Tag: s

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

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★★★½
“Of Power Swords and Cat People”

When the reboot (you hardly can call this just a remake) of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power – and please note the plural form! – was released by Netflix in 2018, it immediately drew fierce criticism. The main issue was re-designing the classic character of heroine She-Ra as well as others. The original animated series ran from 1985-87, and featured very feminine-looking characters. You could call them the feminine ideal: large in size, fit, attractive and yet still more realistic than the musclebound hero from mother series He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, of which She-Ra was a spin-off.

Though it has to be said: those characters then looked very much alike, as if the same model was used for almost all of them. In the new show, which ran for 5 seasons between 2018-20, the characters look more like prepubescent teenagers, and it was one of the things old fans took issue with. She-Ra and her allies were once an ideal of what a young girl might hope to look like as a grown-up, similarly to Barbie. The reimagined version stresses more diversity in body-shape. The character of Glimmer is more rounded – arguably a bit over-weight – which drew ire, too. But these characters also look more androgynous, essentially eliminating the feminine ideal. We seem to live in a time when female characters aren’t allowed to look stereotypically female, though there seems no such problem with heroes e. g. Hugh Jackman in Deadpool & Wolverine.

The show was soon called “woke”, but this is only justified, in that it fits the usual Netflix inclusion rules. So, the character of Bow, the archer, is black and has two fathers; there are indications some characters have relationships with people of their own sex; there is a lizard person whom we are informed online is transgender; then there is heroine She-Ra, who at the very end of the series (similar to The Legend of Korra), enters a relationship with her constant frenemy, Catra. I personally didn’t mind, though it may have something to do with me never caring for She-Ra in the 80s. It makes a difference if you create an original character like Korra, or take a preexisting character and change them drastically. I would have a beef, too, if let’s say James Bond in his next incarnation would be declared homosexual.

Though woke? Is it woke? Well… not in the sense I normally understand the word. For me, it means an agenda is being pushed. I can’t really say I see this here, unless the agenda is to stress that people exist who are not hetero-normative. Which… is true? The focus is on the story; we don’t get characters demonstrating against being sexually or politically repressed by the evil patriarchy, or talking about the problems of their gender orientation in modern society. This is no more woke than The Dragon Prince, another popular Netflix show. Part of the attention is probably due to creator ND Stevenson, who has stated he is – according to Wikipedia – “nonbinary, transmasculine and bigender,” as well as having bipolar disorder and ADHD. Well, whatever it is, is reflected in Stevenson’s work, in She-Ra as well as Netflix animated movie Nimona, based on his graphic novel.

But what is the story?

The core is the same. Adora, a human girl, has been raised as a soldier by the Horde, an alien race ruled by the evil Hordak, who is at war with the inhabitants of the planet Etheria. When Adora finds the magical sword of power that makes her She-Ra, Princess of Power, she learns the Horde aren’t the good guys. She swaps sides to fight them, with the support of several princesses living on Etheria, who all have special powers. However, there is no mention here of Prince Adam (a.k.a. He-Man), Adora’s brother, separated from her at birth when she was kidnapped by the Horde. This fits the modern animated He-Man series released by Netflix in 2021, which was in a totally different drawing style – its characters wouldn’t have matched. And as far as I know – someone correct me, if I’m wrong here – Adora’s childhood was not part of the original story. I’m also unaware she shared a sisterly childhood bond with Catra, a humanoid with cat-like features, in the Horde.

For it’s here where the new show differs from the old stories. And is all the better for it, as the relationships of the characters inform the story of the new series and are essentially the core of it. As Adora leaves the Horde, she puts herself essentially in opposition to Catra. Like her, Catra has been a childhood protégé of Shadow Weaver, a mysterious woman with magical powers and loyal servant of Hordak. Shadow Weaver has raised the two girls but has always been lying to them and treating Catra badly compared to Adora. This plants the seed of a competitive relationship between the two girls. There are definitely shades of Avatar – The Last Airbender in this.

Catra sees Adora’s defection as a personal betrayal, which leads her to fight against Adora more and more. At the same time, it becomes clear that Catra cares – in her own twisted way – for Adora. Her actions are, in some way, a logical result of her upbringing by Shadow Weaver, who later in the proceedings will turn to Adora’s side, too. In the end, Catra is on Adora’s side, declaring her love, which finishes the story.

The series got a lot of praise for inclusivity and character reinvention and has a quite enthusiastic fan-base. Though I don’t see anything here, I hadn’t seen before somewhere else, especially in the Avatar series, as mentioned. It’s not surprising a show like Sailor Moon and the style of Miyazaki films (though I fail to recognize the latter in the show), were cited as influences. The fan-base here, which may mainly consist of “non-heterosexual oriented” young people is definitely not the same fan-base as the original series. So if the intent was to enlarge interest in the franchise in general, I guess one could say: Mission accomplished!

On the other hand, it’s clear this new spin on an old title has split fandom – or, rather, created a second fandom. This is not necessarily a good thing. It can result in embittered online wars and open hostility between members of different fan groups, both claiming ownership of “their story” and how it should be portrayed or interpreted. It’s not the only case. See franchises like Star Wars (George Lucas’ or the Disney version?) and Star Trek (“old Trek” vs. “new Trek”?). If you are as old as I am, you may even remember a time, long before Internet and personal computer communication existed, when people argued over if Kirk or Picard was the better captain, or Sean or Roger the better Bond. Change, it seems, always creates controversies. Therefore, the new show – as good as it is – has created a problem for the franchise that won’t be solved in a foreseeable future.

The plot is interesting and captivating, depicting a cycle of childhood abuse that repeats itself later, with Catra attacking Adora and others – just as she was mistreated and psychologically manipulated by Shadow Weaver when she was a young child. It gave the characters a depth you probably wouldn’t have expected, from a reboot of an old animated show – one that itself was just a spin-off of another show, made more than 30 years ago. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? We always expect “our” franchises to continue year after year, decade after decade, telling us the same stories without changing. But the world constantly changes, and you can’t expect series and franchises not to reflect that in some way. It’s especially true, if we talk about series lasting more than a generation.

What I also liked here very much, were the action scenes. When Catra was being evil-sarcastic to Adora it did remind me a bit of Shego being mean to Kim Possible, or Callisto toying with Xena (another… princess…). But it also has to be said that the show needed some time to get going, had some episodes that felt like fillers, and while characters like She-Ra, Catra, Shadow Weaver, Entrapta, Scorpia or Hordak were mostly written interestingly, others felt a bit bland, underdeveloped and interchangeable. Though it might be a given, if you have so many characters in one show. It is true, the show didn’t break new ground, though I didn’t expect it to. These reboots typically repackage an already existing product, despite presenting it to the audience as something entirely new. Is so much praise justified for a show that essentially is recycled? Just because the main characters come out as lesbians at the end?

Additionally, it has been pointed out that the redemption of Catra is more than just a bit questionable. [Though she isn’t the main villain of the show: it’s still Hordak, who in the original show was also the mentor of He-Man’s archenemy Skeletor.]  She has attacked and tried to kill Adora several times and went so far as wanting to destroy the entire world, rather than see Adora succeed in her goals. That’s pretty bad, and one wonders how such a character can just be forgiven. Admittedly, Etheria might have a different legislation and jurisdiction than planet Earth! But someone put it quite well: “Catra is a war criminal. Why is she not being treated as one?”

In the end the show is indeed comparable to Sailor Moon – it’s all in the name and power of love and forgiveness. Who wants to question logic here? For all its perceived “controversial” elements and flaws, the show is good entertainment, which is where my main focus always lies. Netflix’s streaming rival, Amazon, announced a while ago they wanted to do a live-action She-Ra series (recent news reports suggest it may be He-Man’s turn next). This caused something of an uproar among the fans of the Netflix show, obviously fearing She-Ra may become straight again! It’s history repeating, similar to the reactions of original series fans when they first saw the Netflix show. Though if indeed that She-Ra show is produced, its story-telling will have to match the quality of this one.

But it seems you can never make everyone happy at the same time!

Creator: ND Stevenson
Star (voice) : Aimee Carrero, AJ Michalka, Karen Fukuhara, Marcus Scribner

Surrounded

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★★★
“Putting the stage in stagecoach.”

This is certainly a little different from the usual Western. It takes place a few years after the conclusion of the Civil War. Mo Washington (Wright) is on her way to Colorado to take up a piece of land she bought with her hard-earned savings. To avoid trouble on the journey, she is dressed as a man, though being black is problematic enough at that time. The stagecoach in which she’s travelling – or rather, on which, the driver not wanting a Negro inside – is attacked by brigands, led by notorious bank-robber Tommy Walsh (Bell). After a fierce fight, Walsh is captured, but the coach, complete with Mo’s documents, plunges off a cliff. 

The good news? There’s a ten thousand dollar bounty on Walsh’s head, and Washington is left to guard the fugitive while another passenger, Wheeler (Donovan), goes to fetch the authorities. The bad news? That leaves her alone with Walsh overnight, and there are others interested in the fugitive, including those after the reward, and the remaining members of the Walsh gang. Because he’s the only one who knows the whereabouts of the very large pile of loot, resulting from their last robbery. Mo is going to have to figure out who she can trust. For instance, is Walsh’s offer, to split the loot if she frees him, legit? It would certainly more than cover the losses she suffered when her Colorado land went over the edge.

As with the Hong Kong movies which use the gender disguise thing, it does require a large suspension of disbelief. As soon as Wright opens her mouth, any illusion of her being able to pass for male goes out the window of the stagecoach. On the other hand, gender is almost irrelevant as things unfold. I suspect eliminating the need for concealment would not have helped the intended moral here. The racial element however, is much more pertinent, with Mo having literally walked off her owner’s plantation. Yet there’s more in common with Walsh then it initially appears. Well, providing you accept at face value and trust his story, about being orphaned at age eight by robber land barons. Which might or might not be wise.

It’s in their scenes together where the film is at its strongest, even if they’re just sitting by the campfire, talking. If it feels almost like a play, this is still engrossing, two actors in prime form. Less successful is the arrival of a third party, not least because this leads to a poorly-staged fight, unfolding in near total darkness, where it was impossible to see what was happening. Maybe it worked better in the cinema? At home, it severely took me out of the experience, staring at a blank screen. Fortunately, this recovers to a decent finale, with Mo deciding she is the only person she can truly trust. In the end though, her character seems less fully-rounded than Walsh, despite, or perhaps because of, all the talk. As a result, this only intermittently fulfills its undeniable potential. 

Dir: Anthony Mandler
Star: Letitia Wright, Jamie Bell, Jeffrey Donovan, Michael Kenneth Williams

Snow White and the Seven Samurai

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★★½
“That whirring sound? Akira Kurosawa, spinning in his grave.”

I added an extra half-star here out of how much I was entertained by this. Although this was more a result of us yelling things at the screen than any intrinsic merits. The idea is kinda cool, but if you can’t think of ways this should have been improved  you are simply not trying. Anya Voight (Dorn) is known as ‘Snow White’, because her father, Joseph (Eric Roberts),  is a coke dealer. He’s killed by a mysterious assassin, and when his will is read, her jealous stepmom, Quinn (Vitori), is highly annoyed to discover Anya will be the one inheriting the business, and has plans to go legitimate. 

She sends her mysterious assassin (Jackson) to kill her stepdaughter, but he is driven off by Luna (Tellone), the leader of a sect of onna-musha, female samurai. Once numerous, they got into an ill-advised was with organized crime, and are now only seven in number, each a specialist in a different weapon. They agree to teach Anya, so she can take revenge on Quinn for killing Joseph. Cue the training montage! There is also a subplot where Quinn is trying to eliminate the three other bosses with which her late husband had partnered. However, this is functionally useless, and one of the avenues for improvement would have been eliminating this thread entirely. Spend the time instead, giving more than two of the samurai adequate character depth, for example. 

For if this had gone the way of The Asylum’s Mercenaries, it would also have helped. Cast seven women who know one end of a katana from the other, instead of… maybe one and a half? Give us something like Lady Bloodfight. Instead, while there’s no shortage of action – the final assault on Anya’s former home takes up much of the final third – very little of it makes an impact, save an unexpected twist regarding Joseph’s death. Vitori is fun to watch, really getting her teeth into the “evil stepmother” role. Hardly anyone else makes a significant impression. This is why we were forced to make our own entertainment, e.g. yelling “How not to be seen”, every time someone with a mask showed up. Which was frequently – largely to allow for recycling actors, I suspect.

Jackson, best known as an MMA fighter, obviously makes for a formidable opponent, though his role is almost wordless and doesn’t merit the above the title billing he receives on the cover. I’m fine with that: the problem is more that the film needs someone as a protagonist who can hold our attention, as well as a sword. Sadly, Dorn isn’t good enough in either category. Tellone might have made a slightly better lead actress, though that wouldn’t help problems in the script, such as the way Anya goes from fencing amateur to professional samurai, in only a few days. The best thing about this is the title, and disappointment thereafter is almost inevitable.

Dir: Michael Su
Star: Fiona Dorn, Gina Vitori, Sunny Tellone, Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson

Support and Defend, by Vannetta Chapman

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

It’s funny. You wait ages for an action heroine novel set in Arizona, then two show up at once. Right on the heels of The Killing Game, we have this, which takes place almost entirely in this state’s most iconic location, the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately, this story falls well short of iconic. In fact, it struggles to reach mediocre, though in its defense, I didn’t realize while reading it, this is the second book in the series. I usually have a rule against starting series in the middle, because they tend to build on what has gone before. So perhaps the flaws here might be rectified if I’d read book one, Her Solemn Oath?

That’s being charitable, and I’m not exactly energized towards finding out. It doesn’t feel like a lack of background is the problem, more a heroine who is too flawed to work. She is Allison Quinn, a special agent for the FBI, who seems to have so much baggage, it feels she should be followed around by her own, personal bellhop. Her father was murdered when she was nine, and twenty-six years later, she’s still obsessed with finding the killer. Allison’s dedication to solving her current case, is largely a result of it potentially offering information that might help with that lifelong crusade. Somehow this seems to have entirely escaped everyone at the FBI.

As has Quinn’s acrophobia, which would make her a singularly unsuitable candidate for a mission involving the mile-deep hole which is the Grand Canyon. Oh, well. She’s going down there anyway, seeking a terrorist nicknamed “Blitz”. He’s involved with a group called Anarchists for Tomorrow, who have a plan to sabotage the nation’s electrical grid, with the aim of sending America back to a pre-surveillance era. There are some kill codes which could stop the attack in Blitz’s possession, and he’s going to hand them over to a buyer. For reasons that are vague, he’s doing so on a river rafting trip at the bottom of the Canyon, and so Allison must descend, with the help of Park Ranger Tate Garcia, and stop the hand-off from happening. 

None of the terrorists’ plot makes much sense, and I’ve been working in IT for approaching forty years. Nor is its unravelling here told in a particularly exciting fashion: the descent into the Grand Canyon seems to take place in real time, and doesn’t serve much point. Chapman does seem to have done her homework, and it feels like there is a decent sense of location (I’ve only peered into the Canyon, never gone into it). But this rapidly becomes more of a slog, with problems of pacing, a climax which left me genuinely flicking ahead to see if that was really it (sadly, it was), and a lengthy coda, serving no significant purpose. As an Arizona resident, I’m somewhere between disappointed and embarrassed.

Author: Vannetta Chapman
Publisher: Independently published, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 2 of 3 in the Allison Quinn thriller series.

Supergirl, on its 40th anniversary

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★★★
“Revisiting the original Maid of Might”

Before Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow arrives on our screens in 2026, starring Milly Alcock from House of the Dragon in the title role, I thought, it would be a good time to revisit the original Supergirl movie, which was released in the United States forty years ago this month. So what is Supergirl? A campy trash/cult classic? A fine, forgotten superhero movie? A guilty pleasure? A lame forgettable flop of the 80s? Hopefully, after reading this review you’ll be able to make your own, well-informed judgment!

Originally, the character of Superman’s cousin was supposed to appear in Superman III, but after a new script was written, the character was moved to her own movie. Alexander and Ilya Salkind, the producers who had given Superman life on the big screen in form of Christopher Reeve, probably thought they might score as big with Supergirl as they had with the first two Superman movies. Unfortunately, when Superman III came out in 1983 it was heavily criticized, and fell well below financial expectations, which caused Warner Brothers to give distribution rights to the Salkinds, who would sell it to Tri-Star.

It may not have been the best move, for it seems the film got little marketing (though did get a royal premiere in Britain), and was also sharply edited down. It’s a bit difficult to be certain how many versions of the film exist, but three are well-known: 1) The theatrical cut that runs a bit over 90 minutes. 2) The international version, also called “European theatrical”, though that did not come out in German cinemas. 3) The so-called director’s cut of 138 minutes, which is overly long, especially by 80’s standards. Nowadays, you’re happy when a big movie doesn’t exceed the 2-½ hour mark. How times have changed!

The box-office also ended far, far below expectations and resulted in the Salkinds selling their rights to make any further Superman-related movies. Which is… kind of regrettable, I think, because this movie is not half as bad as it is usually made out to be. I’ll go into its obvious flaws later. But what is the story about? Introducing Supergirl to the film world was not so easy. After all, we had all seen Superman’s home world Krypton blow up in the original movie. But the film actually followed, without really explaining how scientists did it, the original comics which introduced Supergirl in 1959. Argo City, home of Kara Zor-El’s (Slater), was saved from the catastrophe that befell Krypton and in the film survived in “inner space”, whatever that might be – today we would probably call this another dimension.

Here, Kara lives with her parents, other families and scientist mentor Zaltar (Peter O’Toole). The parents are played by Mia Farrow and Simon Ward in cameos; obviously the producers wanted to give Supergirl the same support, with famous or well-known actors, as they did for the Man of Steel. After losing the Omegahedron, the power source of the city, Kara follows it via unexplained Kryptonian technology to our Earth to bring it back. Unfortunately, evil wanna-be witch, quack doctor and esoteric Selena (Dunaway) has taken it with plans to conquer the world. Their mutual interest in young gardener Ethan (Bochner) and Kara’s need to conceal her real identity, going by the alias of school girl Linda Lee, complicate matters further.

From that summary, you should be clued in to what the movie is. It’s a loose repackaging of the Superman story; though some aspects are different here, at the core it’s the same. Maybe this was one of the reasons why the movie failed to attract audiences. But the story and some characters chosen for it come with problems too. While Superman could still be seen as science fiction, Supergirl seems more like a fantasy movie. While Clark Kent’s continuous attempts to dupe Lois that he is Superman were used in the original two movies to wonderfully hilarious effect, this aspect doesn’t appear here at all.

Then again, how could it? Supergirl has just arrived on Earth, differently to Superman. Christopher Reeve’s Superman was originally heavily involved in the script but Reeve politely declined; maybe he didn’t want to play second fiddle to someone else? So the script was rewritten, with Superman on a “special mission” in another galaxy. Neither her room mate – who happens to be the younger sister of Lois Lane – nor Jimmy Olsen, the only character from the Superman movies to appear, know her, so there can be no “A-ha!” moment. Nor can love-struck gardener Ethan see that the brunette school girl he was just talking to, is also the blonde girl in the super-dress. Whoever wrote this should get a “D-” in basic logic. At least Superman changed totally in behavior and wore glasses when he played Clark Kent. Here, there is no believable excuse for it.

The film has other problems. One is a lot of unnecessary characters that are neither needed, nor add anything essential to the plot. It’s especially apparent with actors probably cast for their comedic talents. Peter Cook, often well-matched with Dudley Moore on stage and film, might be a good comedian but is totally unfunny here. The same goes for Brenda Vaccaro as Dunaway’s sidekick: compare her to Ned Beatty’s Otis, alongside Gene Hackman, and you’ll see how ineffective Vaccaro’s role is here. I’ve already mentioned Lucy Lane and Jimmy Olsen. Why are they here? What do they add to the story? Do they do anything that has an impact?

Trimming should have happened in the writing phase. If they would have eliminated, reduced or at least given these characters something of meaning to do in the plot, the movie might have been much better. Additionally, there is a side-plot of female bullies picking on Kara, seeming only to serve the purpose of showing that Kara has the same heat-vision as her cousin. Other strange decisions were made by the screenwriter, and slid past the producer and director. When Kara lands on Earth the first people she meets are two drunk, wannabe rapists who try to molest her. Hurray for feminism, I guess, as Kara shows them that a Kryptonian teen can defend herself. It’s an ill-fitting scene in a movie apparently intended to be family- and kid-friendly. Wonder Woman 1984 also had such a stupid, distracting scene. So either there is something I  don’t understand, or film directors and screenwriters have not learned much over the four decades between the movies!

Also, the “love story” between Ethan and Kara is essentially a “non-love story”. His love for her is induced by Selena’s magical potion, who wants the man for herself. If the first person Ethan saw after waking up had been a cow, would he have fallen in love with a cow? The length of the movie was already criticized when it originally came out, even though it was shorter at the time. And the version that I knew from seeing the movie in the late eighties on German TV was even shorter. You can hardly expect a movie, of whatever quality, that has been edited down so much to still make much sense at all.

It’s no surprise O’Toole and Dunaway were nominated for Razzie Awards, though it’s not all their fault. Obviously, director Jeannot Szwarc had no problem with Dunaway going as campy as she wanted. It’s a pity because her role could have been convincing or even menacing, played straight. There is no doubt Dunaway, with a fine reputation of playing difficult characters, could have given a good, villainous performance. Heck, she already played a first class femme fatale in the Musketeer movies for the Salkinds in the 70’s. Of course when you go camp, you can hardly blame Dunaway for trying to repeat what Gene Hackman successfully did as Lex Luthor, But you have to be really funny, something that worked for the Hackman-Beatty pairing but not here.

O’Toole has only two significant scenes in the movie, at the beginning and the end. His performance in the first seems a bit uninspired and odd. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was drunk while doing it; the actor was famous for this, like Richard Burton or Oliver Reed. The second, where Zaltar seems to have given up all hope and sacrifices himself for Kara, is quite well done and touching. Although a strange decision was made in the German dubbing, where someone came up with the idea of casting the German voice of Clint Eastwood for him!

For all the negatives I have listed, there are quite a few positives, shining bright in this movie pursued by bad luck. Helen Slater probably gave the performance of her career. She is really, really good playing the female version of the true-blue hero, as well as the innocent-looking big-eyed teenager in Argo City, and her cute school girl role of Linda Lee. Slater was even nominated for a Saturn Award for her performance. If the film had been better – or at least financially successful – maybe she could have had a similar career to the one Christopher Reeve enjoyed due to his Superman role? Alas, it wasn’t to be…

The special effects of the film may look dated today – and they are. But considering all of it was before the advent of CGI, digital and computer effects, it’s impressive what could be achieved by in-camera-tricks, visual illusions, miniature and composite effects. Sure, a lot of effects could be simply generated on the computer today. But even a cardboard photo cut-out of Supergirl, drawn quickly out of the water, is astonishingly effective and can only be recognized for what it is today, due to DVDs and Blu-Rays. How do you show Supergirl almost torn to pieces by a monster in 1984? At that time all the filmmakers had were some distortion effects by a changed perspective – nevertheless, it works, and there are some very nice effects.

As kitschy as it seems, I personally loved the aerial ballet of Supergirl when she arrives. For the first time too, we get to see the Phantom Zone: it’s constantly mentioned in the Superman movies, but here it is actually a set in Britain’s Pinewood studios (used for many Bond movies), and must have been one helluva work to create. Selena’s traps and the shaking, fiery ground are impressive, as are her manipulations in the abandoned event park. My favourite effect might be Kara fighting an invisible monster which you only can recognize by its impact on the environment, e.g. giant footprints on the ground, breaking fences, etc. This seems directly inspired by the classic “ID” monster from Forbidden Planet.

All in all, the effects were as good as possible at the time, so shouldn’t be judged by today’s standards. The film in addition boasts great production design, luscious exterior shots, a well-timed tractor-on-the-loose action sequence, appropriate and good-looking costumes (especially for Dunaway), all of which are undeniable pluses. Then there is the – as always – great Jerry Goldsmith score which makes up more than half of the movie’s atmosphere. It’s especially impressive, considering I could hardly imagine anyone else being able to step in the shoes of John Williams, who scored the original Superman score.

Supergirl is still not a great comic book superhero movie. Nor a bad one: more somewhat mediocre, but kind of sympathetic. As mentioned, the movie had bad luck, being both too late and too early. Too late, as it seems audiences had started to grow tired of the whole Superman circus: within six years people had been exposed to four Superman-related movies. The “All-American” hero had become kind of passé with Schwarzenegger, Stallone and co. introducing the new, harder and gritty anti-hero who would dominate the screens for the next decade. Alternatively, you had more goofy heroes like Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop or the Ghostbusters. A simple, straightforward hero didn’t fit into this time anymore.

But the movie might have been too early as well. At that time, audiences were simply not interested in female comic book heroes as flops like Red Sonja, Sheena and Brenda Starr proved again and again. Even a further attempt in the early 2000s with Elektra, Catwoman and the like failed. It’s only recently that movies like Black Widow, Captain Marvel or Wonder Woman are really scoring big at the box-office. This was also before the “girl power” era. In the late 90s and early 2000s, with TV shows like Charmed, Buffy, Xena, Kim Possible and movies like The Craft, Mean Girls or Legally Blonde, a movie about a school girl fighting an evil, powerful witch could have scored big – but well… not in the 80s!

So… maybe “Supergirl” was just a bit ahead of its time. Judge for yourself.  What about my interest in the movie? Well, I saw photos of it in film magazines, years after it was in cinemas. At that time the movie had not been shown on TV and my family had no VCR yet. All I had was some photos and my imagination to tell me what the movie might be about. For me the film belongs in the category of enjoyable fantasy movies of the 1980s together with fare like The Neverending Story or Highlander. That photo of young Helen Slater with her clenched fist, flying with the glowing sun in the background, still hangs on my wall! So I may be a bit biased concerning the film. But aren’t we all regarding our favourites?

Dir: Jeannot Szwarc
Star: Helen Slater, Faye Dunaway, Hart Bochner, Peter Cook

The Shadow Strays

  By

★★★★½
“Dog eat dog”

Director Tjahjanto gave us one of the best action films of the last decade in The Night Comes For Us, a gory and relentless assault of jaw-dropping hand-to-hand mayhem. Follow-up, The Big 4, was a little underwhelming, but I was still stoked to hear about this, in which he puts a heroine front and centre. This is perhaps a step or two short of Night – it’s clear the lead here is not a lifelong practitioner of martial arts like Joe Taslim and Iko Uwais. However, it’s the best film I’ve reviewed on this site in 2024, likely edging out Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, through a combination of sheer force of will and arterial spray.

The Shadows are a sect of assassins, who are basically unstoppable. 13 (Ribero) is a teenage trainee, who screws up a mission in Japan alongside her instructor, Umbra (Malasan), and barely survives. 13 gets put on administrative leave, and her enforced idleness is where the problems start. In a thread strongly reminiscent of Leon, she watches a neighbour get killed by a gang, and takes care of the son, Monji. However, he vanishes, apparently abducted by the gang, and 13 isn’t standing for that. Beginning by turning low-level enforcer, Jeki (Emmanuel), she works her way up the power structure, which goes right to the top of Indonesian political society. The resulting chaos threatens to expose the Shadows, so Umbra is then dispatched to terminate their rogue agent.

This runs a chunky 144 minutes – just a handful shorter than Furiosa – which seems a fair while for a martial-arts film. The Raid 2 and John Wick 4 are the only ones which come to mind as longer. But I can’t say this particularly felt like it; there’s not much slack. We open with the absolutely blood-drenched Japanese operation, which sets the tone early. To be honest, it does such a good job, most of what follows falls slightly short. Ribero is a model and singer, and it feels like Tjahjanto underlights a lot of scenes to help paper over this. But then there’s the final battle, between 13 and Umbra. It’s likely behind only Crouching Tiger as my favorite female vs. female fight ever: utterly relentless, and brutal as hell.

It is a little less impressive in between the fights: originality is, as noted previously, not necessarily the film’s strongest suit. Other threads are set up and them ignored, such as the Shadows’ miraculous serum, which is used by Umbra to resuscitate 13 in Japan, and never mentioned again. Maybe it’ll play more of a part in the sequel, to which the ending strongly hints, bringing in a face familiar to fans of Indonesian action. I’d love to see it, since this is definitely pushing the boundaries of action heroine cinema, in all the right ways. While imperfect, at its best this is enough to make me consider introducing a six-star rating, because it goes places I’ve never seen. When it does, the results are glorious.

Dir: Timo Tjahjanto
Star: Aurora Ribero, Kristo Immanuel, Hana Malasan, Taskya Namya

The Solid-State Shuffle, by Jeffrey A. Ballard

  By

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

There’s an interesting setting here, and the concept isn’t bad. However, the author is flat-out terrible at explaining things, and that derails the book badly. There were entire pages which seemed to be an written almost in another language, such was the level of technological gobbledygook spouted – and I write as someone who works in the field. Too often, it felt as though the writer was using technology as an alternative to magic: whatever needed to be done, there seemed to be some gadget, gizmo or app which the heroine or her allies could whip out to perform the necessary task. 

This takes place in a future America where the coastal areas have fallen to the rising sea levels; for example, much of what was Seattle, is now under water. Into this largely submerged city comes Isa, the leader of a trio of thieves who had to high-tail it away from the East coast for reasons that are unexplained. They’ve now set up in Seattle, and we first encounter them robbing the vault of a bank that is now under water (literally, rather than in the financial sense!). They successfully heist an SSD drive, intending to loot the cryptocurrency they believe is on it. Except, it doesn’t contain money. Worse still, it belongs to Colvin, the local boss of criminal activity. Strike three? He then hires Isa and her team to recover his stolen property and find out who’s responsible.

The suddenly sticky situation results, obviously, in the trio having to execute a lot of fancy footwork, in order to find out who set them up, and play the reverse Uno card. Unfortunately, this is where the author loses the plot (again, literally). There are real drives, fake drives and copies of drives whizzing around between the various factions, like a game of three-card monte. And just like three-card monte, once you’ve lost track, you’re probably going to lose interest. I know I did, and the story limped towards the (largely predictable) finish line thereafter, with only the characters doing much to sustain interest, and that in a split decision.

For all of the three are problematic. Isa, who’s the main protagonist and the first person perspective, is a mouthy bitch to put it mildly. It’s a personality trait which gets her into trouble and renders her mostly unlikable, since the targets of her poison tongue are not always deserving. Then there’s Winn, her lover and newest member of the gang, who is too angsty for my tastes, suffering a perpetual crisis of conscience over their activities. Finally, we have Puo, who is the technical support. I just wish the tech support people I have to work with were one-tenth as supernaturally competent, managing to get the drop on even those supposedly more skilled. At least the author ended the story without a cliffhanger. Take your positives where you can.

Author: Jeffrey A. Ballard
Publisher: New Rochester Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 5 in the Sunken City Capers series.

Deep Fear

  By

★★
“Shallow entertainment”

Naomi (Ghenea) is sailing a schooner single-handed in the Caribbean, returning it from Antigua to Grenada so it’ll be ready for a charter customer to take out. Her boyfriend, Jackson (Westwick) has already gone ahead to prepare things there. But a squall diverts Naomi off course, and she then stumbles across boat wreckage to which Maria (Gómez) and Jose (Coppet) are desperately clinging. They tell her there’s still a survivor trapped on the sea bottom, and Naomi dives down to rescue Tomas from his watery tomb. However, on returning to the surface with him, she gets a nasty surprise and finds her work is not over. For the survivors were also transporting 200 kg of cocaine.

Naomi is now key to salvaging it, whether she wants to be or not. Complicating matters is the presence of a large, predatory shark prowling the area, which makes simply going up and down from the sea bottom a perilous endeavour. Especially after one such encounter, where we get the immortal line, “The shark bit into the bags and now the shark is probably high on cocaine.” Sadly, hopes that this was going to become a sequel to Cocaine Bear never materialized [there is a film out there called Cocaine Shark, but it’s so bad, even a hardened connoisseur of badfilm like I, couldn’t get through the trailer] . Instead, there’s just an awful lot of sub-aqua shenanigans, and there’s really only so much SCUBA-ing I can take.

I will say, it all looks lovely. Malta actually stood in for the Caribbean, and if you’re looking for a picturesque tourist destination, combining beautiful scenery with clear water, it seems a good bet. However, as a thriller, it’s distinctly lacking in thrills, whether it’s a shark whose diet seems exclusively to consist of the bad people, through a cast for whom English is not their native tongue in many cases, to a heroine whose lips appear recently to have encountered a swarm of wasps [I note Ghenea’s credit in Zoolaander 2 as “Hot Shepherdess”]. The pacing is also off, especially early, when irrelevancies like Naomi and Jackson renting an apartment show up, serving no apparent purpose except delaying her arrival on the scene.

Gómez, whom you might remember from SexyKiller, is likely the best element the film has to offer, switching from cowering victim to manipulative sociopath. For instance, Maria conceals her nautical skills because if Naomi realizes she’s surplus to requirements after bringing up the coke, she might not be willing to do so. That kind of smarts is something the film needs to have more, ideally replacing the apparently endless amounts of moist mischief. I did like how the shark attacks don’t hold back on the blood, something you don’t see often. However, the creature rarely feels more than a toothy plot-device, thrown into scenes whenever the film-makers run out of other ways to generate tension. And that is far too often, to be honest.

Dir: Marcus Adams
Star: Mãdãlina Ghenea, Ed Westwick, Macarena Gómez, Stany Coppet

The Squad

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★★½
“#SquadGoals: Try not to suck.”

I was braced for this to be terrible, based on IMDb user comments which were either scathing, or came from accounts with one review – a sure sign they were astroturfed. On that basis, I guess I was pleasantly surprised. Don’t get me wrong: it’s not great, and only occasionally brushes against good. But it’s semi-competent, at least once the director calms the hell down, and stops giving us musical montages in lieu of content. The titular trio are Gina (Carrasquillo), Bella (Hansinger), and Dani (Evans), orphans who grew up together and have now turned to a life of crime. In particular, this spring break is spent by a lake in Oklahoma, seeking to muscle in on the local drug trade.

If you have ever seen Ozark, you will know that such activities are never received kindly, and it’s not long before the expected trouble shows up. This is most notably in the shape of rival drug dealar J.C. (UFC fighter Avila), but she is only the tip of the problem-shaped iceberg. People want The Squad out of the way, and/or to provide the source of their supplies. Double-crosses, backstabbings, police activity, abductions, rescue and a fairly significant body count follow as a result, though largely in a by the numbers approach, all the way to an ending that is clearly hoping for this to become a franchise. I would not be holding my breath for this to come to fruition, shall we say.

The three leads are both the best thing this has to offer, and its biggest problem. They’re photogenic, and spent much of the time wearing bikinis, which is not a chore for this viewer. However, when it comes to being convincing drug dealers, the results are much less consistent. It’s only now and again that they succeed in projecting the necessary sense of threat when facing off against their rivals: Gina probably does best in this department. The rest of the time they feel more like coeds cosplaying as drug lords, and seem about as dangerous pushers as Ed from Shaun of the Dead. The whole orphan thing feels like padding, despite the short running time of seventy-eight minutes.

To a certain degree, it feels like it wants to be Charlie’s Angels for bad girls, though regrettably, seems more inspired by the “gritty” reboot version, than the fluffy concoction of the original movie. It’s also hampered by the lack of personality to be found here: there is only one character, sliced up thinly and divided across the three protagonists, where again, Gina seems to have co-opted the lioness’s share of proceedings. Despite a plot that does keep moving forward – occasionally, a little too forward – the action is nothing special, with the trio ending up having to be rescued by a man on more than one occasion. Not exactly empowering. Looks better than it sounds, and I think that applies to almost every aspect of this.

Dir: Rick Walker
Star: Meghan Carrasquillo, Alea Hansinger, Grace Evans, Julia Avila

Special Delivery

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★★½
“Good only in car parts.”

Based on the trailer, I was hoping for something like a Korean version of The Transporter. It seemed to promise this, with Jang Eun-ha (Park) playing a courier for Baekgang Industries, a company who will transport things – mostly people, it appears – from Point A to Point B, when regular delivery methods are not possible. For example, because the passenger in question is being chased by enemies, and needs to make a quick exit from the country before he’s found. Her latest mission involves baseball pitcher Kim Doo-shik, who has blown the whistle on a match-fixing scandal, so needs to escape before those behind it get hold of him and young son Kim Seo-won (Jung).

So far, so sprightly, especially after an enthralling early sequence which showcases Eun-ha’s mad driving skills in avoiding pursuers through the narrow streets of Busan. However, the attempted pick-up of Kim Sr. goes badly awry, as he’s being chased by Jo Kyung-pil (Song). Jo is a corrupt cop who is also behind the gambling ring involved in the match-fixing. Eun-ha ends up in possession of Seo-won, and… Hang on, didn’t we write about three different versions of this story in October 2022? Yeah, for much of the rest of the film is basically another take on Gloria. Brash, beer-drinking Eun-ha is lumbered with a kid whom she cannot initially stand, yet inevitably, comes to care for Seo-won over the remaining course of the film.

Now, this isn’t all that different from The Transporter, where Jason Statham was also lumbered with an unwanted human package, in his case Shu Qi. However, there, it was the jumping off point for some cool and generally entertaining action, e.g. the classic garage fight, involving a well-oiled Statham. Here, not nearly so much, even though Jo is keen to get hold of the kid, who has a computer dongle which is key to the recovery of $30 million. While this could have been the source of multiple exciting car-chases – and as the opening shows, technically, the makers were more than capable – it feels as if director Park is more interested in how suddenly enforced maternal responsibility changes his heroine. I can’t say I’m with him there.

The concept can work, but seems incredibly trite here, and doesn’t help matters that Seo-won is a very generic child, with little personality compared, say, to Newt in Aliens, or Mathilda in The Professional. Consequently, Eun-ha’s decision not to drop the child off at the nearest police-station seems contrived for plot purposes, rather than resulting from a natural release of suppressed nurturing emotions. It’s well-enough assembled that it never becomes unwatchable, yet proceedings remain just that: assembled. It’s not without merit, since both protagonist and antagonist make for interesting characters. But it the end, Chris described it as “cute,” and that’s borderline damning with faint praise in her vocabulary – one step above “interesting.” I can’t honestly say she was wrong in her assessment.

Dir: Park Dae-min
Star: Park So-dam, Song Sae-byeok, Kim Eui-sung, Jung Hyeon-jun