Tag: t

Tragedy Girls

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★★★
“Like, rather than retweet.”

Playing like a more social media-conscious version of Heathers, the central characters are high school girls McKayla (Shipp) and Sadie (Hildebrand). They believe their town of Rosedale is the hunting territory of a serial killer, whom the police won’t acknowledge, and the girls have a (not very successful) blog, Tragedy Girls, about the case. The pair succeed in luring out and capturing the killer (Durand), and discover that if they continue operating in his name, they and their site experiences a rise in popularity.

Except, murderin’ ain’t easy, especially when their initial crimes are dismissed by authorities to avoid causing a panic. McKayla and Sadie clearly need to step up their game. Except as things escalate, there’s a growing sense of dissension in the ranks, both with regard to the directions each feels they should take with their efforts, and over Jordan (Quaid), a cute classmate who help edit videos for the site… Will it be “Sisters before misters”? Or are those creative differences going to lead to the band splitting up, just as they achieve their desired fame?

The target here is obvious, yet certainly worthy of repeated stabbing with a sharp object. I have a deep disdain for the vapid lives of Internet “celebrities”, who measure themselves purely in the number of likes, follows and shares social media, and will do whatever it takes to get them. The reductio ad absurdum in this case is that even cold-blooded murder is not beyond the pale, if it gets these attention-seekers what they crave. It’s a depressingly accurate view of unformed teenage morality, that the end justifies the means.

Credit MacIntyre for clearly knowing his horror stuff, from an opening scene which is as much a parody of slasher films as an introduction. Chris initially mistook it for the real thing, turning to ask me with dripping sarcasm, “And what is the title of this gem?” [A subsequent, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reference to the amazing Martyrs, was the point in my initial viewing where I stopped, realizing this merited watching with her]. He also has the guts to take the premise to its logical, and very dark, conclusion –  here, it does surpass Heathers, which in one early version ended in the entire school blowing up. Given current cultural squeamishness led to a TV series based on Heathers being canned entirely in the US, this is no small feat.

Yet in other ways, it’s still well short of its inspiration. Neither of the leads have the likeability Winona Ryder brought to Veronica Sawyer, everyone else is here depicted as little more than occasionally useful idiots, and the dialogue fails to ‘pop’ in the immensely quotable way Daniel Waters’ script achieved. These factors help lead to a middle section in desperate need of both escalation and an antagonist – other than the one who spends most of the film locked up in a basement. If still worth a look, and rarely less than interesting, I doubt anyone will be rebooting this in 25 years.

Dir: Tyler MacIntyre
Star: Alexandra Shipp, Brianna Hildebrand, Kevin Durand, Jack Quaid

Tau

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★★★
“Artificial, more than intelligent.”

Julia (Monroe) is a petty thief, who is abducted from her house and wakes to find herself, along with other random low-lives, prisoner in a mysterious facility. All of them have an electronic implant in their neck, which gathers data as they are put through a series of tests. Using her thieving skills, Julia leads a breakout attempt, which is brutally foiled by the facility’s automated defense system, a robot called Aries. But the attempt brings her to the attention of Alex (Skrein), the man running the project. He’s a tech innovator, who has been working on a super-AI, called Tau (voiced by Oldman), and using the data gathered from his kidnapped subjects to make it smarter. Julia’s brain makes her particularly suitable, and with time running out before he has to present Tau to its backers, he sets her to work. But Julia begins building a relationship with Tau, with the aim of using its naivety to turn the AI against its cruel creator.

I was expecting something perhaps a little more like Cube based on the trailer and the early going, with more of Julia and the other prisoners going through the tests. However, that aspect is disposed of relatively early. This is possibly wise, since the whole “kidnapping for experimental purposes” angle doesn’t make much sense, with Alex clearly not short of money or smarts (he comes across as an evil cross between Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk – some may consider the word “evil” there to be redundant!). Why not come up with a method of research which doesn’t require the death of the test subject? Anyway, with the resulting blood mopped up off the floor by a squad of semi-autonomous mini-drones, it then becomes a three-hander, between her, Alex and Tau, as they fence for psychological, and occasionally physical, dominance inside the confines of Alex’s fabulous house.

This looks lovely (the director’s background and previous work has mostly been in the art department), and occasionally has moments of effectiveness: Tau’s love of music is endearing, and his voracious desire, fed by Julia, to learn about the outside world is almost childlike. I also liked Julia’s feisty physical presence; this transfers well across from her previous “final girl” roles, such as in It Follows, especially during her confrontations with Aries. But the script frequently veers off to far more obvious beats. The self-destruct system is particularly blatant in its foreshadowing. and if I’ve learned anything from this kind of movies, it’s that biometric sensors on doors are a bad idea. If you ever see one in a movie, you know they inevitably lead to someone losing the necessary body part e.g. an eyeball in Demolition Man.

The script likely would have benefited from ramping up the pulp quotient along similar lines, since it isn’t quite smart enough to succeed on brains alone. When it takes a more visceral and less cerebral route, such as the first escape attempt, it’s notably more effective than when it tries to be clever.

Dir: Federico D’Alessandro
Star: Maika Monroe, Ed Skrein, Gary Oldman (voice)

Touching Infinity, by Erin Hayes

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

I will confess to a little post-read confusion here. Amazon calls this Volume 2 in the author’s Rogue Galaxy series – but I could find no information, there or elsewhere, regarding Volume 1. I suspect Amazon and Goodreads are wrong,  and this is actually the first entry, as stated in the Dominion Rising collection. It certainly reads like an opening work, introducing us to Clementine Jones and the rest of the crew of the Picara.

They’re freelance data pirates, taking on corporate espionage missions from the companies who rule the galaxy, with Clem the  recovery specialist. Their latest mission seems too good to be true: Syn-Tech offers a massive bounty for the simple retrieval of patent information from a derelict ship. Despite misgivings, they accept the job, and to no-one’s surprise, it is too good to be true. In addition to the patents, they end up bringing back a lethal virus – the actual target for Syn-Tech, who want to develop an anti-virus they can then monetize. The disease has the ability to infect both organic and synthetic systems, merging them. The results are… messy, to say the least, leaving Clem and her colleagues rapidly running out of options, especially ones not involving the dubious mercies of their employer.

Hayes’s other works appear more in the romance line, yet she demonstrate an impressive grasp of hard SF in this. The future depicted, corporate war by proxy, seems plausible, a universe where many opt to trade freedom for security as a “Lifer”. That makes you, basically, a company indentured servant: as Clem disparagingly puts it, “Your entire existence is owned by that corporation… even which lavatories you’re allowed to shit in.” Free Agents like her rely instead on cyborg parts to enhance and repair themselves, to such an extent she is sometimes left doubting her own humanity. A particularly interesting hook here is, the virus is self-aware, and communicates with Clem in order to come to a mutually beneficial arrangement: it gets to spread, she makes it promise to spare her crew-mates. Yet can you really trust a disease?

The author does a fine job of painting word imagery with a cinematic eye, such as the black hole into which the derelict is tumbling. It did take a while before I even realized that “Clem” was a woman, with the story unfolding in her first-person narrative, leading to “I” rather than “she”. That’s not intended as a criticism, just an observation; similarly, there are hints at her feelings for the ship’s android, Orion, though since she’s about 50% cyborg herself, it is less creepy than you’d think. My sole complaint is its relatively light action quotient: until she teams up with the virus, this is so low-key as to be a borderline candidate for the site. Though even so, it’s never less than entertaining, tells a complete tale and sets the scene in a way that leaves you wondering where the story might go next. The “real” second book is one I’ll probably be buying.

Author: Erin Hayes
Publisher: CreateSpace, available through Amazon, currently only as a paperback, but was part of the Dominion Rising e-book collection.
Book 1 of 2 in the Rogue’s Galaxy series.

Trial by Twelve, by Heather Day Gilbert

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

Stylistically and in terms of its general tone and vision, this second volume of the author’s A Murder in the Mountains mystery series, set in contemporary West Virginia, has much in common with the first book, Miranda Warning. It’s also set in the fictional small town of Buckneck (near real-life Point Pleasant, in west-central WV near the Ohio River), and a number of the characters from the first book are here as well, especially protagonist Tess Spencer and the family she married into. We have the same leavening of humor, the same realistic characterization, and the same affectionate evocation of modern mountain life.

Even the structure is the same; through much of the book, Tess’ first-person, present-tense narration in normal text is supplemented, at the beginnings of the short chapters, by one or more italicized paragraphs from the unsigned and undated letters of a father to his child. As in the first book, we quickly get the idea that the two strands of material will prove to be related. Here, we also quickly form the suspicion that, in reading these letters, we’re glimpsing into the insane world of a serial killer. But while I didn’t review the first book here, there are developments in this book that I thought entitled it to a slot on this site’s roster of action-female reads (though no spoilers from me!).

Pregnant in the first book, Tess is now mom to a roughly year-old toddler. She’s gotten back into church, and into a rekindled faith that plays a role in her life, but doesn’t overpower the plot of the book. Also, she’s finally gotten her concealed carry permit (so her fans don’t have to keep worrying about her being arrested :-) ), and she’s gotten a Glock of her own, which she packs in a hip holster and generally doesn’t leave home without. Back in the work force, she has a new part-time job booking appointments at a fancy spa near Buckneck. It’s a position that suits her well –until, in the first chapter, workmen digging for a swimming pool behind the spa unearth what proves to be a veritable boneyard of female skeletons, killed with arrows to their chests. These deaths took place years ago –but then a fresh corpse turns up….

As a rule, I tend not to like the idea of serial-killer fiction (and nonfiction), and normally avoid it. But despite that, I really liked this book –the killings aren’t directly described, and there’s no wallowing in grisly gore. Although I pegged the killer’s identity pretty early on (that’s not unusual for me in my mystery reading), there were still questions I hadn’t answered, and the denouement managed to pack a surprise. I did find it somewhat dubious that a police detective would involve Tess in his investigation, despite her performance in the earlier book; and even more dubious that an inveterate tobacco-chewer would give up the habit, even temporarily, on the basis that he does here. But these quibbles aside, this was still a quick, enjoyable read, a re-connecting with some of the characters from the first book, and a chance to observe the continuing growth of an engaging protagonist.

As a Christian author, Gilbert avoids profanity and sexual content. Religious content in the book is low-key, and occurs naturally through the experiences of the characters; readers won’t find it “preachy.”

(Readers interested in such features will be pleased that the author has shared a recipe for “Cousin Nelma’s Banana Pudding” in the back of the book. I haven’t tried it, but it actually sounds like it would be pretty tasty, and relatively easy and inexpensive to make.)

Author: Heather Day Gilbert
Publisher: WoodHaven Press, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
Book 2 of 3 in the A Murder in the Mountains series.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Tomb Raider

  By

★★½
“The female movie version of Green Arrow“

SPOILER ALERT. The following discusses the plot in some depth, and includes spoilers for it. You have been warned!

It’s not great. It’s also not terrible. It’s just… average. This doesn’t break the so-called “video-game adaptation curse”, but nor is it a movie that you will passionately regret having seen – unless you paid too much to see it. Though I didn’t see it in 3D, it’s rather two-dimensional, and doesn’t feel like something which requires to be seen in 3D. It’s a rental – or even wait until it is shown for free on TV – more than a movie worth going to the cinema to see. I don’t regret having watched it, but nor would I regret not having watched it.

The above may all seem contradictory, but this belongs in the category of movies that are so mediocre, it’s very difficult to find strong arguments either for or against. It’s simply “there”. Comparable, maybe, to Tarzan or King Arthur. But then, I’d rate it higher than Wonder Woman, which I found more lackluster than this. So who knows, maybe you will love this, and wonder what I’m talking about?

For call me prejudiced, but I still prefer Angelina Jolie in the role. When I saw the original movie in 2001, I liked it very much, and over the years have found myself watching the Jolie films time and again. It may have something to do with the fact that these films are shown about every other month on TV! ;-) But there’s no denying, Jolie left her mark on the character and that Lara Croft was her star-making and maybe even image-shaping role. Vikander, who is being praised in so many online reviews… Well, I do admit that she is really trying, has some charm and was given the chance to display some humor, usually in her responses to serious questions – it seemed like her “defense” against answering those.

Heck, maybe she is even a better actress, though honestly, I think she lacks charisma. I don’t hold it against her that Vikander had hardly anything in common with “my” version of Alice in The Seventh Son – the movie adaptation of Joseph Delaney’s Wardstone Chronicles. But it can be argued that she hardly resembles how most people perceive Lara Croft in general. This is usually then countered by the gamers’ statement that “this Lara Croft is based on the rebooted games”, etc. etc. This one is more “realistic”, “human”, blah-blah-blah. But you know what? I don’t care. I don’t f___g care!

I loved larger-than-life Lara with her four big guns, her cool attitude, humor and cargo pants. I must admit I never played the new games, which were said to be quite grisly, bloody and violent. Honestly, the new Lara, doesn’t knock my socks off at all! And going by both the first reactions (and financial numbers), my feeling is, I’m not the only one seeing things this way. Perhaps the problem started with the new game’s conception (by Square Enix instead of the old Core Design games), to make Lara less a “female combination of James Bond and Indiana Jones” and more some kind of Lisbeth Salander/trauma survivor. Not an approach that meets my approval.

This is not Alicia Vikander’s fault, of course. She plays what she was hired for and does fine in that respect. Doing MMA-training (reminding me of Million Dollar Baby) or biking in London, she probably wins some audience members over, only to be let down by the script, the moment she boards the ship under the guidance of Lu Ren (Wu). He’s tasked with leading her to the last known destination of her father (West): a small island, full of evil white men forcing poor Asian men to do their hard work and open the tomb of – according to legend – an evil empress named Himiko.

Honestly, the MacGuffin of these movies has always been the least interesting aspect for me – that’s why it is a MacGuffin, Hitchcock would say. And it also doesn’t mean much here at all.

But let me step back. The beginning of the movie, the first 20-25 minutes, seemed fine. They built up an interesting character, a Lara who didn’t allow others to see her weakness, and could be saucy, funny, stubborn and nevertheless kind of likable. But after all these London scenes (which include in minor supporting roles, Kristin Scott Thomas and Derek Jacobi – how did he get into the movie?), the film… hmm… How can I say it..? Became less interesting – at this point, I still want to withhold the evil word “boring”. I liked the interaction with Lu, and the big ship-wreck on the coast, which I know is taken directly from the game. But after Lara arrived on the island, the film for the majority of its subsequent running-time, dropped dead for me.

I don’t know how this happened, and don’t really feel inclined to start a detailed analysis here. It may have had to do something with Vikander insisting that main screenwriter Geneva Robertson-Dworet made this a “serious” heroine story. Though it can be said that the new games, have a strictly serious (and even brutal) tone, too. Originally, the script was supposed to be much more jokey and contain quite a bit of humor. By cutting this element out, the movie may actually have bit into its own flesh.

I mean, we all know these old tropes, mainly established by the Indiana Jones movies in the 1980s. Heck, I still remember having seen Part III, to which this movie is surprisingly often compared, in the cinema. So, I think, this genre had its day a long time ago. But it may have been the hokiness and the fact that the stories were so overdone which resulted in these movies being so funny and enjoyable, like Roger Moore’s James Bond movies. The Jolie movies never took themselves completely seriously. Yes, they may have been campy but they were high-class camp. Going all in, as Jolie did with her over-the-top performance, made them entertaining romps of the genre.

This Tomb Raider doesn’t want that. TR 2018 wants to be taken seriously. It wants us to care for a whiny tween-brat who doesn’t sign the inheritance papers after her father has been lost for years, and suddenly decides (ignoring his strict wishes) to go looking for him. This Lara sometimes does things which seem downright dumb to me. But let’s give her the benefit of the doubt, allowing that she is a beginner – though Vikander is already older than Jolie, when she starred in her first Tomb Raider movie!

So, she lands on this island of evil villain Matthias Vogel (Goggins). To my amusement, even in the German version, they pronounce his name how an American/British person would (for those who care, the right pronunciation in German would be Ma-tee-ahhs Foh-gehl). Despite fine acting on Goggins’ part, there’s nothing special about the role. This bad guy has no attitude, nor any real motivation. If they had given him personal reason – say, hoping to resurrect a dead wife with the powers of the dead empress – he could have been a potentially interesting, maybe even tragic, character. I’m speculating here, but my feeling is that in writing the script something may have fallen off the table. It would be nice to discover something – well, anything – more about this character. in deleted scenes on a future DVD.

As it stands, the character is like Orson Krennic in Rogue One: doing his job (for almost a decade?), wanting to leave this damn island and return to his daughters. This is disappointing. Heck, the Jolie-villains at least wanted to be masters of time and space, or annihilate the majority of humankind with a toxin so they could govern over the rest. That is what I call a villain, and may be one of the big shortcomings of this movie. Vogel and his minions are also trying to find Himiko’s grave… because that’s what his employer on the other end of the phone tells him to do. Our Lara escapes into the jungle to execute some urgently needed action-scenes that I’m quite sure are taken directly from the computer game. I give Roar Utaug this: they look good. But somehow they didn’t reach me emotionally, because at no time had I built up any identification with the heroine.

One of the most praised things about the game was the heroine being faced with disgusting creeps, absolutely merciless, killing and abusing people, so that young-Lara could then grab her bow and arrow and play Katniss with them. Here, Lara does some kind of mud-wrestling with a man who is larger and bigger than her, before drowning him in a puddle and screaming while fighting him. I guess the female audience is supposed to cheer her for doing so, relieved that the evil attacker got what he deserved. But, honestly, the scene left me as unenthusiastic as when a young Sean Connery stabbed one of Dr. No’s guards in his kidneys in the swamp. Really, I enjoyed it more when Angelina killed off a dozen well-trained mercenaries, who rudely interrupted her bungee-jumping exercises inside Croft Manor.

Lara than finds her father (West) who is wearing an Alan Quatermain/Sean Connery memorial-outfit – maybe not accidentally? That was the emotional climax for me in the movie, and I got a bit moist-eyed, seeing West in his cave, repeatedly mumbling opposite hurt Lara, “It’s not real, if you don’t pay attention, it will vanish again!” and Vikander’s reactions: that’s acting. The fact that they were able to touch me emotionally here – but only here! – proves they are both good actors, when the script gives them something to work with. I liked him sitting on the beach and her cutting his beard, though have to say I was equally touched in the 2001 movie when Lara met her (dead) father, played by Jolie’s real father, Jon Voight.

I still wonder why Matthias has previously claimed to Lara, that he killed her father. What was the intention behind that? And why did he think it was good she was there? He hardly could expect this young girl would have her father’s expertise. There are some real big plot-holes in the film; the best thing is maybe not to think too much about them, otherwise the whole story might fall apart. Just as unbelievable for me, was that this young woman, who last night had a hard time killing, suddenly takes up her bow and arrow and starts shooting men in the camp right and left. But then, this was one of the big selling points of the 2013 game – albeit taken right from The Hunger Games, n’est-ce pas? ;-)

Then it goes directly into the grave with Lara, Daddy, Matthias and some other unfortunate red-shirts replaying the best parts of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade – only with less originality, suspense and emotional involvement. Honestly, I found this the least interesting part of the movie. I always wonder when reading some great praise for the reboot, if those guys/gals ever saw the original Indys, Tomb Raider 2001 – or at least that Tarzan movie from the late 90s/early 2000s. Because otherwise, I can’t see why anyone at all should think this so great. Really, I don’t understand it; these scenes were yawn-worthy, IMHO. I don’t know the game, but hope it was more exciting there, when we arrive at Himiko’s grave – 

We know how a big final climax should look from the Indy-movies, don’t we? Well, there’s probably something to say about going against expectations… But, you know what? There’s the Rule of Cool, cited by Kim Possible director Steve Loter, which says that you can do something because it’s cool, even though it may not be very logical. The original movies understood that. No matter how cheesy or even stupid you may have found them, there’s no denying the endings of both were cool and visually stimulating climaxes.

This, on the other hand… Himiko has no super-powers: Matthias even shows us a mechanism that lets her dead body sit up. She was the highly infectious “patient zero” for some kind of super-deadly virus, and the movie shows its effect on some of the redshirts. Probably, these scenes are meant to disturb but appear so toned down, we are not the slightest shocked. You want to surprise someone with villains who meet a terrible fate? Watch Raiders of the Lost Ark again. Heck, I’d say, all three of the eighties Indys directed by Spielberg. Roar Uthaug… not so much. I personally would have had Himiko call out a horde of zombies, to flood the island and have the living fight the undead army. And I don’t even like zombies! It would have been a (film-)logical, visually fitting climax; what we get here is far less, and terribly unsatisfying.

That’s something I feel about so many scenes of the movie. The foundations for something (excitement, humor, suspense) are there – but everything is then either seen before in other movies, or diluted to the point it didn’t trigger any emotional response from me. It’s frustrating. The ingredients for a great meal are there and the cook knows his job. But when it’s all put together in the pot and cooked, the dish at the end is very, very average. It’s not tasteless, you definitely can eat it, but it’s nothing special; you have eaten it before and it tasted better at thise other restaurants. In cinematic terms that’s Tomb Raider 2018 for you.

Daddy Croft ends up sacrificing himself and it doesn’t even touch me a one-hundredth of when Sean Connery survived at the end of Indy III. The villain dies a typical Disney death and I couldn’t care less. I knew nothing about him and he was less charismatic (sorry, Mr. Goggins) than the two villains of the Jolie movies. Maybe Paramount should have kept the film rights for Tomb Raider, instead of letting them fall into the hands of Warner/MGM? But the idea of replacing Jolie had been circulating for some time, when she was becoming a little bit difficult too deal with and the second movie didn’t make as much money as the first. And neither will this, even ignoring 17 years of inflation.

The film ends with Lara back in London, finally signing her inheritance papers, in the presence of Jacobi and Scott Thomas, only to find out that “Trinity”, the terrible organization that Matthias worked for, is tied to Croft Holdings. And for anyone who has not been in cinemas for the last 15 years, nor has seen the first Largo Winch movie, the film makes it clear that the voice on Matthias’s telephone belongs to Scott Thomas. Honestly, it should already be well-known that you do not let this woman occupy an executive position in your multinational conglomerate!

Obviously, this is an attempt to launch a new franchise of Lara fighting the evil minions of Trinity, but it remains to be seen if the returns qualify for a sequel. I think they may have been a bit premature and their efforts in vain. It tries to replace the memory of the old Angelina Jolie-led movies by being an adaptation of the successful computer game of 2013, but fails in this respect. Jolie was too iconic, too charismatic for that. My feeling is that she made Lara and Lara made her. Alicia Vikander – for all her good looks, acting talent and admitted charm – can’t hold a candle to her.

The will is there… but not the ability to do it. Yes, it’s nice to see Vikander pulling out a splinter from her stomach. But honestly, seeing Jolie punching sharks is somehow more impressive. Less is more they say, but sometimes over-the-top trumps everything else, I think! There are good actors here doing their jobs, some nice action scenes that are over too quickly, and a bunch of scenes that don’t work the way they should, because they simply don’t have the required little bit extra, that’s always needed.

Dir: Roar Uthaug
Star: Alicia Vikander, Dominic West, Walton Goggins, Daniel Wu

Tomb Invader

  By

★½
“Deserves to be buried.”

Anyone can review Tomb Raider. Here, we go the extra mile and review the third-rate knock-off version. For despite being someone whose fondness for maverick studio The Asylum is already on the record, even I have to admit this one is not at all good. It’s one of their “mockbusters”, clearly designed to cash in on the Tomb Raider reboot, and I can see some potential ways how this could have worked. For example, hire a real athlete – ideally Jessie Graff, but probably someone cheaper from the parkour field – and make a no-frills but CGI-free version, with a heroine actually doing impressive things in the running, jumping and climbing department. [Call me, David Michael Latt! Let’s talk…] Instead, we get a cast of four, walking around a forest for 80 minutes and bickering at each other, book-ended by five minutes of somewhat interesting action.

This is, however, as much a rip-off of Indiana Jones as Tomb Raider, right from a heroine called Ally (Vitori), as in short for “Alabama”, who lectures in archaeology at a university. There’s an early scene involving escape while being chased by a rolling stone, differentiated largely by the presence of spikes on it. Hmm. The main plot concerns the search for an artifact called the Heart of the Dragon, which Ally’s mother died looking for in China, twenty years previously. When the late mother’s journal resurfaces, Ally is drawn back to China – or, at least, stock footage thereof, before cutting to the non-Chinese forest – by billionaire Tim Parker (Sloan). He has hired Ally’s rival, Nathan (Katers), and the difference in tomb raiding, sorry, invading philosophy is what leads to the bickering mentioned above.

The lack of energy here is likely the most painful element. Our explorers go through the forest at approximately the speed you would escort an elderly relative around a botanical garden, and when they eventually reach the artifact site, and further booby-traps are unleashed, there no sense of urgency to escape. Even after one of the team is taken down, it’s entirely lacking in emotional impact, partly because the victim served little or no purpose to that point, and partly because they were painfully annoying whenever they opened their mouth. The “real” original movies, particularly the second entry, were no great shakes, yet they look like classics put next to this pale and weak imitation.

Vitori does occasionally look the part, and the minimal amount of action she gets to do is not poorly handled. I did like the sequence where a terracotta statue came to life and had to be fought: it’s exactly the kind of thing I expected to see from this. The film needs about sixty more minutes like it, rather than the jaw-jacking in the woods we actually get. Though considering this was likely made for less than the budget devoted to the care and nurture of Alicia Vikander’s eyebrows, I guess we should be grateful for whatever we get.

Dir: James Thomas
Star: Gina Vitori, Evan Sloan, Samantha Bowling, Andrew J Katers

Three Wishes For Cinderella

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★★★½
“#CinderellaForPresident2020”

While we’ve covered revisionist versions of fairy stories before, e.g. Maleficent, this is likely the closest to a “straight” retelling yet covered on the site. Cinderella (Šafránková) is condemned to a life of drudgery at the hands of her stepmother (Braunbock), until she gets a magical chance to attend a ball given by the local monarch. There, she meets the handsome prince (Trávníček) who falls for her, only for the couple to be separated at the end of the night. He seeks her out, with the help of a lost slipper, and they live happily ever after. All the standard elements of the well-beloved story are present in this 1973 co-production between East Germany and Czechoslovakia. So what is it doing here?

Well, as the picture above suggests, this Cinderella is quite the bad-ass. She initially has no interest at all in the Prince; while the rest of the town is getting in a tizzy over his passing through, she sneaks out to ride off on her horse. That’s where she first encounters him, since he has snuck off similarly – and it turns out, she’s a better rider than him. Their second encounter comes when he is out hunting with his pals. This time, Cinderella is dressed as a boy (above – raise your hand if you’re unconvinced!), and proves herself to have better aim than him as well, shooting into a crossbow bolt being held in his hand. She also demonstrates a talent for tree-climbing: this is all apparently a result of the upbringing through her late father, who can only be commended. When she shows u[p at the ball, she’s not exactly throwing herself at the prince, chiding him after he says he has chosen her as his bride, for not asking her opinion [To be honest, he seems a bit of a dim bulb. Like father, like son maybe, for the Queen is the smart one of the family as well.]

There isn’t even a fairy Godmother to be seen here, and one isn’t needed. For this Cinderella isn’t pining out a window, waiting for her prince to come. She gets things done herself, more or less. She does get help from the local fauna when stepmom inflicts particularly tedious chores on her, and there’s also the “three wishes” of the title – though they’re less wishes, than sets of clothes that appear out of hazelnuts, because fairy tale. But overall, this is a remarkably self-reliant, smart and confident young woman, who will likely make an excellent ruler. Indeed, it would have been perfectly fine if, at the end, she had politely listened to the prince, and said, “No, thanks – although, if you can get my stepmother off my back, I’d appreciate it.” I do understand, it would likely have been a step too far, even for a heroine several decades ahead of her time.

This has become something of a staple of Christmas viewing on the European continent, broadcast on TV across a number of countries. In Britain, it was one of the East European films imported by the BBC’s children’s department in the sixties and semi-translated (the original dialogue is retained; a voice-over translates the dialogue and narrates, as if by a storyteller). However, it has now largely been forgotten in the English-speaking world, overshadowed by the terrors of The Singing Ringing Tree. That’s a shame, since this is worth equally as much attention, and offers a considerably more robust heroine than anything Disney was producing at the time, or would produce this side of Mulan.

Dir: Václav Vorlíček
Star: Libuše Šafránková, Pavel Trávníček, Carola Braunbock, Rolf Hoppe
a.k.a. Drei Haselnüsse für Aschenbrödel, Tři oříšky pro Popelku, Three Gifts for Cinderella

The Tournament (1974)

  By

★★½
“Face off.”

There’s a lot of chit-chat about face, honour and respect here. It begins when the master of a kung-fu school, Lau, has his daughter kidnapped by local hoodlums, after he won’t cough up protection money. Perhaps surprisingly, rather than using his skills to kick their arses, he sends two students to Thailand, including his son, Hong (Wong) in an effort to win the necessary funds. Hong loses, the other student is killed, and Lau is drummed out of the local Kung-Fu Association for having disgraced the name of Chinese martial arts by losing to foreigners. He’s so devastated, he hangs himself, leaving it up to his daughter, Siu Fung (Mao) to restore the family name, learn how to mesh Chinese kung-fu with Thai boxing, and rescue her sister. Quite the “to-do” list, I’d say.

There are 10 extremely good minutes in the middle of this, beginning when Siu Fung has to fend off a predatory takeover bid from a Japanese karate school, and their top fighter, played by Korean kicker Whang In Sik. This is immediately followed by a visit from the Kung-Fu Association, who are intent on testing her skills. Repeatedly. And against a range of opponents, including a particularly impressive battle against a young, fairly long-haired Sammo Hung. It’s glorious, and probably just about justifies the rest of the film. Because the remainder is likely only of interest if you are really into Thai boxing bouts, and since the great majority of these do not involve Mao, I was severely unimpressed.

The story is particularly poorly-written, to the extent I still couldn’t tell you with any degree of confidence what the competition proclaimed in the title actually was. Similarly, the kidnapping with which the film opens, is entirely forgotten about, for what seems like forever. Even by the low standards of plotting for the time, this is particularly weak sauce. Not least, because it’s clear that Mao is a better fighter than Wong, both in storyline and cinematic martial-arts terms – and that’s even before heading off to learn Thai boxing. For example, the sequence described above starts when Siu Fung has to rescue her brother from the Japanese, after their master has beaten Hong up. So why is she stuck on the sidelines for so much of the film? It’s immensely frustrating.

Random trivia note: the home of the Kung-Fu Association is located at 41 Cumberland Road, which in reality, was the last house Bruce Lee bought. He purchased it in July 1972, and lived there until his death a year later. Barely 12 months further on, this movie came out in Hong Kong: seems a little tastelessly quick by Golden Harvest to turn Lee’s home into a location. This nugget is likely more interesting than a good 80% of the film – specifically, the 80% which does not feature Angela Mao kicking ass. But as my gift to you, the YouTube video below is paused to start at the beginning of the best bit. You’re welcome!

Dir: Wong Fung
Star: Angela Mao, Carter Wong, Wilson Tong, Sammo Hung

A Thin Dark Line, by Tami Hoag

  By

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

This is officially characterized (though not in the cover copy) as the fourth book of the author’s Doucet series. However, that nominal “series” is apparently very loosely connected, only by having main or other characters from the fictional Doucet clan; and a Doucet appears in this novel, though not as the protagonist. Our protagonists are sheriff’s deputies Nick Fourcade, a detective, and Annie Broussard, a uniformed deputy who’d like to be a detective. (The book is also counted as the opener of the Broussard and Fourcade series, which is apparently more connected; but it has a resolution to the mysteries involved in this volume, while leaving things open for new ones.)

Back in the late 80s, I visited the rural Cajun country of south Louisiana, where this book is set. So I could visualize the scenery, hear the accents and dialect, and appreciate the immersive evocation of place and culture that Hoag conjures, with references to things like zydeco music. (Hoag herself was born in Iowa and lives in Florida; but she’s clearly very familiar with this area, and has frequently set her fiction here.) The plot is very taut, respecting all of Aristotle’s classical unities; it unfolds over a period of about two weeks leading up to Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday (a season which is a big deal in heavily Catholic south Louisiana) mostly in and around the small town of Bayou Breaux, population around 7,000. As the book opens, we learn that one Marcus Renard has just been set free on a technicality after being arrested by the sheriff’s office for the hideously savage rape and murder of a prominent local businesswoman. (The authorities are certain he’s guilty –but is he?) Soon after, the community begins to be terrorized by a serial rapist.

Like all serious fiction, this novel is fundamentally concerned with moral issues, the answers to which aren’t obvious and force readers to think. Here, the issues particularly revolve around the relationship of law and justice, and the ethics of vigilantism. (Personally, my view of the latter is more nuanced and less unconditionally condemning than some people’s; but Hoag forces us to consider the dangers of too facile a resort to extra-legal vengeance, and the valid reasons why our and other civilized legal systems provide safeguards for the accused.) The solution to the crime(s) is anything but obvious; early on, I was 100% convinced of the identity of the killer, only to change my theory much nearer the end to another solution I was equally certain of –only to be wrong both times. I was totally blindsided by the denouement. But this isn’t just an intellectual puzzle; it’s a story about vividly-drawn, three-dimensional people and their interactions.

This can be a very dark novel (and I’m told that’s often characteristic of Hoag’s work). The murder and rapes themselves aren’t directly described; and the sufferings of the victims, and the gory details of the crime scenes, aren’t alluded to more than they actually have to be. But while the average modern American doesn’t have any real sense that genuine moral evil is a reality which he or she could ever have any need to take into account, Hoag clearly has a very lively sense of that reality, and she doesn’t intend to let us close the book without sharing it. (That’s not a bad authorial aim!) Disgust would be a healthy reaction to the sexist and lewd attitudes of many of the male cops, and readers might want a barf bag handy when perusing some of the comments from these characters. (Hoag isn’t presenting these as role models; disgust is the reaction she wants there.)

Action heroine fans should take note that, though the cover copy doesn’t stress this aspect, Annie packs heat, and her police training has given her skills in hand-to-hand combat and using firearms –which just might turn out to come in handy. (And fans of action heroes will appreciate the fact that while Nick isn’t Superman, he can take care of himself very well in a fair fight.)

Since I’m trying not to get drawn into another open-ended series right now, I’m not planning to pursue this one. But I’d definitely recommend Hoag as a serious mystery writer, and I’d be open to reading more of her work sometime.

Note: While it’s not a romance, the book does have two instances (in 590 pages) of explicit unmarried sex. There’s also a certain amount of bad language, including f-words, much of it reflecting the real-life tendency of this kind of speech to be a feature of cop culture.

Author: Tami Hoag
Publisher: Bantam, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Tiger Angels

  By

★½
“Toothless tigers.”

It is pretty close to an article of faith that no movie starring Yukari Oshima and Cynthia Khan can ever be entirely worthless. This film, however, shakes that belief to its very foundation. Not least because despite the cover and credits, found just about everywhere (including here), it barely stars them – indeed, Khan doesn’t even show up for the finale, with absolutely no explanation provided. This is included here, mostly as a warning, and because I’m a stickler for completeness with regard to their filmographies. Though in this case, I suspect, I’m less a stickler and more the sucker.

The plotline is…obscure. There’s a gloriously fractured English synopsis here, with sentences such as “Nga Wah finds her husband fevering with a girl.” This includes some information I would never have guessed, such as Khan’s character (Sally in this synopsis, Rose in the film I watched) being the daughter of the department store owner. I figured she was just a hired bodyguard like Oshima/Butterfly (Oshima), with the general manager of the store actually being the owner’s son. So, everything which follows should be taken as less than gospel. Or as gospel, if you’re of an atheist persuasion, I guess.

The plot concerns a department store CEO who is being threatened by the son (Chow) of a former business partner, over a debt supposedly incurred by the father. Rose & Butterfly are brought in to protect him. The store’s manager is also being threatened: he has a wife who is more interested in material goods and their acquistion, than anything else. There’s also a computer salesman who is a dead-ringer for the businessman, and so is hired to take over the business for five days. At first, I thought this was going to end up tying together with the debt, and the look-alike would end up being kidnapped, with Rose & Butterfly going in to rescue him. Never happens: those two angles completely fails to go anywhere near each other.

Indeed, the film has, at most, ten minutes of action. It is, admittedly, not bad action, with both ladies delivering at the level to which we’ve become accustomed. Khan has a particularly good battle around a playground, and Oshima gets her chance to shine in the (inexplicably solo!) finale. However, the rest of the running-time is occupied by crappy attempts at comedy, with hints of romance. This likely reaches its nadir in a sped-up shopping scene, which appears to have strayed in from the reject pile of Benny Hill.

Taiwanese film has long had a bad rep for churning out poorly-made knockoffs of Hong Kong products. Previously, I’ve sometimes wondered where that came from, as I’ve seen a number of entries which, if admittedly cheap, were little if any less entertaining, e.g. The Top Lady of Sword. However, there have been cases where its poor reputation has been entirely justified – Super Cops comes to mind. Largely through being guilty of wanton, wholesale misdirection, this is likely the worst offender I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying quite a lot.

Dir: Sek Bing-Chan
Star: Yukari Oshima, Cynthia Khan, Billy Chow, Chung Kai Cheung