Tag: USA

Chickfight

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★★★½
“Probably the best American women’s wrestling DVD I’ve seen to date.”

This 8-woman tournament took place on October 2004 as part of All Pro Wrestling’s Halloween Hell weekend, in in Hayward, California and.was the first under the ‘Chickfight’ banner. If you’re used to the Diva “matches” [quotes used advisedly] put on by the WWE, this will come as a pleasant surprise – it’s closer to the Japanese style, where technical skill is more important than breast implants. Perhaps the most surprising thing is the length of the bouts: rather than being a five-minute distraction, 15 or 20 minutes being not uncommon. The wrestlers come from Mexico and Japan as well as the US, though they really deserve better than both the location, which appears to be a lock-up garage complete with a roll-up door on one side, and the crowd, the bouts taking place in front of an audience that hardly seems to number fifty.

That said, the women still give their all, and Sugey is probably the most impressive, both in her quarter-final contest against Candice LaRae, where she totally destroy her opponent into unconsciousness, and then again in her semi-final match versus Nikki Roxx, where the pair roam turn the entire venue into the ring. Meanwhile, the other half of the draw sees Cheerleader Melissa – who can now be seen on TNA as Awesome Kong’s “Islamic” sidekick, Raisha Saeed – move through the tournament, defeating her opponents, Tiffany and Christie Ricci. The contests there are more evenly-balanced, though probably also count as somewhat less memorable – the acid test being that they failed to distract us as much from the appointed task of packing up boxes, in preparation for our imminent move. The final is a steel-cage match between the Princess and the Cheerleader [which, if it’s not a Disney movie, should certainly be one], held on a later evening – likely a wise decision, since otherwise, the wrestlers would be fighting their third contest in one night.

To be honest, the finale was a bit disappointing, since we believe it’s not a real steel cage match until the phrases “busted wide open”, “mask of blood” or “Oh, the humanity!” are used. This was far more like a regular wrestling bout inside a wire fence than anything, and the cage also hampered the camerawork, leaving me feeling like I was watching proceedings on CCTV. It didn’t help that the commentators didn’t know the rules for the fight, and weren’t aware that escaping the cage made you the winner. Really, it’s a pale shadow of a cage match when compared to something like the 1997 tag-bout, Las Cachorras Orientales (Mima Shimoda and Etsuko Mita) vs. Kaoru Ito & Tomoko Watanabe. That, dear readers, is a cage-match [and can be found on our video page for April 2009]. Overall, however, it’s a good-value package with some quality content and despite occasional qualms about the production values, I intend to check out other entries in the series down the line.

Star: Princess Sugey, Cheerleader Melissa, Nikki Roxx, Christie Ricci

Day Night Day Night

  By

★★★½
“Is it live, or is it Semtex?”

This is one of those which split the panel here. Chris was thoroughly unimpressed with its lack of a well-defined conclusion: “I knew it,” she muttered, “As soon as I saw this had a woman writer/director.” Certainly, if you are looking for a clear, structured thriller, this won’t be for you. Explanations are notable by their absence, as we learn about a young girl, preparing to stage a suicide bombing in Times Square. Who is she? Why is she doing this? What group is helping her? We never really learn explicitly. There are occasional clues, such as an Islamic-themed backdrop in front of which she is carefully posed for the traditional video, but as we never get to see the video, it’s inconclusive. We get hints of family trauma: she says her parents are dead, but later on, calls them from a payphone, and the only possession she wants to keep is a photo of a kid brother. But “Leah Cruz” – the woman whose identity she adopts, and on which she is relentlessly quizzed by the cell commander (Weinstein) is basically a blank canvas, onto which you can project whatever you want. “I have only one death and I want my death to be for you,” she says at the start; that’s as much of an explanation as you’ll get.

It is a cop-out, no question about it, and I can’t blame Chris for being annoyed: it’s both lazy story-telling and bad film-making to make the audience do all the heavy lifting, as Loktev does here. However, I tend to think it occasionally does the brain good to give it a workout, and let’s be honest, the Girls With Guns genre isn’t usually the place to find such an exercise. That doesn’t excuse the maddeningly unfinal ending, however, that is the film’s weakest moment. If Loktev had delivered a genuine conclusion – one way or the other, it doesn’t really matter – she would have been on much firmer ground. Up until then, I was willing to give the film the benefit of the doubt, with Williams providing a surprisingly strong core: excruciatingly polite, yet bent on committing the most awful destruction through her 40-pound backpack [“It’s mostly nails,” says one of the cell, helpfully].

The devil is very much in the details: she clips her toenails and requests a pizza, behaving more like a college girl than someone preparing to carry out mass murder. But would any terrorist group allow its human bomb to wander the streets aimlessly, rather than heading straight for the target? Surely every minute increases the risk of capture and failure? It’s in aspects such as this that the hyper-realistic feel – no incidental music, for example – breaks down, and you are reminded that what you’re watching is just as much cinematic contrivance as 24 or Vantage Point.

Dir: Julia Loktev
Star: Luisa Williams, Josh P. Weinstein

Eve of Destruction

  By

★★★★
“Known as Terminator Woman in Spain, I can see their point.”

While undeniably a product of its time – which would be 1991 – this has stood the test of time very well, and remains a solid piece of action SF. Eve Simmons (Soutendijk) is a researcher working for the US government on creating life-like robots for surveillance missions, and her creation, Eve VIII, not only looks like her, but has her memories and psychology too. When on a test run in San Francisco, Eve VIII is caught up in a bank robbery and a bullet sends her off the grid, and on her own mission. Jim McQuade (Hines), something like a proto-Jack Bauer, is brought in to track down the lost little robot, who has all of her creator’s complexes, but none of the social restraints, leading to a fondness for automatic weapons, which she uses with abandon as she works out her psychiatric issues [cheaper than counselling, and a good deal more fun]. Oh, and Eve VIII also has a nasty little surprise package tucked away inside. It’s up to McQuade and Simmons to stop the killing machine before things really get out of hand.

Former pop-video director Gibbins [he did Wham’s Club Tropicana] makes a smooth transition to the action genre, and keeps things moving at a fine pace. It’s Soutendijk’s first European role – or rather roles, since she plays both human and cyborg, and she does a good job of splitting and defining them. Eve VIII has the kind of unfettered approach that’s fun to watch, wielding a Mac-10 with delightful abandon, and the image of Soutendijk in her red leather jacket, blazing away, is justifiably an icon of the genre. I particularly recall seeing the cardboard standee in the video-store which advertised the film. Sure, there are a number of convenient plot-holes [it’s never quite explained how Eve VIII tracks down her father through an army associate] and occasionally the budget and effects don’t prove quite up to the ideas the script wants to express. The subplot involving Eve’s son learning about genitals should probably have been removed entirely too: in these more-sensitive days, it comes across as creepy rather than anything.

But as a straightforward B-movie, it works nicely, with Hines having a nicely sardonic wit: “A spinach lasagne, in a light tomato and basil sauce,” is the reply, when Simmons asks dubiously what is McQuade’s “specialty” as a government agent. I’m still trying to work out if the film is feminist or chauvinist: you could read it either way, with the ‘liberated’ (if robotic) woman a free spirit, though the ending firmly puts Even back in her place, to say the least. She also emasculates one man, somewhat familiar territory for Soutendijk, who previously wielded a scissors to leg-crossing effect in The Fourth Man. Gibbins, meanwhile, died in the 1993 Hollywood fires, while trying to rescue a cat. Guess there’s never an unstoppable robot around when you really need one.

Dir: Duncan Gibbins
Star: Renee Soutendijk, Gregory Hines, Michael Greene, Kurt Fuller

The Golden Compass

  By

★★★½
“While feeling incomplete, still a good primer for young action heroine fans.”

There aren’t that many decent action heroine films for kids: much as I love Bloody Mallory or Kill Bill, they aren’t really child-appropriate. At the other end, films like the Harry Potter or the Narnia series, while containing female characters of some importance, sideline them in favor of the boys. That makes this a refreshing breath of fresh air, in that the heroine is firmly front and center as she goes through her adventures. It’s set in an alternate universe where people’s souls take the form of animals that accompany them everywhere, known as daemons. Childrens’ daemons shapeshift, but adults’ ones are static in form. Things are run by an authoritative group called The Magisterium, but Lord Asriel (Craig) who has found “dust” in a far Northern land, that could challenge the established order – the Magisterium have been kidnapping children for use in human experiments to counter dust. Into this is dropped Asriel’s niece, Lyra Belacqua (Richards), who is given the last golden compass, a device able to answer any question in the right hands. she is about to head North with Mrs. Coulter (Kidman), only to find she has a central role in the kidnapping – as Lyra’s best friend has now vanished, she bravely heads off, initially on her own, to rescue him.

It’s a pretty cool adventure tale, with some stirring sequences and memorable characters – not least the armoured polar-bear (voiced by McKellen), who becomes Lyra’s protector. He doesn’t just sit around drinking Coke, let’s say, though the entirely bloodless nature of the battle sequences lessen the impact significantly, though is likely an inevitable result of the PG-13 certificate. It is satisfyingly full of strong female characters, on both sides: as well as Lyra and Mrs. Coulter, the witch queen Serafina Pekkala kicks almost as much ass as the polar-bear. But the film fails badly to tie up the ends, particularly Lord Asriel, who is kidnapped in the middle and then vanishes, almost without further mention, until a quick reference at the end. Admittedly, while there are decent reasons why – it was intended as the first in a trilogy – we are less concerned here with excuses than actuality. And in actuality, it peters out.

I have to say, I haven’t read the book on which this is based, but opinion generally finds the movie to be ‘dumbed-down’, not least for removing the book’s far greater criticism of religion [the Magisterium is a thinly-disguised version of the Catholic Church]. This is likely inevitable, given the film’s $180m budget, but didn’t stop a campaign to boycott the film – which worked rather better in the US than abroad. It took more than four times its US gross overseas – compare, say, the first Narnia film, where the foreign multiplier was only about 1.5. Its relative failure in America has thrown the sequels into doubt, especially in the current economic climate, and that’s a shame: the world could always use some more heroines, and what you get here is painfully and obviously unfinished. Maybe I’ll go read the books instead.

Dir: Chris Weitz
Star: Dakota Blue Richards, Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Ian McKellen

Leila Khaled: Hijacker

  By

★★★
“Terrorist? Freedom fighter? You decide…”

Khaled became internationally famous in 1969, for hijacking a TWA flight from Rome to Athens, diverting it to Damascus, where it was blown up – after everyone had been taken off [this was a kinder, gentler era of terrorism]. She then underwent plastic surgery to conceal her identity, and the following year tried to hijack another plane. However, air marshals shot her colleague and captured Khaled, who was taken into custody in London, only to be released soon afterwards as part of a prisoner exchange. She returned to the Middle East, her sky-piracy career at an end, but became an icon of the Palestinian movement, and remains active in it to this day, despite travel restrictions. The Guardian wrote of Khaled in 2001,

She flamboyantly overcame the patriarchal restrictions of Arab society where women are traditionally subservient to their husbands, by taking an equal fighting role with men, by getting divorced and remarried, having children in her late 30s, and rejecting vanity by having her face reconstructed for her cause… “I no longer think it’s necessary to prove ourselves as women by imitating men,” she says. “I have learned that a woman can be a fighter, a freedom fighter, a political activist, and that she can fall in love, and be loved, she can be married, have children, be a mother.”

A fascinating and complex character, it can’t be said that much of the complexity – both hers, and the entire Middle East situation – comes across in this documentary, less than a hour long. You get a quick romp through her early history, her family’s departure from then-Palestine just after World War II, both hijackings, and then we leap forward to the present day, where she’s a mother and works for a political group. There are some interesting moments, such as where she draws a line between what she did, and the 9/11 hijackings: “I don’t agree with the murders of civilians, no matter where in the world”, and she’s been consistent in expressing that. More probing questions would have been welcome: instead, Makboul – brought up in Sweden by her Palestinian parents – admits to having been basically a fan. She interviews others involved in the hijacks, such as a stewardess and the crew, and follows Khaled on a trip to the Chatila refugee camp in the Lebanon, but the film ends abruptly, just as she asks Khaled about the negative image of Palestinians as terrorists that she helped create.

Overall, it’s a frustrating documentary, raising as many questions as it can be bothered to answer. It only scratches the surface of an icon from whom a line can be drawn to modern-day female ‘martyrs’ such as Wafa Idris, but leaves me eager to learn more: she wrote an autobiography, entitled My People Shall Live, published in 1973, so I may have to try and track that down. She certainly stands alongside Patty Hearst and Ulrike Meinhof in the ‘Hall of Fame’ for female terrorists; having had a song written about her by The Teardrop Explodes merits some extra cool points. But if you’re interested, here’s a probably better – less disjointed, certainly – interview with Khaled, carried out in 2000 by, ironically enough, the magazine Aviation Security. Leila notes the black humour there, saying she’s “looking forward to finding out what you wanted to know from me about the security of aviation…”

Dir: Lina Makboul

Cat Ballou

  By

★★★½
“They’ll never make her cry…”

Aspiring teacher Catherine Ballou (Fonda), heads home to see her father in Wyoming, but finds him engaged in a struggle over his land with a land baron, and threatened by the villainous Tim Strawn (Marvin). She sends for legendary gun-fighter Kid Shelleen (also Marvin) to come protect them, only to find he is less legendary gun-fighter, and more alcoholic bum, incapable of saving himself. Strawn shoots Cat’s father and, when justice fails to be served, she heads off to a nearby outlaw town, where she vows to bring the land baron down and take revenge herself.

Originally a ‘serious’ novel – the same author, Roy Chanslor, also provided the source material for another proto-feminist Western, Johnny Guitar – this was turned into something light and frothy in tone. It provided a career breakthrough for Fonda, making her a star at age 28, and did much the same for Marvin, whose double role got a Best Actor Oscar, and helped lift him up after decades in TV and supporting roles. Unlike Paint Your Wagon, he wisely leaves singing to the pros e.g. Nat King Cole. This was a precursor to Fonda’s cult role as another fringe action heroine a couple of years later, as Barbarella. As there, she is less action-oriented than I’d like, though we have to bear in mind the era. She unquestionably drives the plot along, but when it comes to things like the train-robbery, she generally steps to one side, leaving things up to her male colleagues.

That said, she shows guts and bravery, as is shown in the scene immediately after the death of her father, where she goes to confront Strawn. It’s a poignant scene, where she realizes that the entire town is against her, and vows “You’ll never make me cry!” – and is in marked contrast to her first encounter with him on the ranch, where Strawn’s mere presence is enough to start her screaming. It’s a nicely-drawn arc, and the ending leaves me wishing there’d been a sequel. Still, nothing quite lives up to the delightfully pre-credit sequence, where the Columbia logo transforms into the rootin’, tootin’, six-shootin’ animated version of Cat Ballou shown below. That would be the movie I want to see.

Dir: Elliot Silverstein
Star: Jane Fonda, Lee Marvin, Michael Callan, Dwayne Hickman

Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
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Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)

Taking the Heat

  By

★★½
“Because the more accurate, Taking the Luke-warm, wouldn’t exactly fly off the shelves.”

Michael Norell (Goldwyn) sees mob boss Tommy Canard (Arkin) whacking a debtor, but won’t admit it to the cops. However, when they look at the credit-card transactions, the truth comes out and Detective Hunter (Whitfield) is sent to retrieve the witness; Canard, thanks to a mole, also finds out and send his top hitman to ensure Norell never reaches the courthouse. A heatwave has simultaneously hit New York, leading to blackouts, gridlock and a breakdown in communications, so it’s down to Detective Hunter, back on her old stomping ground, to negotiate her way through the traffic jams and dodge the killers out to get Norell.

The IMDB states this 1993 film is a TV movie. Some language and one brief nude scene seem to argue against that, but with some minor trims, it could certainly play on television, and there are some aspects, such as the Patrick Williams original score, which appear straight out of TV-land. The story is hardly novel – Midnight Run is perhaps the best-known example of the ‘Protect the irritating witness’ thriller, and if you’re looking for a distaff version, In the Line of Duty IV has more martial-arts, courtesy of Cynthia Khan and Donnie Yen, than you could possible want. This isn’t up to the level of either of these, and barely scrapes by as an acceptable way to waste ninety minutes on a wet weekend.

The film does occasionally get away from the pedestrian, but the potential inherent in the scenario, as the city swelters and boils in the heat, turning into an urban jungle, is largely wasted. There are some moments which work quite nicely, such as Hunter and Norell picking their way through a booby-trapped drug den, but it’s largely predictable stuff, with the heroine and her charge initially bickering like cats and dogs, then – over the course of a mere few hours – falling for each other. For most of this, I couldn’t help thinking, Whitfield is no Pam Grier – though in her defense, few people are, and she does well enough, I suppose. If there’s nothing else on TV, it’ll do.

Dir: Tom Mankiewicz
Star: Tony Goldwyn, Lynn Whitfield, Alex Carter, Alan Arkin

Forbidden Warrior

  By

★½
“Eminently forgettable. And I’ve now watched it twice, just to prove that.”

Though I couldn’t put my finger on why, large chunks of this seemed very familiar when I was watching it last night. Maybe it was just the story, cut from a template [mystical book, blah, chosen one, blah-blah, key to all power, etc.] we’ve seen a million times before. But then, when I Googled the film’s title, I realised why: at #6 was my review on our other, non-GWG site, from back in October 2005 when this came out on DVD [which I’ve just seen contains basically the same ‘blah’ line as above. Hey, if I had to watch this twice, you can read it twice. It’s the least you can do]. It made little impact on me then, and it hasn’t improved with time. The main problem is its absolute failure to stand on its own: the movie ends just as the heroine heads off towards the evil emperor who holds said mystical book, which only she can read. The aim was, apparently, to make a trilogy, but three years later, we’re still waiting for any word of the sequel. The moral is, if you’re going to make a series, either get your cash lined up in advance (as in Lord of the Rings), or make your first film capable of working by itself (see The Matrix) – otherwise, you’ll be left with something that looks utterly unfinished.

That aside, this is also not exactly enthralling. While the fight sequences are not bad, they are nowhere near frequent enough, and the first hour in particular is turgidly-paced. Seki (Matiko) is sent into exile for her own protection, as the only person standing between the emperor and world domination. There, her blind sifu (Amendola) teaches her magic and self-defense, while the emperor eventually sends out his sons to look for her – albeit after first waiting a couple of decades for her to grow up. It’s nice to see a good number of Asian-American actors getting decent roles, even if there there is a random mix of ethnicity that detracts from any real sense of time or place. It seems to be trying for some kind of Princess Bride-like vibe, yet the clunky set-up approach taken here would likely tax the patience of even a moderately-impatient eight-year old. Maybe they should have started in the middle, like Star Wars: the second episode has to be better than the first, largely because it can’t be much worse.

Dir: Jimmy Nickerson
Star: Marie Matiko, Sung Yang, Karl Yune, Tony Amendola

Silence of the Lambs

  By

★★★★½
“Clarice had a little lamb – Buffalo Bill kills to dress.”

One of only three films to win the top five Oscars – Best Actor, Actress, Director, Picture and Screenplay [the others being It Happened One Night and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest] – this is arguably the most critically-acclaimed Girls With Guns film of all time. Foster plays FBI trainee Clarice Starling, sent to interview captive killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Hopkins), from where blossoms a strange, symbiotic relationship where both parties need each other. Lecter can help the FBI find an active killer, nicknamed Buffalo Bill because he skins his victims, while Starling is prepared to open herself up, psychologically, to Lecter’s unwavering gaze.

The relationship between the two is the engine that drives the picture, and it proves Starling’s strength that she is able to stand up to Lecter, to the extent that he develops a respect for her. That’s an interesting contrast to her colleagues in the agency, such as Jack Crawford (Glenn), with whom Starling has an unending battle to be treated as an equal: her physical lack of size [apparent right from the start, when she is an an elevator and towered over by her fellow trainees] is belied by her smarts and strength of character, which propel her forward when many would give up. It says a lot about Foster’s performance, that it is not entirely overpowered by Hopkins’ one; Lecter is another case of a great British actor portraying evil to perfection [see also, in different ways, Ben Kingsley, Alan Rickman, Ranulph Fiennes and Christopher Lee]. If Buffalo Bill is the ultimate misogynist, despite his desire to be a woman, Lecter is the ultimate boogeyman, punishing, in unspeakable ways, those he deems unworthy.

It’s Lecter that people remember, quote and fear – to the extent that the movie sometimes topples over as the result of his but Starling is the heart of the film, defying convention by being a heroine who has, basically, no romantic side [there seem to me to be vague homoerotic hints, but that may just be the result of subsequent data about Foster]. She doesn’t sleep with anyone: indeed, she doesn’t appear to sleep, with her life outside the FBI Academy barely sketched. Starling is intensely focused on her task, and prepared to go to any lengths to accomplish it. She is pushed beyond her limits in the process, and digs deeper than she ever imagined possible, on a journey into her personal heart of darkness. If occasionally far-fetched [there being no way the FBI would let a trainee gallivant around on a top-level case like this], this is a landmark entry in the genre, with quality performances that have rarely been matched.

Dir: Jonathan Demme
Star: Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn, Anthony Heald

Devil’s Den

  By

★★★
“The final battle for the soul of mankind will be fought in a bar full of possessed strippers.” Best. Tagline. Ever.

Sadly, despite the above tagline, the movie doesn’t quite live up to expectations. It has some very interesting ideas, but kinda goes about them the wrong way: I love the idea of a government task-force that roams the world, taking out vampires, werewolves, etc. I enjoy the concept of government-sponsored assassins, working on behalf of pissed-off senators. Instead, for the most part, the film wants desperately to be From Dusk Till Dawn – an admirable target, for sure, even if it falls short on almost every level. Vamp is another obvious touchstone for the script, which has Quinn (Sawa) stop off at the titular strip-club on his way back from Mexico, only to find the buffet is of the patrons, not for the patrons. Fortunately, government agent Leonard (Foree) is there too, looking for the queen of the ghouls, and so is Caitlin (Hu), a two-gun lady whose purpose in attending the venue is less clear. Decapitations ensue.

Perhaps part of the problems with the flick, is that the director – originally Jeff (Texas Chainsaw Massacre III) Burr – took his name off the pic after getting fired by the writer, Mitch Gould. Gould then completely re-edited the picture and wrecked it, according to Burr, who says it was “A fun bad movie, with energy and personality. Now it is just a bad movie.” It certainly has its flaws: there’s remarkably little flesh for a strip-club, especially one that promises ‘Live Nude Girls’ – depending on your definition,. at least one and possibly two-thirds of that promotion is entirely unfulfilled. Some of the mask FX also appear to be of the Halloween leftover variety, and there is generally just too much restraint. It is the kind movie that needs to go gloriously over-the-top, if it’s to stand any chance of a credible comparison with the titles it’s aping [not least on the DVD cover shown right].

That said, there is a fair amount to enjoy here, with the performances, particularly of Foree and Sawa, being entertaining. Sawa is perfect as a stoner dude who, while initially freaked out for obvious reasons, eventually comes to terms with what’s going on: during the climatic fight between Caitlin and the queen ghoul, he just sits there with a goofy grin on his face, taking it in like we all would. Foree, a horror icon since his performance in Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, also delivers a quirky turn, and there’s a sublime sequence where he and Quinn, both fans of cinematic samurai Zatoichi, imagine what the blind swordsman would do in their shoes. Hu’s role builds gradually throughout the film, and eventually brings this into GWG territory, which I wasn’t expecting initially. She handles the action scenes fairl well, covering all the bases with gunplay, sword skills and martial arts – I note that one of the stuntwomen on the film is Zoe Bell, whom you should remember from her role in Death Proof. If the potential is never fully realized, there is enough going on to make it a pleasant-enough way to spend 85 minutes.

Dir: “Andrew Quint” [but see above]
Star: Kelly Hu, Devon Sawa, Ken Foree, Karen Maxwell