Tag: USA

Sucker Punch

  By

★★★★½
“Suckers for punishment?”

Before getting to the film, what’s perhaps even more interesting is the critical reaction: it has been a long time since I’ve seen a film provoke such savagery, e.g. the Chicago Tribune’s Michael Phillips, who wrote: “The film abdicates so many basic responsibilities of coherent storytelling, even coherent stupid-action-movie storytelling, director/co-writer/co-producer Zack Snyder must have known in preproduction that his greasy collection of near-rape fantasies and violent revenge scenarios disguised as a female-empowerment fairy tale wasn’t going to satisfy anyone but himself.” Ouch. That’s far from the only example, and covers the common planks used to whack Snyder: incoherence, faux-feminism and dubious sexual politics.

There’s not even any genre love lost. Joe Wright, director of the somewhat similarly-themed Hanna, which came out two weeks after Sucker, tore into it: “I probably shouldn’t say this but the posters for recent films with girls kicking arse – there’s one out at the moment – there’s girls in the poster in bikinis and crop-tops, and they’ve got pigtails and they’re dressed up as schoolgirls. They’re being sexualised, this is supposedly ‘Girl Power’ female empowerment and that’s bullshit. Female empowerment is not about sex, that is the point of female empowerment. It’s about brains and not objectifying women.”

It’s worth pointing out Wright hadn’t seen the film, but I can’t say I support his position of laying down canon law on what does or does not constitute “the point of female empowerment”, or accept that sex is incompatible with it, as he states. There’s multiple routes to the goal, just as the Camille Paglia approach to feminism differs from the Andrea Dworkin one. It’s not a Spandex leotard – one size fits all – and to denigrate another piece of entertainment (which is, after all, what both Hanna and Sucker Punch are) for an alternative approach seems petty and mean-spirited. There’s room in the playground for both. Of course, I’m not someone who relies upon Hollywood to provide any kind of moral compass: if you do, I’d say you have far bigger problems than Sucker Punch.

But those who like it, really like it. It’s rated at 6.6 on the IMDB, from over 25,000 votes, so it’s not just studio shills. Compare other critically-savaged and commercial genre “failures”: Barb Wire (3.1), Catwoman (3.2), Ultraviolet (4.0). Sucker is more in line with something like Underworld (6.8), and the reaction on Twitter is also far more positive. Star Cornish may have a point when she said, “It’s so stylised, so specific; there’s no other film like it at all. When you have something totally new, it’s going to be judged to the 10th degree… When you’ve got a totally new concept, it’s a love or hate relationship.”

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Even if it fails, I’d rather have a film with ambitions, that tries something different, rather than another Judd Apatow/Seth Rogen “comedy”. There’s some parallel to be drawn between Snyder and Dutch maverick Paul Verhoeven. You could link Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake to Robocop, while 300 and Starship Troopers are both pseudo-fascistic tributes to the glory of war – and Sucker Punch would be Snyder’s Showgirls, a critically-reviled flop, damaged by its rating. Except here, it’s the PG-13 which hurts, but we’ll get more into that a little later.

The movie itself is imperfect; by some measures perhaps not even the “best” GWG film I’ve seen at the cinema this month. However, it is thoroughly cinematic and can only be admired as such – I’m far more likely to pick up the Blu-Ray DVD of this than Hanna. An un-named 20-year old (Browning) is sent to a lunatic asylum by her stepfather, after rejecting his attentions and being made the scapegoat for the death of her younger sister; her lobotomy is scheduled for five days time. Turns out the asylum is a high-end brothel where our heroine – nick-named “Baby Doll” – and the other girls are kept to perform for the pleasure of various high-rollers. Baby Doll plots an escape, the tools necessary lifted by her accomplices while she entrances the staff and customers with her dancing. During these, Baby Doll retreats even further, to fantasy worlds to do battle against dragons, robots, samurai warriors, etc. But which “reality” is real?

There’s more doubt over that, than which reality Snyder likes: hands-down, it’s the one filled with carnage, and his love for it shows. It’s only April, you could nominate these as the best four action sequences of the year, and I wouldn’t argue. My personal favourite sees the five girls storm the trenches in World War I, taking on steampunk-powered German zombies, with the aid of a rocket-powered walking tank. Remarkably, as cool as that sounds on the page, seeing it on screen is even better. Yes, all bear more than a passing resemblance to video games: they still work, possessing an elegant flow to them. And while none of the heroines will make Zhang Ziyi lose sleep, nor are they left looking horribly out of their depth, a major fear on hearing a High School Musical star was involved.

Since Baby Doll is explicitly stated to be 20, this doesn’t strictly fall into the category of “teenage action heroines,” but her hair, clothes, make-up, etc. all are designed to evoke the spirit of what Chris disparagingly called, “schoolgirl porn” – but the PG-13 rating means it can get absolutely no closer, so really, what’s the point? At least Showgirls delivered the goods: Baby Doll’s fantasy world might as well have been an office, college dorm or, frankly, convent, instead of the world’s most demure brothel. Reports indicate it took seven submissions and the removal of 18 minutes to get past the MPAA, so I have to ask. Should a film that, on one level, is about an abused girl forced into prostitution by her step-father, share a rating with Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire?

However, I do like a little more plot and better characterization with my action sequences. I think Baby Doll probably sings more than she speaks in the film. Browning is responsible for the cover of Sweet Dreams, which backs the immensely creepy opening that paints, in swift efficient brush strokes, the lead-up to her arrival at the asylum. It’s almost as if Snyder says, “Well, that’s that out of the way,” and there’s nothing anywhere near as effective the rest of the way. The rest of Baby’s posse don’t even get the benefit of that, and remain little more than lingerie-clad chess pieces, to be moved around the board of Snyder’s (undeniably impressive) imagination. Same goes for the plot, which has the action sequences more grafted on, than flowing naturally from the plot.

Overall, however, for all its undeniable flaws, this is a rare beast: an action film where women [rather than a singular woman] take center-stage. I’m hard pushed to think of anything like it out of Hollywood since, perhaps, The Descent, and this is clearly on a much bigger scale. Unfortunately, the luke-warm box-office probably makes it unlikely anyone else will follow suit, though I get the feeling it will do very nicely on DVD. It’s certainly close to a unique movie, for its combination of style, content and execution, and I tend to think/hope that the passage of time will be kinder to it, than most contemporary critics.

Dir: Zack Snyder
Stars: Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens

"It’s certainly close to a unique movie, for its content of style, content and execution, and I tend to think/hope that the passage of time will be kinder to it, than most contemporary critics."

Zorro’s Black Whip

  By

★★★
“Masked woman with a whip? Despite being almost 70 years old, still better than Catwoman.”

This 12-part serial from Republic was a spin-off from the success of Zorro – though despite the title, the Z-word is never mentioned. It moves the legend from Spanish California to Idaho in the 1880’s, just before a vote to decide whether it would become a state. Villainous Dan Hammond (McDonald) begins a violent campaign to prevent this, and is opposed by local newspaper owner Randolph Meredith, who has a secret identity as The Black Whip, a masked vigilante. When he is shot dead, his sister Barbara (Stirling) takes up the cape and whip, along with the help of undercover federal agent, Vic Gordon (Lewis). Together, they foil Hammond’s increasingly-desperate plots as voting day nears, and escape from 11 precarious positions. Well, it is a serial, after all…

Within the harsh limitations of the format, it does its best. In less than 15 minutes per episode, they have to fit in opening credits, a recap, replay the previous cliff-hanger, resolve that, set up the next cliff-hanger and finish with the closing credits. It leaves precious little time for plot or character development, which may explain why all the bad guys wear black hats. Seriously. They could reduce crime by 90% simply by banning the sale of non-white headgear, or so it would appear. Vic does most of the heavy lifting, action-wise, brawling frequently; Barbara generally stands back and uses her whip, which makes sense. Though, to be honest, the villains are remarkably oblivious to the Whip’s feminine curves: they’re blinded by their own sexism, at one point rejecting a suggestion Babs is the masked marauder, saying, “She couldn’t be! The Black Whip’s got to be a man!”

While clunky, sporting a dreadful ending for Hammond, and truly a product of its time (1944), the action is frequent and competent, thanks to the second-unit work of the legendary stuntman Yakima Canutt, who was the inspiration for much of John Wayne’s on-screen persona, and is best-known for staging the chariot-race in Ben Hur. The horse-work here is still outstanding: Babe DeFreest was the double for Stirling, and can be seen riding with her here. You could edit this down into a somewhat hyper feature, which would still be complete nonsense, yet given its age, is far from unwatchable.

Dir: Spencer Bennet and Wallace Grissell
Star: Linda Stirling, George J. Lewis, Francis McDonald, Hal Taliaferro

Hard to Die

  By

★★★
“I just want to get my clothes on and get out of here.”

This slice of cheese couldn’t be any riper. Five employees of the Acme Lingerie Company are called in to work on a Saturday to do inventory, despite the presence of creepy janitor Ketchum. A misdelivered package arrives, intended for Dr. Newton, an investigator of witchcraft, and when the ladies open it, they unleash the soul of a serial killer (allowing the use of flashback footage from a previous Wynorski flick. Sorority House Massacre). Meanwhile, the workers, having got all dusty gathering up boxes in the basement, make the logical decision: to take showers and try on the latest Acme line of skimpy products. Which they then wear for the rest of the film. As the unleashed killer picks off them, and everyone else in the building, one by one. Fortunate that there’s an arms dealer who has also set up shop on another floor, and who has left large quantities of merchandise and ammo around…

For the first 70 minutes, you’ll be wondering why this even qualifies for the site. It’s more in the campy horror line, with the emphasis more on the “camp” than the horror: always nice to see genre icon Forrest J. Ackerman in a supporting role. Otherwise, this is basically an excuse to ogle scantily-clad babes, but the tone is kept light – check out the squeaking sounds when they are assiduously soaping their breasts in the shower. Even the deaths are basically off-screen, with a fraction of the gore we get now, more than twenty years on. As a B-movie, it’s fine, but despite the title, Joe-Bob Briggs was about a million miles off when he said, “It’s the female version of Die Hard, full of lighting-hot action.” There’s a reason just about everyone involved uses pseudonyms. And then, fortunately, there’s the final reel, to which no description can do justice. Fortunately, someone posted it on YouTube, so I think I’ll just let the footage speak for itself.

Quite why they waited until the end to unleash this furious assault on the senses, I don’t understand. Is it great art? Not in the slightest. But it crams in more marvellous, lingerie-clad, automatic, dumbness into ten minutes than many better-known GWG entries do in their entire running-time, and should only be respected as such.

Dir: “Arch Stanton” [Jim Wynorski]
Star: Robyn Harris, Lindsay Taylor, Debra Dare, Orville Ketchum

Resident Evil: Afterlife

  By

★★★
“Is There Life After Afterlife?”

Milla Jovovich, coming at you in three dimensions! Unfortunately, Chris and 3D movies do not play well with each other – as we discovered at Avatar, where the resulting motion sickness had her staring at the back of the seat in front, after the first twenty minutes. She understandably declined all invitations to see Afterlife in this mode, so please note that with regard to this review, we’re strictly discussing the 2-D version. Other reports generally indicate the 3-D is pretty spiffy, having actually been shot that way, rather than being some hacked conversion job like certain movies I could mention [cough-ClashoftheTitans-cough]. That said, we move on.

We keep bumping into the first Resident Evil movie, which has been on cable a lot lately, and I’m tending to think my 3 1/2-star review was an under-estimate. Maybe due to the underwhelming nature of the last couple of entries in the series, the original moves briskly, keeps a tight focus on proceedings, and has a nice character arc for Alice. I was hoping that the return of its creator, Paul W.S. Anderson, to writing and directing for this fourth installment would signal a return to this approach.

There’s really only one reason we bother with this series: to see Milla Jovovich kicking righteous ass. Everything else is – or should be – secondary. And for the first 15 minutes, it looked like this would indeed be a return to these basics, as Alice and an army of Alice-clones launched a righteous assault on the massive complex housing the Umbrella Corporation’s headquarters beneath Tokyo. It’s reminiscent of the lobby scene from The Matrix, with a swarm of Alice-alikes breaking in and hurling themselves against the guards like aggrieved lemmings, with no regard for their personal safety, as they try to take out Umbrella’s CEO’s Albert Wesker (Roberts).

It’s great: among the best scenes of the entire series, in fact. The bad news is, it’s also the best thing in the movie. The sequence would have made a great climax, but instead, everything thereafter feels like an anti-climax. Wesker escapes by helicopter, flipping the self-destruct switch and destroying the clones. However, the real Alice is aboard, and before the ‘copter crashes, he injects her with a serum that neutralizes the T-virus, rendering her human again. Boooooo-ring! Turns out they both survive the crash: quite why Wesker didn’t deal with her then, isn’t made clear. Alice heads to Alaska, in search of the haven called Arcadia where Claire Redfield (Larter) was heading at the end of the third film.

That turns out to be a red herring, but Alice does find Claire, albeit now controlled by an Umbrella device on her chest. Removing that, albeit at the cost of Claire’s memory, the pair fly back down the West coast, eventually locating a group of survivors bunkered down in an LA prison – Arcadia turns out to be the name of a boat, anchored just offshore. As the zombies break in, the survivors make their way towards the boat, with the help of a prisoner who turns out to be Chris (Miller), Claire’s brother. Reaching the Arcadia, they discover it’s a trap, designed to lure people to it for Umbrella’s research, with Wesker overseeing operations. He wants to assimilate (or “eat”) Alice; as the only person to successfully meld with the T-virus, he wants that ability to enhance his own superpowers.

There’s way too much moving about in underground darkness here, and elements are lobbed in from the video game, which make no sense in the context of the movie. For instance, some zombies now have their faces split open and become all tenticular: why, is never explained, and the CGI used here is less effective than the effects used for a similar concept in Blade II, almost a decade ago. There’s also the Executioner, a giant creature wielding an even-larger weapon: again, its presence from a cinematic perspective is completely unexplained. In short, the film just doesn’t make much sense, though admittedly, between the battles, there was precious little of interest going on to hold my attention.

Nor is there much feeling of threat to the characters, who cheat death with blithe abandon – the sense of “anyone can die, at any time” present in the original is all but gone. A case in point would be the leader of the survivors, who vanished from the film entirely as they make their way out of the prison, only to reappear, right at the end, to no point whatsoever. Chris Redfield is an almost entirely superfluous character; like the monsters mentioned above, he is apparently there, just so that fans of the game can go “Look! It’s Chris Redfield!” The rest of us…not so much. The whole subplot of Alice’s humanity being restored doesn’t go anywhere either; that may well be fortunate. In any case, by the end, she seems completely back to normal. Well, “normal” in the way we want to see, anyway.

Which brings me nicely to the action, and it is, as usual for the series, solid, meaning this is, overall, just worth the 92 minutes of your time it will take up. I think due to the 3-D, the editing is more restrained than it has been of late; indeed, there’s probably as much slow-motion as anything else. I particularly liked Alice’s fondness for loading her shotgun with coins – again, I suspect largely for 3-D purposes. There’s a nice tag-match between her, Claire and the Executioner, but the final face-off versus Wesker is largely forgettable. As usual, the film ends on an interesting note: this time, it’s the return of a character last seen in Apocalypse, who makes a cameo early in the end-credits, and I wouldn’t mind seeing them return.

Despite the 3-D, the movie was only a mediocre success here, but a much greater hit overseas. For perspective, the percentage of total box-office coming outside North America for the first three entries was fairly constant, at 61%, 60% and 66% respectively. Afterlife got an astonishing 80% of its takings in foreign territories, grossing $236 million there, compared to only $60m in the US, barely recovering its budget. That’s one of the highest ratios of the year, and has only been surpassed a handful of times this decade, by films with a broad Stateside release. It’s this success abroad which means a fifth installment is all but certain. And as long as they keep making them, we’ll keep watching, hoping the potential, seen in flashes, might be more fully realized. A script which makes sense on its own terms, and doesn’t bother pandering to gamers, would be a good start.

Dir: Paul W.S. Anderson
Stars: Milla Jovovich, Ali Larter, Wentworth Miller, Shawn Roberts

"As long as they keep making them, we’ll keep watching, hoping the potential, seen in flashes, might be more fully realized."

Double Dare

  By

★★★★½
“Zoë Bell, you’re our heroine. Never change.”

The day after watching this documentary, I was clearing out the shed in preparation for our house move. I twisted my back, and thought about giving up, but soldiered on until the job was done – because that’s what Zoë Bell would do. It’s now my life philosophy: WWZD? She’s the main focus here, from working as Lucy Lawless’s double on Xena in New Zealand, through an unsuccessful attempt to break in to Hollywood, and on to a second try, where she’s hired to stand-in for Uma Thurman in Kill Bill. Paralleling this, it looks at Jeannie Epper, a veteran stuntwoman who shadowed Lynda Carter in Wonder Woman. Now nearing her 60th birthday, Epper is still active and seeking work, fighting against the problems of being a female in an extremely male-dominated industry.

The thing that comes over is how delightfully un-Hollywood Bell is, innocent almost to the point of naivety – she’s blissfully unaware of the need, for example, to have head shots, and drops F-bombs with a marvellously casual air. The cameras are rolling when she gets the call telling her she’s got the Kill Bill job, and her obvious, genuine delight at the news, brought a huge grin to our faces, and is completely endearing. It’s to be hoped that Hollywood doesn’t change her in the slightest, and Zoë remains the same, down-to-earth, well-grounded person shown here, who is now even more solidly entrenched among our favourite contemporary action heroines.

I have some concerns there, based on Epper; her contemplation of plastic surgery and liposuction at her age is more sad than anything else, as is watching Jeannie working the phones, basically begging for work, even though she’s a legend in the business. There’s a good heart beating in there (Epper donated a kidney to a friend, for instance), but she has clearly been ground down by her decades in the film industry, and become a lot more cynical and battle-weary as a result. That’s no wonder, when you witness her struggles trying to get equal treatment for women at the annual awards ceremony. It’s a somewhat grim reality-check, warning of the potential perils ahead for Bell in her career.

But aside from the contrast in the two heroines, this is a fascinating study in a side of the business that doesn’t get anything like the recognition it deserves. As one comment I read elsewhere said, “If you liked Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, Zoë Bell is the reason why,” and that sums up the shadows in which stuntwomen work. This film shines a light into that darkness, and both Epper and Bell deserve enormous respect and admiration for putting their bodies on the line, in the name of our entertainment. And while I’m not really a big Tarantino fan, if he turns out to be responsible for bringing Bell to a wider audience, then it’s perhaps the biggest gift his career will have given us.

Dir: Amanda Micheli
Star: Jeannie Epper, Zoë Bell

Salt

  By

★★★½
“See Salt?”

Angelina Jolie is the undisputed US box-office queen of action heroines. With Lara Croft: Tomb Raider‘s $131 million, and the $117 million this had earned to date, she owns two of the top four all-time genre entries (the other two being Crouching Tiger and Charlie’s Angels). While that’s not adjusted for inflation – Aliens would likely come out on top there – it’s still an impressive feat, and there probably isn’t any other actress in Hollywood capable of opening a large-budget action movie on this scale. Even in a supporting role, e.g. Wanted, she has credibility as an action heroine few can match.

Here, she plays Evelyn Salt, a CIA operative who returns from time in captivity in North Korea, and resumes her cover as a company executive. She and her colleague Ted Winter (Schreiber) are called in to interview a Russian defector, and decide if he is telling the truth. He spins a tale of a long-running project, dating back to the Cold War era. Young children were groomed from a very early age to become sleeper agents abroad, leading normal lives without suspicion until the time comes to activate them. That time has now come, with one agent tasked with killing the Russian President, currently on a state visit to the US. Oh, yeah – and that agent’s cover name is… Evelyn Salt.

When Salt can’t contact her husband (Diehl) and the defector escapes from custody too, Salt bolts from the impending custody closing around her and goes on the run. Is it because she wants to rescue her husband and prevent the assassination, to clear her name? Or is she the double-agent claimed? The film doesn’t hold out too long in this regard before committing itself. However, that isn’t the main focus, as the script then swerves in a different direction, and it also turns out that the assassination attempt is not an end in itself, only the start of a more far-reaching, and disturbing, plan to incite Armageddon.

I confess to being somewhat disappointed, especially after I realized this was written by Kurt Wimmer, who gave us Equilibrium and Ultraviolet [the former was a lot more warmly-received, but I’ll defend the latter to my dying breath as pure adrenalin/popcorn nonsense]. This is rather more restrained, which likely explains why it took nine figures at the box office, yet is also rather less memorable as a result. Not to say it’s “bad”, or anything like that; just that it’s very easy to see it, as originally envisaged, starring Tom Cruise. Pretty much run a global search and replace on the script, changing the lead character’s name [to, oh, I dunno: “Jason Bourne”?] and you’d be there. It’s too generic to be a true classic of the action heroine genre.

Still, it’s entertaining and keeps moving. Credit for clocking in at a brisk 100 minutes, rather than stretching things out beyong what’s necessary: there’s isn’t much unnecessary fat on its scriptual bones, and a refreshing lack of romantic chit-chat. There are a couple of solid action set-pieces, most notably an early, frenetic chase through the streets, and Salt overall has an ability to withstand falls that Wile E. Coyote would envy. Towards the end, she descends a lift-shaft leading to the presidential bunker, without bothering to wait for the elevator, and can also turn a few common cleaning supplies into an impromptu rocket-launcher. These are talents I’m sure we all could use occasionally.

Despite this, and Jolie’s undeniable screen presence, it lacks any truly memorable moments, and has little you won’t have seen before, assuming a passing knowledge with action franchises like Bourne, 007, Jack Ryan, etc. [Worth noting that two entries in the last-named series were directed by Noyce] We sniggered more than once at the way Salt always seems to have a new outfit, even as she runs from the entire weight of federal law-enforcement, and Salt’s husband is never developed enough to justify the pivotal role he plays. However, the ending is left wide-open for a sequel, pointing in a definite direction, presumably in the hope of a franchise emerging. The $162 million this has taken overseas, in addition to the US earnings, make that a distinct possibility, and I would certainly not be averse to the prospect of another helping of Salt.

Director: Phillip Noyce
Stars: Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor, August Diehl

Whip It

  By

★★★
“Mostly harmless.”

Bliss Cavendar (Page) is stuck in the hickville of Bodeen, Texas: her mother (Harden) coerces her into small-town beauty pagents, but Bliss’s heart isn’t in it. On a shopping trip to Austin, she picks up a roller-derby flyer, and on attending the event with her friend Pash (Shawkat), falls in love with the sport and decides to try out. She has to lie about her age to do so, and also keep her attendance a secret from her parents. Bliss has a natural talent, and helps her team, the Hurl Scouts, previously the doormats of the league, to the championship game against the Holy Rollers, under Iron Maven (Lewis). The confidence Bliss gains is not without its issues however, bringing her in to conflict with her boyfriend and Pash, as well as her parents…

In many ways, it’s A League of Their Own for the modern era, right the way down to the male coach, trying to get his girls to play the game the way he wants. Adversity must be overcome, friendships formed, life lessons learned, etc. These aspects are more like a chick-flick with a roller-derby backdrop, but it does manage to avoid the usual pitfalls of that genre. While skipping over some details of the game, the film does gets the “feel” of roller derby right, with the participants – Lewis in particular – capturing the cheerful anarchy at play, and the way they live for the game [it’s also nice to see Zoe Bell as one of her team-mates].

It’s a bit much to believe she can skip out for an entire season of games and practices, without her parents noticing, and Page is probably too much a physical lightweight to be truly convincing, though that’s disgused well enough you don’t really notice. However, the story is completely predictable, and without giving too much away, even the ending is little surprise at all, and fits in with the generally feel-good nature of this. As warm, fuzzy sports movies go, roller-derby may not be the most obvious choice, yet Barrymore has made a nice promo for the sport, and if the film would certainly have benefited from more conflict on the track, and less soap-opera off it, I certainly can’t claim to have disliked this.

Dir: Drew Barrymore
Star: Ellen Page, Alia Shawkat, Marcia Gay Harden, Juliette Lewis

Run! Bitch Run!

  By

★★
“Grindhouse par excellence. Not convinced this is entirely a good thing, however.”

I can certainly appreciate where the makers are trying to go with this one. Two Catholic schoolgirls, selling Bible door-to-door to raise funds for their educational establishment. Unfortunately, they knock on the wrong door: this is actually a whorehouse, run by the psychotic Lobo (Tahoe), who has just killed one of his hookers. The two are kidnapped: one is killed, while the other (Lyone) is left for dead, naked, in the nearby woods. She is taken to hospital, but has only a single thought in her head: revenge. Stealing a nurse’s uniform, she checks out, intent on taking our her wrath on Lobo and his no-less depraved sidekicks.

Particularly if you’ve seen the (thoroughly NSFW) trailer, you’ll know where this is heading, and it’s not a pleasant place. While entirely successful at evoking the grindhouse atmosphere, with its mix of sleazy, ugly sex and grimy violence, it also succeeds at being remarkably.. Well, boring is the word I’d use, and that’s close to an unforgivable sin as far as exploitation cinema goes. The pacing just seems off: it takes too long to get to what we actually want to see, which is these low-life scum getting their come-uppance. While the film does eventually deliver (Lobo’s fate will have you shifting uncomfortably), I must confess, my interest had waned well before that point.

The main problem, I think, is there is no emotional connection with the heroine. While there is an attempt to build her character early on, it’s not successful. A film like this largely stands or falls on its central performance; while Lyone is laudably game, she doesn’t have the acting chops to get the audience over on her side, and so the torments she undergoes have little or no impact, and neither does her revenge. The best grindhouse flicks achieve that connection on an almost visceral level, taking you to dark places you generally don’t want to go, and this only brushes against the edges there, making its flaws all that more obvious.

That said, I am still somewhat interested in seeing Guzman’s next work. Whatever his talents may lack elsewhere, the man has an undeniable eye for a title, and this one may even lack the grammatical issues found here. Coming soon: Nude Nuns with Big Guns.

Dir: Joseph Guzman
Star: Cheryl Lyone, Peter Tahoe, Ivet Corvea, Johnny Winscher

Alice in Wasteland

  By

★★
“Washing-up proved marginally more interesting.”

Ok, that brief is a little harsh, but it is true to say by the end, I had opted to double-task, and was watching this while I stood over the sink in the kitchen. It wasn’t as good as I expected: I was hoping for something along the lines of Faster, Pussycat, and instead got a turgid, over-extended crime drama. While it has all the right aspirations, the yawning chasm between that and its execution would require several days’ trip by mule to cross. Alice Wynn (Sondrup) is part of an armored-truck robbery, only to find herself double-crossed and left for dead by corrupt cop Jill Robbe (Beisner). Alice vows to recover the loot and take revenge on Robbe, and won’t let anyone – examples include her late mother’s boyfriend, psychotic pimp Ramrod or his Swedish assassin – stand in her way.

It’s not as good as it sounds, with the low-budget impediments and a largely amateur cast providing almost permanent blocks to success. About the only thing it shares with Faster, Pussycat is a complete lack of actual nudity – and unlike that, this doesn’t make up for that shortcoming in charisma. There are some amusing moments, such as adverts for a non-dairy product called “Pusé Whip”, or a film called Kill Jill, yet most of the individual scenes seem to solve little purpose except to get you to the next one – they’re just not very interesting on their own.

I did quite enjoy the two leads, with both Sondrup and Beisner surpassing the minimum necessary “Oomph” for their roles – the final scene together is perhaps the best thing about the movie (save the Swedish assassin). However, I don’t come into films expecting “the minimum necessary,” and when the other aspects largely fall short of even that mark, I have to confess that disappointment, and a resulting decision to get on with some housework, were the result. I’m left with the feeling that some things are perhaps best left to the professionals.

Dir: Lasse Jarvi and Peter Schuermann
Star: Roxane Sondrup, Michelle Beisner, Major Mandolin, Adam Ryan Villareal

Blood: The Last Vampire (live-action)

  By

★★★
“Half-human, half-demon takes on her own kind. Haven’t we seen this before?”

The animated version was one of the first reviews I wrote for the site, and I didn’t like it much – the fifty-minute running time allowed for hardly any development of scenario or characters at all. The feature fares a good bit better in these departments, though suffers from some horrendous editing styles and a couple of monsters which appear to have strayed in from a Playstation game (and I am not talking Playstation 3 here, either). The basic plot is retained. Saya (Gianna) is a half-demon with a grudge, intent on taking out Onigen (Koyuki), the one responsible for the death of her father. Working under the loose guidance of The Council, she is inserted into a school on an American air-force base in 1970 Japan. American girl Alice (Miller) has been added; Saya rescues her, and the two end up on the run, pursued both by Onigen and more regular forces.

This wasn’t as bad as the reviews led me to expect, and Gianna goes a good job of capturing the permanently-peeved expression of Saya. There are certainly lots of fights, with Corey Yuen doing his usual solid work, though the cutting of these early on, renders them almost incomprehensible. Seriously: you have almost no idea who is doing what to who. However, that seems to change in the second half; there’s a very solid battle in the forest between Saya, her mentor, and an endless horde of minions, and the final battle between the heroine and Onigen certainly doesn’t lack for spectacularity…er, -ness. Or something.

Going against this, Alice’s presence seems no more than a sop to the international market, because she serves little or no purpose to the film otherwise. There’s also a thoroughly unsatisfactory sequence where Saya fights a flying monster on a truck, perched precariously in a gorge: it’s both incoherent and very badly-rendered, a combination that would shame a SciFi original movie. That said, it kept me entertained and awake, which is more than some films (coughSnowbloodcough) have been able to do this month. If Gianna wants another stab at an action heroine flick, I wouldn’t object.

Dir: Chris Nahon
Star: Gianna, Allison Miller, Liam Cunningham, Koyuki