Tag: m

Matching Escort

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★★
“No sense nonsense.”

I was pleasantly surprised when this random kung-fu film found Tubi (under the Silver Fox title) turned out to be by the creator of Wolf Devil Woman. which was batshit crazy, but at least quite entertaining. This is, unfortunately, only half of that – and worse, it’s the insanity which is delivered, with the entertainment being only sporadic in nature. I will say, in the film’s defense, the presentation is likely not helping. There’s no subbed version I’ve been able to find, and the English language one is badly dubbed, cropped visually and is likely also cut (either that, or the editing is worse than terrible).

All that said, I didn’t feel this was up to the same level of quality as WDW, which at least had a novel story. This, is just your basis revenge item, no matter how much the trappings insist otherwise. Pearl – I’ve no clue about her character’s name, I’m not sure it’s ever used in the entire film – is brought up as part of a martial arts family, whose training methods consist of strapping heavy shoes to her feet. Just as she reaches adulthood, the other 73 (!) members of her clan are killed by a rival, in search of a jade amulet that’s the source of their power. But, naturally, Pearl escapes with the amulet, and goes into hiding.

She’s taken under the wing of the rather weird Silver Fox (Ying), who teaches her his advanced kung-fu techniques, up until he is also brutally killed. This triggers Pearl, who goes after both his killers, and those responsible for slaughtering her family. There may be a connection. There is also a roaming nobleman (Meng) and his comic relief sidekick (Seng), but up until the end, they are largely irrelevant and so can safely be ignored. The main issue is, the film sits around in Silver Fox’s underground lair for far too long: it feels as if the movie spends twice as long on the training for the revenge, as the actual revenge. While it’s a somewhat loopy environment, it gets old quickly and my interest largely died during this middle section.

Things do perk up down the stretch, with some insane battles, not least the bit where Pearl stabs a guy in the top of his head with her sword, and he then turns into a geyser of blood for a bit. This is is the kind of insanity for which I am here. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel there was enough of this, and I found the herky-jerky editing approach close to inducing a migraine: the stabs at comedy have much the same effect. The IMDb says it was written by Godfrey Ho, and I’ve seen enough of his dreck to make it seem plausible he was involved here. It’s an underwhelming kind of revenge for Pearl too, and leaves the ending falling painfully flat. Closure, it would appear, is for other people.

Dir: Sze Ma Peng, Pearl Chang
Star: Pearl Chang, Fei Meng, Shih Ying, Sek Fung
a.k.a. Fury of the Silver Fox or Venus the Cavalier or Wolf Devil Woman 2

Mr. and Mrs. Smith, by Cathy East Dubowski

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

This book is the official novelization of the 2005 movie of the same name, starring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. I don’t share the idea that movie novelizations are by definition trash, devoid of any possible literary quality. Like movies based on books, they take a work in one art form and endeavor to translate it (hopefully faithfully!) into a different one. Whichever direction the translation goes in, it requires genuine artistry to do well; IMO, either way, it has the potential of creating something worth watching or reading, and even something that’s seriously good artistically. Each attempt ought to be judged individually, on its own merits. That said, in this case, neither the original movie nor its novelization are ever likely to be viewed by many people as stellar achievements in either of their respective forms. I thought that the film had significant gaps in logic, which I hoped the novelization might address. In fact, it doesn’t; the plot holes, logical problems and murky areas in the original are as glaring, illogical and murky here. That’s the primary reason that my rating for this book isn’t higher. As most readers will know going in (and the cover copy will tell you that much, if you don’t!), our title characters here are both professional assassins. Neither of them knows that fact about the other. As it happens, they work for unnamed organizations, both seemingly U.S.-based (the main setting appears to be New York City), which are hostile to each other for totally unexplained reasons (did I mention “murky?”). They’ve been married 5-6 years (a running gag is that they can’t agree on which), having met in Bogota, where they’d both been sent to carry out hits on various local malefactors. At the time, they were strongly drawn to each other, quickly forming a deep emotional connection, and married after a whirlwind courtship. Since then, however, their marriage has deteriorated to the point that they’re hardly communicating at all, and are just going through the motions, nursing various unexpressed grudges and frustrations. Not far into the book, they’re both assigned by their respective organizations to dispatch the same mark. The resulting confrontation will set the stage for the ensuing developments. Cathy East Dubowski is a professional writer, who apparently specializes in both YA and grown-up movie novelizations. This is apparently her best-known one (and my only exposure to her work). To her credit, she attempted a fresher approach here than simply re-telling the screenplay in third person. The movie used the frame device of the couple’s visits to a marriage counselor. Here, the author begins the book with the counselor’s notes and transcripts from his initial sessions with the Smiths, both together and separately; the main body of the story is their alternating journal posts which the counselor asked them to write, without necessarily showing the text to anyone else. IMO, this works well; we get inside both their heads, and understand them and their feelings. (One reviewer complained that the technique makes for “repetition,” but I didn’t find this to be a problem. While they’re often describing the same events, their different perceptions of them are very revealing, and as such anything but boring.) Dubowski follows the movie fairly well (I could spot some minor differences, but though my memory of the film isn’t as sharp now as it was right after watching it seven years ago, I could also recall a good many scenes and lines of dialogue). The main difference is that the bad language in the book is much worse than in the original. There, I don’t recall it as very noticeable (and I would have picked up on that sort of thing), though the PG-13 rating is in part for “brief strong language.” Here, it’s not brief, and there’s a lot of it, including the f-word and religious profanity; I found most of this gratuitous. (Otherwise, the content issues aren’t problematical; there’s implied –actually, stated– sex, some of it premarital, but nothing explicit, and while the violence level is through the roof, it’s not really gory and is so over-the-top it’s hard to take seriously. The same could be said for both the movie and the book in general.) A lot of plot points aren’t really credible; it’s difficult to go into detail without spoilers, but I didn’t think any of the decisions by the couple’s superiors were believable, Benjamin Danz’s role didn’t logically make sense, and I couldn’t imagine any real-life assassins reacting to the situation of discovering another hitter targeting the same mark the way this pair did. Also, the carnage in the highway chase scene would have resulted in police attention long before it concluded; and I thought the ending was way too pat. The causes of the couple’s estrangement over the years also aren’t really brought out and explained. Objectively, given all of these shortcomings, in terms of its literary worth the novel doesn’t deserve more than two stars. Three was a gift; but it’s one I’m subjectively willing to give, just because I honestly did like the book, to a degree. The reason I did is for the strength of its depiction of a couple who honestly do love each other, and who are willing to fight both external dangers and their own inner anger and misunderstandings, in order to hang on to and recapture the bond that drew them to each other in the first place. And it’s made clear that a big part of doing that is learning to be honest with each other, to be themselves without playing a role, to communicate and give your entire commitment to the relationship. That aspect of the book, even though the story is told with a significant leaven of humor, is in itself as serious as can be, and applies to all marriages, whether the partners both happen to be contract assassins or not. And despite their faults, I had the sense that both main characters were essentially decent human beings, whom I did care about and want to see succeed in their married life. Author: Cathy East Dubowski Publisher: Harper; available through Amazon, currently only as a printed book. A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Mayday

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★½
“Send help.”

Yes, this is one of those cases where the title is the review, because I suspect many viewers will be signalling enthusiastically for help before reaching the end. I would start off by saying something snarky, like “That’s an hour and a half of my life that I’ll never get back.” But this would imply the film actually held my attention for an hour and a half, which would.. not be entirely correct. I was in the same room where it was playing. My eyes were open. I am not prepared to commit to much more than that. I also note that at the North American box-office, it took a grand total of $4,382, including a whopping $209 over its second week of release. I trust everyone involved in the production learned a valuable lesson from this.

This is a “war of the sexes” picture thinly disguised as fantasy, which throws elements from Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan and Lord of the Flies into a blender, in the belief that doing so makes for some kind of feminist statement. It doesn’t. Not even when you burden the cast with lines like, “You’ve been in a war your whole life, you just didn’t know it,” or “You need to stop hurting yourself and start hurting others.” It begins with downtrodden waitress Ana (Grace Van Patten) crawling through an oven in the hotel where she works, and emerging onto a vaguely WW2-era shoreline. There, she bonds with a group led by Marsha (Goth), who lure male soldiers to the beach using fake Mayday signals, sniping dead any who make it past the turbulent conditions. Because all men are predators who deserve to die, right?

It plays like an “Is caffeine-free Pepsi alright?” version of Sucker Punch, with Ana crawling into her own headspace, trying to escape the traumas of everyday life, in a world with repurposed characters. For example, Marsha is the same, reluctant bride Ana comforted in the bathroom shortly before her break from/with reality. The only element of interest was Ana’s refusal to go down the same murderous path of intent as her colleagues. though this does lead to a feeling the movie doesn’t quite know what message it’s trying to send. At least Paradise Hills, which occupied similar territory, had a gorgeous visual sense to paper over the weaker plot elements. Here, there’s no such distraction.

This is not quite the worst “young women trapped in a surreal landscape” movie I’ve ever seen. That would be the near irredeemable awfulness of non-GWG film, Ladyworld. However, that I found myself consciously comparing this to it, is not a parallel to any movie’s credit. If there’s a lesson to be learned from Ana’s eventual fate, it’s that the cure for what mentally ails you, apparently involves a psychotic break, along with some quality girl time spend living on the beach alongside a crew of Aileen Wuornos wannabes. I guess it probably works out as cheaper than therapy.

Dir: Karen Cinorre 
Star: Grace Van Patten, Mia Goth, Soko, Havana Rose Liu

Mistress Killer

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★★★
“Mistresses cannot be exterminated!”

To my surprise, when I begin researching this film, it appears actually to be based – at least, somewhat – in reality. I give you this story from 2016. “Zhang Yufen, 58, is known in Henan province, as the “Mistress Killer” for her unusual hobby, which involves spying on her clients’ partners before confronting their lovers in public with vicious and humiliating attacks. She set up her agency, the Alliance Against Mistresses, in 2003 after her own husband admitted to having to having an affair in the 90s and left her and her son for his lover, clearing their joint bank account after 16 years of marriage… She receives around 100 calls a week in her mission to “ruthlessly exterminate those men” — and says police turn a blind eye to her assaulting other women in public.”

Unsurprisingly, the local film industry pounded on the idea, quickly popping out the Chinese equivalent of a quota quickie, running a brisk 67 minutes before the credits roll. Naturally, the film version of the vigilante, Lv Xia (Li Mengmeng), is considerably more photogenic, but the concept is the same – she busts in on men having extra-marital affairs and humiliates them and their lovers, for the benefit of their wives. The story here has the “Scandal Chaser” being seen and photographed by journalist Chen Dong (Qi). But after discovering her mission, he agrees to withhold the proof of her identity, and work with her instead. However, Liu, a businessman who had been one of Lv’s targets, doesn’t take kindly to her actions, and sends his assassin (Chen) to put a stop to her brand of justice.

It’s not a bad idea, though the way it’s developed is largely predictable, such as how Lv and Chen fall for each other. The fighting is mid-tier at best – and not often at that – but there are some quirky moments which helped sustain my interest above the Lifetime movie to which this largely aspires. I liked how Lv wears a V for Vendetta mask while in action, and was amused to hear Liu berating his minion, “Do you really think you are Leon in that movie?” The businessman has a point: “Leon” is indeed a bit crap, as company hitmen go, Lv typically disposing of him with ease.

Things did perk up in the final twenty minutes, when someone formulates a plan to capture Lv and take revenge. At first, I thought this was the humiliated mistresses getting together; it turns out to be for rather more prosaic, capitalist reasons, involving the hostile takeover of a corporation by female tycoon, Wu Yan-Mei (Li Man-Yi). She’s good as the evil villainess: she has a great laugh a slew of henchwomen, and some details of her scheme to turn the tables on Lv, are elegantly malicious. If only she’d shown up sooner. The tables end up turning, albeit in a somewhat clunky fashion and a slo-mo mass cat-fight, before one final twist. Still, I’d not be averse to a sequel, or a remake with more punch.

Dir: Geng Lei
Star: Li Mengmeng, Qi Ling, Li Man-Yi, Chen Xing-Yu,

El Monstro del Mar!

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★★★
“Catch of the day.”

I could have sworn I’ve seen this before, but a search of the reviews suggest otherwise! This is an Australian pastiche of a couple of different things. Perhaps the most obvious influence is Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, in that it’s the road misadventures of a trio of delinquent women – two brunettes and a blonde. The leader, Beretta (Scarlet) looks something like a cross between Tura Satana and Bettie Page. We’re less than ten minutes in before their psychopathic nature is revealed, in the brutal killing of two men who stop to offer them roadside assistance – I did like the way the film, shot in black-and-white to that point, explodes into full colour when the violence starts.

They turn out to be hitwomen, hiding out in a beachfront house after completing their latest job, where they cross paths with – further nods to Pussycat – a grumpy old misogynist in a wheelchair, and an innocent young girl, Hannah (Capri). But where it diverges significantly from the Russ Meyer classic is… Well, as you’d expect from the title, the presence of a sea-monster, whose hunger has been impacting the town for decades (including Hannah’s parents).. Yeah, I don’t remember one of them in Pussycat. Then again, that did take place in the desert. It doesn’t actually get any screen time until the half-way point, and the film is quite chat-heavy to that point, save one blood-drenched flashback sequence.

While it’s undeniably a low-budget creature across the board, the atmosphere, assisted by some good use of filters and colour in general, has a Lovecraftian feel to it that was unexpected and well executed. In the second half, there is an increasingly gloomy and oppressive feeling, as the trio stumble across a series of body parts, eventually losing one of their own to the monster, while Hannah rebels against her grandfather. Inevitably, it all ends in the surviving duo taking the fight to the monster and its many tentacles, assisted by Hannah, after they learn the truth about what has been going on. It’s a very moist battle, with body fluids flying on both sides, though I was a bit disappointed we never get to appreciate the full scope of the beast.

It does make for a rather awkward combination, with the two halves of the movie never quite meshing. I kept expecting the fact they were hitwomen would show relevance, but it never amounts to anything: they could simply have been tourists on a seaside vacation. The same goes for the apparent wild swings in era; the cars at the start look sixties vintage, but have very eighties cassette players in them. and any period feel is all but discarded on arrival by the water. However, even if the elements here never go together as you feel they should, they work well enough on their own. If you’re in the mood for a genre fondue, which throws everything into the same pot, you could do worse. Scarlet may not quite be Tura Satana, but then – nobody is.

Dir: Stuart Simpson
Star: Nelli Scarlet, Kyrie Capri, Karli Madden, Kate Watts

Masquerade

  By

★½
“Home confusion.”

It’s never a good sign, when the first thing we do at the end of a movie, is go straight to the Internet and try to find out what happened. That’s what we needd to do here, after a “twist” left us both thoroughly confused as hell about what had happened. After 15-20 minutes of both Chris and I googling, I think we eventually achieved some kind of consensus. But it was far from satisfying, and we are definitely not happy about it. I admire the attempt made to up-end everything the audience has seen over the previous 75 minutes. Unfortunately, when the execution is as wretched as here, I wish writer-director Taylor hadn’t bothered. 

After Girl and Chick Fight, it seems to be part of Bella Thorne’s attempts to re-invent herself as an action heroine, rather than the wussy Disney Channel girl. But this appears to have mutated more into a race to the bottom, between her and Ruby Rose as to who can select the worse projects. While both actresses have potential, neither of them have found material which is decent. This definitely ranks among the crappiest, even before reaching the ending. It’s about the burglary of a mansion belonging to married art brokers, Olivia (Monroe) and Daniel, by a masked man and a woman (Samuels). The couple’s young daughter, Casey (Lind) hides after the babysitter is brutally bludgeoned to death, while waitress Rose (Thorne), who is driving the couple home, appears to be in cahoots with the home invaders. Key word: appears.

The burglars turn the power off, for no particular reason – it’s established they had already disabled the alarm. Which means that the bulk of the movie has everyone involved creeping around the house in near darkness. I don’t know why film-makers persist in doing this. I stopped being scared of the dark when was 11, and now it’s just an irritant. Not helping matters, the criminals demonstrate absolutely no sense of urgency, moving at the most languid pace possible, when you would think it would behoove them to get in and out as quickly as possible. Of course, these actions are so that the movie can happen, with Casey crawling around the attic space, desperately trying to avoid capture, as Rose looms ever closer.

Lind is probably the best thing about this, balancing nicely between being brave and resourceful, without toppling over into Hit Girl-like excess. But even here there are problems – such as, why she didn’t get her parents’ gun earlier, or make any effort to call for help, leave the house, etc. It all adds up to one of the most woefully inept scripts I’ve had the misfortune to view in a long time. I should have seen the warning signs on the poster: when the thing you want to tout most is the producers’ previous credits, you have a very weak hand. Still better than Twilight though. Albeit, only just.

Dir: Shane Dax Taylor
Star: Bella Thorne, Alyvia Alyn Lind, Skyler Samuels, Mircea Monroe

M and the Last Hell Gate, by Mark William Hammond

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

In my review of the first two volumes in the trilogy, I concluded the third would only be read at a discount price. Enter my accidental purchase of Kindle Unlimited, which allowed me to pick it up at no additional cost. And, on balance, I’m fairly glad I did. It was always going to be something of a problem since, as noted previously, parts 1+2 were basically two-thirds of a single entity. Part 3 does a good job of tying things up, with a grandstand climax deep in the Tibetan Alps. There, M and her twin sister Lien, with whom she was recently re-united, have to take on bone goddess Baigujing. The demon queen has opened up a third and final hellgate, which is the Channel Tunnel in comparison to the previous, fun-sized portals to hell which M has had to close up.

It does take a while to get there, admittedly. Distractions on the road to Tibet are provided by increasing attacks from wendigos in the New York subway system; a threat to M’s adopted family; and her off-again, on-again relationship with Gotham detective Antony DeAngelo. All of these manage to provide their share of entertainment, M slicing and dicing, with the unstoppable ribbon sword, through all that get in her way. My main issue was the lack of closure. Sure, the main threat is addressed. But for something that’s supposed to be the final entry in the saga, there was no particular sense of finality. It wasn’t even clear what happened to M, who was described as “dying,” yet seemed to be clinging to life, half way up a Himalaya. The status of Lien, gravely wounded in the battle against Baigujing’s minions, was similarly uncertain, and poor Antony seemed to get forgotten about entirely.

That said, the journey to get there is quite satisfactory. Hammond has a great sense of location, whether he is describing Chinatown, the tunnels beneath New York City or the lofty heights of the Tibetan mountains. He also manages to tie together various disparate mythologies so that they mesh into a single, coherent universe. There’s clearly a hierarchy in hell and, as in the first two volumes, it’s a world which is interesting to visit, though you certainly wouldn’t want to live there. This is written with a dry sense of wit, which helps overcome the suspension of disbelief needed for the scenario to make sense, e.g. that the wholesale slaughter of subway workers would not trigger a mass shutdown of the network.

It’s still a solid page-turner, and I certainly can’t complain about the climax, which is exactly the epic, grand-scale confrontation expected, and to which only the written word can do justice. Well, that or a $200 million budget. I’m happy enough with this one, even if I suspect I’ll have to wait for a hypothetical fourth volume to achieve any kind of resolution.

Author: Mark William Hammond
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
3 of 3 in the Demon Realm series.

Misfit Lil Rides In + Misfit Lil Cheats the Hangrope, by Chap O’Keefe

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Misfit Lil Rides In: Literary rating: ★★★, Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆
Misfit Lil Cheats the Hangrope: Literary rating: ★★★★, Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆½

The Western is typically among the most macho of genres, and this applies to the world of pulp fiction as much as to movies. There are exceptions: Werner has covered quite a few in the past, such as The Complete Adventures of Senorita Scorpion, and I recently dipped my toe in the genre, with the first book of Chrissy Wissler’s Cowboy Cat series, Women’s Justice. While set in the past, that did have a contemporary feel to it: Cat felt like a 21st-century heroine in an antiquated world. That seems significantly less the case for Miss Lilian Goodnight, despite her nickname of “Misfit Lil”. These two stories feel like a throwback to the golden age of pulp. There is no obvious agenda beyond entertaining the reader, which is almost refreshing. They’re quick, uncomplex, and occasionally slightly disreputable reads. Nothing wrong with these elements, I should stress.

Lil is the daughter of cattle rancher Ben Goodnight, who has resisted all attempts by her father, a widower, to turn her into a proper young lady. In particular, he sent her to a Boston boarding school; rather than uplifting Lillian, she succeeded in corrupting the other pupils, and we sent home in disgrace, earning her nickname. Since then, she has been riding free, helping out on the ranch, with occasional stunts that bring her into conflict with the local authority, such as showing off her pistol marksmanship on the local Main Street. “Once she hammered five four-inch nails halfways into a boardwalk post, then drove each of ’em in with a bullet from twenty paces.” The local sheriff was unimpressed, locking her up overnight, until her long-suffering father bailed her out. But Lil gained another nickname: “Princess o’ Pistoleers”.

Beyond the heroine, the players do overlap, in particular, a co-lead in both books is Jackson Farraday, local scout and guide, who takes on commissions both for the army and for civilians seeking to cross the dangerous territory. She has a crush on him, though acknowledges its futility, with him being twice her age (doing the math based off this and other information, it makes Lil about twenty, and Jackson almost forty), and he similarly has no interest in her for romantic purposes. But he certainly respects her skills and bravery, and they have no hesitation in helping each other out when needed. Which is the case in both of these novels, with Farraday being falsely accused of murder in each.

The first, Misfit Lil Rides In, sees him framed for killing the wife of store owner Axel Boorman. While Axel was actually the killer, in a fit of jealous rage, with the help of the local law, Farraday is blamed, and a posse sent after him. With Lil’s aid, the posse is fended off, though she is arrested, and Jackson believed to have fallen to his doom. He is actually still alive, but ends up captured by the local Apaches, so both are in serious trouble. Even after Jackson escapes, he falls foul of an Army officer with a grudge against him, and ends up behind bars too. Lil needs to free herself, break her friend out, then find some way of proving the truth – not least about Boorman’s scheme to sell guns to the Indians – and convince the authorities to take action.

I think my major surprise was how relatively even it felt like the book was split between Jackson and Lil. While Jackson isn’t a bad character, he is fairly generic as Western heroes go. I was considerably more interested in Lil, and every page that detailed her colleague’s adventures felt like it was wasted, especially as the whole book is under two hundred pages. I almost found myself speed-reading the Faraday heavy sections, to get back to what Lil was doing. Outside of the gun-battle against the posse, that was largely using her brain rather than her pistols. But of particular note here is an author’s afterword, Heroines of the Wilder West, in which O’Keefe discusses some of Lil’s predecessors and inspirations, such as Hurricane Nell and Denver Doll. I sense a rabbit-hole for future exploration, and may have to watch Along Came Jones as well, for its proto-heroine.

However, any issues are well addressed in Misfit Lil Cheats the Hangrope; it seems O’Keefe has grown more comfortable with his characters by this, the most recent entry. While Faraday plays a significant role here, Lil feels more the focus, and the story flows around her in a fluid way. It begins when Lil helps rescue a wagon train of settlers headed west, who make an ill-informed decision to try and cross the mountains as the weather comes down. She gets Jackson a job as co-guide on the train, but the previous sole guide, Luke Reiner, is far from happy about it. When the corpse of a young, female settler turns up drowned in a creek, suspicion falls on Farraday, because Lil isn’t the only woman to find him attractive. It’s up to her to find the necessary proof that will exonerate her friend, before Reiner succeeds in whipping up a lynch mob.

There’s a good sense of escalation here, and it’s a solid page-turner, with each incident providing a natural progression into the next. It works both as a Western and as a whodunnit mystery, with the killer’s identity shrouded in uncertainty. As for the cause of death… Well, that might be one of those “slightly disreputable” elements mentioned earlier, even if there are worse ways to go, it has to be said! Again though, Lil seems to be almost loathe to use her shooting skills. To me, the point of guns is that they are a great equalizer, allowing the weak (or “weaker sex,” to use a slightly pejorative term!) to stand up against the strong. But over both volumes, I’m not sure there was any real demonstration of the sure-shot abilities described early in the first book.

This is a relatively minor complaint, however. These may be stories, rather than Great Literature; yet there’s an absolute lack of apparent pretension to the approach, which I appreciated. If the intention of the author was, as discussed above, simply to provide a good yarn that entertains the reader, I’d say they accomplish that mission. 

Author: Chap O’Keefe
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Books 1 and 7 in the Misfit Lil series.
I was provided copies of both volumes, in exchange for an honest review.

Mardock Scramble

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★½
“Scrambled: adj. a jumbled mess”

Originally a series of three novels by Tow Ubukata, then a manga series published from 2009-12, I can only presume that something was lost in the translation to these three short (~65 minutes each) movies. Actually, make that just about everything. For after a promising first entry, I can’t think of a franchise that fell so completely off the rails. Okay, maybe The Matrix, with which this shares similar problems: taking itself far too seriously, and diverting into social commentary for which no-one was asking. I gave serious consideration to bailing and make this a rare “Did not finish,” which I’d not even bother writing about. But perhaps if my experience can serve as a warning to others, the tedium will not have been experienced in vain.

It’s the story of teenage prostitute Rune Balot (Hayashibara), whom her pimp Shell Septinous (Nakai( tries to dispose of after she becomes too much of a liability. Near-dead, she is rescued by the mysterious Dr. Easter, who transforms her into a powerful cyborg, under the provisions of the murky “Mardock Scramble 09” protocol, which allows for extreme measures to be taken in pursuit of the preservation of life. Accompanied by a multi-dimensional entity named Oeufcoque (Yashina), which takes the form of a mouse (!) that can transform into any object. She’s unleashed to track down the evidence necessary to convict Shell of murder, but has to deal with Oeufcoque’s former owner. Dinsdale Boiled (Isobe) – really, who comes up with these names? He underwent the Mardock Scramble process as well, except went more than a little bit mad as a result.

The first movie is not bad at all, and ends with Rune at the mercy of Boiled and Oeufcoque disabled, after a vicious battle. I rushed off to immediately find the second and third films. A fatal mistake. I should have guessed from the “with one bound, she was free” resolution to the cliff-hanger. For rather than the same blend of cyberpunky action, in the vein of Ghost in the Shell, vast swathes of the second and third film are spent watching Rune play blackjack and roulette. No, seriously. Apparently the proof of Shell’s crimes was encoded on four million-dollar casino chips, and these can only be obtained by accumulating wealth at the gambling tables. Very. Slowly. And with far too much explanation. If I didn’t know better – and, to be honest, I really don’t – I”d think they blew all their animation budget on part one, so had to cut back severely for parts two and three.

Even the bits between the gambling sessions are borderline ludicrous, like the wonderland where cyborg Tweedledum is in a gay relationship with Tweedledee. Who is an enhanced dolphin. Tack on a whole bunch of psychobabble about the nature of things, and yeah – my Matrix mention above begins to look increasingly relevant. The whole saga feels as if the creators simply vomited out ideas onto the page, then turned that over, in lieu of a completed script.

Dir: Susumu Kudo 
Star (voice): Megumi Hayashibara, Norito Yashima, Tsutomu Isobe, Kazuya Nakai

Me, You, Madness

  By

★★
“American Psychette.”

I wanted to like this considerably more than I actually did.  The idea of a supremely self-aware female serial killer – not just comfortable in her psychoses, someone who actively revels in them? Colour me intrigued. Throw in any amount of eighties tunes, super-lush production design and photography, and this should have been right up my neon-lit alley. Yet, it very much runs out of steam. When perhaps the most memorable joke is an argument over the difference between a couch and a sofa… Yeah, there are some significant structural problems which need to have been addressed. 

The “heroine” (quotes used ironically) is hedge fund manager Catherine Black (Linton, also the writer), who has risen to the top with ferocious aggression. She has embraced her psychopathy, and in her beautifully appointed mansion, has multiple freezers full of dismembered bodies. Her next intended victim is Tyler Jones (Westwick), a con-man who is posing as an intended house-sitter. However, for the first time, Catherine finds herself unable to go through with her habitual slaughter, instead making an unexpected connection to the thief. Even after he absconds with one of her cars and a slew of her jewellery, part of her is still willing to forgive Tyler his trespasses, and brings him back by threatening to expose his previous crimes to the authorities. Yet will these new feelings of humanity and kindness be enough to overcome Catherine’s deep-seated and long-standing urges towards murder and cannibalism?

It appears this is Linton’s debut as both writer and director, and seems she bit off a bit more than she can chew. I think, in particular, it’s the script which is the issue. Crammed full of breaking the fourth wall and other advanced techniques, there’s no denying its ambition; unfortunately, Linton as writer doesn’t appear up to the task. Instead, she tries to run before she can walk, never managing to establish Catherine as a complex character. Indeed, it never puts enough effort into establishing her even as a murderous psychopath, until well after the point at which she has fallen for Tyler. That’s another problem, because the film doesn’t provide sufficient justification for thus: there’s precious little given to the audience that make us think, “I get what she sees in him,” rendering all that follows contrived and unconvincing.

While I certainly appreciated the nostalgic soundtrack, it does seem an odd choice given the contemporary setting – Linton was aged two when Blue Monday was originally released. Perhaps an older actress, such as a Naomi Watts or Catherine Zeta-Jones, would have been a better fit? But I guess, when you have decided you are going to be an actress, director and writer, and can find financing for it, then it’s full steam ahead. If much credit is due to her for seizing the opportunity, and there’s enough here to suggest a vision, it’s definitely too unpolished. She would likely be better off focusing on one area, rather than attempting to become a Jill of all trades.

Dir: Louise Linton 
Star: Louise Linton, Ed Westwick, Shuya Chang, Tyler Barnes