side. However, an occult sect have unleashed a higher-level demon, Virago (Piryan) into this world, and she must be stopped before an upcoming total eclipse will allow her to blow the portals between the realms wide-open, and take the world down, Titanic-style.

Director/co-writer Smith appeared in both Guyver movies, and you sense that’s the kind of feel he’s going for here, combining martial-arts and rubber suits, in a world running just below the surface of ours. But according to his bio, he’s also done special effects on everything from Contact to Xena, and perhaps the latter’s influence can be seen in the statuesque Piryan, who would certainly have given Lucy Lawless a run for her money. The result is a mix of the highly-effective and the less-impressive. The moment where Alex’s true nature is revealed is just fabulous: among my favourite moments in any film this year. There is also a nice sense of ongoing history, though this is not developed as much as in, say, Witchblade. I got the sense of this being a fragmentary corner of a universe much larger than the film, perhaps due to budgetary limitations, could portray – a TV series would be very welcome.

…but the thong remains the same!

On the other hand the CGI, especially at the finale, is not up to the tasks demanded of it; the world-threatening apocalypse looks too often like a bad video-game. I wasn’t really impressed with Levy either, who lacked the required presence for a lead. The main problem, however, is a first half that drags horribly. After Virago is freed, she basically vanishes, and it’s almost sixty minutes before she does anything of significance. The film doesn’t really develop the back story, or do much with the characters during this time either, and it’s pretty tedious, with little action to keep you interested.

Things do perk up significantly later on and, must say, Virago is definitely a nominee for the Best Costume of 2006, while Alex’s thong gets almost as much screen-time as she does. The action is well-staged with Dempsey kicking ass in a manner befitting a grown-up Buffy. However, and a minor spoiler, it’s Griffin that ends up taking on Virago – sadly, not in the cool costume – even though it’s clear that Marlowe is the better fighter. If the makers cut 25 minutes out (the current running-time is 110), this would be a much tighter, more effective work with a claim at cult status. As is, it’s still an interesting rental, but one whose potential isn’t quite realised.

Dir: Ted Smith
Stars: Glen Levy, Tanya Dempster, Lana Piryan, Ronald Quigley

G.I. Jane

  By

★★★½
“The training Jane stays mainly in the pain…”

The opening hour of this must be great entertainment for sadists, watching Demi Moore get pummelled, ground-down, chewed-up and beaten into a bloody pulp by the war machine, as part of Navy SEAL training. The first woman to go through it, she could open the door for others if she succeeds – which is exactly why the stops are pulled out to ensure she fails. While the most obvious face of this is Master Chief Urgayle (Mortensen – his character here would eat Aragorn for lunch), her political mentor Senator DeHaven (Bancroft) also finds the pressure coming down to pull the plug on this social experiment. But Jan…er, Jordan O’Neil (Moore), won’t give up at any cost, demanding absolutely equal treatment. Of course, after what seems like a 75-minute training montage, she wins the respect of her colleagues, overcoming the Senator’s intervention thanks to a peskily imperfect fax machine.

An eye-poppingly brutal look at what our soldiers go through (leaving me with even more respect for them), it’s the second half where the movie kicks into life. Their final training mission has the SEALS diverted to Libya to help recover a device containing weapons-grade plutonium. This “no man left behind” would be revisited by Scott – and cranked up to the max – in Black Hawk Down, but the restraint he shows here is a lot more effective. To me, showing ability in a combat situation, as our heroine does, would seem a better way of obtaining the admiration of your fellow soldiers – rather than telling Urgayle to “Suck my dick!” But, hey, I’m a civilian, and very happy to be one, so what do I know? It’s a shame there wasn’t a resulting franchise; as the last hour shows, there is a lot of potential for development, with O’Neil kicking butt in a variety of exotic foreign locals. However, at 43, Demi Moore is perhaps too old these days. What’s Jessica Alba doing?

Dir: Ridley Scott
Star: Demi Moore, Viggo Mortensen, Anne Bancroft, Jason Beghe

La Guerrera Vengadora 2

  By

★★½
“Schoolmistress by day…crawls through impressively large air-ducts by night.”

Chagoyan is perhaps the nearest thing Mexico has to offer to an action heroine. She best known for her role in Lola la Trailera (‘Lola the Trucker’), in which, she played the daughter of a haulier – she takes over his business and goes out for vengeance, after he’s gunned down for refusing to assist a drug-cartel. Almost a decade later, that director’s son would helm this, in which Chagoyan plays a teacher who moonlights as a crime-fighting vigilante. Not having seen part one isn’t much of a problem; presumably it explains her origins, and perhaps how she gets to spend so much time away from her job. All we see here is one class, before she and her midget sidekick take on a gang who kill one of her pupils (with a surprising amount of blood, it has to be said). Then, when she’s blamed for kidnapping the daughter of the police chief, she has to find the real culprits and clear her name.

This swings wildly from surprisingly decent to laughable, as far as action goes. The explosions and stuntwork are credible. However, to call Chagoyan “unconvincing” is putting it mildly, not least the opening sequence where she rides into a hostage situation on her motorbike and saves the day – see Heroic Trio for how it should be done. But there are occasional moments (the crossbow bolt through the hand) that made us sit up and take notice, tiding us over the dumb comedic interludes. [Though any film with a flour-covered midget will always find a special place in our hearts.] There’s a lengthy finale in an underground labyrinth, pitting our heroine and her explosive-tipped crossbow bolts against evil minions with flamethrowers, before coming back above ground to answer the age-old question, which is better: a helicopter or a rocket-launcher? If that has ever kept you up nights, this is the film for you.

Dir: Raul Fernandez Jr.
Star: Rosa Gloria Chagoyan, Rolando Fernandez, Edna Bolkan, Jorge Vargas

Girlfight

  By

★★★★
The story of a girl who “didn’t make the cheerleading team”.

The opening shot zooms in on Rodriguez with her head down; slowly, she raises her head, and stares into the camera with ferocious intensity. If this renders the rest of the film largely redundant, it’s not really anyone’s fault. In Michelle Rodriguez, the makers have the perfect person to play Diana, a pissed-off, troubled/troublesome) teen, who finds that violence does solve problems after all. Okay, that’s not perhaps the message the authors intended, but when Diana finally lays into her father, it certainly seems that way.

However, that’s typical of the honesty the film shows: uplifting, without sugar-coating the harshness of life or the toughness of training. Though it’s hard to remember a time when Rodriguez’ stare wasn’t a cliche (see S.W.A.T.), the rawness of her emotion shines out, and getting someone with little screen experience turns out brilliantly in the end, even if it could have backfired badly, and completely sunk the picture. Rodriguez certainly puts the fear of God in me, that’s for sure. While the rest of the cast are much lower-key, and barely memorable, they do their jobs adequately, in roles that are little more than cliches e.g. ex-boxer turned trainer.

However, by making Diana’s boyfriend a boxer too, it adds a significant spark, even if the “Gender Blind” boxing tournament that pits them against each other for the climax, is contrived, ludicrous, and can be found nowhere in the real world, AFAIK. Yet the film brings you along so well, that it’s easy to take that final step, which provides more than adequate closure for Diana – if not necessarily anyone else.

Dir: Karyn Kusama
Star: Michelle Rodriguez, Jaime Tirelli, Paul Calderon, Santiago Douglas

Gun Crazy, Volume 1: The Woman From Nowhere

  By

★★★½
“Muroga reclaims for Japan, what Clint and Sergio borrowed in the 1960’s.”

If the inspiration for this one wasn’t clear, Goro Yasukawa’s score will soon enlighten you: Sergio Leone. A character with a mysterious past and equally obscure agenda comes into a lawless town, and kicks ass. For The Man With No Name and his horse, read Saki (Yonekura) and her Harley. Given that Leone basically ripped off Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo in A Fistful of Dollars to begin with, the irony is satisfying. She has come to Tsuson – surely a nod to Tucson, less than two hours down the dusty Arizona I-10 from where I write this – to take on Tojo (Tsurumi), the local mob boss, who commits his crimes with impunity from the safety of an American Air Force base. She gets his attention when she interferes with his robbery of a wages truck, and takes the money herself. The two had met previously, though Tojo doesn’t recognise Saki; you’ll probably work out the basic circumstances long before the film reveals them, but it does add a couple of unexpectedly nasty twists of the knife.

The Okinawan setting is interesting, given tension between US forces there and the locals, dating back to a 1995 incident when three servicemen raped a 12-year old girl. Hence, the scene where Yuki demolishes two leering US soldiers has an additional level of resonance for local viewers, and the tolerance of the Americans to a brutal thug on their territory become somewhat more explicable. Yonekura is impressive in her role, and Muroga wisely doesn’t bother to introduce any love interest; the film is barely an hour long, so there just wouldn’t be room. The inevitability of the final Suki-Tojo faceoff is perhaps only exceeded by its ludicrousness – the heroine expands the definition of “unarmed” to include other limbs too. However, for an obviously low-budget work, it’s busily energetic, and rarely slides much below entertaining.

Dir: Atsushi Muroga
Star: Ryoko Yonekura, Shingo Tsurumi, Takeshi Yamato, Takashi Ukaji

Gang of Roses

  By

★★
“Hip-hop feminist revisionist Western is entertaining mostly for fans of bad movies.”

This comes across less like a Western, more like a feature-length rap promo – with every bit as much emotional depth or historical accuracy. The idea that a gang of ethnic gun-toting women could ever ride into town at the turn of the century, and get served at the local saloon with little problem stretches credulity to near-breaking. It then snaps entirely when faced with their always-immaculate clothes and hair, even as the ladies sleep rough. The group of former bank-robbers return to the fray after the sister of one is killed by outlaws, under the control of the one-eyed Bobby Brown. Insert Whitney Houston joke here. He and his gang have taken control of a town, from a sheriff with a startlingly Australian accent, as part of their search for treasure supposedly buried locally.

With cameos by Mario Van Peebles and Macy Gray, the characterisations never pass the obvious: the revengeful one (Calhoun), the mercenary one (LisaRaye), and then there’s the ho – Lil’ Kim, of course. Despite dialogue about a hundred years later than the period, and an odd subplot that sputters out lamely, about a mysterious figure who seems to be stalking the girls, the directing manages somehow to be worse than the script. Case in point: the innumerable scenes of our heroines riding through the landscape, which serve no purpose whatsoever. The cliches come thick and fast, to the point where you wonder if this is supposed to be a parody – if so, however, it isn’t funny.

What it often is, is bad enough to be entertaining; otherwise, it’s bad enough to be utterly forgettable, and why this got an ‘R’ rating beats me entirely. The writers of another screenplay, Jessie’s Girl, sued the makers, claiming the story here was stolen from their work: in their shoes, I’d have kept very quiet. Must say though: the beautifully colour co-ordinated costumes, below, are fabulous, and the designer thereof deserves an award. Writer/director Lamarre, on the other hand, should be firmly discouraged from carrying out any more ‘reimaginings’.

Dir: Jean-Claude La Marre
Star: Monica Calhoun, LisaRaye, Lil’ Kim, Marie Matiko

GLOOW: Hovember to Remember

  By

★★½
“Someone, someday will run a serious US women’s wrestling federation. GLOOW is not that group.”

I keep buying DVDs like this, hoping against hope to strike gold. Not to say it doesn’t have the occasional guilty pleasure, but knowing the name used to stand for “Gorgeous Ladies of Oil Wrestling” (the second O eventually became “Outrageous”), should give you a rough idea of what to expect on this DVD, filmed in November 2002 at the Pennsylvania National Guard Armory. If not, then bouts such as the Battle of the High School Virgins or Hardcore Bra and Thong Match should provide a clue, and explain why Chris was rolling her eyes at the prospect.

However, she’d probably admit it wasn’t quite as tacky as feared – no actual titties, and I definitely saw her smirking in the tag-team battle featuring midgets Little Louie and King Sleazy (and who’d disagree?). Nor could she deny that ‘Prime Time’ Amy Lee vs. Riptide, who cuts a great promo, was also a damn fine brawl. Though you couldn’t tell by moronic commentators Jeffrey J. James and Eric Garguilo, who give teenage humour a bad name, but at least the sound quality on the DVD was mercifully poor and their drooling frequently inaudible. Oddly, for a women’s fed, they had a man (Greg Matthews, from Tough Enough) wrestle champion G.I. Ho for the title. This was okay too, despite a cop-out ending that demonstrated another problem – watching this in isolation, you had no idea of the storylines leading up to it, or who half the characters were.

While GLOOW seems to have died, many of them are now part of Women’s Extreme Wrestling. It was from their Ebay seller, soprovideo, that I got this double DVD set, though buyers should beware: the discs took six weeks to arrive, were DVD-R (with the title written in Sharpie), and the second one refused to work in the player, and had to be nursed on the PC. Still, I only paid $6, not the $29.95 price on the site. Needless to say, that’d be far too much to pay for one memorable bout and a lot of juvenilia.

Golden Queens Commando

  By

★★★
“One title for each heroine. And each plot element too, probably.”

I’m going with the title on the print – your opinion may differ. As it likely will for this insane distillation of The Magnificent Seven and The Dirty Dozen, complete with music lifted from both Western and War genres. It certainly isn’t dull: incoherent and dumb, maybe, but you expect that in an early work from the director of Flying Dagger, one of the maddest Asian movies ever. Lin, credited as “Venus”, plays the fetchingly eyepatched Black Fox, who breaks out of jail with six associates, and convinces them to help destroy a chemical weapons plant in occupied Manchuria.

This task occupies only the last ten minutes of the film: the rest covers life in prison, how the women got there, a dumb subplot where the ladies get captured and take part in goofy contests (such as spaghetti-eating) to win their freedom, etc. Calling these “of variable interest” is being very kind, yet when not diverted, the film works well; the heroines, each with different skills, are strong and well-defined. I was able to recount their individual fates the next day to Chris, who’d fallen asleep – in defense, she’d been sinusy and on the Robitussin. But without saying too much, the heroic mortality rate here is higher than in either Magnificent or Dirty…

Shame the print is badly cropped: a caption reading “tan Plate” is presumably “Tibetan Plateau”. While the production is often as clumsy as the presentation, it’s one of the first girls-with-guns films to come from Hong Kong, so respect is due. And given sufficient leeway and appropriate expectations, this is stupid fun on its own terms.

Dir: Chu Yin-Ping
Star: Brigitte Lin, Elsa Yeung, Sally Yeh, Sylvia Pang
a.k.a. Amazon Commandos [BRNS.com]
a.k.a. Golden Queen Commando [Alex-in-Wonderland.com]
a.k.a. Golden Queen’s Commando [IMDB.com]
a.k.a. Golden Queen’s Commandos [HKMDB.com]
a.k.a. Jackie Chan’s Crime Force [Arena Video title]
a.k.a. Seven Black Heroines [BrigitteLin.com]