Tag: USA

At Your Own Risk

  By

★★½
“Reality bites.”

This is one of those films where the making-of is probably more interesting than the movie itself. For this was made for a thousand dollars, with the shoot consisting of two cast and two crew members, filming on property belonging to the director’s parents. This is what micro-budget film-making should be about: knowing your limitation, and working within them, so they don’t appear obvious. On that basis,it is s an impressive achievement, for it looks and sounds thoroughly professional, not least in capturing the scale of the outdoor environment in which it operates. Unfortunately, it’s considerably underwritten, and even at a terse 72 minutes, there just isn’t enough going on here.

Taylor (Santos) and Angie (Boylan) are running a struggling PR firm in Las Vegas – matters not helped by the secrets each woman is keeping. However, there is hope, in the shape of a potential new customer (Schroeder). He is running a high-end adventure business which sends customers into the New Mexico desert on a geocaching treasure hunt. But before giving Taylor and Angie the contest, he wants them to go through the process as if they were customers, in order to understand it better. They agree, and head into the wilderness. However, the further they go, the clearer it becomes that not everything about this “experience” is what it seems.

The problem is that for the great bulk of the film you only have the heroines wandering around the desert, from Point A to B… to C… to D… They chat, and the secrets mentioned earlier are revealed. However, we already know about one from the opening scene, and the other is severely lacking in impact. Meanwhile, there’s not enough of an antagonist. It’s clear that they are being watched, yet the observer is thoroughly passive, and all you really have as a result, is a very mild “women vs. nature” story, without sufficient threat to make you genuinely concerned for the safety of the lead characters. Throw in a broken leg, for example, and that might have helped generate the drama and tension which, as is, the film desperately needs.

. I didn’t mind the lead performances. Both portrayals manage to feel like real people, and I wasn’t left hoping a pack of hungry coyotes showed up and ate them. Given they’re on screen for almost every scene in the movie, that’s something of a feat in itself. We eventually reach a final reveal, explaining the reasons behind what has happened, though this provoked not much more than a shrug and a “Huh,” than any shock or awe. Indeed, it’s dragged out to such a point, it feels almost as if the footage was tacked on, purely in order that the film reached feature length. While there’s enough talent here I wouldn’t be averse to seeing what the makers create in future, this remains something I wouldn’t watch on a regular basis – even if condensed to an hour less commercial breaks.

Dir: John K.D. Graham
Star: Helenna Santos, Alexandra Boylan, Jeff Schroeder

Cats Kill

  By

★★
“Dead cat bounce.”

It’s quite a feat for a film which runs a crisp 67 ½ minutes to outstay its welcome, so… Well done? The problem is mostly that far too much time is wasted on the set-up, introducing us – in quite excruciating detail – to characters in whom we have little or no interest. These would be the friends who decide to spend a weekend in upstate New York, unaware they are about to cross paths with a pair of bored locals who have decided to alleviate the tedium by going on a killing spree. When one of them gets cold feet, however, it’s left up to Cat (Rafferty) to follow through on the original plan, which she does with some enthusiasm. Just a pity this doesn’t happen until roughly the final twenty minutes.

Up until that point, the film makes the mistake of concentrating on the victims. They are, by and large, not people with whom you would want to spend more than five minutes. To the movie’s credit, this does appear to be deliberate, yet it renders every moment an increasingly aggravating experience. That’s especially the case, when contrasted with the lack of motive provided for Cat and her partner, who simply choose to become murderers in virtually the first scene, with little or no justification. More time spent building towards that decision, and less watching the Big Apple pals swapping tedious banter, would certainly have been a wise move. Heck, hanging out with the New Yorkers for a bit first would surely convince anyone about the wisdom of murder as a moral imperative. No jury in the land would convict.

Indeed, the whole spree-killing couple angle is given such short shrift, I was left wondering why the directors bothered. However, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as when it’s just Cat operating by herself, things get done at a considerably brisker clip, which is certainly to the film’s benefit. [I’m not certain the likes of Milton Bradley, Victoria’s Secret and John Deere will be quite as enamored by the name-checks their products receive over the course of proceedings here – particularly the last] After capturing and disposing of a set of victims, it ends with Cat going up against final girl Alana (Loren), and it’s then that the film is at its bes… uh, least underwhelming.

Definitely a case of too little, too late however, even with the final twist, which I’ll admit gave me a dark chuckle. The makers here claim they were going for something giallo-esque. I know giallo. And this is no giallo. Given the complete lack of style shown, it’s more like a bad eighties straight-to-video slasher pic, with all the lack of gore, shortage of tension and terrible pacing that implies. Rafferty gets a full pass and Loren a partial, with their more energetic performances something the rest of the cast would have benefited from following. Otherwise, it’s hardly catnip for horror fans.

Dir: Alexander Cherney, Gregory Casino
Star: Alanah Rafferty, Kay Marie Loren, Daniel J. O’Connor, Will Scarlett

Crawl

  By

★★★★
“The shark was otherwise engaged, torturing Blake Lively…”

I have to say, I’m neither an expert on that strange sub-genre of “animal horror,” nor am I a particular fan of it. I’m mainly looking for a movie that can give me a suspenseful time in the cinemas. This is becoming more and more difficult. Partly because in by my time of live, I have has seen quite a lot of movies, of all sorts; but also because I feel modern film makers have forgotten how to create real suspense and a feeling of slowly rising and constant terror in movies.

Mostly we are left with nonsensical pictures of man-killing animals that seem to have supernatural abilities. Usually it’s played for laughs because of all the silliness that comes with these kind of movies. That’s a pity. Sure, as a cinema-goer you can’t expect the greatness of classics like Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) or Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) an ymore. But is it really that difficult? Create a modicum of interest for the main characters; introduce the predator; put the future victims in an isolated spot with the animals; and play with the ambiguity of the question as to whether said territory is safe at the moment – or not! That’s not rocket science, folks!

But for that you have to take the movie and the characters of your story seriously and the timing of every scene is essential: You’ve got to know where you set up your “beats”. How long can you ratchet up suspense before you’ve got to deliver? Where do you put the shocks, without which you can’t do a good horror movie? Do you put in a little bit of humor and to what degree? When is it time to give some relief to the audience, e. g. with character or relationship moments which seem obligatory background for these kind of stories? Whom do you kill? Whom do you have survive? And should you kill off the family dog or not? 😉

Alexandre Aja is a French film-maker who has got to show his talents across very different horror movies. His great High Tension, a psycho-thriller produced by Luc Besson, was followed by a The Hills Have Eyes remake, the good but not great Kiefer Sutherland vehicle Mirrors and later the (consciously) ridiculous Piranha 3-D. After a good start, in recent years it seemed as if he had lost “it” a bit. So, the offer from producer Sam Raimi to film an original story by Michael and Shawn Rasmussen came at the right time.

While the script has a few humorous moments (if you’re looking for them), it plays its story straight and Aja also focuses on creating genuine suspense and danger. Yet he also delivers in the important categories of shock and gore – something not really that evident from the trailers. That makes sense: you won’t show your climaxes in a trailer of an action movie. I’ve to say my expectations were pretty low when going into the movie. As a fan you know the score, so can a film still get you? To my surprise and delight, this was not only able to do that but also surpassed my expectations by far. But let’s start with some background info on what I want in such a movie.

Though you never expect a character study, I’m always happy if the characters get enough backstory or character traits, that they don’t appear as totally bland, two-dimensional audience stand-ins. That’s definitively true for Crawl‘s main actors Kaya Scodelario and Barry Pepper. Neither had that much luck with past roles: Scodelario, I remember from the Maze Runner movies but hardly seemed to register anywhere else much. I think I saw Pepper last with a supporting villain role in the True Grit remake (2010). I also need predators I like and respect. Some animals won’t really work for me, e. g. bears are simply too sympathetic. But for my money reptiles of all sizes always deliver the goods. And I’ve got an enormous respect for crocodiles or alligators.

Next, the simple but effective story in a nutshell. Florida, hurricane time. Swimmer Haley Keller (Scodelario), who just failed in a swimming competition, receives a phone call from her sister She’s worried because she couldn’t reach their dad. Neither sister has had much contact with him, since their mother and father divorced; he was Haley’s former trainer, leaving their relationship no on the best of terms. The streets are beiing closed due to the dangers of the approaching hurricane and the rising water levels.

After finding her father’s house abandoned, save for his dog, Haley drives on to their former family house which he was renovating. Following the sound of a radio, she descends into the derelict cellar where she finds Dave, her wounded father (Pepper), who tells her that two alligators have entered the cellar through the drain. While they have some sanctuary in the cellar, they have to make an escape, due to the rising water that is coming up through openings in the cellar floor…

This may sound maybe a bit dry (pun not intended). But, believe me, the screenwriters and Aja have used every trick in the book to push and pull us, the audience, emotionally through our seats, in the same way the alligators push and pull the two likable yet imperfect protagonists through their surroundings. I was very pleasantly surprised about the high level of suspense and tension here. But also how the important ingredients mentioned above were perfectly blended together. The movie really creates suspense and grisly anticipation – yet also doesn’t forget that audiences need moments of relaxation so they can breathe a little, before the next furious attack or moment of extreme danger arrive. It’s a very well-written and executed entertainment, showcasing a kind of story-telling we don’t see much any more.

That said, the movie doesn’t reinvent the wheel. I personally wouldn’t be surprised if the Rasmussens saw two other recent animal horror movies with female leads: Burning Bright (2010) told the story of a young woman, locked together with her autistic brother in a house with a wild tiger by her evil uncle during a hurricane. And, of course The Shallows (2016, is it really already that long ago? It feels as if I saw the film just a couple of weeks ago…), which showed us Blake Lively on a rock in the rising water off an unknown beach while a blood-thirsty shark circles. As a matter of fact, both of these movies would make for a good triple-bill with this. And once Crawl comes out on DVD, it will find its place directly next to them on my shelves!

What is it about all those young women fighting predators with large pointy teeth? I’m no psycho-analyst but I guess it has something to do with the re-integration of certain character traits into the female psyche. Whatever these may be. I do remember an early trailer when The Shallows came out that had a voice-over of what sounded like a life coach trainer, encouraging the Blake Lively character. I wonder if the idea of the father who trained his daughter to extraordinary achievements was inspired by that trailer?

Actually, this movie goes a different way from some recent action-heroine movies, that looked to discredit father figures or put them in a negative light. Haley may have felt betrayed by her parents divorce and her father “abandoning” her. Yet during the course of the story, she finds out that her parents were not as happy as she thought and that her dad, who always loved her and believed in her, is just a normal guy. [Though I must credit him for absolutely convincing me how every household needs a utility belt for hand tools!] Having to survive and fight for what is left of her family, with the support of her father makes Haley overcome her own anxieties, through facing more than one deadly situation. Certainly, crawling through the drain by which the reptiles came into the house evokes quite distressing birth trauma… That’s a very positive message. After so many negative portrayals of father figures and “family values”, I found this a highly sympathetic and, for 2019, unusually traditional depiction.

But it only has to work – and it does that very well. We are not immediately tossed into shock-infested seas, there’s a nice build-up, so when the gators appear they evoke the desired audience reaction.Haley and her father have enough back story that you are on their side and want them to survive, while at the same time worrying if they will make it. Despite being just that just 90 minutes, the movie is full of ideas of how the imprisoned father-daughter couple could get help from outside (which leads to an unpleasant looter-reptile encounter) or escape the cellar and the house. It really plays with giving you hope, just to take it away again. One of my favourite moments is when Haley and Dave make it to an escape boat outside, when the levees break and a wave of water throws them back into their house – only one floor higher. Well-timed elements of humor, such as Haley’s reaction when normal house spiders fall on her face, help make for very satisfying entertainment.

A fascinating side-fact is that the movie was shot in Belgrade, Serbia, which doubles for Florida perfectly. And a little “tidbit”: Scodelario’s and Pepper’s family name in the movie is “Keller”. For German cinema-goers that’s extremely funny as “Keller” is the German word for “cellar”. But one last question: will the dog survive? Watch the movie to find out! It gets four well-earned stars from me. Your mileage may vary, but honestly I think it’s on the same level as The Shallows, which also scored highly with me. So, if you enjoyed that, this should be right up your (flooded) street.

Dir: Alexandre Aja
Star:  Kaya Scodelario, Barry Pepper

Kiss Kiss

  By

★★½
“Weaponized strippers. What could go wrong?”

Four exotic dancers go on a trip to vineyard, courtesy of a customer at their club. However, they get more than they bargained for, falling unconscious and waking up to find themselves test subject in a scientific experiment run by Gibson (Wagner – no, not that one). He is attempting to convince the military-industrial complex to invest in his project to create “super soldiers”. To this end, he has a serum which vastly enhances both aggression and compliance, and has invited Senator Graham (Farino) to witness a test, under carefully controlled laboratory conditions. Oh, who am I trying to kid: he actually just shoots up the strippers with the serum and makes them fight to their deaths. In sports bikinis. And face-paint. In subdued yet artistic lighting. Because science! And that’s how government funding works!

It’s every bit as silly as it sounds. Unfortunately, it’s probably not as entertaining. It’s as if the editors of Maxim rented a copy of Raze, and decided to do an unofficial remake for their target demographic. They just forgot to bring along any of the significant players, leading to a result which is more pale imitation than loving homage. Even beyond the color filters, King does shoot proceedings with a good deal of style, and certainly no excess of slow-motion. Though he mixes this up with over-kinetic editing, e.g. showing the same punch landing from multiple different angles in quick succession. This can, however, only go so far in covering up that the fights are no more than average.

It’s never clear quite why the protagonists have to be strippers. Even during the opening scenes, where we see them “at work,” they don’t actually show any significant skin, and it’s weird having them called each other by stage names, like Kiss (Hopkins) and Promise (Castellon). I will admit that I knew some dancers back in my youth, and they never used the fake names outside. It may backfire, in that these pseudonyms repress the feeling these are real people, and I certainly didn’t feel any significant connection to the victims. Instead, it feels for much of the time like you are watching video-game: a well-rendered one, it has to be admitted, though one where the cut scenes go on considerably longer than normal.

To that end, I did quite enjoy Wagner, who chews the scenery to good, “mad scientist” effect. His performance reaches the point that the silly trappings (I mean, do we really need an electric fence around the ring?) begin to make weirdly flamboyant sense. You can even believe his scientific research establishment has a whole team of hair and make-up artists, to ensure the test subjects never have a lock or lick of mascara out of place, despite repeatedly brawling each other in the dirt. But in the end, it’s all just too daft. 35 years ago, it would, however, have made an excellent Duran Duran video.

Dir: Dallas King
Star: Natascha Hopkins, Robert Wagner, Nathalia Castellon, Julia Farino

Counterfeiting in Suburbia

  By

★★½
“Fake it till you make it.”

High-schoolers Reilly (Albuquerque) and Erica (Wallace) have discovered a way to literally print money, forging hundred-dollar bills. They then use these to buy high-end fashion, and sell these ill-gotten gains on to their schoolmates for genuine cash. The more cautious Reilly wants to stop, but realizes she can do good by helping Karen (Butler), her aunt and guardian, who is in financial trouble. So when Erica is insistent they expand, Reilly goes along with it, and they use the school’s art-class resources to up their game, laundering the fake money through foreign exchange stores. However, this criminal empire comes under threat, after art teacher Tim Sylvester (MacCaull) discovers what they’re up to. Because by chance, he owes a large sum of money to some nasty people, and starts a relationship with Erica, to make sure she’ll keep working for his benefit.  Worse still, the Secret Service have been alerted to the flood of funny money, so are also investigating.

I have… questions. What made R+E get into counterfeiting to begin with? For when the film starts, they’re already printing out the Benjamins on their home printer. And where do you get the special paper? While there have been cases of people using inkjet printers for this purpose, it seems these involved wiping $5 bills, then reprinting them with higher denominations. [Googling to find this out has probably got me on a watch-list…] And while the film makes the point, especially in high-end stores, that most purchases using credit-cards means assistants are less familiar with spotting fake bills, this surely doesn’t apply to currency exchanges? As a credible piece of scripting, this ends up skipping most of the necessary check-boxes, and I doubt it’s based as much on a true story as claimed.

It’s not entirely without merit though. The underlying idea – teenagers gradually getting out of their depth, and not realizing it until they are too far in – is a decent one. The contrast between the two leads is effective as well: Erica is perpetually touting them as being like Thelma and Louise, and is unfazed when Reilly points out how that ends. There’s also a contrast in motives between the girls – though you wonder a bit why they’re friends, given their divergent natures. Reilly is entirely selfless, and is using her illicit income for what she perceives as “good” [though never quite considers the negative implications of her acts]. Erica, on the other hand, is apparently doing it for the thrill or the LOLs, and you’re never sure quite what this loose cannon might do.

By coincidence, this was watched the same weekend as Body of Sin, and the two films are similar. Both focus on two young women of disparate characters, whose decision to team up and go over the border of legality has severe consequences. Both also have severe problems in the script department. Body was perhaps better technically, but this gets the edge – simply for the sheer uselessness of the only sympathetic male character, which may arguably be more feminist than anything the women do. While some way short of great, it just about passes muster, if you’re in an undemanding Netflix mood.

Dir: Jason Bourque
Star: Larissa Albuquerque, Kayla Wallace, Sarah Butler, Matthew MacCaull

Body of Sin

  By

★★
“Diamonds are clearly not forever.”

Erica (Kriis) is an attractive con-artist, who seduces married men in hotels, then drugs and robs them, knowing they’ll never be able to report the crime. She has just brought on an apprentice, Lauren (Patrikios), to learn the dubious trade, watch her back, etc. Their next score turns out to be the jackpot. as they discover the target was carrying a stash of diamonds with a seven-figure value. Absconding with their ill-gotten gains, the pair decide to lay low for a while, and head to Erica’s hideout on the holiday destination of Isabelle Island. They’re disturbed to read news reports that the target turned up dead in the room, and it quickly appears that the owner of the diamonds is closing in on them. But who is the threat? Local policeman, Mike (McCullough), for whom Lauren has a thing? Visiting boat-owner and part-time magician Tom (Berdini), with whom Erica has a fling? Or the creepy bald guy who arrives on the island and appears to be stalking Erica?

The performer who makes the best impression here is Tybee Island in Georgia, playing the role of Isabelle Island. It seems like a very nice place to take a holiday, picturesque and relaxing. Everyone else? Not so much. In particular, you could have Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren, and they’d still struggle to do anything with a script which resembles French lace, in that it’s a lightly-connected series of holes. For instance, when robbing the target, Erica first comes across an empty briefcase, before locating the diamonds in a tube, hidden in the toilet cistern. Inexplicably. she still takes the briefcase – which, of course, turns out to contain a tracking device. For the film’s entire duration, people both good and bad don’t behave in ways that make logical sense, and Creepy Bald Guy is probably the Worst Stalker Ever, though in his defense, there does turn out to be something of an explanation.

The leads are decent enough. There’s a nice contrast between the utterly cynical and untrusting Erica, who believes she’s on some kind of crusade to punish deceitful men, and the more naive and open Lauren, who gradually becomes more appalled, the more she discovers about her partner. I’d far rather have seen this angle exploited, with the two women turning from Thelma and Louise buddies, into vicious competitors, battling each other for the diamonds. Instead, they literally stand around while the (eventually revealed) good guy and villain tussle it out, mano a mano, on the edge of a convenient cliff. No prizes for guessing how that ends. The other thing is, for a film basically predicated on sexual attraction… it’s  tame stuff. Given Kriis bears some resemblance to Penelope Cruz – though she’s Indian rather than Hispanic – this was disappointing. If ever you want proof that technical competence alone is not sufficient to justify a movie’s existence, this should be Exhibit A.

Dir: The Olson Brothers
Star: Elisha Kriis, Ellie Patrikios, William Mark McCullough, Riccardo Berdini

Agent 5

  By

★★½
“Sleepless in Seattle”

Coincidentally, this one-man production was watched immediately after another, also put together toward the north-west corner, around the USA/Canadian border. But Carter Johnson is relatively restrained compared to Shadow of the Lotus‘s Jeff L’Heureux, Johnson’s name only appearing ten times in the end credits. While not dissimilar in low-budget approach, Agent 5 likely comes out just on top of the two, due to better pacing and sleeker look.

The titular heroine is Jada (Lemos), an assassin for a shadowy group which brought her up and trained her to kill, after the death of her parents. However, her programming is broken after she’s assigned the target of a whistleblowing doctor, whose elimination has been ordered by the pharmaceutical company which employed him. He convinces her to spare his life: although nearby colleagues still complete the job, before his death, he gives her the folder of incriminating data, information which could save thousands of lives. When Agent 5 goes public with it, her own employer decides she must be eliminated for her treachery, and the call goes out that she is to be located and killed. Easier said than done, though, especially when the target has decided to take the battle to her boss.

The action is competent. Nothing especially memorable, yet those involved are wise enough to know their limitations, and operate within them, rather than pushing the envelope and coming up short. Plotwise, there are some wobbly aspects: as with Lotus, the director being the writer probably hampers seeing such deficiencies. Jada exerts no effort to make things difficult for her ex-employer. If I was the subject of a brigade of assassins, I’d have moved to another country (or at least another state), drastically changed my appearance and gone as far off the grid as possible. Agent 5 does none of this, and keeps driving around town – likely for the prosaic reason that it would have posed production difficulties. Her “defection” also needed additional work: as it stands, she goes from apparently dedicated killer to rebel on the strength of a thirty-second conversation. Showing her as already disgruntled and with thoughts of quitting, would have made this much more plausible.

Originally developed as a short web series back in 2012, the main strength for the feature-length version is on the visual side. The technical quality of the footage here is so slick, it’s all but indistinguishable from a fully professional production (from what I can gather, it’s more of a high-end hobby effort for most involved). If only the same could be said about the performances, which are the biggest problem. Not so much Lemos – I’m not the only person to think she could perhaps be mistaken for Kate Beckinsale under certain lighting conditions. But the rest of the cast are all over the place, things likely reaching their nadir in the male “newscaster,” whose acting is so spectacularly awkward, I rewound it, purely for amusement purposes.

Dir: Carter Johnson
Star: Cindy Lemos, Ben Andrews, Andrew Tribolini, Roy Stanton

The Breadwinner

  By

★★★
“Burka-to-back.”

Around the turn of the millennium, Parvana (Chaudry) is an 11-year-old girl living in Kabul, Afghanistan – then under the strict religious rule of the Taliban, in the aftermath of the Russian retreat. Her father is arrested and taken off to prison, leaving his wife and children without a male guardian. Which is kinda important, because under Taliban law, women are not allowed out in public unaccompanied. With no other option, Parvana cuts her hair and dresses as a boy in order to be able to get supplies for her family. Teaming up with another boy-who-isn’t, Shauzia (Bhatia), they find work. Parvana starts saving for the bribes necessary to see, and hopefully win the release of, her father; Shauzia is saving up for her long-held dream of seeing the ocean. Of course, it’s never that easy, especially post-9/11, when the country is invaded by America and its allies.

A well-drawn exercise in paradox, it’s interesting to see liberal Hollywood attempt to juggle two of its favoured topics: feminism and Islam. Though in the end, this more or less says “Screw it,” and comes down firmly on the side of the former. For if you didn’t hate Islam before this film… you probably will by the time it’s over. Technically of course, the villain here is fundamentalism, in the malevolent shape of the Taliban; yet, this is the only kind of religion depicted in the movie. It’s not even clear if Parvana and her family are Muslim; they certainly don’t go to a mosque, and their existence seems entirely secular. On that basis, I’m quite surprised the film hasn’t been called out for Islamophobia, but I guess those gatekeepers were probably too busy nodding approvingly at the message of feminist liberation.

Moving on from tdubious socio-political messages which I can take or leave, as an animated feature, I liked this rather better. It intertwines Parvana’s efforts, both to contact her father and simply survive, with her telling the folk-tale of The Elephant King – making its hero her brother, who was previously killed by a land-mine left over from the Soviet occupation. The two threads use different yet complementary styles of animation to separate the “real” world from Parvana’s story, and it’s an effective way of depicting them. Parvana, too, makes for a solid heroine: brave and loyal to her family, while being too innocent and young to know the awkward questions she isn’t supposed to ask e.g WHY women aren’t allowed to go out unaccompanied.

Twomey was co-director of Oscar winner The Book of Kells, and it’s nice to see some animation that isn’t intent on being 3D and photo-realistic, so much as serving the story and the characters. It is sometimes a little hard to put aside the obvious intent as social propaganda, but I’ve never been one who felt you had to agree entirely with a film’s politics, in order to admire its artistic qualities. The latter are decent enough here to make for a worthwhile, if slightly too earnest, viewing experience.

Dir: Nora Twomey
Star (voice): Saara Chaudry, Soma Bhatia, Noorin Gulamgau, Kawa Ada

Shadow of the Lotus

  By

★★
“Give the man a hand!”

We know very well that, on low-budget films, people have to wear many hats. Hell, my IMDb entry began when a film I was supposed to be helping my wife produce, had an actor drop out. You can only respect those who can turn their hands to multiple jobs. And, yet… There’s a point at which it become self-defeating, because nobody can be good – or even competent – at so many positions. Lotus appears to have set new records in this area, with Jeff L’Heureux having his name listed in the end credits at no fewer than thirty different points, from director to make-up artist. That’s wearing an entire department store’s worth of hats, most apparent in the running time. For this is an 85-minute movie which runs for 124 minutes. L’Heureux the editor desperately needed to have had a word with L’Heureux the director and L’Heureux the writer about that.

There are two crime triads: the Black Lotus and the Red Dragons. Sarah (Huang) works for the former, but when she attempts to leave the organization, is shot, set ablaze and left for dead [Memo to self: if ever I become an evil overlord, I will not set my enemies on fire within easy rolling reach of the Pacific Ocean…] Naturally, she’s still alive, and comes back to begin disrupting the somewhat precarious plans of her former gang to form an alliance with the Dragons 0 I guess with the goal of forming some kind of super-triad under Gensho Woo (Geoff Wong). In the process, she encounters and subsequently teams up with local cop Claire (Neale), who has been trying to work things from the legal end. Sarah, needless to say, has no such limitations…

As noted, this is desperately in need of severe trimming, with hardly a single scene which does not go on for too long, where not altogether superfluous. This is particularly apparent in the early stages: it feels like an hour before things actually get going, with endless chit-chat between the players that’s blandly uninteresting. Things do improve in the second half, even if I found myself irrationally irritated by the way Sarah held her gun sidewise, like an amateur gangsta wannabe. The main plus is former colleague Jade (Macalino), who gets the chance to unleash her inner psycho. You could perhaps argue her performance is rampant over-acting, yet it’s still a heck of a lot of fun to watch, and the film is the poorer for Jade’s eventual departure.

L’Heureux is clearly inspired by, and trying to reproduce, the style of classic Hong Kong cinema from the likes of John Woo. That’s laudable enough an aim. Though the action is competent, it does fall short of these lofty goals, mostly lacking the passion and intensity which Woo’s actors brought to his films. This was never a function of their cost – admittedly, having Chow Yun-Fat was just a slight help to him there – though in defense of this, it appears to have been the director’s first feature. Plenty of room to improve next time, especially if he gets the help he needs to avoid spreading himself thinner than margarine on toast.

Dir: Jeff L’Heureux
Star: Vicky Huang, Melanie Neale, Alex Law, Candice Macalino

Lady Death: The Movie

  By

★★
“Death warmed up.”

My first viewing of this was on a day off from work, when I was down with some sinusy thing, and dosed up on DayQuil. So I chalked my losing interest and drifting off to the meds, and once I felt better, decided this deserved the chance of a re-view. However, the result was still the same: even as a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed viewer, I found attention lapsing. For this animated version of a mature comic, might as well be a He-Man and the Masters of the Universe episode. Which is a shame. I wanted to like it, since the creator of Lady Death, Brian Pulido, is something of a local comics legend here in my adopted home state of Arizona. This should have been better.

In 15th-century Sweden, Hope (Auten) is the daughter of Matthias (Kleinhenz), a mercenary who is actually an incarnation of Satan. When this is exposed, the innocent Hope is burned at the stake by religious zealots: there, she makes a literal deal with the devil, and agrees to re-join her father in Hell, where he has also taken her fiance, medical student Niccolo. However, once she is in the underworld, she rebels against his authority. With the aid of Satan’s former swordsmith, Cremator (Mungle), she obtains ‘Darkness’, a weapon Cremator had forged after slaying Asmodeus. Hope – or Lady Death, as she is now known – begins to amass an army and plot her demonic father’s overthrow.

All of which sounds considerably more interesting than the execution here, which is blandly uninteresting in just about every level, beginning with its depiction of hell. Even by the standards of 2004, this is low-quality animation. One of the strengths of the medium is it’s limited only by imagination: you don’t need to worry about the costs of building sets or whatever, it’s just what you draw. Yet there’s no indication here of any thought having gone into the setting. Hell is, apparently, a poorly-lit and generic cave system, populated by entities that look like Jabba the Hutt or Tim Curry in Legend. Much the same vanilla complaint can be leveled at voice-acting that’s desperately in need of more energy, save perhaps McAvin as Lucifer’s “jester,” Pagan.

But it’s perhaps the script which is the weakest element here – and considering the screenplay was written by Pulido, that’s especially disappointing. I’m only somewhat familiar with the comics, yet they seem to have a rich and fully-developed mythology. Could have fooled me based on this, where the Devil is basically an idiot, who has to make every mistake in the Evil Overlord handbook, to allow his adversary to triumph. Though this version of Lady Death appears considerably more heroic than in the source material, the question of why a “good girl” would want to reign over hell is never addressed. All that’s left is in an impressive bit of central character design, because there’s no doubt she is a striking creation. She’s someone who deserves a significantly better fate than this entirely forgettable prod with a blunt stick.

Dir: Andy Orjuela
Star (voice): Christine Auten, Mike Kleinhenz, Andy McAvin, Rob Mungle