Tag: n

Nicole

  By

★★★½
“Patience is a virtue.”

If you came into this with absolutely no previous knowledge (including the poster on the right!), you’d be forgiven if you spent the first forty minutes thinking this was an independent drama about the perils of professional dating life in the big city. Then, suddenly, it’s very not. But initially, it’s about Nicole (Shannon), who while she may be a little strange and anti-social, doesn’t seem all that far outside the bounds of normal behaviour. Well, I guess her carting a bottle of hard liquor to work, for drinking sessions in the bathroom, is somewhat problematic. Maybe her imagining dinner with her parents could be a bit of a red flag. [The film makes nice use of switching between b&w and colour, to separate reality from flashbacks and fantasy] But, all told, she’s fairly high-functioning.

That all changes when she goes out on a rare date with John (Green), whom she met through an online app. She’s simultaneously fending off advances from a co-worker (Busey) and neighbour (Lockhart) – it must be said, all the men here fall somewhere on the creepy/predatory spectrum. What we know, but Nicole initially does not, is that John is well toward the latter, with a fondness for date rape and every intention of adding Nicole to his list of dubious conquests. However, her day drinking has given her a remarkable tolerance for alcohol, so when he makes his move, she’s not as drunk as she should be, and fights back, with no shortage of vigour. As well as a knife. That’s where the tone of the film changes drastically. We’re not in Sex and the City any more, Toto.

The rest is considerably closer to pitch-black humour, as Nicole has to come to terms with the consequences of her actions. Realizing what John was intending, she decides simply to dispose of his body. This requires a late-night trip to the hardware store, where the Goth assistant nods approvingly at her selection of tools. Then there’s the actual dismemberment, not helped by John’s corpse continuing to talk to her throughout the process. For example, he requests a refill on his wine, only to realize it’s hard to drink since she’s removed his hands.

This disposal reminded me a little of A Good Woman is Hard to Find, though that was thoroughly serious. There are also elements of Ms. 45. in a blurring of the lines between reality and delusion, which are deftly handled. Regular readers won’t be surprised to learn I preferred this second half of the film. I was actually a bit disappointed things ended when they did, more or less with Nicole’s return to work, and in a maybe or maybe not more well-adjusted state. It felt there was mileage left on the table, with her further adventures as an IT worker, moonlighting as a killer of sexual predators. We can only hope for Nicole 2: Ax Me Anything at some point down the road.

Dir: James Schroeder
Star: Tamika Shannon, Stephen Green, Ke’Shawn Bussey, Tre Lockhart

Night Witches in the Sky

  By

★★★
“Spirits in the sky.”

kinopoisk.ru

This was made in the early eighties, when the Soviet Union and United States were making loud, growling sounds at each other. Being a product of that era perhaps explains the way this feels almost like a propaganda film, made to inspire the population to be prepared to fight in defense of the motherland. Its closest cousin on this site is therefore the similar Chinese film, The Red Detachment of Women. The topic here is one we’ve covered before: the renowned “Night Witches”, the all-female air force squadron, who carried out reconnaissance and bombing missions against the Germans on the Eastern front, during the second half of World War II.

The two central characters are Galya Polikarpova (Druz) and Oksana Zakharchenko (Grushina). The former is recuperating from injury in hospital, but sneaks out against doctor’s orders in order to rejoin her colleagues on the front lines. The pair are hauled over the coals for this by their long-suffering commanding officer (Menshikova), but are able to escape punishment due to the shortage of fliers making operational needs more important. Thereafter… Well, to be perfectly honest, not a great deal happens, and the film comes in at less than 80 minutes.  At points, it almost feels like an edited-down version of a longer feature.

For instance, there’s one point where they are being harried by a Messerschmitt – then, suddenly, they’re landing in a field to sweep up an orphaned boy, Fyodor (Zamulin), who becomes an unofficial mascot of the squadron, despite efforts by the higher-ups to send him away. There’s also a long-distance romance between Galya and another soldier that didn’t do much for me.

However, one point about this production is particularly worth noting. Director Yevgeniya Zhigulenko was actually a “night witch” herself, having been a member of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment. Initially a navigator in May 1942, she became a pilot and eventually a flight commander. By the end of the war, she had flown close to a thousand sorties, and been awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. There can’t be many films from any country set in World War II, which were directed by someone who took part in the events depicted.

This was one of two features she made, and seems more functional than particularly artistic, though may have been constrained by its budget. Some of the flying sequences are… let’s say, not particularly convincing. But perhaps due to the director’s background, it does have a down-to-earth (pun not intended) approach which does occasionally work in the film’s favour. One example would be when the women are struggling to get their planes launched out of the mud, after heavy rain. But generally, the tempo is kept upbeat and patriotically optimistic, with only occasional nods to the heavy toll of life taken by the conflict. All told, a decent effort; I’d just give the edge to the TV series Night Swallows, whose greater length allows for more depth in its characterizations.

Dir: Yevgeniya Zhigulenko
Star: Yana Druz, Valentina Grushina, Dima Zamulin, Nina Menshikova
a.k.a. V nebe ‘Nochnye vedmy’

The New Mutants

  By

★★★½
“The end of an era”

We live in a strange world in which Wonder Woman ’84 gets delayed again while The New Mutants is suddenly getting its release. Over the years, the story surrounding this movie has become more interesting than the one it tells. Originally, the film was scheduled for 2018 but didn’t find much luck. Director Josh Boone (The Fate in Our Stars) had the interesting idea of doing a Breakfast Club-type movie set in the Horror genre. After initial enthusiasm from the studio, execs pulled back, wanting to make the film more accessible, less horrific. Than the studio head at 20th Century Fox left, which led to changes at the script.

Originally, the film was supposed to play in the 80s (after X-Men: Apocalypse) and would have included Professor X and Storm. The script at hand seemed to depict the caretakers of the New Mutants in a very negative way. This is apparent when you see the character of Dr. Reyes (Alice Braga), the replacement for Storm. As the original X-men characters were always the heroes of the franchise, their appearances were skipped. But the success of the first part of Stephen King adaptation It (2017), led to a rethink, that the film should not abandon its scarier elements. The next thing to happen was the acquisition of 20th Century Fox studio by Disney (is there anything the House of Mouse doesn’t already own?) which meant that Dark Phoenix as well as The New Mutants were now Disney’s to deal with.

And obviously Disney didn’t care too much for Fox’s leftovers. Dark Phoenix went into cinemas last year with little fanfare, remaking a storyline that had already been told (and according to many, much better) in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006). The remake was a box-office failure – and this time the often overly negative criticism of fans, which I usually explain as Marvel fans who can’t stand that there is any competition for their beloved Disney films, might have been justified. I don’t know, because even I didn’t bother to watch the movie – and the X-Men movies were my entry into the Marvel universe. Why pay again to watch a story I saw 13 years ago, and own on DVD?

It seems to me that cinemagoers are tired of always seeing movies following the same old formula they have been watching, repeated again and again. That you can be successful by being different is proven by movies like Deadpool or Venom. The New Mutants tries to do something similar, but unfortunately, the caravan has moved on. After It and Netflix’s Stranger Things, the concept of the movie is nowhere near as original as it might have been a few years ago.

Based on Chris Claremont’s comic series from the 80s – at that time Marvel’s successful attempt to create a successful competing series to DC’s Teen Titans – New Mutants is about five misfits with the usual unusual abilities you know from the X-Men universe. Dani Moonstar (Blu Hunt) survives a catastrophe that killed her entire tribe, and wakes up in a hospital (which actually looks more like a nunnery!).

There, Dr. Reyes is trying therapy on four other mutants: Rahne Sinclair (Maisie Williams) who can turn into a were-wolf; Illyana Rasputin (Anya Taylor-Joy), Colossus’s little sister, who is able to jump in and out of the alternate dimension Limbo and can manifest a soulsword; Sam Guthrie (Charlie Heaton), who can move extremely quickly in the air and creating so extreme energy while being invulnerable in this situation; and Roberto da Costa (Henry Zaga), who can create when being excited solar energy, so he becomes actually burning hot. In the comics these characters are also known with their usual other names which are Wolfsbane, Magik, Cannonball and Sunspot but the movie never mentions these names.

Dr. Reyes intentions are to teach these young disturbed teens how to deal with their abilities and not hurt other people. It’s suggested by Reyes, they might then go to a school for gifted youngsters (hint, hint). Unfortunately, not all is as it seems and very soon the teenagers have to face their own anxieties and traumas. The evil power that killed off Dani’s people arrives at the facility and they are forced to work together to save Dani as well as defend their own lives and freedom.

Basically, this movie tries to go for a smaller scale, after a succession of X-Men movies that seemed to increase constantly in size. It’s a nice idea, and one I respect. This was even seen as the potential start of a new trilogy – although, which film nowadays isn’t? And I have to give the filmmakers this: at least they tried to do something different. That’s worth a lot in my book, considering we live in a time when Disney’s Marvel movies seem to be written and directed almost on autopilot (exception: The Avengers). Once a film series gets too big, the next logical step is to scale down. It can be a successful move: look at the James Bond movies, which seem to do so at regular intervals. However, it needs an audience that still cares. Unfortunately, I think that boat has sailed long ago for the X-Men. For most people, Logan (2017), Hugh Jackman’s final appearance in the role of Wolverine, was the last hurrah and end of the series.

There are a lot of good elements here. A darker, more sombre and psychological variation on the X-Men theme, it feels like Chris Carter’s TV series Millennium compared to his warmer, more sympathetic X-Files. This comparison is particularly appropriate, since The New Mutants was filmed in Vancouver, Canada, where the first few seasons of The X-Files were produced and here, too, the composer is Mark Snow.

The first half of the (fortunately not-too-long) movie – I really, really hate the lengthy running time of blockbuster movies today – focuses on the five misfits, their pasts and their relationship building. The second is when the action and the CGI comes into play, though is more restrained than you may be used to in these movies. The New Mutants really feels like the intimate stage-play of X-Men films. The main inspirations, apart from those already mentioned, seem to be the psychological drama Girl, Interrupted (1999) with Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie, as well as Buffy the Vampire Slayer – the latter is watched by the mutants a couple of times, and seems to correspond with things we see later. But, while I said that the new movie is more psychological, don’t think it’s deep, beyond “Well, I’ve got these superpowers, didn’t know how to control them, killed some people and now I’m kind of a wreck.”

But still… I kind of liked that this went a different route than the usual overblown extravaganzas. Anya Taylor-Joy as Illyana Rasputin, a.k.a. “Magik”, leaves a particular impression. Though I have to wonder why those in power found it necessary to change the backstories: Rahne (Williams) and Dani seem to be moving towards a lesbian relationship while the film subtly indicates that Illyana might have created the “limbus” (her magical world) due to sexual abuse as a child. Neither of this has any basis in the comics, it’s just Josh Boone overwriting existing lore, perhaps to make the characters more “realistic”. I don’t know why people do that. Is being kidnapped by a devil-like demon and being transported in some kind of hellish dimension not terrifying enough anymore? On the other side, the story of “Magik” has hardly been touched, so the possibility of a solo film that could dive deeper into the lore of the character still exists. Though I guess, we’ll never see this at all.

I stayed until the end titles were over. For, while the movie was not the best of the series (though far from the worst), I felt a little sad realizing this was finally, officially and really the end of 20th Century Fox’s X-Men films. The first X-Men, in 2000, ushered in a new era of comic book movies and introduced me to Marvel superheroes. And while we have seen all sorts of similar films since, I always had a liking for this franchise. They tried out new things, and wanted to be different from that what Disney/Marvel did. Sometimes they succeeded, sometimes they failed – sometimes they succeeded and the result was still not that great. It’s always easy to do the safe, secure thing and laugh all the way to the bank. It’s less easy to constantly try to reinvent oneself.

Regardless of what their respective qualities or flaws were, I guess I’ll miss them.

Dir:  Josh Boone
Star: Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Heaton, Alice Braga

Nemesis 5: The New Model

  By

★½
“Left longing for the subtlety of Albert Pyun.”

It has been twenty years since Nemesis 4 apparently signalled the end of Pyun’s cyborg saga. I was therefore rather surprised when a fifth installment cropped up on my radar. Not directed by Pyun, admittedly, but he had given his blessing to it continuing under the guidance of Ferguson. It’s one of those things which probably seemed a good idea at the time, and there are elements that occasionally teeter on the edge of working. However, there’s far from enough content here, and the execution turns into into a fan film for the Nebraskan rivet-head community, with the severely limited appeal that implies. 

In the future, the Red Army Hammerheads are waging a war against the Los Angeles Police Department and their allies. Among the latter is Ari Frost (Craig), a part-human, part cyborg, who was trained in the ways of a warrior by Alex Sinclair (Price). That’s one of those nice elements, having the star of Part 4 show up to pass the torch on; seeing her was a bit like seeing Linda Hamilton pop up in the trailers for the new Terminator movie. Ari and her pals are being hunted by various elements of the R.A.H., dispatched by their leader (Novak), before she can stop them by… Well, you’ll have to watch it to find out. Which is code for “I completely lost interest and stopped paying attention.”

The director seems to think that slapping a random filter on the lens equates to art, and the complete lack of consistency between consecutive shots is enough to give you a migraine. The special effects are mostly bargain basement post work, though the Terminator-like android was decent enough, at least in comparison to most of the rest. The fight sequences leave a great deal to be desired, and the entire film grinds to a halt in the middle, for what amounts to a 20-minute promo film for local venue, the Zero Bar, including the least sexy go-go dancing in cinematic history. That’s a lot, considering the whole thing runs barely an hour between the lengthy opening text crawl of set-up, and equally extended closing credits. And apparently, after the apocalypse, the world will look like downtown Lincoln, Nebraska. Who knew?

Positives are hard to find here. The electronic soundtrack works quite well, including a surprising theme by Velvet Acid Christ, of whom I was well aware previously. Craig isn’t bad either, though when she’s acting alongside her predecessor, you realize that she’s desperately in need of the  sheer physical presence Price brings. Though again, apparently when people get cybernetic implants, they turn into refugees from Hot Topic. Even by the limited standards of what was already a bargain-bin science fiction franchise, this is scraping the bottom of the barrel. To be honest, it would probably have been better for all concerned if they’d left the franchise on the strange yet relatively high note which was the fourth installment.

Dir: Dustin Ferguson
Star: Schuylar Craig, Crystal Milani, Mel Novak, Sue Price

The Nightingale

  By

★★★
“Pack your bags, we’re going on a guilt trip!”

History is largely filled with people being unpleasant to each other, usually for belonging to a different race, religion, nationality or even species [if you want to go back to the Cro-Magnons pushing out the Neanderthals about 40,000 years ago]. It’s sad and unfortunate, but it’s not something for which I feel personal responsibility – not least because it tends to work in both directions. My ancestors may have been part of the British Empire who, for example, invented the concentration camp in the Boer War. But my ancestors were also subject to the ethnic cleansing of the Highland Clearances, forced out to make way for sheep. Attempts to make me feel guilty for the sins of my forefathers are thus largely doomed to fail.

And what we have here, is a well-crafted exercise in manipulation. It’s set in what is now Tasmania, then a penal colony where the British garrison were trying to maintain control, both of the prisoners and the indigenous population, using savage brutality against both. One of the former is Clare Carroll (Franciosi), an Irish woman convicted of theft who is now married to another prisoner and working in an army garrison. She is at the mercy of Lieutenant Hawkins (Claflin), who wields a letter of recommendation, which would give Clare and her family freedom, as power over her. Circumstances escalate to a night where she is raped and left for dead, while her husband and infant child are murdered. Hawkins leaves for the capital of Launceston, in pursuit of a promotion. Clare follows, intent on revenge, helped on the trail by Billy (Ganambarr), an Aboriginal tracker, who has also borne the brunt of colonial savagery in his past.

It’s effective, in the same way that a 2×4 across the head will get your attention. It’s not exactly subtle in the parallels being drawn between Clare and Billy, who have both suffered at the hands of the evil Brits, and who subsequently bond over their victimhood. Hawkins is such an evil swine, he might as well spend the entire film twirling his mustache. But despite being such an obvious attempt at generating outrage, it’s not without its merits. Franciosi delivers a fierce and intense performance, as someone who has lost everything, and so is prepared to go to any lengths to take revenge on those who destroyed her life.

Perhaps the most chilling sequence has her hunting down a soldier, already wounded in an encounter with the local population (which seems to have strayed in from an 80’s Italian cannibal film!). The savage way in which she takes him down and then beats his head to a pulp with her rifle-butt… Yeah, she is clearly highly motivated. However, the simplistic way in which white men are, almost without exception, portrayed as stereotypical villains undoes much of the good work put in by the actors, and dampens its overall effectiveness.

Dir: Jennifer Kent
Star: Aisling Franciosi, Baykali Ganambarr, Sam Claflin, Damon Herriman

Ninja She-Devil

  By

★½
“Have semen, will travel.”

Ninjas were famed for their mystical powers, but Tsubame (Asami), the heroine here, has… well, let’s just say, a rather different talent. And I quote her brother, Hayabusa: “The ability to store a man’s seed inside your womb for seven days after intercourse.” This raises a number of questions, not least: how did this get discovered, considering Tsubame is a virgin at this point? Anyway, this skill is needed because of… Ah, to heck with it. Hayabusa explains it as well as I could:

As you know, Lord Kuniyoshi doesn’t have a wife. Because of that, Koicha, the concubine of Lord Kunisada, his father, is apparently plotting to have him assassinated to elevate her own son Kunitsuna to become the next in line. Kaede, Lord Kuniyoshi’s wife, has already been cursed by some sort of spell caster and can’t resist earthly temptations any longer. Though Lord Kuniyoshi planned to have his concubine, Yamabuki, bear his child so he could become the rightful heir, summoning Yamabuki would be too dangerous. That’s when Lord Kuniyoshi remembered your secret ability.

Yep, Tsubame has to become a sort of human turkey-baster, storing Kuniyoshi’s semen and making the perilous journey to deliver it to Yamabuki (Hanazawa). Even before she has left, Tsubame has to fend off attacks from those with an interest in preventing delivery of the sticky package. On the way, she meets Kagero, another former kunoichi (lady ninja), who used to be in love with Hayabusa. Meanwhile, the heroine’s boyfriend, Taichi, is captured and used as leverage against Tsubame. But, to be perfectly clear here, this is almost entirely about the sex. Lots of sex. It’s not sub-titled “Legend of the Voluptuous Kunoichi” for nothing, and that’s more accurate than the title by which it was released here.

It’s probably significant that this is the first time I can remember, where I have written a good three-quarters of the review before the film even ends. For as I type these words, it is still playing in another window, cutting between two separate, simultaneous sex scenes, neither of which are particularly interesting. Like all the other such sequences, they’re basically a good amount of wriggling, accompanied by some high-pitched squeaking from reasonably photogenic actresses. If you’re looking for… Oh, I dunno, ninja-ing, or even she-devilling, you’re going to need to look elsewhere. While there are a couple of fight sequences, these are so perfunctory and limited in their staging, you wonder why they bothered at all.

Before watching this, I had to check very carefully to be sure I hadn’t reviewed this before, given the plethora of films with similar titles. I still suspect I may have, and simply blanked it from my memory. And there go the end credits, slightly less than seventy minutes after we began. At least I didn’t have to waste much time on this. Oh, hey, the actress also sings the end theme. Yuma Asami is clearly a woman of many talents – not just wriggling and squeaking. And look, the behind the scenes footage shows them presenting the naked actress with a bunch of flowers. That’s nice.

Dir: Yoshikazu Katô
Star: Yuma Asami, Yûya Matsuura, Lemon Hanazawa, Toji Yanagi
a.k.a. Kunoichi

No Shelter, by Robert Swartwood

  By

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

“Meet Holly Lin. Nanny by day, assassin by night.” That was the tagline here, and you’ll understand why it jumped off the Amazon page and onto my Kindle. I was expecting something like Mary Poppins crossed with Atomic Blonde [“A spoonful of C-4 helps the terrorists go down…”], which is a great concept. However, I guess I’m going to have to write that book myself, because this isn’t it. I suppose, technically it is, though may be closer to like “vaguely nannies some times, assassin at others”. It certainly helps in terms of workplace schedule flexibility, that she nannies for her government boss. So it’s apparently fine when she has to abandon her charges and jet off from Washington to Las Vegas to assassinate someone selling a flash drive, on which is… Well, we’ll get back to that.

Holly also had a tendency to go off-mission, riding off into the Nevada desert on her own to rescue a bunch of sex-trafficked women. That’s a decision that comes back to haunt her later on, though it’s extraordinarily convenient how all the bad guys seem to know and work with each other. They must have a villains’ Facebook group or something. The other major issue is the shift in focus. In the second half, the main antagonist becomes someone who was only mentioned in flashback/passing in the first. There’s little or no emotional resonance to the conflict as a result. Though if you can’t guess the identity of the mysterious figure who spares Holly’s life in an alley, you probably need to read more of this genre.

Swartwood has a better handle on the action, with a number of well-written and fast-paced set pieces, and a heroine who has no problem using brutal violence as a tool. However, the underlying logic on both sides is often questionable. The climax occurs after Holly’s charges are kidnapped and ransomed, held in exchange for that pesky flash drive. Yet the way in which she goes about retrieving it, seems more designed for spectacle than good sense – and she needn’t even have bothered, since the villain agrees to meet her without requiring any kind of proof she has it. These kind of missteps bedevil the story. Though I did appreciate the final, savage payoff to the running thread about the elevator in her apartment building being slow or out of order.

There just isn’t enough here to make it stand out from the pack of other assassins-with-a-heart-of-gold-and-a-troubled-past books. If it had played up the “double life” concept – making Holly some kind of bad-ass baby-sitter – this could have been a novel angle. Instead, it hardly gets much of a look-in, and as a final insult [probably a spoiler, but I don’t care] Swartwood can’t even be bothered to tell us what is actually on the flash drive to cause such mayhem and bloodshed. It’s a complete McGuffin. Unfortunately, this author is no Hitchcock.

Author: Robert Swartwood
Publisher: RMS Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 3 in the Holly Lin series.

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

  By

★★★★½
“The wind rises.”

After the enormous critical, if not commercial, success of Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro, Miyazaki was commissioned to create a manga series for Animage magazine, with a potential film adaptation attached. Publication began in early 1982, but it would take a dozen years, albeit of intermittent publication, before that story was complete. When the series’s popularity among Animage readers was established, work began on the film adaptation, covering the early portion of the manga. Since this was before Miyazaki’s own Studio Ghibli was founded, an external company, Topcraft, were commissioned to create the animation. The budget was only $1 million, with a mere nine-month production schedule leading up to its release in March 1984.

It takes place on a post-apocalyptic world, a thousand years after the near-mythical “Seven Days of Fire”, pushed humanity to the edge of extinction. Since then, nature has taken over much of the planet, covering it in an expanding toxic jungle where the very air is poisonous in a few minutes. It is populated by equally lethal creatures, at the top being the “ohmu”, gigantic insectoids capable of destroying anything in its path. The human race is reduced to clinging on to the fringes, such as the small kingdom of the Valley of the Wind, in which a never-ending breeze keeps the toxins at bay. There, the king’s daughter, Nausicaä (Shimamoto), is one of the few brave enough to enter and explore the jungle, and has developed a mutually respectful relationship with its strange inhabitants.

The balance is destroyed when a plane from the kingdom of Tolmekia crashes. In its cargo is an enormous “God Warrior” – one of those which carried out the Seven Days of Fire – recently dug out from where it had been buried. Tolmekia and their rivals, Pejite, are wrestling for control of the warrior and the power it wields, and the crash drags the Valley of the Wind into their conflict. In particular, Princess Kushana of Tolmekia (Sakakibara) intends to use the warrior to destroy the jungle and restore mankind’s dominion over the planet. Nausicaä is ferociously opposed to this scheme, especially after discovering that the jungle is actually purifying the atmosphere and soil, absorbing the toxins from the apocalypse. She’ll do anything to stop Kushana, including being willing to sacrifice her own life if necessary.

There’s a lot going on here, as you can see. It’s somewhat understandable why, when initially shown in the West (one of the first examples of anime to receive a theatrical release), 22 minutes was cut out, in order to market it as a children’s film, retitled Warriors of the Wind. The problem is, like almost all of the director’s work, it is not a children’s film. This is not a uncommon mistake – presumably based on them having a child as the central characters, and because they’re animated, which still largely equates to Disney in many people’s minds. But they’re more about that age capturing an innocent and idealistic mentality. This is undeniably mature and thoughtful cinema. In just his second feature, and first original film, Nausicaä establishes several themes which would run through almost all of Miyazaki’s future work, in varying degrees: the joy of flight, concern for the environment, and a strong female presence.

Miyazaki’s father ran an airplane parts company in World War II, and even his film company, Studio Ghibli, was named after an Italian plane. Almost every one of his movies includes a flying sequence, and Nausicaä certainly has plenty of them, whether its the heroine skimming across the desert on her one-person glider, or gigantic warships looming, threateningly, in the sky. Despite the imperfect animation, a result of the limited resources, the sense of wonder and awe is undeniable. If you don’t want to take to the skies after seeing these scenes, you might want to check for a pulse. Similarly, there’s no denying Miyazaki is firmly on the side of nature, with his heroine believing all life to be sacred, and humanity deserving no special place above any other species. If mankind can’t live in harmony with the world, the movie suggests, it’s mankind which needs to change. Bending nature to our will is always going to backfire.

But it’s with the depiction of womankind that the film truly succeeds. In Nausicaä and Kushana, you have two fully-formed characters that are not just among the best in animated film, they could stand beside the protagonist and antagonist of most live-action movies. The latter, in particular, demonstrates Miyazaki’s skill at depicting those who would be flat-out villains in less nuanced films, instead being given motivation and depth. While you may not agree with Kushana resurrecting the God Warrior, you can understand what she is trying to accomplish. Her actions stem from a genuine belief that what she is doing is best for the future of mankind. She just has a military-industrial approach to that, in sharp contrast to the one emphasizing ecological science and harmony, preferred by Nausicaä. Interesting to note that, in the 2005 Disney English-language dub, Kushana was voiced by Uma Thurman.

The story here builds to a stellar climax, in which a massive herd of ohmu are lured into a stampede towards the valley, while simultaneously the God Warrior is unleashed by Kushana, to horrific effect. [The animation for the latter was done by a young Hideki Anno, who’d go on to become a master of the genre himself, best known for Neon Genesis Evangelion. In a 2006 Japanese poll, Evangelion was the only anime ranked ahead of Nausicaä as an all-time favourite] Our heroine puts herself in harm’s way in an effort to stop the carnage, and… Well, I won’t spoil it in detail; Miyazaki manages to pull off an ending which could easily have come off as contrived or ridiculous, and is instead emotionally satisfying. With even the Tolmekians forces humbled by nature, as environmental messages delivered by teenagers go, it’s certainly a great deal more effective than an angry Scandinavian shrieking “HOW DARE YOU!” at the audience.

Dir: Hayao Miyazaki
Star (voice): Sumi Shimamoto, Gorō Naya, Yōji Matsuda, Yoshiko Sakakibara

Naam Shabana

  By

★★★½
“Four for the price of one?”

If you took four different films, by four different directors, and edited them together into a single entity, you might end up something similar to this. Oh, make no mistake: I still enjoyed most of this. It just doesn’t feel like a coherent whole, perhaps because it is a spin-off involving some of the same characters from an earlier film, Baby. For at least three-quarters of it, however, not having seen its predecessor shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

The first chunk is perhaps the weakest, introducing us to the heroine, Shabana Khan (Pannu), a college student and judo expert, with something of a quick temper. She has just started going out with a new boyfriend, when they get into an altercation with some cat-calling men, which ends with him dead in the street. It’s all rather unconvincing, not least the early incident which does a very poor attempt to establish Shabana’s zero tolerance for harassment.

Things do improve significantly thereafter, for it turns out she was under observation by a shadowy arm of the Indian government as a possible agent. She’s contacted by Ranvir Singh (Bajpayee), who offers to help her take revenge on her boyfriend’s killers, if she comes to work for him. With the authorities apparently uninterested in the case, Shabana accepts, and the next section covers her vengeance, and subsequent training under Singh. This is likely when the film is at its best, taking an interesting concept and executing it with some energy and flair.

Shabana then vanishes from her own movie in the third quarter, as we return to the topic of international arms dealer Mikhail (Sukumaran) he was briefly glimpsed at the beginning, making short work of two Indian agents in Vienna. Authorities have tracked down his ally, Tony, and apply pressure, hoping to discover Mikhail’s location. However, it turns out Mikhail has been using the services of a doctor to change his appearance, making the task of locating him that harder, and it becomes a race against time before he changes again, and the trail is lost.

Which brings us to another switch in direction for the final section, in which Shabana is sent into the hospital where Mikhail is about to get plastic surgery, in order to assassinate him. Here, she’s teamed up with Ajay Singh (Kumar), who was apparently the hero of Baby. There was a point where it looked like he was going to take over – not that we’d have minded too much, as we’ve always enjoyed seeing Kumar in action (despite his creepy mustache here), but this is supposed to be an action heroine film. Fortunately, that’s where it ends up.

Despite feeling a bit like Nikita, a bit like Peppermint, a bit like Alias and a bit like a Jason Bourne movie, there’s plenty going on, and the running time feels considerably shorter than its 147 minutes. It helps that its heroine is made to look relatively plain, rather than the typically stunning Bollywood actress. 

Dir: Shivam Nair
Star: Taapsee Pannu, Akshay Kumar, Prithviraj Sukumaran, Manoj Bajpayee

No Tomorrow, by Luke Jennings

  By

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

“I’m just you without the guilt.”

As we recently discussed, the first book and first season of the TV series had some major differences. The second book does make a significant effort to narrow the gap. Indeed, by the end, we have almost got to the same point as at the end of the TV show, albeit by a rather different route. Then, just when I was expecting this to wrap up and set the stage for the second season, Jennings drops a major bomb. I have to say, well-played: I don’t think I’ve ever been quite as stunned by a twist in a novel before, yet thinking about what had gone before, it made perfect sense. I’m really curious to see whether the TV show follows suit, because if so – nothing will be quite the same again.

To that point, we had more of the cat-and-mouse games between the international assassin codenamed “Villanelle” [though these days, it’s basically her real name, with her true identity buried deeply in the past], and harried MI-5 operative Eve Polastri. The latter is struggling to balance her increasing obsession with Villanelle, and a husband who would greatly prefer it if she was not jetting off to Venice or Moscow at a moment’s notice, leaving him to open a tin of beans. Eve is very much a desk jockey, and not exactly suited to go head-to-head with a ruthless killer. Can wits and persistence counter cold-blooded psychopathy?

It was the twisted relationship between the two which separated the first book and the TV series, with the show having much more development in this area. Jennings said his approach to the second book was altered by the strong reaction of fans to the TV version, and you can tell: there are a couple of scenes which can only be described as fan service, apparently inspired by one notorious broadcast line [Villanelle’s confession to Eve, “I think about you, too. I mean, I masturbate about you a lot.”] This angle really doesn’t fit, considering Eve finished the first book literally tooling up to kill Villanelle, and I found it an abrupt and jarring shift in tone.

The rest of it though, is really well-done, from the explanation of The Twelve’s intent through to Eve’s dogged piecing together of her target’s identity. I read the whole thing in about 30 hours, which is far from my usual leisurely pace. Staying up late, waking up early, in front of the TV… I ripped through it, powered by Jennings’s great eye for description; particularly in terms of locations. Whether it’s attending a conference of neo-Nazis on an Alpine mountain-top or shivering in a cell, deep in the bowels of the infamous Lubyanka prison, the reader feels there.

The balance of the book also feels improved. The first was mostly about Villanelle, with Eve almost feeling like a supporting role; this time, it’s much more even. Indeed, the contrasts in the transitions between the two lead characters form some of the book’s most memorable imagery. For example, we jump from Villanelle prepping the ground by seducing her next target, Rinat, to following Eve on her way home from work:

“The sun is low in the sky, half obscured by oyster-pink cirrus clouds. Rinat turns to beckon to the waiter, but he’s already standing there, as patient an unobtrusive as an undertaker. In the bus, moving at a snail’s pace up the Tottenham Court Road, the only person to give Eve a second glance is an obviously disturbed man who winks at her persistently. It’s a warm evening and the interior of the bus smells of damp hair and stale deodorant.”

This bone-dry dark wit is fairly common, and the style with which Villanelle operates can only be applauded, making up for in quality of mayhem perhaps what the book lacks in quantity. I suspect she would make a fine Bond villain, with an eye for the grandiose and demonstrative over the purely functional [There’s an idea: with all the talk about diversity for 007, why have we never had a Mrs. Blofeld?] In the absence of that, Sunday nights can’t come quickly enough.

Author: Luke Jennings
Publisher: Mulholland Books, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 2 of 2 in the Codename: Villanelle series.