Ninja: Shadow of a Tear (2013)

After the events of Ninja Casey (Scott “Best Western Martial Arts Actor” Adkins) and Namiko (Mika Hijii) have gotten married and are continuing Namiko’s father’s ninjitsu dojo. Now, Namiko is pregnant, and we all know what that spells for women in martial arts movies: death. Consequently, one night while Casey is out indulging Namiko’s pregnant wishes for chocolate and seaweed, someone murders her.

Casey assumes it was an act of vengeance for a little lesson he taught a couple of robbers, and does some murdering of his own. Vengeance leaves Casey with anger management problems and no proper direction to his life, so he takes the invitation of his senpai Nakabara (Kane Kosugi, not as horrible as usual) to visit his dojo in Thailand to get a grip on himself again.

However, it soon turns out that Namiko’s murder had rather more complicated reasons, and that Goro (Shun Sugata), the son of a former enemy of her father, is the man truly responsible, and still rather vengeful too. Casey decides perhaps a little more vengeance will make him feel better about himself, so he travels to Myanmar, where Goro has built quite a career as a jungle-based drug lord, to finish matters between them.

With Shadow of a Tear, director Isaac Florentine and actor/martial artist Scott Adkins continue their mission to make martial arts and action movies in a more classical style, which turn out to be as good as anything you will find in the genre. Unlike the first Ninja, this isn’t quite as much a love letter to even the cheesiest and silliest of Western made ninja films (though it shares the first film’s basic respect for Japanese culture as well as the highly excellent concept of casting actors from the correct parts of Asia to play the role of characters from said regions), but more interested in being a classic martial arts revenge movie. Which only is a bad thing to the degree the film can’t do anything better than kill Mika Hijii’s character – the only woman with an actual role in the film – off early on to motivate its male protagonist. Not exactly a plot device I love, though it would on the other hand have been quite difficult to find any other reason to get Casey back into the killing habit.

At least, and this is something Florentine always does well beside his obvious virtues as an action director, the handful of scenes between Adkins and Hijii do sell them very well as a loving couple, and Hijii as a person, which is a good way to keep Adkins sympathetic once he gets down to violent business. Florentine is one of the handful of directors in contemporary action cinema who actually seems to understand that the moments when people aren’t fighting are important too, and who is able to use these moments to build a modicum of emotional momentum. A modicum of emotional momentum of course being all a film needs that expresses most of its emotional content through violent action.

By now, it seems hardly necessary to talk about Florentine’s – damn correct – idea of how to film a martial arts fight in a way that shows off the performers and keeps an audience excited as well as oriented about what is going on, nor to praise his ability to go back to this older, non-shaky, style of action filmmaking without eschewing what modern technology can provide, namely giving the camera a physical presence during the fights which makes them all the more dynamic. Unlike some other Florentine admirers I’m not using the word “realistic” to describe the fight scenes, because of course, these fights are as beautifully (and brutally) choreographed as only screen fights can be. Realism, on the other hand, would be rather less attractive (and would probably not contain performers on the level of Adkins or Tim Man), and would look nothing at all like the glorious one-take fight in a dojo relatively early on in the movie, or like the explody ninja action in the film’s pre-finale.

All of Ninja: Shadow of a Tear’s beautiful carnage is presented with great flair for good location work (most of the film being shot in Thailand), actually intelligent use of colour filters (which is to say, a use that knows where and when not to use them too), and the enthusiasm of true believers in the martial arts film as an art form that can and does express a lot of things through its violence. I, for one, am certainly much too distracted by excitement to disagree with this enthusiasm.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,thai movies,reviews,martial arts,action,isaac florentine,scott adkins,mika hijii,tim man,kane kosugi

Three Films Make A Post: KARLOFF TURNS KILLER IN A HORROR-CRAMMED THRILLER!

V/H/S/2 (2013): I was less than enthusiastic about the first part of this horror anthology but the second beats the first one easily and with style, forgoing the attempts to look as fugly as possible for more reasonable POV techniques, and doing much better work telling its very simple genre stories. Then there's the film's absolute highlight, Gareth Evans's (of The Raid fame) and Timo Tjahjanto's (of The Mo Brothers fame) segment "Safe Haven", which goes from mildly creepy, to heavily creepy, to insane what-the-fuckery during the course of half an hour or so, and left me actually slightly breathless. Saying it alone is worth the price of admission is putting it mildly.

Ambushed aka Hard Rush (2013): One thing to keep in mind when making a movie in a genre as rich as the gangster film is that you really need to bring something original or something of your own to the table when making one, because there will already be dozens of movies in existence who did the standards better than you did. Giorgio Serafini's Ambushed really doesn't, and instead tries its luck at squeezing as many worn out tropes into the movie as possible, without achieving any other effect than that of disjointedness and an inability to focus on any one theme or character. Instead, the film is a series of barely explored clichés that is made even less consistent by being the kind of Anchor Bay production that has to feature larger than a cameo but smaller than a substantial role parts for Dolph Lundgren, professional racist Vinnie Jones, and Randy Coutoure (another in a long line of acting ex-wrestlers who can't act for shit), instead of casting actors actually fit for their roles and available for enough shooting days to actually be effective as parts of a movie.

Needless to say, Ambushed is not a movie that stays in mind.

Kiss the Abyss (2010): I'm often rather down on "indie horror" as a genre but Ken Winkler's film avoids most of the pitfalls of what has become a style. So the narrative is rather concentrated without needless digressions, the acting - particularly by leads Nicole Moore and Scott Wilson - solid, and the film is clearly made with an idea of what can be achieved under the circumstances of its production and what can't. The story - boy loses girl to death, boy and rich father go to sorcerer for help, girl returns but develops socially unacceptable habits - isn't exactly original but told with conviction and an eye for the Weird, resulting in a film that makes much out of little in the best possible way.

The Possession of Joel Delaney (1972)

Upper class divorcee Norah Benson's (Shirley MacLaine) well-protected life takes a turn for the difficult when her brother Joel Delaney (Perry King) is taken into custody for an attempted murder. Because he was clearly not himself when he did what he did, and because he's rich and white and has a connected sister, he soon gets released into Norah's care. However, Norah soon realizes that there's a lot she doesn't know about her brother's normal life in Spanish Harlem, and that something is very, very wrong with him.

In fact, he might be responsible for some murders; at the very least, he is friends with the man who most probably committed them. Or, he might even be possessed by the spirit of that man. Norah, who loves her brother deeply (perhaps quite a bit too much, even) does her best to help Joel with his troubles, even when that means having to let go of some of her class-based perceptions of life, and teaming up with the kind of poor brown people who usually clean her place. But even that might just not be enough.

Waris Hussein's film about possession or mental illness (depending on how you look at it and your ability to ignore the film’s ending) does quite a few things right: there's its slightly sarcastic view on American class and race politics, probably helped by the director being British and therefore having an outsider's view on the US specifics of the question; there is the film's often documentarian shooting style that doesn't feel the need to explain things it can just show, and knows how to show things so it doesn't have to explain them; there's Shirley MacLaine's nuanced performance of a character who would very easily have turned out atrociously unsympathetic in lesser hands but feels human in hers; and there's the film's low key and ambiguous concept of the supernatural, if it is even about anything supernatural at all.

The Possession of Joel Delaney's problem lies with the follow-through. While it is much better at (in this case) showing the poor Puerto Rican community of New York as people with actual lives and identities as human beings than films of its time and place usually are, it still does view them very much as The Other, sharing the view point of MacLaine's character who always seems to be standing on the verge of breaking through her own classist assumptions, but then never quite does - though a friendly interpretation could be that the film's ending turns out as it does because she doesn't quite manage the needed change, and not just because the script didn't have any better ideas.

Obviously, I found the film's ending particularly weak, with Perry King transforming into the absolute cliché of a Hispanic thug (and demonstrating that King's just not good enough an actor to pull that stunt off convincingly, though there’s probably only a handful actors in his age bracket and age who could have, so I can’t be too hard on him), and the film petering out without even attempting to resolve any of the thematic questions it has brought up. The very horror movie styled final kicker that's bound to destroy all ambiguity doesn't help in this regard at all. It's quite disappointing, really, for what came before contains so many interesting aspects (the near-incestuous relationship between MacLaine's and King's character, the question of how one can transcend one's class, not to speak of the question of how one should react to the mental - or spiritual - illness of a loved one) deserved more than the not very successful thriller ending they got.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,horror,waris hussein,shirley maclaine,perry king,reviews

In short: Kiss of the Damned (2012)

Warning: this little piece is rather cranky

As much as I respect director Xan Cassavetes's obvious admiration for European horror cinema of the 70s (particular that of Jean Rollin), and approve of her decision to use elements of the style without going all out imitative retro with it, I can't help but notice, and be annoyed by how fucking bourgeois her film's conception of well, everything, is.

Her vampires are boring upper-class twats, even rebellious evil vampire Roxane Mesquida's type of rebellion is deeply bourgeois in its utter pointlessness, and really nothing you haven't seen from any rich daughter, just in this case with more dead bodies after the fucking, and blood instead of cocaine. Let me put it this way: why should I care about these people, their oh so poor broken vampire hearts, their unimaginative conception of evil or of happiness, their improbably conservative idea of hedonism and their sad staring out of their rich homes towards peaceful fucking lakes while classical piano plays?

The film surely has no answers to that question. In fact, I don't think it can even imagine anyone asking that question of it, seeing as it is the sort of film where the only lower class people are a faithful maid who gets rid of the evil vampire sister after a deus ex machina has already done most of the work, and various nameless victims. And no, the film unfortunately isn't doing some rude satire where he equates being rich with being monsters; it's just too concerned with posing its pretty people in pretty shots with a bit of decorative blood and a few tears to bother with any of that stuff.

I'd still be able to get something out of the film if Cassavetes style would result in a film as hypnotic or moody as it is pretty, but Kiss of the Damned never finds the point, that dream-like or nightmarish mood of many European horror films of the 70s that could help one ignore its politics, or its lack of dramatic heft, or its lack of plot, all things that I have seen become unimportant in other films.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,horror,xan cassavetes,roxane mesquida,milo ventimiglia,joséphine de la baume

Music Monday: Fire! Edition

Cult (2013)

Original title: Kurato

Idols Yu Abiru, Mayuko Iwasa and Mari Iriki (all three playing themselves as mostly sympathetic young women) are hired for a very special job - taking a plunge into the supernatural and entering a supposedly haunted house where a teenage girl and her mother are terrorized by something. Because this is going to be a responsible TV project, the lone director/camerawoman/who-knows-what-else also provides a friendly exorcist who will protect the idols and exorcise the house to the best of his abilities. Alas, things are much more dire than expected, and what looked like an easy job for the exorcist turns out to be rather more complex and problematic.

Fortunately, this isn't Paranormal Activity, and a failed exorcism doesn't result in the exorcist legging it out of the movie but calling his master for help. Yet even he might not be strong enough to get rid of the horrible force that now becomes rather possessive of everyone involved.

Director Koji Shiraishi has quite a bit of experience with POV horror movies; he even has quite a bit of experience with idol POV horror (yes, that's still a sub-genre of its own). Better and more importantly, Shiraishi also know how to take a been there done that set-up like that of Cult, and add copious amounts of the grotesque and the pretty fucking weird to it.

At first, Cult seems a very typical example of its genre, but things escalate quickly, so that about twenty minutes in, we already get a scene of a teenage girl eating her dog. Obviously, things only get more peculiar from there. In fact, right at the point where I thought I knew where this was going, the film made a sudden turn into the realm of the manga-esque when a very tsundere gentleman calling himself Neo (yes, after Matrix) appears to solve the situation after the two religious exorcists have been killed off. Suddenly, the film makes a detour into black humour, idol in-jokes, anime hair, weird posing, demon bombs, a teleporting idol ghost, various psychic powers and a cult trying to help a very Great Old One-like god cross over into our world, until the film just stops in an incredibly brazen non-ending. And all that on a shoe-string budget that can hardly afford more than two streets and two interior sets!

While it is obviously a bit of an insane mess, Shiraishi's film has the kind of energy that makes it impossible for me to not enjoy it, as well as the kind of all-pervading weirdness the director really seems to enjoy using whenever he can get away with it. After all, if you're hired to shoot a cheap horror film, and don't have the time or space to give it depth, you can still end up making something enjoyable to watch by the sheer power of strange flourishes you stole from various manga and anime shows and some of your own earlier films. This won't work for everyone, but Shiraishi had me convinced right quick.

I also admire the director for how little he seems to care that whoever is responsible for the effects has neither the time nor the ability to make them even the least bit convincing. Surely, having a dog's head walking around on a bunch of tentacles, tentacles possessing idols, and a giant face with tentacle-y eyes coming out of a ceiling are things worth so much as ideas that their technical execution isn't too important! I, at least, find it hard to criticize technical aspects of effects so clearly made to please me and all other right-thinking gentlepersons.

Compared with the often very interesting subtext or the actual creepiness of some of Shiraishi's better films, Cult's cartoon world isn't quite as interesting, but to me the spirit of just madly fucking around with strange stuff the film embodies so enthusiastically is something nearly as worthwhile.

Technorati-Markierungen: japanese movies,reviews,horror,koji shiraishi,yu abiru,mari iriki,mayuko iwasa

Three Films Make A Post: GET READY FOR THE NEXT ACTON HERO

Frankenstein '80 (1972): Cinematographer Mario Mancini's only film as a director should be easy to love for an old hand in Italian genre movies like me. Its combination of awkward direction, awkward early 70s fashion, an awkwardly stupid plot full of awkward sleaze, and a surprisingly awesome soundtrack is the sort of thing love affairs are made of. Unfortunately, for some inexplicable reason the film's script decides to put its emphasis on the investigative aspect of the story, with a police investigation of the film's murders and that of a journalist with a personal interest in what's going on running parallel to one another and giving the film many possibilities to repeat exposition of the same boring facts twice with a different set of actors. The film doesn't improve on the problem by telling the audience most of what it needs to know early on, which results in a film full of dull scenes in which the characters have to catch up to the audience. Needless to say, this does not make for a very exciting experience.

Captain Sindbad (1963): Byron Haskin's US/German co-production is an excellent reminder of the excellence of the Schneer/Harryhausen mythological by virtue of not having any of those films' virtues. It's not just the markedly worse special effects - though they certainly don't help - but really that the film gets everything about the power of imagination wrong, being childish where it should be childlike, stupid where it should be simple, and lacking all the conviction and joy that should run through them. Turns out making a film of childlike wonder is harder than it looks.

The Fall (TV-Show, 2013): The other thing apart from costume drama and Doctor Who British TV is really good at are various more or less realist modes of crime shows that leave productions from most other countries in the world (except for Scandinavia, sometimes) in the dust with the care and intelligence put into them. This Gillian Anderson starring show is a case in point. It moves on the very dark and cold spectrum, the sort of thing that leaves house favourite Luther looking like a light comedy. I find the show's clinical, non-judgemental way to look at victim, perpetrator and cop alike particularly remarkable, with nary a scene that doesn't seem utterly concentrated on showing us characters’ mental states without ever feeling the need to explain them to us. The thinking - about ethic, morals, and everything else is the job of the audience here.

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,american movies,british tv,in short,mario mancini,byron haskin,gillian anderson,horror,adventure,fantasy,crime

On ExB: The Ghoul (1975)

Many of the people working in front of or behind the camera of Hammer Studios did have rather a hard time arriving in the 70s, with the well-known dire consequences for Hammer, and possibly British horror of the time as a whole.

From time to time, though, Hammer alumni did some rather interesting things by letting their old-fashioned style collide with some new ideas. Case in point is The Ghoul, a film that unites Freddie Francis, Anthony Hinds and the great Peter Cushing in a much more worthwhile way than I expected. Read more about it in my newest column at Exploder Button!

Technorati-Markierungen: british movies,reviews,other places,freddie francis,peter cushing,john hurt,veronica carlson

SyFy vs. The Mynd: Grave Halloween (2013)

Maiko (Kaitlyn Leeb, taking part in the long tradition in American casting direction not knowing the difference between Japan and China) has come to Japan to lay her Japanese birth mother she hasn't seen since she was four to rest. That's easier said than done, because Maiko's mother committed suicide somewhere in Aokigahara Forest aka Suicide Forest, with her body not found. Thoughtful mother has at least provided Maiko with personal items needed for a ceremony to be held at her dead body on October 31st to hinder her spirit from becoming a yurei. So all Maiko has to do is to find her mother's dead body. Because this is a thing you shouldn't do alone, and a horror film of this type without people to kill off would be quite difficult to pull off, Maiko is accompanied by her friends Amber (Cassi Thomson) and Terry (Dejan Loyola) who are of course shooting a documentary about the whole she-bang.

There's also a last minute cameraman replacement for Maiko to romance and a trio of jerks around, so there's a lot of meat for the ghosts to disperse of. Things do start off rather well for Maiko and the meat, with a helpful Japanese gentleman (the rather inevitable Hiro Kanagawa) suddenly turning up to assist. Alas, the situation deteriorates quickly, and soon, forest rules are broken and ghosts get grumpy.

Steven R. Monroe is another of the handful of regular SyFy Original directors who make films for the channel as well as for the home video market, and whose SyFy films are generally - and rather counter-intuitively - better than their theoretically more personal non-TV work.

Grave Halloween is a pretty entertaining example of the "people stumble through woods; terrible things happen" type of horror movie. To get entertainment out of it, one of course needs to give the film some leeway, for British Columbia where this was shot and Japan look nothing alike, and - as is par for the course for SyFy films good and bad - originality lives elsewhere. What does live in the movie are a bunch of well-placed shock effects, a competent SyFy interpretation of Japanese ghost lore, and mostly sympathetic characters – apart from the jerks – who often act rather rationally. At least I did find myself thinking "you know what, that's actually a sensible idea, poor doomed character" more than once, which is more than I can say about many other movies.

I also thought that the film's version of Japanese culture and myth was surprisingly well done. While it's surely not authentic, it seems at the very least born of actual interest and probably even a bit of research, and lacks the "gosh, look at the exotic orient and its strange customs" vibe I rather expected going in. I unfairly expected, now that I think about it, because many of the last few years' SyFy films were actually trying to put a bit of effort into their view of cultures beyond the US. Perhaps this could be the start of a new mini-trend, and soon, we'll see SyFy interpretations of yokai, too? I'd love to see a karakasa-kozō SyFy movie, and really who in possession of a soul wouldn't?

All in all, Grave Halloween is rather typical of the good but not great kind of SyFy movie, the sort of film that makes for a fun enough time while you're watching it but lacks that little something that would turn it from an entertaining time into the sort of thing I'd ramble on about for double the length I just did.

Technorati-Markierungen: canadian movies,american movies,in short,steven r. monroe,kaitlyn leeb,cassi thomson,syfy vs the mynd,horror

Curse of the Faceless Man (1958)

A worker discovers a man turned to stone in the ruins of Pompeii. Unlike most stone people, the man we will later learn once was called Quintillus Aurelius (Bob Bryant), is at least still half alive, and tends to get rather grabby with other people's necks only to fall into deep stone(d) sleep again afterwards, which is just the kind of behaviour that makes a murder look like a car accident to the police in this particular movie.

Though he really can't prove anything untoward about the stone man, the director of Naples' Pompeii museum, Dr. Carlo Fiorello (Luis Van Rooten), is discomfited enough by the whole affair to call in the former fiancée of his daughter - also a doctor, and that in a 50s film! - Maria (Adele Mara), snarly-voiced American Dr. Paul Mallon (Richard Anderson). Mallon doesn't believe in walking stone men, but he'll perhaps change his tune in the future, for his new fiancée, the artist Tina Enright (Elaine Edwards), has a peculiar connection to the stone man. Before she even knew he existed, Tina had a dream about, and painted a picture of, Quintillus. Once she has learned he does exist, she feels strangely compelled towards the stone man, and it is pretty clear that he feels drawn towards her as well. Why, one could think Tina is the reincarnated love of his life!

For the lesser movie in a two-fer feature together with It! The Terror Beyond Space, which was of course also shot by Curse's director Edward L. Cahn, who made more films between 1955 and 1959 alone than many directors do in their whole careers, this isn't half bad. At the very least, Jerome Bixby's script's attempt to transplant elements of The Mummy into modern Naples and the site of the former Pompeii (both of course played by the usual places in California) is rather interesting and at times unexpected.

50s monster movies usually don't show quite as much interest for the backstory of their monsters as Curse does. The film's emphasis on its monster as a nearly tragic figure repeating the tragedy that cost him his life two millennia ago is also rather uncommon for its time. Sure, there's the Creature from the Black Lagoon, but otherwise, 50s movie monsters seldom got a foot in the door beyond being monstrous, something that always seemed like a bit of a shame to me.

In its actual execution, Curse isn't all that different from your run of the mill monster movie, though, for while Cahn did hit on a good film or two between the disinterested crap he often did, he really wasn't the man to delve deep into the possibilities the script offers, or really, to delve even very shallowly. What we get from him is a pacy, straightforward film that looks and feels alright, which probably is the best we can hope for under the circumstances of the production.

The film's biggest weak points are the usual ones: heroine Elaine Edwards couldn't act her way out of a paper bag (which is particularly problematic since it's her job to sell us on the reincarnation biz), "hero" Richard Anderson is bland when he isn't rude, while all the much more interesting and much better acted minor characters (like Felix Locher's rather wonderful Dr. Emanuel) never get the moment in the spotlight they deserve. The film is further weakened by a particularly egregious piece of off-screen narration (perhaps done by Morris Ankrum, perhaps not) that won't ever stop telling us the things we are able to see just fine without its help, as if someone involved in the production had problems understanding the difference between a movie and a radio play.

Still, I'll take a competently done 50s horror movie with a handful of underdeveloped good ideas and some rather painful flaws over a boring one any day, so while Curse of the Faceless Man isn't a film I'd recommend whole-heartedly, it is a film with a certain amount of interest.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,reviews,horror,edward l. cahn,richard anderson,elaine edwards,adele mara

In short: Ticks (1993)

aka Infested

To say that Tony Randel's Ticks is probably the best film about a group of Troubled Teens™ (among them a Seth Green actually moving his facial muscles) bonding via the ways of survival while fighting pretty large, hallucinogenic ticks mutated by steroids used by marihuana farmers is selling the film short a bit, though it certainly is that. For beyond the gloriously silly basic idea, Randel's film also does a lot of things rather well in practice.

There is the fact that Randel manages to start his characters off as absolute clichés but for the most part then goes on to provide them with enough personality to put them a little above your usual horror movie victims, and takes care to never let any one of them become so annoying for you to actually want them to die; which is always good to heighten the stakes in a movie. Then there's how low the film's body count actually is, without the film ever feeling too harmless (and don't you worry, the black character dies and births a monster tick, because the film isn't that clever). It is, Ticks demonstrates again, not necessarily the number of victims that makes the fun in this sort of monster movie but rather the way the monstrous threat is presented.

Said monstrous threat is obviously one of the strong points of the film, seeing as it comes in form of slimy, skittering practical effects inspired by Alien's face-hugger and the true horrors of mother nature, which in their turn produce all kind of icky things, bodily fluids and some wonderfully gruesome and silly body part explosions. Tonally, it's all in good fun, demonstrating a sardonic sense of humour and a love of the grotesque that adds giggles (how appropriate to the film's back story) to the mild shudders and the highly entertaining carnage.

Plus, if you ever wanted to see Seth Green fight off a bunch of rude, over-large ticks with a burning broom, this is your film.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,horror,tony randel,rosalind allen,seth green,ami dolenz

Music Monday: Holy Ghost Edition

Night Claws (2013)

aka Apex Predator

Welcome to beautiful Mobile, Alabama. Mobile’s sheriff, Joe Kelly (Reb Brown), is having a tough time, because for some reason, a ten foot sasquatch has decided to make the woods around town its home, ripping people apart whenever it meets them.

Kelly’s not the only one interested in the murdering hairball. Government backed cryptozoologist Sarah Evans (Leilani Sarelle) comes to town to bag herself a sasquatch and disturb the romance between Kelly and his deputy Roberta (Sherrie Rose), and a crazy hunter (David Campbell) and his pair of goons wander through the woods. Then there’s a small group of people (among them Ted Prior) wandering through these very same woods on a survival training trip. Things will get very complicated and wood-wander-y before they get better for Mobile.

The advent of fully digital filmmaking has invited some of the elder statesmen of cheaply shot local productions back into the business of making things most people would barely interpret as movies, and putting the local colour where their younger peers only want the colour yellow. Among these happy few is house favourite David A. Prior, him of Sledgehammer and Action International films. Looking at the cast of Night Claws, Prior still has a degree of clout, so instead of the usual young people who can’t act you generally find in this sort of film, it features a lot of low budget veterans who sort of can. Unusually, these middle-aged and older veterans don’t just pop up in cameo appearances (that’s left for - I kid you not - Frank Stallone), but as the film’s actual leads, giving the proceedings slightly more dignity. And while the Reb Browns and David Campbells of this world won’t be my choice for Shakespeare, they do know how to look grumpy, deliver awkward dialogue lines with a degree of verve (and perhaps a little wink from time to time), and get by on some basic charisma.

Speaking of awkwardness, this is very much a typical David A. Prior film in its approach, which is to say, always entertaining, sometimes clever, and often just ever so slightly off. Even though nothing at all of import for plot and characters happens in a film’s middle part, as it does/doesn’t for Night Claws, Prior’s detours are generally fun to watch in that classic parallel dimension cinema way I love so dearly, where middle-aged romances still work like the ones in kindergarten did, plot twists seem to have been made up on the spot without even the tiniest thought for their sense in context of anything that came before them, and so on, and so forth.

In fact, and obviously, the whole of Night Claws carries that parallel dimension feel, presented with a bit more charm and self-consciousness than usual in this sort of affair, perhaps. The film’s final third, when the twists and turns of what we may as well call a plot become particularly random and weird (you didn’t think you’d get a Prior movie without any kind of conspiracy thriller elements, right?), is particularly lovely in that regard, with never a dull second between Prior chewing scenery, Brown being Brown, things that must surely be meant as jokes (but one can’t be sure) and Prior seemingly just putting up any old nonsense that comes to mind at the moment, as long as it’s fun. Which just made me incredibly happy while watching Night Claws.

As an added bonus – as if this were needed! -  the delighted audience (what do you mean, a 2.2 user rating average on the IMDB?) gets a smidgen of dumb gore, and a bit of shameless dubious monster costume action from a film that is as generous with its particular brand of thrills as its budget allows. In exchange, I offer up my honest enthusiasm for whatever the thing I just watched is.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,horror,david a. prior,reb brown,leilani sarelle,ted prior,sherrie rose,david campbell

In short: The Ripper (1985)

Mild-mannered college professor Richard Harwell (Tom Schreier) has just started his new, somewhat experimental (oh, 1985) class about "Famous Crimes in the Movies" when his pleasant life gets a bit more complicated. Richard discovers a mysterious (read: tacky) ring in an antiques store, and can't seem to be able to help himself but just has to buy and wear it, however much fun his dancing instructor girlfriend makes of it.

His new precious(sssss) has somewhat disturbing effects on Richard: he can't seem to sleep properly, when he sleeps he has nightmares in which he murders women and plays with their guts, and - probably most troubling - he has blackouts. I'm sure there's no connection at all to the series of Ripper-style (the movie says, though they aren't all that much) murders hitting the town, and the curious fact that Richard's new ring once belonged to Jack the Ripper himself?

Ah, the wonders of shot-on-video movies and the brains who can take watching them! Christopher Lewis's The Ripper is one of the entertaining examples of that particular style of filmmaking, with nary a minute going by that doesn't feature something to amuse or delight the patient viewer. Much of what delights about the film are of course what would be called flaws in the type of professional looking movie that attempts to tell a sensible story. But then, that's not at all what you should hope for when entering the wild and woolly world of SOV horror, where properly blocked scenes and even just mildly competent pacing are unexpected occurrences on the level of humane Objectivists or real-world sightings of the King in Yellow.

Instead you'll have to decide to accept The Ripper on its own terms, which is to say, find pleasure in the film's awkward, yet not horrible, acting that breathes a kind of honest naivety it would be like kicking a puppy to criticize, delight in decidedly fake looking gore (which is always the best kind), approve of some particularly stiff (sorry) sex scenes and fall in love with regular detours.

I found the relationship between Richard and one of his students particularly charming in the detour department, with the film buff student having somehow acquired his hero's phone number and now doing things like phoning him to remind him to tape horror movies, which obviously annoys Richard to no end, though he is much too nice to say so right out. This is, of course, the sort of business a film needs to get up to to get to feature length when it does only have plot for half an hour or so. Also, and just as of course, it's this sort of business that makes the better SOV horror films actually worth watching, the awkward charm of a film made by people just making movies instead of what is generally called professionals.

In The Rippers's case, I found myself quite taken with all those attempts at distracting me from the not very interesting main course, perhaps because there's a degree of self-consciousness visible here (what with all the horror movie love) that never gets in the way of the naivety, or perhaps because the film is able to turn its filler (which makes up about eighty percent of its running time) into a main course of its own.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,horror,christopher lewis,tom schreier,mona van pernis,tom savini

As every year

the affairs of the tentacle demand the closure of this blog for a few days. I'll be back peddling nonsense again on January, 3rd.

If you just need to throw insults at me because I said mean things about your indie horror movie, or because you're more oppressed than I, I'm still available via email.

Happy holidays, whichever holidays it may be for you!

December Beach Party: The Horror of Party Beach (1964)

The agents of M.O.S.S. (yes, we still kind of exist in our own, half-assed manner, and will even upgrade to three-quarters-assed soon) are nothing if not timely - or secret sympathizers of the Southern hemisphere - so December seems just like the right time to get down to the beach and find out what we find there.

Unfortunately, what I found for my second and final entry in the theme month is The Horror of Party Beach, a film I'd forgotten about. Or rather I had repressed how much I loathe it. In fact, I hate Party Beach so much, I was badly tempted to let this entry consist exclusively of a few hundred cartoon curses. But that would be tacky, particularly in the year in which the film's director (I use this term in the broadest possible sense) Del Tenney died.

So, I'll try to just keep to the facts here: radioactive goo creates incredibly goofy looking amphibian monsters looking like the Creature from the Black Lagoon as reimagined by a three year old with a thing for golf ball eyes. The creatures attack pillow fights and beach party people. Horrible music plays. The dances of the mad are danced. The sort of romance in which a "hunky" (beach party) scientist gets over the death of his estranged bad girl girlfriend right quick thanks to the efforts of an incredibly sanctimonious thirty year old teenager occurs. Jokes that would make the Riddler ashamed are told by actors who can barely speak. There's a racist caricature of a black maid walking around.

So, all in all, I really should love this thing, particularly since I've enjoyed films that are objectively even worse quite a bit, but I'm just not feeling it in Horror's case. Maybe it's the non-coastal person's distrust of beaches and the people who dwell on them, maybe it's an Innsmouth kind of thing, or maybe my irony glands just don't function as well as they should when confronted with The Horror of Party Beach. All I know is that watching it doesn't result in my giggling companionably to the nonsense happening on screen, or finding myself surprised by hidden depths (fat chance), or even just accepting the film with a feeling of mild tolerance and embarrassment on behalf of the filmmakers, but instead sees me ending up with a feeling of barely contained rage, as if Del Tenney and co.'s attempt at making a quick buck by mixing the outgoing beach party movie craze with the monster movie were are very personal affront. Which it well may be, for all I know.

Anyway, your beach party tolerance may vary.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,horror,del tenney,december beach party

Music Monday: Still Seasonal Edition

Technorati-Markierungen: music,music monday,los campesinos

Europa Report (2013)

It's quite a good thing to see the POV style slowly spreading out from Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity style horror movies into not just other types of horror but into different genres as well, places where the techniques these horror films more or less pioneered might be put to good - or even new and interesting - use.

Case in point is Sebastián Cordero's Europa Report, a film that documents a mission to Jupiter's moon Europa in search of hints for life outside our ecosphere via the internal and external cameras of the vessel manned by a group of astronauts (Anamaria Marinca, Daniel Wu, Karolina Wydra, Michael Nyqvist, Christian Camargo and Sharlto Copley). This being a movie, things go neither all that easily nor too well for the crew. Their mission is a bit of a different case, and they might in fact find more than they ever could have expected.

POV style techniques work wonders for doing this sort of tale on a budget, with the need to show space in form of vast, spectacular vistas mostly negated by the reality of what cameras in such a situation would be able to capture. On the other hand, Cordero does not use the film's style to avoid showing things to his audience - it's always at least as clear to the audience what's going on as it is to the characters, and the supposed multitude of cameras on board never so much constricts the information we are getting as it focuses it. To me, this seems to be an approach highly appropriate to the kind of SF Europa Report is, as close to hard SF as you'll come and still be able to tell an actual story, but not so close as to mirror the experience of reading a bad science book instead of a novel that is so typical of too much hard SF.

I'm less impressed by the fact that the film seems to get some of its science rather wrong, even though the production design as well as the special effects look perfectly believable and authentic. However, what the film gets right is rather more important to me here, for Europa Report is finally a SF film again that buys into the idea that the endeavour of science, the attempt to widen human knowledge of the universe, particularly through manned space flight, is a heroic thing, something worthy to risk one's life over, and even possibly to die for if one has so chosen. It's one of the rare movie that understand that a space flight going terribly, tragically wrong does not mean space flight or science are bad or a sign of human hubris, but rather that things in a random universe sometimes just go wrong for no reason at all.

This doesn't mean the film is blithe about human pain and suffering. In fact, Europa Report gains some of its strength by acknowledging it absolutely, by showing its characters often shaken by a mixture of awe and fear and trauma, never pretending even a heroic death to be anything but a catastrophe. It's just also arguing that if you die, you might as well die doing something good.

Cordero makes this case with the help of an excellent ensemble cast (uncommon for POV films, all actors you might have seen before in other movies, which isn't really a problem for me but might be for other viewers with a higher need to be convinced of a film's fictional reality), an ability to become emotional without becoming melodramatic - something particularly seldom found in films concerning the idea of personal sacrifice as Europa Report does -, and an equally strong ability to create a sense of wonder out of a handful of ideas, effects, and sets. It's what Science Fiction on a budget should more often be doing, if you ask me.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,sf,sebastián cordero,anamaria marinca,karolina wydra,michael nyqvist,daniel wu,reviews

In short: The Sleeper (2012)

Student Amy (Brittanny Belland) would probably have reconsidered her decision to join a sorority if she had only known the sisters of Theta house would become the targets of one of those weird, nigh-indestructible killers (Jason Jay Crabtree), and she'd have to live up to the insanely high standards of Final-Girl-hood (everyone's favourite new-ish godhood, or so I've been told). But then we wouldn't have much of a movie.

Justin Russell's slasher homage/patchwork slasher movie (with particularly emphatic nods towards Black Christmas) is another film that demonstrates quite nicely how a film can totally lack in originality yet still be quite worthwhile if it only has the right spirit. The film parties very much like it were 1981 (in fact, the film does take place in 1981), at least as far as you can do that on an indie budget, not just hitting the well-known plot beats but hitting them with the relish and enthusiasm this sort of thing needs to survive. Irony might earn a film critical praise, but all too often, it won't warm my heart, and surely, filmmakers should concentrate on their central audience, that is to say, me.

While The Sleeper does a more than decent job of being a period piece - not so much a film which tries to take on the job of emulating an actual earlier era as the style and content of the films of that era -there are some typical "indie horror" weaknesses on display. Some of the acting of minor characters is a bit awkward, the gore's too abundant for the charming yet improbable way that it looks, and you wouldn't call its pacing sprightly, for example. However, Russell has an eye for the all-important moody shot and knows about the whys and wherefores of sleaze, so that The Sleeper's feel (to use the least precise word in any human language) is just right for what it attempts to be. Plus, there's a dance scene of glorious silliness, incompetent yet polite police, and many a thing to smile at, perhaps even with that much-loathed (by me) feeling known as nostalgia. What more could I ask of a film about a random killer slashing sorority sisters to death?

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,horror,slasher,justin russell,brittany belland

SyFy vs The Mynd: Scarecrow (2013)

Detention - it's more dangerous than you think, at least if it's the very special kind of detention teacher Aaron (Robin Dunne) offers his misguided students (among them Chupacabra vs the Alamo's Nicole Munoz). It's off to the supposedly haunted farm just in the process of being sold off by Aaron's ex-girlfriend Kristen (Lacey Chabert) for them to do some good for their community.

Unfortunately, the haunting's not just a supposed one, and soon, Aaron, Kristen, Kristen's other ex-boyfriend and the kids find themselves hunted by a black husk of a thing that really, really likes to kill people in messy ways. There's also a bit of time for awkward moments of teenage romance, and even more awkward moments of grown-up romance for all and sundry but mostly, it's time to run, scream, and die, and for some people to show their most unpleasant sides in the face of death.

Sheldon Wilson is one of those curious directors who are actually doing much better work when working for SyFy than when on their own. Scarecrow isn't quite as great as Wilson's magnum opus Carny but it's such a fine, well-paced piece of low budget horror it's difficult to feel too disappointed.

It's all very traditional in form and set-up, of course, but Wilson has the required pacing for this sort of thing down pat, with little time wasted on filler. Instead, there's a lot of fun monster action, a smidgen of gore, and characterization that is just the decisive bit more interesting than in other movies of this type. Why, before the first hour is over, you can't even play "who dies next" bingo properly because Wilson doesn't follow the very specific order of deaths as closely as you'd expect - Chabert's the obvious final girl of the piece, though. This doesn't sound like a big thing, but really, shaking up traditional genre structures in little ways is a good method to make the well-known interesting again.

It does of course help Scarecrow's case too that the acting's mostly decent and that the design of the not-exactly scarecrow monster is pretty creepy, its abilities not without their surprises. There's also rather well-done feeling of escalation to the plot, and some rather clever use of the characters moving from unsafe looking claustrophobic places to supposedly safer open ones, and back again. Again, it's these little structural changes (generally, horror movie characters move into increasingly claustrophobic places) that help make Scarecrow work as well as it does.

Technorati-Markierungen: syfy vs the mynd,in short,horror,sheldon wilson,lacey chabert,nicole munoz,robin dunne

In short: The Witching (1972)

aka Necromancy

We who know Bert I. Gordon mostly adore or spurn him as the king of awkward giant monster movies. However, despite a clear preference for very large or very small things, Gordon was a true exploitation director, hopping on any trend that came his way if it suggested a possibility for turning a fast buck.

In 1972, that meant making an occult horror movie about Pamela Franklin getting unwillingly drawn into the influence sphere of an evil satanist cult (or witch cult, the film doesn't differentiate) led by Orson Welles(!) in his bloated and bored phase because Orson needs her secret witch super powers to reanimate his dead little son. Which is one of the better motives for what's going on than these films often prefer. Too bad neither Welles nor Gordon are doing much with that aspect of the movie.

Instead, The Witching is a rollercoaster ride between long, plainly boring scenes of actors who could act but won't mumbling or shouting through slightly loopy versions of early 70s occultism horror clichés and awkward yet strangely effective scenes of delightfully illogical trance states. I did rather expect the first part of the ride from Gordon, his giant monster movies do after all have a tendency to go about things in an awkward and slightly ramshackle manner that has always reminded me of how a middle-aged used car salesman would interpret the idea of giant monsters.

The film's dream-like parts on the other hand did hit me as a surprise. Sure, the adjective of "awkward" still applies to Gordon's direction here, but here, the awkwardness rubs against moments of ambitious camera work and visual ideas that remind me of nothing so much as of Italian gothic horror and giallos. That impression of encountering a bit of pleasant European loopiness where I least expected it, is - at least in the version I watched, which I think, is based on a 1983 version of the film that adds a bit of nudity and surely subtracts other things - still more enhanced by a synth soundtrack very much in the spirit of Goblin (but not as good, not surprisingly).

Consequently, The Witching is at its strongest (or at least at its most charming) when it gives up on real world logic altogether and becomes a free-floating entity made out of strange emotional peaks, sleaze, vague notions of Satanism, Pamela Franklin widening her eyes and a side-ways approach to narrative that emphasises counter-intuitive scenes while treating what should be actual dramatic climaxes with off-handed disinterest. If you're like me, and this sort of thing is exactly what you hope for in your occult 70s horror, the devil's rain will fall on you gently here, particularly in a final half hour that is as glorious an appropriation of the dream state as you'll find in movies.

I never would have thought Bert I. Gordon had it in him.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,horror,wtf,bert i. gordon,pamela franklin,orson welles

One in the Chamber (2012)

Welcome to beautiful Prague (at least in part played by beautiful Romania)! Ray Carver (Cuba Gooding Jr.) uses the city as base for his work as a professional killer. When Ray is not killing people, he's soliloquizing about his sinfulness, reading the bible, and stalking Janice Knowles (Claudia Bassols), the now grown daughter of one of his earlier victims, driven by a mixture of guilt and plain obsession he sells to himself as his wish to protect her from harm.

Right now, Ray's even doing his work in Prague, because he was hired by the resident Suverov crime family to wipe out the heads of the resident Tavanian crime family in one go. Unfortunately, Ray's strict "no innocent bystanders come to harm" policy gets in the way of his job, leaving the Tavanians with a not completely incompetent underboss in charge, and Prague in the grip of a gang war. Understandably, the Suverov's aren't at all happy with Ray's performance, so they fly in the near mythical hitman Aleksey Andreev aka "The Wolf" (Dolph Lundgren). Aleksey is a rather different kind of killer than Ray, clearly not driven by a guilty conscience, proclaiming his generally violently chipper mood by wearing loud Hawaii shirts, and given to a much more direct approach than Ray, though he does share Ray's ideas about killing civilians.

When Ray and his handler (Billy Murray) hear of the new man in town, they decide to change sides and work for the Tavanians now. Not surprisingly, Ray and Aleksey are headed for a collision course, and Janice just might get right in the middle of it.

One of the more peculiar developments in movies in the last few years is surely Cuba Gooding Jr.'s new career as a direct-to-DVD action hero; perhaps even more peculiar is how good Gooding is good at his new career, showing enough physicality to be basically believable as a man of violence, and obviously bringing more acting chops than he'd strictly need for the job, which pushes the scripts of the films he's in into slightly more complex directions than you find in something starring someone who wasn't even a decent enough actor for professional wrestling. That tends to make the characters Gooding plays more sympathetic than is the rule in direct-to-DVD action outside the body of work of Jean Claude Van Damme, too. It applies even to a character as much as a self-pitying fool as Ray is, the kind of guy who loves to moan about the guilt being a professional killer brings with it, yet never does anything about it, like stopping to murder people for money, for example.

Additionally, Gooding actually stars in the films he's supposed to star in, and doesn't go the slightly prolonged cameo route as Jean Claude Van Damme or his partner in this outing, Dolph Lundgren, often do. Consequently, there's much more Cuba than Dolph in One in the Chamber but the film's script handles the situation appropriately. In fact, it would make little sense if the two leads had more scenes together. When Lundgren is on screen, he takes on the violent and crazy yet likeable persona that he fills in many films at this point in his career. He's grown rather good at it by now, and is one of the few actors in action movies who can make the wholesale slaughter of a dozen other people somehow look good-natured. If that's always a good thing, I'm not always sure about.

It is a bit disappointing that One in the Chamber's script doesn't make as much out of the strange juxtaposition of its two main characters as I would have wished, but then, Cuba and Dolph (sounds like a sitcom title if ever I saw one) would need to interact more for it to work, which clearly was right out for the production. I'm also not really happy about the (non-)solution to the plotline between Ray and Janice, or rather, about the much too easy and straightforward way the film ends it, taking what should be emotionally heavy, and not a little creepy, stuff and trying to just wink it away.

On the positive side, there is enough complexity here to keep the very basic gang war plot lively, and what the script lacks in dramatic unity, it makes up for with a love for small and colourful details that don't exactly make the world it takes place in believable but protects it from feeling like the series of clichés it actually is. Which is more than I ask of this kind of film, and more than enough to keep me entertained throughout.

It helps that director William Kaufman aims for filming the kind of action scenes the human eye can actually comprehend, which also just happens to be the kind of action scene I find actually fun to watch. As a visual extra, Kaufman also doesn't dive too deeply into the colourless colour film rabbit hole, leaving my eyes delighted by the existence of other colours than yellow and blue, or, in the case of Lundgren's shirts, nearly blinded by them.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,reviews,action,william kaufman,cuba gooding jr.,dolph lundgren,claudia bassols

Music Monday: It's That Season Again, Silly Edition

Technorati-Markierungen: music,music monday,low

December Beach Party: Stonados (2013)

The agents of M.O.S.S. (yes, we still kind of exist in our own, half-assed manner) are nothing if not timely - or secret sympathizers of the Southern hemisphere - so December seems just like the right time to get down to the beach and find out what we find there.

There's trouble brewing for the people of Boston, British Columbia. Huge, water-y tornados are hitting the city's coastline, but these aren't your grandpa's tornados. Unless your grandpa's tornados spat more rocks than a disaster movie meteor shower (an early victim is the Plymouth Rock, and I'm not talking about the chicken breed), squashing people left and right. And even then, I suspect the rocks of Grandpa's tornados never exploded as the ones in Stonados like to do because of SCIENCE!

Fortunately for Boston, former volcanologist and storm chaser turned science teacher Joe (Paul Johansson), his former storm chasing buddy turned weekend replacement TV weather forecaster Lee (Sebastian Spence), and Joe's cop sister Maddy (Miranda Frigon) are there to help. Unfortunately, The Authorities represented by the Oceanic Blah-Blah Agency of Tara Laykin (Thea Gill) don't think a series of absurd tornados building over the open see and spitting exploding rocks are anything more than "freak weather", and want to see proof. No idea proof of what, really, but there you have it.

So, before the Government will provide our heroes with the bomb they'll need to blow the bad weather up - a time-honoured SyFy Channel way to get rid of all kinds of bad weather be it Ston- or Shark-nado - there's an ill-fated regatta to save and some sort of sports game (taking place in "the stadium", so the kind of sport is anyone's guess, though I suspect a film this pretend all-American will mean baseball) ending in catastrophe. Of course widower Joe's not quite happy kids need saving, of course Lee and Maddy will finally get around to doing something about their twenty years of affection disguised as bickering, and of course Laykin will die right when she's making her "oh Doctor Joe, you were so right and I'm so sorry" speech.

Obviously, and not surprisingly, there's nothing new going on in SyFy Channel disaster movie land, though Jason Bourque's film goes through the usual motions with enough élan to keep simple-minded folks like me entertained throughout. The film's tone, mostly treating the ridiculous bomb-throwing storm idea it has been cursed with by a marketing department in desperate search of stupid movie titles seriously but not treating it too po-faced either, works pretty well for the material, helping to distinguish it from Sharknado whose very American ideas about getting rid of tornados it shares.

The special effects aren't half bad this time around either, and they are surprisingly numerous too. I suspect it helps that the effects houses working on SyFy's projects have by now made so many films with giant tornadoes in them the people involved probably do tornados (particularly exploding tornados) in their sleep.

On the acting and characterization front this is perfectly decent though I couldn't escape the impression Bourque races through the character bits to get to the next piece of destruction, which, to be perfectly honest, is a bit more interesting than watching another US white core family get together again. I'd rather love to see a film showing one of these core families growing quickly apart again after the chupacabras are dead, the storms are gone, and the ice age prevented, but then I might be a mite cynical about these things.

Stonados earns itself bonus points by including a handful of scenes featuring William B. Davis as Boston's lighthouse keeper, having a chat with his bird, talking on the radio with the film's actual protagonists, and in the end getting crushed by his lighthouse.

So Stonados is a fun enough time at the beach, if you don't mind the exploding rocks.

Technorati-Markierungen: december beach party,american movies,american tv,reviews,jason bourque,paul johansson,sebastian spence,miranda frigon,william b. davis,disaster

Three Films Make A Post: Based on the Historical Realities

Du rififi à Paname aka The Upper Hand (1966): Denys de La Patellière's crime movie is a sort of retirement home for tired looking old and middle aged actors (Jean Gabin! Gert Fröbe! Nadja Tiller! Claudio Brook! George Raft!), the kind of film that thinks just letting the actors turn their faces in the direction of the camera equals acting performances. What's actually going on is that no one in front of the camera seems even the least bit interested in the film they are involved in, which is somewhat understandable given the been there done that nature of the film's crime plot, and the script's insistence on not developing the plot's few interesting elements in any direction worth following. De La Patellière manages to make the film pretty, but doesn't provide any sense of tension or drama, and also seems to delight in the kind of "witty" dialogue only very few films can get away with. Most of those films have actors actually doing more than coasting on their mere existence, though.

An American Ghost Story aka Revenant (2012): Derek Cole's film could be a fine, low-key ghost story, if a highly derivative one. At least, the core performances by scriptwriter and male lead Stephen Twardokus and Liesel Kopp are never less than decent, often even quite good, the camera work is atmospheric, and the film has a nice, concentrated flow to it. Unfortunately American Ghost Story suffers from a case of Advanced Jump Scare Syndrome that borders on the ridiculous. There's no quietly effective scene of the supernatural the film doesn't ruin by making inappropriate loud noises at the audience in moments that aren't at all meant to be jump scares, no scene that doesn't end up destroying its own effectiveness by shouting "boo". It's nearly like a parody of other films who like their jump scares a bit too much, and feels as if the film were afraid to just let the creepy mood it so desperately tries to build work on its audience, permanently losing faith in its own ability to function without VERY LOUD NOISES. While this technique doesn't work at all to actually make the film scarier, it ruins any mood it actually builds quite effectively, dragging the whole effort down from the at least decent to the nearly insufferable.

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013): I'm more than just a little surprised that this one is the film of these three I actually like, but then surprising me is what J.J. Abrams's movie did more than once: by feeling much more like a Stark Trek movie than the first one, by not just fixing the first film's dubious politics but actually consciously having and using political themes and coherent morals, by actually doing some rather great (or at the very least fun) things with the Star Trek movie it is playing with/off, and by this time around actually having something (though still not enough by far) to do for its female cast members. If the last trend continues, the next Star Trek movie might even see Zoe Saldana's Uhura as an actual female lead instead of a relatively large supporting role for Pine's and Quinto's perfectly entertaining boy's club.

As it stands, the film is still nearly up there with the Avengers or the last Batman or Pacific Rim as a film that fulfils all blockbuster demands on spectacle, yet still has the time and space for human things of one kind of the other. Most of the time, it even remembers the spectacle is there to dramatize the humanity and not the other way around.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,french movies,horror,crime,sf,in short,j.j. abrams,denys de la patellière,derek cole,jean gabin,gert fröbe,nadja tiller,stephen twardokus,liesel kopp,chris pine,zachary quinto,zoe saldana,benedict cumberbatch

On ExB: The Crone (2013)

The last few Japanese low budget horror films I watched left me with a bit of a sour taste in my mouth, as well as with a degree of pessimism towards the state of the genre in the country.

A film like The Crone, flawed yet made with obvious dedication and intelligence as it is, can't help but bring me around to optimism again. I'll explain why in my column over at Exploder Button.

Technorati-Markierungen: japanese movies,reviews,other places,horror,eisuke naito,honoka miki,shiori kitayama,kaoru goto

In short: Red Water (2003)

Before the SyFy Original movie really came into its own, before Mansquito was a blink in Tibor Takács eye, the icky sounding Turner Broadcasting System aired Charles Robert Carner's Red Water, a film you could sell to me as part of the SyFy cycle any time. It has everything you'd expect from this sort of film: two likeable leads given by two actors whose faces we all know but who never really got a big break - in this case Lou Diamond Phillips and Kristy Swanson; a killer shark; non-rapper, non-actor Coolio non-acting and at least not attempting to rap; Cajun clichés; gangsters; ex-husband and ex-wife getting back together thanks to the magic of animal attacks; as many explosions as the budget can take, so not very many; evil oil business and evil banks. In other words, there's not a single original idea in the whole film. Instead Red Water tries to become somewhat memorable by at least mixing the clichés of a few different genres.

As with the SyFy films whose cousin Red Water is, there's a lot of fun to be had with it if you're willing to accept the lack of originality for what it is instead treating it as an insult to all of humanity, don't expect something spectacular, and just go with the film's flow. Carner makes that easy enough, for while there are no spectacular stylistic achievements visible on screen, the director does present his plot in a clear straightforward style that fits the clear straightforward story just fine. While there is no really clever moment in the film, there certainly aren't many dull ones, so if you're in the mood for a highly traditional yet effective mix of sharksploitation and thriller that aims to entertain the simple-minded like me, Red Water will scratch that itch nicely without letting you wade through too much idiocy, and without ever trying to bore you. Plus, I don't think I've ever seen a movie monster shark killed in quite this way before.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,american tv,in short,thriller,horror,charles robert carner,lou diamond phillips,kristy swanson

In short: Kill 'Em All (2012)

Again, a maniac kidnaps a bunch of people, stuffs them into a decrepit warehouse, and plays games with them. Only this time around, the kidnapper will later turn out to be played by Gordon Liu Chia-Hui, his victims are all successful professional killers with martial arts skills (with Ammara Siripong, Johnny Messner and Tim Man as the central characters), and the only game Gordon likes - apart from gloating - is seeing them fight one-on-one to the death, promising survival to the last one standing.

Some of our killers (maybe the ones whose actors I named!?) are not quite as gullible as poor Gordon Liu may hope, though, and may find the brains to team up and take the fight into more warehouse rooms, and to their captor and his army of stunt people playing crazy dress-up.

If you've got to make a warehouse-bound martial arts/action movie, you can do much worse than decide what Kill 'Em All's Raimund Huber did and take your most basic set-up (sort of) from Saw but replace all semi-sadistic games and stupid plot twists with martial arts fights. Thusly, Kill 'Em All may not exactly win any prizes for originality, but it sure is a film trying to make the most of its miniscule budget and to deliver what its potential audience will probably really come to see - a lot of fights.

While there's nothing spectacular about Tim Man's choreography or Huber's way of shooting it, it's solid and dependable with some bursts of actual energy and - particular in the final fights - a nicely presented sense of brutality that befits a film whose heroes are professional killers. I'm also quite happy to report that Huber shoots the fights straight, with editing rhythms and camera angles meant to show off the actors' (all of whom have more martial arts and/or stunt experience than acting experience) skills, which seems to be a style that slowly replaces the micro-editing and camera-shaking that has marred low budget action movies in the last fifteen years or so again. Generally, martial arts is something I actually like to see in a martial arts movie, so I'm all for it.

There is little else to say about Kill 'Em All. Its level of writing and acting are about where you expect them to be in this kind of production - good enough for what the film is, probably horrifying if you're the sort of person who goes into a film called Kill 'Em All expecting much depth in these regards. The rest is silly bad guy talk, one rather funny joke about ninjas, and a lot of fun scenes of people beating each other up. I call that a highly satisfying evening's entertainment.

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The Phantom (1996)

At some point in time between the World Wars. Kit Walker (Billy Zane) is The Phantom aka The Ghost Who Walks, the newest in a long line of adventuring pulp-style heroes, ruling about some "native tribes" while wearing ugly purple costumes and having something of a skull fetish. When he's not chatting with the ghost of his father (Patrick McGoohan), Kit's in the habit of smiting evil in a semi-competent manner a bit too semi to not leave ghost dad rather exasperated from time to time. The evil Kit has to smite this time is a megalomaniac business tycoon from New York, the excellently named Xander Drax (Treat Williams).

Drax (not to be confused with Drax the Destroyer) and his merry band of evil-doers (including Catherine Zeta-Jones and James Remar) are trying to acquire three magical skulls that combine into a weapon of awesome supernatural power, with the usual resulting world domination dreams. Obviously, this sort of thing won't stand with the Phantom, nor with Diana Palmer (Kristy Swanson), the niece of a newspaper owner up to Drax's tricks. Diana, what with her having some actual survival skills (though not enough to not get kidnapped every ten minutes), is of course the perfect potential girlfriend for a pulp hero (and in fact, Kit and Diana know each other already, though that's a part of the script so useless to the proceedings I can only assume it is a left-over from an earlier script version), so face-punching, woman-rescuing, and romancing can ensue.

Simon Wincer's The Phantom is one of a handful of attempts made in the 90s to get at some of that old pulp magic by reviving long dead characters. Unfortunately none of these films was commercially successful enough to lead to sequels or a larger pulp and serial renaissance in the movies. The character of the phantom did of course start out in a newspaper strip, but in style and content, it's about as pure a pulp hero as you can find, though one lacking the craziness of The Spider as well as the cleverness of Doc Savage or The Shadow.

The movie at hand is generally entertaining in a very old-fashioned manner, and not really in the business of trying to change up much of import about the Phantom or its mythology. Though, to give the film its dues, it does pare the racist elements of the original down from "holy crap, seriously?" to "problematic" and attempts to make Diana slightly more than an object to be kidnapped and rescued. Unfortunately, and quite typically for this sort of endeavour, the film stops with this slight re-imagination about half-way, using the old "kidnapping of the heroine" cliché so much that said heroine's general poise and ability to kick a bit of ass are undermined for no good reason (surely, the script could find someone else to kidnap at least half of the time), which is a particular shame seeing how much Kristy Swanson seems to enjoy herself in her more heroic moments. That enjoyment stands quite in contrast to Zane's rather awkward performance that suggests an actor who can't forget that he's in a very silly adventure movie wearing a particularly silly costume.

The costume is rather emblematic of the film's other great weakness, set design and costuming that just isn't all that interesting, ending in a particularly lame villain lair that's mostly cramped and brown and without any interesting visual features. I'd have rather wished for more colour, imagination and an openness to at least be as silly as the Phantom's costume in the sets; after all, the film has no problem with being silly in everything else.

Still, if you're looking for a serial-style adventure movie, you can do much worse than The Phantom. It is at least well paced, acted with zest by an excellent bunch of character actors (excluding Zane whose perfect perfect teeth just aren't that impressing, as much as he shows them), and full of exactly the sort of stunts you'd expect.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,australian movies,in short,adventure,pulp,simon wincer,billy zane,kristy swanson,treat williams,catherine zeta-jones

Music Monday: Chickamauga Edition

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