009-1: The End of the Beginning

★★★★
“Spy vs. Spy”

seal009-1Partly to celebrate the 75th birthday of its late creator, Shotaro Ishinomori, the first live-action feature adaptation of his spy series 009-1 was made – it had previously been made into a TV show, during the late sixties, and a 12-episode anime series in 2006. This version was helmed by Sakamoto, best known for his work on the action in Kamen Rider and Power Rangers, but we’ve been a fan since his involvement in 1997’s Drive, with Mark Dacascos, whose fights still hold up very well today. And this is almost as much fun, combining bone-crunching action with more philosophical insights, into what it means to be human.

The heroine is Mylene (Iwasa), an orphan who was recruited by a Japanese spy group, and transformed into a cyborg superagent, equipped with enhanced senses as well as weapons in unusual places. We first see in her action dismantling a black market organ trafficking ring, and her next mission is to rescue Dr. Clyne, a scientist who was her cyber-“mother”. However, when she discovers Chris (Kinomoto), one of the victims she freed from the organ traffickers, in Clyne’s hands, awkward questions begin to be raised. When she goes off book, and is stripped of her 00 status, Mylene finds herself being hunted both by the bad guys, not the least of whom is played by Nagasawa, and her erstwhile agency allies.

While slightly more restrained on the nudity front, this feels like it could be another entry in the Naked series of movies from Hong Kong started by Naked Killer, sharing a similarly heady combination of sex and violence. Only slightly though, most obviously perhaps the sequence near the end where the heroine, wearing what can only be described as a bondage bra, is tied up and licked from toe to head by someone who’s a convincing simulacrum of her mother. Years of therapy beckon for that, me thinks. But if not perhaps fun for all the family, the action is excellent, and there is plenty to go around, with a laudable number of the chief participants on both sides being female: it’s also pretty messy, though the impact is lessened by the obvious use of CGI for much of the blood (albeit, far from all!). Fortunately, that doesn’t extend to the action, which is almost all in camera, with some stunt doubling that is kept nicely plausible.

In the interests of full disclosure, I have not consumed any of the other versions, so I cannot say how this compares to those, or the original manga. What I can say is, on its own terms, this is more than satisfactory, providing a slickly-produced piece of quality entertainment that contains plenty of hard-hitting action. The universe created certainly has room for further exploration, and I’m hoping this is successful enough that we get to see more of it.

Dir: Koichi Sakamoto
Star: Mayuko Iwasa. Minehiro Kinomoto, Nao Nagasawa, Mao Ichimichi

Maidroid 2: Maidroid vs. Hostroids

★★★
“Maid in Japan”

maidroidPart one was deemed by the qualification panel as falling short of the necessary minimum level for inclusion here, being a mix of poignant drama about an elderly man whose lifelong companion’s battery is running down, and porn. The sequel, however, just about does enough to qualify, albeit while retaining a hefty dose of the latter aspect – and you don’t need to have seen part one either. Here, disgruntled scientist Professor Uegusa (Horiken) hatches a plan to destroy the appearance-based culture of romance, and to finance this sends out his “hostroids”, attractive male androids, in a variety of guises, e.g. office manager, door-to-door salesman, etc. to seduce woman and bilk them of their savings. He also sends them to kill rival researcher Dr. Kouenji, who had been building a countermeasure, in the form of a maid android, Maria (Yoshizawa). Before his death, Kouenji sends Maria to geeky student Shotarou (Haraguchi), but she isn’t ready, needing her “love circuit” activated before she can attain her full potential needed to defeat Uegusa and the hostroids. Can Shotarou manage that final step before the hostroids take him and Maria down?

After a fairly wobbly opening period, where it looks like the balance is going to tilt firmly towards the fleshly, this recovers nicely, demonstrating a nice sense of absurd humour, and with good lead performances from Yoshiwaza and Haraguchi. Shotarou comes over as likeable but lonely, rather than dysfunctional, and (whether by accident or design!) Yoshisawa’s stilted performance is perfect for Maria – a name which is an obvious nod to perhaps the first cinematic female robot, from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. It poses an interesting moral question too: you would think Shotarou would be right behind Uegusa’s plan, but the moral appears to be, that there’s something for everyone. Admittedly, it is somewhat undermined by Maria being emotionally attached to whoever is the first person she sees after being activated, but let’s not get into a discussion of free will in artificially created life-forms, shall we?

The action is limited, this clearly not being Yoshisawa’s forte, but is enlivened by imagination; for example, her maid head-band transforms into a lethal sword, and the hostroids have drill weapons that are… Well, I trust there’s no need for a diagram. After the film hits its stride (which takes maybe 15 of its 64 minutes), this manages to achieve a nice level, acknowledging the obviously prurient interests of the viewer, without pandering to them excessively. In a surprising twist, I actually found myself… Well, I wouldn’t go as far as “caring about”, but let’s say, “not entirely disinterested in” the protagonists and their fate, which is a rare occurrence in a movie of this kind. Maybe it’s just seeing this after the hell of Cat Girl, but by no means was this as terrible as I thought it might be.

Dir: Naoyuki Tomomatsu
Star: Akiho Yoshizawa, Daisuke Haraguchi, Hiroshi Hatakeyama, Horiken

Cat Girl

★½
“Claws for concern…”

catgirlI don’t review movies without subtitles very often. This would be a good reason why. I knew very little about this going in: there’s no IMDB entry, no other reviews appear to exist, and virtually the only Google hits are the range of more or dubious sites from which you can download the movie. Subtitles? Don’t make me laugh. That no-one has done so indicates one of two things: no-one was interested enough to do so, or it’s difficult to subtitle a movie with one hand, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. Either way, it leaves me in a difficult spot: any or all of what follows may be wildly inaccurate. However, the chances of anyone ever correcting me are likely slim, so what the hell…

The heroine, it appears, has a flier for a ‘cyber cosmetic laboratory’, but it appears to be rather different from the norm – whatever that is – since the next thing we see, she’s tied up to a table, being oiled up (at some length) by the mad scientist in charge. Turns out this is just a front, to bring in an attractive young woman, on whom he can carry out his fiendish experiment. This involves infusing the target with feline DNA, which apparently causes them to a) start growling a lot, b) attack other people with stylized cat-like gestures, and c) wear skimpy lingerie, topped off by a mask which is complete with little cat ears. That must surely be the Nobel Prize committee, calling on line one to make an appointment.

But what use is a single cat girl? Another one, apparently a Western friend of our heroine (there’s a pic of them together) is also kidnapped and felinized, lead to a head-to-head fight between “Cat Girl” and the new “Cat Devil.” This consists of about 15 minutes of very bad pro wrestling moves, accompanied by more grunting than I’ve see since the last time Monica Seles played Jennifer Capriati. But, oh no! Cat Girl sees Devil Girl’s tramp stamp of a butterfly, realizes it’s her friend, and refuses to fight any more! After this, things get more confusing, with the two girls apparently swapping costumes for some reason, before eventually teaming up to take on a Cat Guy in the big finale. At least, I think that’s what happened, my interest had drifted off to do something else entirely by that point.

Cheap and poorly-staged, I don’t think it’s the lack of subtitles which are to blame for making this as uninteresting as it is. It’s more like a fetish video made for a curiously specific market, where furries intersect sadomasochists with an interest in sploshing – no other way to explain the length sequence where the scientist slowly hoses Cat Girl down with a nozzle dribbling green goo. Given the content would technically be no more than PG-13 – there’s not even a glimpse of a nipple – it’s all remarkably sleazy. The best thing I can say is, it’s not a film I’ll likely forget in a hurry. Which should save me from making the mistake of ever watching it again.

Dir: No clue.
Star: Even less idea.

Lucy

lucy1★★★
“NOW there is a god…”

Besson has been making action heroine movies for almost a quarter-century, going back to Nikita, which remains one of the most iconic and influential genre entries. The Messenger and Angel-A are the most obvious members of his filmography, but even when they’re not strictly in our wheelhouse, they often contain those aspects, e.g. The Fifth Element or Leon. The prospect of him returning to the field was an exciting one, but the end result doesn’t quite live up to what I’d hoped. And that’s discounting the fact, trotted out by a lot of lazy critics, that the entire film is based on a shaky premise – the whole “we only use ten percent of our brains” things is pure myth. I have no real issues with that. There’s no evidence for the galaxy having guardians either, and the same premise was an integral part of Defending Your Life, currently 96% fresh at Rotten Tomatoes.

lucy4No, my main issue is a failure to unleash the potential of the idea (rather than the human brain). The initial set-up is interesting and slick. Lucy (Johansson) is trapped into acting as a drug mule for a Korean mob-boss (Choi), but the package inserted into her stomach is breached, causing the contents to leak into her bloodstream, and triggering the gradual activation of the remaining 90% of her brain. Initially, she becomes self-aware, but her skills then increase exponentially, first to manipulating her environment, then the very fabric of time and space itself, before she vanishes entirely from our world. Freeman plays Professor Exposition Samuel Norman, whom Lucy contacts to… Well, I’m not really sure exactly why. Something about him being the guardian of the knowledge she acquires as her mind expands. Waked plays a French cop, who helps her get the entire global supply of the drug, needed for her to reach 100%. We get a literal score of her progression in this department, tabulated on screen between scenes.

I think this would have benefited from a more measured approach, rather than a headlong rush toward Lucy’s divinity: the journey is more fun than the destination. There’s a certain point here, perhaps half-way through, where she becomes entirely invincible, and that’s where this turns into an intellectual exercise, because no-one – least of all a bunch of Korean gangsters – is a credible threat any more. I would have had Lucy get a little taste of the drug, then spend most of the film exploring what life is like as a super-enhanced bad-ass, using her talents to acquire more of the drug. Perhaps have the film end as she cranks the proceeds into her veins, and only then quickly go all 2001 on the audience, as Besson does at much greater length here. That’s closer to what I was expecting, and may be the result of  publicity that seemed to set this up as an action flick with existentialist aspirations, when it’s really an existentialist flick with action aspirations.

lucy3While I’d have enjoyed the former more, there are no shortage of aspects to admire. Besson’s films are generally a lot of fun, and this delivers the level of visual style and polish we’ve come to expect from all his works, both directed and produced – the car-chase is particularly Bessonesque. Johansson is also good in the role, though Freeman seems faintly embarrassed to be there, as if he should instead be off narrating another Science Channel documentary. Credit is due too, for making an action movie which is not only R-rated, but with a heroine, a combination which has been a difficult sell in the past e.g. Haywire. Lucy has arguably become the first such to pass $100 million at the US box-office, depending on how you view T2, and I’m more than happy to see it succeed, even if any sequel resulting from its profitability is going to be answering some difficult questions!

Watching this, I was left with a frequent urge to yell the line at the top of the review, which is taken from a famous SF short-short story by Frederic Brown, about the perils of unfettered technology and artificially constructed deities. Lucy is the human equivalent, though according to Besson, “A simplified summary, which will conjure up the images in as few words as possible,” was that “The beginning is Leon: The Professional. The middle is Inception. The end is 2001: A Space Odyssey.” This overview probably explains why my entertainment level diminished as things went on, because I love Leon and regard 2001 as one of the most over-rated pieces of tripe in cinema history, containing spectacular visuals, but little or no heart. That’s what Lucy is sadly missing: you can see Johansson deliberately dialing back her humanity, the higher her percentage of brain function becomes. It makes sense, but you’re left with little reason to empathize with her; it’s like nothing so much as watching Superman being super, and there is no kryptonite in sight here to bring her back to the level of the audience.

Re-reading the above, it seems perhaps unnecessarily harsh. Make no mistake, this was a fun ride, and I was never bored. It may be a case of managing expectations here: if you’re happy with a film which builds to having the heroine sit on a chair for 20 minutes, before going all Neo on us for a finale, then this will be fine. But given Besson’s pedigree, combined with a trailer which made this seem more like the Black Widow film we’ve been promised than anything, I was anticipating something rather different. It’s not often I criticize a film for being too much brains and not enough brawn, yet this might be one such case.

Dir: Luc Besson
Star: Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, Amr Waked, Choi Min-sik

lucy5

Iron Girl

★★½
“The Somewhat-magnificent One”

Iron-Girl-2012-Movie-PosterThe introduction tries to make it seem as if this could take place at any point in history, but there’s not much effort put into maintaining the illusion. The guns and overall setting – best described as “distressed warehouse” – puts this firmly into the post-apocalypse genre, though it’s very much at the bargain basement end of the spectrum. The heroine (adult actress Asuka) stumbles across naively innocent Anne (Akiyama), being pawed by some bad guys after straying into the danger zone to pick flowers; clearly a kinder, gentler apocalypse. After punching them out, assisted by remarkable reactions and her metal exo-skeleton, Anne is escorted back to her warehouse village, where we discover they are frequently raided by the Crazy Dogs gang.

They are under the imaginatively-named Crazy Joe (Koga), who looks a cosplay version of Captain Jack Sparrow, down to the headsquare and mascara. The village elder pulls out a parchment and pronounces “Iron Girl” to be the saviour of prophecy, even though she has no memories of her life, or even her name.  The Crazy Dogs are less convinced, though come around after a fat minion and his low-level sidekicks are dispatched, and Anne’s brother, who has been re-programmed to forget his original identity, has his brainwashing undone. Joe and his sadistic girlfriend decide to pop over for a visit, to find out what all the fuss is about. Turns out, he and Iron Girl have more than a little in common…

I suppose, for what this is, it’s okay. However, what it is, isn’t much to begin with. There’s never any feeling of a convincing setting, the characters are paint-by-numbers, and the action is neither realistic enough to have any impact, nor stylized and excessive enough to be entertaining. Nagamine seems to know only one approach: slow down the action, to give the impression that Iron Girl is moving much faster than she actually is. It’s not very effective, and it’s also incredibly overused. The low-budget roots are also apparent, in an excess of static, talky scenes where people are just sitting around and talking. However, it’s not all bad. Asuka does a decent job as the stoic gunslinger without a past, and despite my snark above, I actually enjoyed Koga’s scenery chewing, which is entirely appropriate for the villain in this sort of thing.

Undemanding fans of SF will probably find this an adequate time-passer, and I likely fall into that category myself: it has just about enough action to sustain interest, especially in the second half. However, anyone going off the title, and expecting something even vaguely along the lines of a certain Marvel superhero film, is going to be horribly disappointed. So it’s probably about managing your expectations. The lower those are, the more likely this is to reach them.

Dir: Masatoshi Nagamine
Star: Kirara Asuka, Rina Akiyama, Mitsuki Koga, Yasuhisa Furuhara

Cleopatra 2525: season one

cleopatra2525a★★★
“After the apocalypse, crop tops will fortunately not be in short supply.”

When Hercules: The Legendary Journeys ended its run in January 2000, producers Renaissance Pictures looked to replace it, but instead of going with another hour-long show to follow the hit Xena, took the unusual step of making two, 30-minute action series. This was a break from normal practice: half-hour comedies were standard, but for shows like these, it was a format which had not been seen since the seventies. The second was Jack of All Trades, starring Bruce Campbell as Jack Stiles, a wisecracking spy for the US at the turn of the 19th century. The first was radically different: a SF saga, set 500+ years into the future, when robots have driven humanity, literally, underground.

Waking up here is Cleopatra (Sky), a 21st-century exotic dancer who got frozen after a boob-job went wrong. She’s rescued by Hel (Torres, who’d go on to cult stardom in Firefly) and Sarge (Pratt), part of a team fighting the robots, which are known as ‘Baileys’, their human-imitating agents called ‘Betrayers,’ and dealing with the anarchic and dangerous life beneath the surface, guided by a voice in Hel’s head, that organizes the anti-Bailey resistance. [In the original pilot, that voice was Lucy Lawless, but she ended up being replaced by Elizabeth Hawthorne] Cleo gradually becomes part of the team, being the viewers’ voice in the dystopia of 26th-century life, while Hel and Sarge represent the brains and brawn of the team.

cleopatra2525cAll three, however, were clearly selected as much for their visual appeal, and the 25th century is not short of beautiful people – it’s also quite warm, going by the ah, flimsy clothing worn by the trio. Cleo and her former profession fit right in. But taking any of this seriously would largely be doing the show a disservice, because it’s clear it doesn’t take itself seriously. There isn’t really time for that kind of thing, with each episode barely 20 minutes, excluding opening (theme song sung by Torres, a funked-up and lyrically altered version of Zager and Evans’ one-hit wonder, In the Year 2525) and closing credits. There isn’t much time for anything, in fact: both characterization and plotting remain about as scanty as the outfits. Hel is thoughtful but can be distant; Sarge likes shooting things first and asking questions later; Cleo, to be honest, is mostly irritating, coming over as both whiny and rather vacuous.

At least in the first series, the storylines don’t focus on the Baileys as much as I remembered. The heroic trio also find themselves taking on evil clown Creegan, against whom Hel has a personal grudge (for good reason), or psychic Raina, who can not just read your mind, but implant suggestions in it. The latter was a personal favourite villainess, played by Danielle Cormack, who is a veteran from Xena, having played Amazon Ephiny there. That’s true for much of the cast: Sky read for the part of Gabrielle, but also ended up playing another character, Amarice, while Pratt was Cyanne, the Queen of the Northern Amazons. Torres was on the show too, though not as an Amazon. Perhaps more confusingly though, she played Cleopatra – the Egyptian version, not the stripper one.  There’s also a considerable overlap of directors who worked on both shows.

Cleopatra is generally more consistent in tone: that may not necessarily be a good thing, as one of the joys of Xena was seeing it swing from mass crucifixions to musical numbers. It does make Cleo less suitable for binge watching, because the episodes exhibit a certain sameness that grows somewhat repetitive after a while: three was about my personal limit, so not much more than an hour, before the titular heroine started to grate on my nerves. But in the show’s defense, it wasn’t created to be viewed like that, and in 20 minute chunks, generally manages to be energetic and action-packed entertainment. Outside of the Raina episodes mentioned earlier, I particularly enjoyed Run Cleo Run, a take on one of my most beloved films, Run Lola Run, that somehow manages to be even more hyperkinetic than the original – though with a less kick-ass soundtrack.

Star: Jennifer Sky, Gina Torres, Victoria Pratt

Tokyo Ballistic War

★★
“Long live the new flesh.”

tokyoballisticI’m on the fence with regard to the Japanese uber-gore films, most notably, by the Sushi Typhoon studio, which have achieved renown (or infamy) of late. While some (Mutant Girls Squad) are entertaining nonsense, others (Helldriver) are pretty tedious. So, the concept of lower-budget, exploitation-er versions of these, already low-budget exploitation flicks, is a mixed blessing. Enter Zen Pictures, and their formula, which appears to consist of costumed heroines who alternately fight and get tortured. The story here is split into two volumes, but with each barely an hour long and containing plenty of filler, probably better to consider them a single, feature-length entry.

I do like the central story, which is daft as a brush, yet executed with the right level of straight-faced intensity. In order to market his half-human, half-machine cyborgs to the military, Koumoto, chairman of the Dainippon company, comes up with a cunning plan: create a set of female athletes, who will smash all existing records. However, he has forgotten the Japanese Sports Association, under chief Gondo, who don’t take kindly to these performance-enhancing shenanigans. The solution? Naturally, build their own (eco-friendly!) cyborg to fight the Dainippon team. Except, due to an administrative cock-up, the original candidate, Megumi Asaoka (Taki), is accidentally replaced by Ai Asaoka (Noda). Initially, Ai is successful, but after being captured by Koumoto, she is reprogrammed, and her friend Megumi has to battle to rescue Ai.

The first volume is significantly better, though still has its weaknesses, not the least being more evidence that crappy CGI is far less endearing than crappy practical effects – and there’s enough of both to be seen here. However, it whizzes along with sufficient energy, and contains plenty of action, to merit forgiveness for the obvious poverty-row origins, and everyone involved chews scenery to amusing effect. After the break, unfortunately, things slow down, with a pair of lengthy torture sequences which had absolutely no value for me whatsoever, and the fights seemed, to a large extent, repeats of those from the first volume. Both parts also have another severe weakness – taking an idea and running with it, well past the point where it stops being interesting. Case in point: one of the battles includes the participants each releasing a cyborg arm, which then stage their own fight, independently. For 15 seconds, it’s kinda amusing. After a minute, it’s dull. But the film keeps going far beyond that, and there are plenty of similar cases; the surgery which turns Ai into a cyborg is also depicted at far greater length than necessary. Maybe this is some Japanese fetish thing, of which I was previously unaware.

tokyoballistic2This is definitely a case where less would have been more, and with a more enthusiastic hand on the editor’s knife, this could have become a decent eighty-minute feature – and possibly an even better 50-minute one. Kamikura does often demonstrate an awareness and acceptance of exactly how ludicrous the entire scenario is, and the film is at its best when wholeheartedly embracing its own insanity. For instance, each of the cyborg athletes’ talents is influenced by their sport: Hitomi Oka is a tennis-player, so whacks people with an over-sized, pneumatic racket, and lobs exploding tennis-balls at them. Additional helpings of that kind of imaginative lunacy – and considerably less tied-up schoolgirls being prodded or whipped – would certainly have made for a more entertaining end product.

Dir: Eiji Kamikura
Star: Ayaka Noda, Arisa Taki, Masahiro Saito, Shinya Nakamura

Kite Liberator

★½
“Half a star deducted, for being only half a movie.”

KiteLiberatorAnd not a very good movie at that, suffering from such multiple personality disorder, it sometimes feels that two completely different anime were spliced together in some mad scientist’s laboratory. If so, he clearly got bored and drifted off while the project was half complete, because this ends in a way which doesn’t so much suggest another part, as demand it unconditionally. Six years on, that still hasn’t materialized, making this about as appetizing as a half-cooked chicken. Oh, and speaking of mad scientists, there’s one of those in here too.

We’re a decade on from the events of the original Kite, and it seems Sawa has – without explanation – morphed into Monaka (Inoue). In between tracking down and killing paedophiles, she has a regular identity as a klutzy waitress at a cafe, where he co-worker Mukai (Okamura) protects her from the sleazy patrons. Monaka’s father is an astronaut, who has been in space for years. His space-station is visited by Kōichi Doi, a researcher investigating ways to preserve bone density in zero-G. However, it appears a combination of factors such as radiation, results in the astronauts mutating into monstrous creatures. After a firefight, Doi and his team bail out as the station disintegrataes, but the monster that Monaka’s father has become, is also on their craft, which crash-lands – conveniently right in her neighbourhood. A cover-up ensues, despite a trail of corpses, and Monaka is given her next mission: to kill the monster, unaware that it’s actually her father.

Which is pretty much where it ends, after a first battle between Monaka and him. Really: WTF? On its own, this is such an entirely pointless release, you have to wonder what happened. Even up to that point, this is problematic in a bunch of way, not least that Monaka is almost a minor character, and it appears to be a sequel in little more than name. While I’m not normally one to criticize a film for a lack of sex, this also lacks the severely transgressive or original qualities which made the original infamous. This is mostly a monster mash, which we’ve seen any number of times before. There is some potential for a second half, but I doubt it will ever happen. This is like tearing a book in two, selling the first half and never publishing the rest. If I had actually paid any money for this, I would be righteously pissed.

Dir: Yasuomi Umetsu
Star (voice): Marina Inoue, Akemi Okamura, Masakazu Morita, Setsuji Satō

Travelers: Dimension Police

★★
“Explanations? They’re vastly over-rated.”

Travelers_-_Dimension_Police_PosterThis doesn’t so much hit the ground running, as plummet into it at top speed, to such an extent I genuinely stopped the film, to check if this was perhaps part two of an ongoing series. It isn’t: it’s just that unconcerned about explanations. What seems to be going on, is a universe where the different dimensions are now connected. Hence, there’s Retro World, Fairy World, Lost World, etc. This offers new criminal possibilities; to counter these, a trans-dimensional police force is also created. One such officer is Ai (Nagasawa), but her mission, to protect a psychic (Takayama) against the terrorist group Doubt is thrown into… Well, doubt after she meets her former partner Yui (Kinoshita), who appears to have thrown her lot in on the side of the villains.

At least, I think some of the above is probably fairly accurate. I am not prepared to commit any more strongly than that. Easily the best thing this has to offer are the actual fight: Sakamoto did a lot of work on Power Rangers, and also the cult classic Mark Dacascos vehicle, featuring a young Britney Murphy, and the style here is fast and frenetic, with people being punched hard enough to fly into things. A lot. Credit both lead actresses for doing a good chunk of this themselves. Less successful, are just about all the other elements, led by the confusing plot, that appears to think whizzy SFX will remove any need for coherence. Admittedly, it’s not helped by subs, even the official DVD English ones, which are borderline illiterate, and on at least one occasion appear to contradict directly the on-screen action.

I was also more than a little uncomfortable with the apparently leering approach taken to the heroines. Chris, breezing through the living room, airily dismissed it with a roll of her eyes as “Oriental women in shorts,” (see the cover on the right for a good example). While part of me wanted to argue the point, the cheesecake quotient here was just too high for any credible defense: I mean, do you really need skimpy clothes for inter-dimensional travel? The final battle is kinda decent, but I’ll confess, my brain had largely given up on the entire exercise by that point, my attention only being somewhat regained whenever things e.g. fists or actresses started to fly. Sakamoto’s credentials as a fight choreographer are fine, just not in the director’s chair.

Dir: Koichi Sakamoto
Star: Nao Nagasawa, Ayumi Kinoshita, Yuko Takayama, Kenji Ebisawa

Ang Huling Henya

★★
“Pushing the Manilla envelope too far.”

huling-henyaI’ve seen quite a few Phillippine GWG movies – mostly thanks to Cirio Santiago and/or New World Pictures. But this is likely the first made for local consumption, rather than the West, which may explain why I found large chunks of it almost impenetrable. Is this the kind of thing that has them cheering in the aisles there?

The heroine is Miri (Quinto), an agent for an international organization devoted to protecting scientists, and keeping their inventions out of the wrong hands. After a mission goes bad, resulting in the death of her partner, Miri is sent back home for some time off. However, she’s called back in to help investigate the odd case of a professor who vanished for two weeks, only to return a cannibal and rip his wife’s throat out – and her corpse isn’t apparently entirely dead either. There’s also a mad scientist (Chan) who is experimenting with sucking memories out of people’s heads; her brother (Guzman), who is wasting his potential away in a dead-end job as a barman; and flashbacks revealing the tragic circumstances under which their parents, also scientists, apparently were killed for their invention.

Is it a horror film? It does have zombies. Is is a SF film? The memory transference and some nifty guns, which seem to shoot energy, suggest that. Comedy? The main villainess (Weigmann) shoots anyone who tells her she could be a model, and her sidekick perpetually needs to go to the bathroom. Action? Why not? There’s running around and pointing of guns. Family drama? Sure! The problem is – and some of the local reviews echo this – it just doesn’t commit to any of them, resulting in a movie which pays lip service to being scary, thrilling, funny, or intriguing. A few moments do work. I liked Miri having to go to the supermarket, prosaic stuff international agents aren’t usually seen doing. The finale, pitting heroes against the bad guys, very quietly, in a room full of sleeping zombies, also has potential. I even liked the cool way characters slid from English into the local tongue and back, in the middle of sentences.

However, at over two hours, it’s a good thirty minutes too long, and you could just about slice any half-hour out, and the result would be an improvement. Quinto also makes for a thoroughly unconvincing action star: from what I’ve read, a credible comparison would be a Pinoy version of Amy Poehler, and I’m not sure I would want to see Poehler try her hand in this genre. It’s certainly different, and it’s not bad enough to put me off other example of cinema from the Philippines. However, it’s certainly not good enough to make me actively seek them out.

Dir: Marlon N. Rivera
Star: Rufa Mae Quinto, Edgar Allan Guzman, Ricci Chan, Valerie Weigmann