Tag: g

Grisaia Phantom Trigger – The Animation

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★★★
“Time changes everything… or does it?”

DISCLAIMER: I have no knowledge on the backstory of this series. Grisaia Phantom Trigger – The Animation is the latest story in the Grisaia universe, that originally began as a series of “visual novels” (which as I understand, have more in common with a computer game), was then turned into a manga and the 13-episode anime series The Fruits of Grisaia which got two sequels, The Labyrinth of Grisaia (a TV movie) and The Eden of Grisaia (10 episodes), before we reached where we are here. GPT-TA is the new stand-alone film of that series, which came out last year and was also shown in cinemas. As none of the above mentioned series or films have been dubbed and released in Germany, my home country, I never saw anything before this movie. I belong to those anime fans who prefer to see their stuff in a language they can understand.

But that actually doesn’t matter at all, for this film serves as a very good introduction to the uninformed like myself. It therefore can be watched by those who have never seen an episode of this series before. As a matter of fact, the film consists of two longer episodes, combined into a movie, that thus tells us two separate stories. The first part serves as an introduction, which I felt was a bit dialogue-heavy. The second half was around 15 minutes longer than the first and provided more of the action stuff that fans love. But the way it was done was very nice.

So, what’s it all about? There was a US-Japanese anti-terrorism organisation called CIRS: after having become public knowledge, a new agency for covert operations was created, called SORD (Social Ops, Research and Development). This organisation has established many schools within the country, where homeless poor orphans from unfortunate backgrounds are being trained and schooled to protect the country (meaning: to kill people).

In this particular school, where the orphans consist solely of young girls, the teenagers are taken care of by a young man Haruto, who with his long hair almost looks like a woman himself. He could have his own interesting backstory – he doesn’t shoot, but has others do it for him – something I suspect happened in one of the prequel shows. Than there’s sharp-shooter Touka; the Russian Ninja Murasaki; hot-shot action-girl Rena, who’s totally devoted to her ‘Master’ Haruto; Chris, the “mother” of the team, a handsome woman; and the female (and underdressed!) director. There are a couple more characters, but they hardly have much more than a cameo.

The teen girls are nice, and love to banter and bicker with each other in the way normal pupils would in school. But when they are on a mission they make, as we say in Germany, “nails with heads” – meaning they definitely don’t take prisoners. Seeing these otherwise lovely girls, delivering head-shots here and there quite bewildering to me, It was also a bit much for the new teacher, Miss Arisaka, who is kidnapped in the first episode, though still decided she would continue her new job at this unusual school.

The second part then gets into the real action. It’s a more complex story about a comatose former agent who gets kidnapped from a ship. When the girls find him, he’s dead, his heart having been ripped out. The team finds out that the heart, that was originally supposed to go to a leader of the secret service, has been stolen by Russians who have been duped by the seller, who sold the same heart twice. After they recover the heart, they get tricked immediately again by a false courier. As young hot-shot Rena pursues the courier, and then the woman the heart has been given to, she finds out much to her surprise that the woman is her childhood friend Maki, with whom she spent time on the streets, trying to survive.

It’s that second act that makes me like this movie especially. Sure, the idea of hero and villain having a history together, is nowadays an old, almost beaten-to-death cliche. But unlike a recent Bond movie, where the connection is only unimaginatively drawn, and never given any emotional meaning, this small anime film does so much more (and better) with the idea. In that childhood, they called themselves “Sics” and “Bucks” – Rena found Maki behind a coffee shop – and lived on the streets, fighting for food, which they shared. A gangster decided that Rena should become a killer and Maki a prostitute, but as things went on also Maki became a killer, the right-hand woman for  heartsick Russian mob boss, Alexej Nicolaijewich. She is as devoted to her master as Rena is to hers, leading to a very intense fight, first with guns then with bare hands.

Though just 88 minutes long, this is very well done. The few short scenes of the childrens’ childhood give their fight more meaning then the talked about (but never really felt) conflict between for example 007 and 006 in GoldenEye. The fight itself is well-choreographed, looks believable (I’m very well aware I’m talking about an anime!), has exactly the right length and comes across as deliciously hard. And while the whole story about the stolen heart is solved in the end, I liked that this movie doesn’t end the way one would expect. The otherwise trigger-happy Rena doesn’t kill Maki, and also learns about her responsibility to follow orders from Haruto. So there’s a learning curve here.

As Nicolaiewich has died peacefully, Maki has no interest in following the Russian gangsters: her obligation was to Nicolaiewich not the organisation. Following Rena’s request, Haruto is taking her under his wing to become a new member of the team. I liked this ending as something different to what a Hollywood actioner would typically serve us. Also, twisting cliches is something I find very rewarding storywise. It’s quite astonishing that big blockbusters in Hollywood can’t be written and directed with the same care as much smaller budgeted Japanese anime. The storytelling in Hollywood’s entertainment industry has really declined sharply, in my opinion. This movie shows you don’t need a big budget to add some more personal touches to your main characters.

The animation itself is well done – good but probably not great, as there are a couple of static images, probably to save money. Also remarkable: this anime was able to tell its story without the typical ecchi or anime humour, so no panty- or booby-shots. The main focus is on the drama and interaction of the different characters, though I couldn’t complain about the action. It was a good mix of both elements. Also, I can say the German dubbing was very well-done. The German voice actresses sound much more grown-up than those in the Japanese dub (I listened for a minute into it) where the girls sounded all very kawai, very cute… The dialogue itself sounded very believable in the German version, especially the bantering and the saucy/funny comments of the girls.

The only minor complaint in my book is that I felt this is a great beginning for a series I would like to continue. Unfortunately, it is (at least for the time being) the end point of the story as far as any German releases are concerned. Well, who knows… maybe the DVD label will now also release the sequel Grisaia Phantom Trigger – The Animation: Stargazer and the sequel series Grisaia: Phantom Trigger that was announced recently?

Dir: Motoki Tanaka

Girl Vs. by Xela Culletto

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

While a quick read, at 205 pages, after slogging through a couple of what can only be described as “chonkers”, I really didn’t mind. It’s briskly-paced, hits the ground running and largely doesn’t stop thereafter. I have some concerns about where things might go in subsequent volumes, so will probably stop here, just to be safe. However, I enjoyed what I read well enough.

It opens with an alien invasion having taken place, and humanity not getting the best of the subsequent war. The Vela, as the creatures are called, have taken over most cities with brutal force, scattering the surviving population to remote areas. One of these is Rhyan, whom we first meet living in a cave, as part of a small group. She lost the rest of her family to the Vela, and hates them with a passion. Rhyan puts that into effect with her blades, getting rid of any aliens that stray too close to her hide-out. However, circumstance forces her on the road, and she ends up at Springfield, a human stronghold with plans to take the fight to the Vela.

It was only while writing this, that I realized I didn’t actually know much about what the aliens looked like. I know they have claws. But beyond that? Here’s about the only meaningful descriptive passage: “It looked the same as them all—four long legs, bent into a ‘z’, supported the plump abdomen. Rising above that was a middle section from which taut appendages shot forth long serrated claws. The swiveling head, with its unblinking black eyes, was perched on top.” It has to be said, they also die very easily – I lost count of how many a teenage girl took out of the course of the book, with even a dozen being dispatched in one fight – to the point you wonder how they managed to defeat Earth’s armies.

Despite the heroine’s single-minded devotion to the cause, there are suggestions the aliens’ motives may be not as genocidal as they seem, with a theory they were looking to save the Earth from humanity by “thinning the herd.” I did notice the author’s page on Amazon says, “Aliens have always held her fascination, and she hopes to meet one someday,” which makes me wonder if these ones could indeed turn out to be benevolent-ish. To be honest, that’d kinda suck. I much prefer my alien invasions without moral ambiguity.

This is better when it’s not hinting at such things, with a laudable body count on the human side too, and a heroine who is easy to root for, even when some of her acts are morally dubious. There’s hardly a dull moment to be found, as we head to a climax where Rhyan and her colleagues are the only thing stopping a call for alien reinforcements going out. Bit of a helicopter ex machina there, yet I can’t complain about the heroine finally catching a break, after all she has been through to that point.

Author: Xela Culletto
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 2 in the Sinister Skies series.

The Girl and the Gun

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★★★
“The equalizer”

The protagonist is a young woman (Gutierrez), who works in a department store in Quezon City, the largest city in the Philippines. Her life is one of constant drudgery, with what income not spent on her tiny, shared apartment, being sent home to her mother in the countryside. She can’t afford to buy new stockings to replace her torn ones – a fact which brings her into conflict with her manager – or even go out with colleagues for drinks after work. She has a lecherous landlord, and is treated by everyone as the perpetual doormat she is.

Then she finds a gun.

She initially does nothing with the weapon, discarded in the alley by her apartment building. But after being sexually assaulted, she picks it up, and everything changes – it gives her a voice, both literally and psychologically. The key trigger (pun intentionally) is using it to rescue her flat-mate from being assaulted by her boyfriend. She then suddenly realizes she doesn’t need to take it anymore: whether “it” is her boss harassing her about the stockings, or simply a shop worker being rude to her. Having the weapon gives her the confidence to stand up for herself, a surprisingly radical concept. Perhaps a variant of “An armed society is a polite society,” as Robert A. Heinlein once said.

Then she offers to help her flat-mate handle the abusive boyfriend permanently… But will she take the final step and go through with it? Hold that thought though, because the film then takes a left turn, diverting to tell the story of the weapon, and how it ended up in the alley. This is, unfortunately, a misstep in cinematic terms, with a segment which does not travel anywhere nearly as well as the first half. It’s a rather impenetrable story of death squads, corrupt cops, drug dealers and familes, which I can only presume, reflects life in the underbelly of urban life in the Philippines. It seemed, to me, like a pointless diversion that didn’t say much of interest about anything, and when the film eventually returns to the “girl” part of the equation, any forward momentum had been lost.

That’s a pity, as there were points when it seemed like an Asian take on Ms. 45, with its heroine almost mute until the point at which she powers up with a fire-arm. This heroine is considerably more sympathetic, in part because she shows considerably more restraint. While she fantasizes about killing her rapist, for example. she doesn’t actually pull the trigger on him. However, as well as the unwanted diversion into the history of her weapon, the ending is less polished. It’s one of those open ones, where the audience has to decide what happens. These tend to feel like a cop-out, as if the writer couldn’t come up with a proper way to finish the film. Still, the first fifty minutes do enough, to make this worth a watch.

Dir: Rae Red
Star: Janine Gutierrez, Felix Roco, JC Santos, Elijah Canlas
a.k.a. Babae at baril

Goodbye Honey

  By

★½
“Trucking terribly written.”

There is a good concept here. Unfortunately, rarely have I seen an idea so conspicuously derailed by dreadful execution. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves though, and begin by focusing on the positives here. Dawn (Morgan) is a truck driver who is on a cross-country route, and pulls off the road into a remote, wooded location for an obligatory rest stop. Barely has she come to a halt, when a terrified young woman, Phoebe (Gobin), shows up outside her cab, demanding help. She claims to have been abducted, and been held nearby. But she managed to escape from her kidnapper, who is now hot on her heels, with evil intentions. However, is the new arrival speaking the truth or is she dangerously deranged?

It’s safe to say, you have my attention with this set-up, and Morgan is nicely unarchetypal as an action heroine, both in her middle-age, and a world-worn appearance which is about as unglamourous as you could imagine. She’s likely the best thing about this, and her performance was good enough to stop the whole thing from imploding entirely. This matters, because the script appears almost intentionally crafted to wreck any suspense or interest, resulting from both the premise or the lead performance. Within a few minutes of Phoebe’s arrival, Dawn has lost the keys to the truck and had her phone broken. Given the character is intended to be a highly competent, no-nonsense sort, this just doesn’t work. 

There are then two major mis-steps in terms of story-telling. A pair of stoner dudes show up, and the film grinds to a halt as Dawn has to deal with them. It’s painfully obvious they have nothing at all to do with Phoebe’s situation, and it’s embarrassing how shallow the writing for them is. Then, after they have mercifully departed the film, we get a lengthy, entirely superfluous flashback, telling us in detail how Phoebe was abducted, and what life was like in the cellar where she was kept for months. Guess what? We don’t care. It doesn’t matter, and adds nothing at all to the situation at hand. The final straw is the revelation of a connection between Dawn and the kidnapper, Cass (Kelly), which completely defies belief. I may have snorted derisively.

Inevitably it leads to him showing up and a confrontation between him and Dawn, where we learn the truth about Phoebe’s claims. Guess what v2.0? By this point, I didn’t care about then either. The film was on the screen, and I was looking in its general direction. But it would be a stretch to say I was paying any kind of attention, There is something to be said for a low-budget film cautiously writing its story within the limitation of what can be afforded: here, that’s a truck and a forest. However, the failure to convert that into anything meaningful or interesting thereafter, must also be laid at the door of the writers. 

Dir: Max Strand
Star: Pamela Jayne Morgan, Juliette Alice Gobin, Paul C. Kelly, Peyton Michelle Edwards

Girl Force, by Jonathan J. West

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

On the one hand, this is a book in desperate, desperate need of a copy-editor. Seriously: this is littered with more typos, grammatical gaffes and clunky phrasing than any other book I’ve ever read. I don’t know what the process was, which brought this to market, but it clearly fell dramatically short of adequate. Even as a first draft, this is something of which I would be flat-out ashamed. At times, I had to read a sentence three times, just to try and figure out what was meant. I have DNF’d books for far, far less. 

And, yet… Not only did I finish this, I genuinely enjoyed the whole, lunatic experience. I don’t know if the editing got slightly better as the book went on. Maybe I just became used to the style, which flies defiantly in the face of, not just all literary convention, but the basic rules of English. Bizarrely, by the end, I found myself almost appreciative of the stream of consciousness, neo-Joycean approach. It’s better demonstrated by example, than description, so here’s a sample paragraph – neither particularly good nor bad by the book’s standards:

Terrorist fighters were all except the junior member the fifteen-year-old boy, all dead, all taken out with kill shot perception of naturality of the cold kill of special forces combat. As feeling neither angry or regret did the unit, the squad of Girl Force have. It was a job that needed to be done and done with maximum efficiency it was.

Imagine 176 pages, just like that. But for all the shortcomings in grammar. spelling, and frequently,  coherence, it doesn’t lack for sheer energy. The five women of the title are a super-secret black ops group, who carry out impossible missions on behalf of the US government, while bickering amiably about what tunes should be played [There’s a blackly funny moment involving suicide bombers and the song It’s Raining Men…] GIRL Force – it stands for Ground Infantry Reconnaissance Logistics – are a vastly disparate quintet, in terms of background and culture. They run the gamut from “hee haw rootin’ tootin’ dixie chick farm girl” Annabelle Huston, to Hannukah Jones, “at the top of the top from Persian and African royalty.” But they are all amazingly talented, in everything from dance to martial arts, loving their country (and puppies), while hating injustice with an equal and admirable passion.

The first mission is an extraction out of China, which escalates into an extended chase sequence, worthy of a Michael Bay movie, before they are swept up to safety. After a brief pause to meet their boss, General Sofia-Jones Washington in their state-of-the-art headquarters, and her nemesis, Senator Karen Mann, it’s back out into the field. For a terrorist  attack has led to the brink of World War III, and GIRL Force represents the only chance of stopping it. But can these five brave women really defeat the five hundred terrorists of ISIL splinter group Crimson Jihad? Oh, who am I kidding. It’s a light challenge. For they are so good at everything, this reads partly like a sly parody of the dreaded Mary Sue trope (which was, itself, originally created as a parody of Star Trek fan-fiction).

Indeed, I’m not sure how much of this is to be taken seriously. If forced into judgment, I’d say rather little: I’d line it up alongside the original Charlie’s Angels movie.  Taken in that light, it’s a fast, frothy read which, against all odds, did have me interested in finding out what happens next. But you definitely need a huge tolerance for what My Fair Lady’s Professor Henry Higgins called the “cold-blooded murder of the English tongue.” Never mind homicide, this may be guilty of war crimes against the language. 

Author: Jonathan J. West
Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book

Girl of Nightmares, by Kendare Blake

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

Warning: while this review contains no spoilers for the book I’m reviewing, it inevitably involves some spoilers for the book to which it’s a sequel, Anna Dressed in Blood. (I didn’t review that one here; see below). The situation in this book directly grows out of the events of the first one; and though the author provides some brief references to those in the opening chapters here, if you have not read the series opener, you would get only the very bare basics of what happened there. IMO, she expected that her readers will read the books in order, and I would strongly recommend doing so. Your whole understanding of the premise here, your engagement with the story, and your understanding of who most of the major characters are as people and your emotional connection to them will be seriously impaired if you don’t!

With this novel, Blake concludes the Anna duology. The two books are quite similar in terms of style and literary vision. As in the first book, our protagonist and present-tense narrator is high school junior Cas Lowood, the latest member of his family line to wield a magically-powered athame capable of sending those ghosts which are homicidal (not all ghosts are) out of this world into the afterlife. And again, our title character is Finnish-descended Anna Korlov (ca. 1942-1958), brutally murdered by her own mother, a black-magic witch, who cursed the girl with a spell that forced her to haunt the house in which she died and to savagely slaughter anyone hapless enough to subsequently enter it. Near the end of the first book, Anna deliberately cast herself through a portal into Hell (conceived in terms more owing to North American European-derived folk religion than to anything biblical), dragging along with her an utterly malevolent and murderous spirit of enormous power and menace, the “Obeahman,”and thereby saved the lives of Cas and others –but not before she and Cas had forged a genuine emotional connection.

The previous novel took place in the fall of Cas’ junior year in high school. When the second one opens, we’re now in the late spring of the next year, when the school year is rapidly winding down to its close. All during the interval, a grieving Cas has been searching for some way to communicate with Anna and at least obtain some sort of closure. He’s been aided in this quest by his mom, a white witch; by his London-based British mentor (and the mentor of his late father before him) Gideon Palmer; and by his high-school classmate, psychically-gifted Thomas Sabin and Thomas’ grandfather Morfran, a pair who are endowed with pretty formidable magic talents of their own. So far, they’ve drawn a blank. But now, Cas is beginning to find his dreams turned nightmarish with visions of Anna and, increasingly, experiencing very vivid waking visions of her as well. Are these genuine communications from Beyond, or is he simply beginning to lose his mind and hallucinate? (Well, for an answer, you’ll just have to read the book! :-) )

The first novel in the series isn’t an action heroine read. There, although Anna, as a cursed ghost, is formidably deadly (she can, and does, kill people by literally ripping them to pieces), she’s not inflicting her mayhem in a heroic mode; and where physical combat with dark forces is called for, it falls strictly on Cas. This time, though, he’s going to need help in that department; and Carmel Jones, queen bee of the high school’s “in” crowd (and Thomas’ girlfriend; Blake lets her transcend stereotype, which I appreciated) will find herself “getting in touch with her inner warrior princess.” Then there’s magically-gifted teen Jestine “Jess” Reardon, groomed to be Cas’ replacement (long story!) by the ancient Druidic order whose ancestors created the athame, who’s combat-capable as well as smart. And just because Anna’s no longer cursed doesn’t mean that she’s not still one tough ghost…. Action scenes that involve these young ladies aren’t numerous –but they are pretty intense, and potentially lethal (or worse).

Our initial setting is the main setting of most of the first book, the real-life rather large Canadian city of Thunder Bay, Ontario. We also have a couple of ghost-hunting side trips to Minnesota, and then shift to the British Isles for roughly the last half of the book. Again, Blake gives us three-dimensional people in her important characters (both the returning ones and one newly introduced here), who have realistically complex feelings and motivations and nuanced attitudes and interactions, but whom at the same time we can understand and like. Folklore from the Vodoun tradition isn’t as prominent in this book, but the author continues to make good use of Finnish lore, particularly the role of Sami drums in shamanism. Again, this is a very gripping read, with a high suspense factor, several surprise developments (which never violate the logic of the plot, unlike the “surprises”thrown in by some genre writers!), often a real sense of life-and-death danger in places, a high-stakes central conflict, and scenes of ghostly menace which conjure a genuine, powerful sense of creepiness. The emotional intensity of the story, for me, was quite high.

As with the first book, I’d call this an adult novel which happens to have mostly teen characters. I don’t unreservedly recommend it for teen readers because, like the first book, it has a lot of bad language, including profanity and obscenity, the great majority of it gratuitous. (That cost it a star.) But, also like the first book, it has no sexual content, and the violence, though it’s there, isn’t more graphic than necessary. If you’ve read the first book, I’d characterize this sequel as a must-read.

Author: Kendare Blake
Publisher: Tor Teen; available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl

  By

★★½
“In plane sight.”

This is the story of Gunjan Saxena (Kapoor), one of the first women to be admitted into the Indian Air Force as a pilot. Near the beginning is a rather effective scene in which she’s taken up to the cockpit of the jet on which she is flying with her father (Tripathi). The look of wonder on the young girl’s face as she sees the flight deck does a better job of putting over the sheer joy of flying than all the many montages that will be crammed in over the next 110 minutes. It’s a “Miyazaki moment”, if you are familiar with the work of Hayao Miyazaki, which often features sequences that capture the same joy.

She wants initially to be a commercial pilot, against the wishes in particular of her older brother Anshuman  (Bedi) and her mother. But her father is encouraging and sympathetic, even when her career diverts Gunjan into the Air Force, part of the first batch of female recruits. The rest of the film is notable most for its well-crafted and polished predictability. She has to overcome barriers, both physical (she’s too short to become a helicopter pilot – fortunately, she has long arms. No, really: that’s literally the get out) and those of a military culture which is not yet prepared to treat women as equals. Inevitably, there’s a commanding officer who takes the recruit under his wing, and Gunjan overcomes her own self-doubt, with the help of her father’s encouragement.

She is sent into battle as part of the Kargil war in 1999 (more of a spat, really, lasting a couple of months on the border between India and Pakistan), but public concern over her possible fate as a POW forces her removal from the front lines. It all ends up looping back to the scene at the beginning where, equally inevitably, an emergency gives her the chance to redeem herself, on a mercy mission to rescue injured colleagues who are under enemy fire. Apparently, disobeying orders in the Indian military gets you feted for your initiative, which would seem to be something more likely to happen in movies about the military, than the actual armed forces. 

There have been significant complaints about this being an unfair depiction, with the Air Force writing to the Indian censors objecting to the way it was portrayed. That may explain the lengthy pre-film disclaimer, including this odd paragraph:

The producers, directors, artists or others associated with this film are all law-abiding citizens and have not created this film to incite any disorder or lawlessness.

Saxena herself said she never experienced discrimination at the organization level, only from individuals. Obviously, I can’t speak to that, and my concerns are more about the very obvious and cliched nature of the script. There is a good point to be made, about the importance of chasing your dreams, in the face of adversity, and Kapoor’s depiction is winning and likable enough. I certainly can’t complain about the technical aspects, especially in the flying sequences, which are also well constructed. It’s just that the “woman overcomes the adversity of being a woman” story is a cinematic dead horse, and this has little or nothing new to add to it.

Dir: Sharan Sharma
Star: Janhvi Kapoor, Pankaj Tripathi, Manav Vij, Angad Bedi

Golden Arm

  By

★★★½
“Arms and the (wo)man.”

The sport of arm-wrestling has been featured in the movies before, most notably the Sylvester Stallone vehicle, Over the Top. But that wasn’t a comedy – at least, not intentionally. This entry, as well as switching to the distaff side, also has its tongue in cheek, while still sporting a strong message about female empowerment, that never becomes a lecture. If you’re looking for an inspiration I’d saw the first season of TV series GLOW is very much a touchstone. As there, we have a woman who becomes involved in a sport at a difficult time in her life, only to find herself… well, finding herself as a result of her new endeavour.

The heroine is Melanie (Holland), a mild-mannered cafe-owner whose enterprise is almost out of business. Her pal, truck driver Danny (Sodaro, sporting one of the worst haircuts in cinema history), takes part in women’s arm-wrestling, but just had her wrist broken by the infamous Brenda the Bone Crusher (Stambouliah).  Seeking revenge, she eventually convinces Melanie, who has a natural talent – the “golden arm” – to enter the national championships in Oklahoma City. The goal is to win the crown, and fifteen thousand dollars that go with it, to save Melanie’s business and take down Danny’s nemesis. But the path towards that title will go through not only Brenda, but over a number of other hurdles for the rookie athlete, both physical and mental.

There’s very little new here in terms of plotting. Everything unfolds exactly as you’d expect, right down to the final which pits – surprise, surprise! – Melanie against Brenda in a best-of-three battle. Still, the joy here is in the characters and performances. There appears to be, if this film is to be believed, a significant overlap between arm-wrestling and pro wrestling, with the participants here adopting personas and cutting promos to intimidate their opponent. Melanie, for example, begins as a masked wrestler called “Freaked Out”, after the ring announcer mistakes a comment as her name. But she eventually becomes The Breadwinner, complete with a dusting of flour on her cheek.

However, the greatest pleasure is the Melanie-Danny relationship, which builds over the course of the film. They’re total opposites – “Please don’t say ‘twat'”, begs Melanie repeatedly – but there’s still such chemistry, you can see how they’d be fast friends. It’s so good, in fact, that the romantic angle between Melanie and referee Greg (Cordero) seems entirely superfluous. It actually drags down the rest of the movie, and provides nothing of substance except for an explicit reference to The Natural. That’s another apparent inspiration, in its story of a sports star rising above injury at the moment they need to most.

This is thoroughly foul-mouthed, albeit for comic purposes, and I will say, it doesn’t all quite work. For example, there’s an extended discussion over the female equivalent of “going balls out,” that’s frankly a bit cringe. However, the sheer heart on view throughout is undeniable: that powers this through the flaws, and will likely leave you with a big, goofy grin on your face.

Dir: Maureen Bharooch
Star: Mary Holland, Betsy Sodaro, Olivia Stambouliah, Eugene Cordero

Girl

  By

★★½
“Axe me another question.”

Thorne appears dedicated to destroying the wimpy image created by her role as a Disney channel heroine. A little while ago, we reviewed Chick Fight, in which she played the bad-ass nemesis at a female fight club. Now, she’s the unnamed heroine (whom I’m going to call Girl, as the credits do), who shows up back in her home-town of Golden after a prolonged absence. She has returned to protect her mother (Lavallee) from her estranged father, only to find someone beat her to the punch. Dad is dangling, lifeless, in the shed, and those responsible are after a stash of cash which he supposedly squirreled away. Not helping matters, those responsible are led by the local sheriff (Rourke), and they are convinced Girl knows where the money is. Fortunately, Girl has acquired some unusual survival skills of her own, in particular, throwing a mean axe, as suggested by the poster.

I would say though, the film would have benefited from more axe-tion, as it were. While it’s established early on that’s she’s packing in this department, you have to wait a good while before the payoff comes, and it’s merely adequate. Until then, there’s the feel of a modern Western, not least in the lack of people – if the streets here don’t quite have tumbleweeds rolling across them, they might as well have. Into this, moseys the lone gun-slinger (or axe-slinger) into a town both controlled and terrorized by corrupt leaders, seeking to right a personal wrong, with the side benefit of cleaning up this here territory. The locals give what support they can, yet are too scared to actively fight back, leaving the heavy lifting to Girl.

While a convincing depiction of small-town America as hell, there’s also a curious lack of tension here. Golden is the kind of place which feels like it would be ground zero for the opioid crisis, yet that seems to have infected the film, with most scenes feeling like they have taken Oxycontin. There’s just such a lack of energy in all the performances. Even Rourke, whom you would expect to bring a certain swagger to the role, as lord of his domain, opts for largely understated, to the point of gently soporific. Of course, as expected, deep-buried family secrets end up getting revealed, not least concerning the relationship between the sheriff and  Girl’s mother.

Thorne gives a decent performance, as someone who has clearly been through a lot, and come out the other side embodying the phrase, “That which does not kill you, makes you stronger.” It feels as if director/supporting actor Faust is aiming for Winter’s Bone, and probably comes up short, perhaps because Girl is too abrasive to be sympathetic. She’s the kind of girl whose sports the chip on her shoulder as ostentatiously as the piercing through her nose, and that’s probably not the kind of character with which I want to spend time. And similarly, if I never go back to Golden again, I’m probably fine with that.

Dir: Chad Faust
Star:Bella Thorne, Mickey Rourke, Chad Faust, Tia Lavallee

Gunpowder Milkshake

  By

★★★★
“Jane Wick.”

Yeah, it’s kinda like that. As in John Wick, the hero(ine) is an assassin for hire, in a world where there exists a significant infrastructure of support for hitmen and hitwomen. After they fall foul of the wrong people, our hero(ine) becomes the target, but has more than enough skills to be able to fend for themselves, and takes the fight to their aggressors. Oh, yeah, and it also borrows significantly from Leon: The Professional, in that the assassin becomes the protector of a young girl. Hmm. But this leverages those two with very large injections of style. Not quite to the level of Sucker Punch, but heading that way. Thiscand enough original ideas, made it work for me, despite the familiar elements. 

It has been interesting to read the reviews, which seem sharply divisive. Critics appear either to like it or hate it, with not much “It was alright.” I think this is one of those films where you need to buy into the approach as much as the concept. For example, it seems to take place in a world inhabited solely by people in the film. There are few if any bystanders. The location is deliberately vague (it was filmed in Berlin), with a deliberate attention paid to the colour palette used. According to the director, for example, yellow represents death – such as the large, yellow duffel-bag with “I ♥ Kittens” on the side, in which the protagonist totes her weapons. If you’re not down with this approach, I can see how this could annoy rather than amuse.

Said protagonist is Sam (Gillan), a killer with abandonment issues ever since her mom (Lena Headey) walked out on her, fifteen years earlier. Sam is tasked by her employer, Nathan (Giamatti), with recovering a haul of stolen cash. But she finds the thief was coerced into action, after his eight-year-old daughter (“8¾!”, as we are reminded on several occasions), Emily, was kidnapped. Likely reminded of her younger self, Sam takes custody of Emily, though the cash is destroyed in the process. This, and a previous job where she killed the son of a very important person, makes her persona non grata, and the hunter becomes the hunted.

Fortunately, she’s not without allies. In particular, there are the Librarians, three women who run the armoury available to all assassins [like the Sommelier in John Wick]. This trio, played by Yeoh, Angela Bassett and Carla Gugino, have a lot of previous history with Sam and her mother, and opt to take her side in the impendng war. Of course – and the development is so obvious, it doesn’t count as a spoiler – Mum also returns. The 5½ women (counting Emily as the fraction), have to stand their ground, first at the library, then in a final battle at the diner, the neutral ground (coughContinentalcough) where Sam’s mother left her, all those years ago. 

The action is good, rather than great. It is, at least, not over-edited and is definitely helped by Papushado’s dedication to style – it all looks striking, which makes it (literally) punch above its weight. Nowhere is this clearer than an amazing slow-motion pan down the length of the diner towards the end, which is the kind of shot you’ll want to rewatch several times, in order to see everything that’s going on. It does feel as if Yeoh was somewhat underused, though I should probably give up expecting anything Crouching Tiger-like these days. That was over twenty years ago, and Yeoh turns 59 in less than a week. That said, she still holds her own with the less mature actresses admirably – says the man, younger than her, who needs a stunt double to change the batteries in the ceiling smoke detector.

Despite the shot mentioned above, the fight in the library is definitely the film’s highlight and in terms of pacing feels like it should have been the climax. With the women defending their turf, it has the feel of an Alamo-like final stand. Instead, things potter on for a further 20 minutes thereafter, with the makers feeling like they have chosen to coast over the finish line, rather than engaging in a final sprint. I felt another area of criticism was the use of music, which often seemed to reach Baby Driver levels of over-emphasis. I once described that film as “like I was trapped inside Edgar Wright’s iPod, while he hummed along to his own mix-tape,” and if this isn’t quite as bad, there’s even less reason for the songs here. They’re a grab-bag that don’t offer a sense of time or place. I blame Quentin Tarantino.

It is notable that the film is split firmly along gender lines. with every one of the protagonists being women, and every one of the antagonists being men. However, it’s fortunate that seem largely to be about the extent of the messaging, and nobody particularly pays attention to this. Everyone is kept quite busy trying to kill each other. It’s also a bit less of an ensemble piece than I expected from the trailer. Especially in the first half, it’s Sam vs. the World, with the Librarians introduced, and then shuffled off to one side until Sam is ultimately forced to turn to them for help. That’s not particularly a criticism. I like Gillan, who was born about 25 miles from where I was, so is likely the nearest I have to a local action heroine. She can carry a film perfectly well, even if I’d rather have heard her natural Scots accent.

Comparing this to Black Widow from a few weeks ago, both films got four stars, but only Milkshake merited our seal of approval. I think it’s because the latter’s strong sense of visual style does give a rewatchability that the relative pedestrian approach of Widow didn’t achieve. You’ll see things here which you have likely never seen before, and while that originality definitely does not apply to all the plot elements, it does at least have the grace to take those things from some very, very good movies.

Dir: Navot Papushado
Star: Karen Gillian, Chloe Coleman, Paul Giamatti, Michelle Yeoh

Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)