Reviews

Giant human-piloted mecha space-traveling war-machines fill the very rich, lived-in, perennially popular future history of anime's Gundam universe. Yet except for a promptly-forgotten Canadian TV movie, the numerous Gundam permutations have never been explored on the big screen (although a live-action...but sadly not big budget...adaptation has been just been announced; no writers, director, nor cast, so it might or might not exist in a few years). Practically an embryonic Marvel universe, rife with creative potential.

Would that Guillermo del Toro had turned to this existing mythos for 2013's PACIFIC RIM--he surely could have worked kaiju into his script somehow-if only in service of creating a viable franchise going forward. A Gundam adaptation, or merely inspiration, could easily have resulted in a sequel far more satisfying than watching talented actors squandered on Steven DeKnight's insulting hodgepodge of inept direction, incompetent story-telling, and encyclopedic list of rando cliches.

Spiritual awakening in the scenic byways of western Canada...but only sort of.

Less extreme horror exploitation than a null-budget anarcho-punk statement from identical twin sister auteurs Jen & Sylvia Soska (a.k.a. Twisted Twins), DEAD HOOKER IN A TRUNK is the visual equivalent of lo-fi riot grrrl garage rock—mashing up Robert Rodriguez, Harmony Korine, Nick Zedd, Amos Poe, and Eli Roth, with an occasional whiff of Greg Araki.

The movie has to be taken on its own terms. In keeping with a homage to no wave and grindhouse esthetics, the Soskas apparently consider continuity to be cisgender heteronormative fascism imposed by imperialist capitalist elitism: exterior shots filmed before & after a snowstorm are spliced together; one character's severed limb randomly appears re-attached; it seems that a lead role had to be reinvented on the fly when the actress cast for the part didn't show up on set and the only available substitute was the cameraman. Some viewers can roll with this; others can't.

Still, the script is energetic, brutal, funny, often quite sparkling, albeit the actors mumble and stumble through any dialogue more complicated that "F*&K!"

The plot? There's a dead hooker in the trunk: roll camera and--ACTION!

More specifically: Geek, her severely hungover twin sister Badass, and Badass' equally hungover punk-rawk pal Junkie are giving Geek's friend Goody Two-Shoes a lift home from his Christian youth ministry when, en route, they discover that someone's stashed drugs and a corpse in the boot of Badass' car.

So...call the police? It's not like they had anything to do with it, right? Well, that's another problem--

BADASS: "Last night is really fuzzy..."

Thus the quartet, uncertain whether they're psycho-killers, have to find an informal way to ditch a cadaver in suburban Vancouver in broad daylight in winter--and pious Goody Two-Shoes demands they do so while respecting the dignity of the deceased. Plus, they're all being hunted by the real murderer or murderers.

Complications, mayhem, mutilations, homicides' 'n' hijinx, along with gratuitous everything and a cameo appearance by God, ensue.

It all hangs together—often barely—by dint of the Soska sisters' relentless fan-sensibility attitude.

A extreme post-apocalyptic action gore comedy that proves to be far more accomplished—and far funnier—that it probably has any right to be.

Celebrity assassins Drifter, his nemesis/lover Mary Death, and their novice gun caddy (who's supposed to schlep a golf bag full of military assault weapons, recommending the appropriate gun for each kill) Road Warrior their way through a nuclear hellscape in which the evil Ayn Rand-inspired war criminals & their murderous henchmen all wear Armani suits with very loud matching ties; the armies of moral ambiguity are Juggalos; Western "stagecoaches" are Winnebagos hitched to synchronized Harleys; and the ultimate currency is a can of PBR. Somehow this all hangs together, albeit by partially severed limbs.

Adapted from his own graphic novel by screenwriter Jason Dodson, the movie is a family affair and first feature for both Dodson and his cousin, director Henry Saine. Which, in a low-budget indie, is rarely auspicious, but works well in this case. The script and set pieces are crisp, on point, and often quite original. The acting, fight choreography & editing are impressively self-assured. Even the sfx appear far more big-budget than they can possibly be. And although Saine and Dodson aren't yet in a league with Robert Rodriguez or Yoshihiro Nishamura, they've successfully delivered an amusing, lightning-paced freshman effort with flying bloody colors.

There are two kinds of really, really bad zombie movies:

Those with NO Danny Trejo... And those with ¡SI, MUY! Danny Trejo.

Or as much Danny Trejo as the "producer/writer/director" could afford to hire, which seems to be roughly a half-day's worth in this case.

Too inadvertently cheesy to qualify as the worst ever in its sub-genre, this grind house wannabe also boasts: absolutely no acting or directorial values; an unedited, witlessly amateurish imitation Frank Miller tough guy script; lots of gore, black gore, maroon gore, fuchsia gore, lavender gore, green gore, ecru gore; a gratuitous chain-sawing wielding maniac clown; never-explained CGI mutant space monsters; a single set of all-purpose fake intestines which are repeatedly pulled from various dead extras; characters who keep forgetting they're in the zombie apocalypse; a running visual gag involving masturbation; a geezer who repeatedly declares "I'm getting too old for this sh*t"; and a second-lead actress whose IMDb biog notes that she used to model for Japanese girlie mags and now sells lingerie at strip clubs in Utah.

In sum: grade Z camp fare; awful, but minimally fun. Eh...sometimes you're in the mood for a really bad zombie movie. It may as well feature Danny Trejo.

Simply put, this might be the finest motion picture so far this century.

A coming of age meditation by turns elegant, delicate, and demur, MACHETE KILLS is rated "R" for "replete with subtle nuances" evoking the whimsical pastel visions of James Ivory, Bernardo Bertolucci, Wes Anderson and Eric Rohmer, while providing a showcase for such Latin- American cinema icons as Mel Gibson and Elon Musk (inventor of the Tesla). One suspects the only people who can resist this movie's lures are very likely anti-Mexican bigots...

Nah, just kidding, bro'.

More to the point, MACHETE KILLS is rated "R" for "relleno"--'cuz it's stuffed to bursting with gloriously unhinged exuberance. A relentlessly rollicking mad marvel, most freakin' amazeballs so to speak. Plot? There's oodles of it, nearly all irrelevant. This tongue-in-cheek, kaleidoscope mix of mayhem, sex, slaughter, sci-fi, satire, shenanigans and spy spoof establishes Danny Trejo's Machete Cortez as a direct descendant of such '60s anti-James-Bond anti-heroes as James Coburn's Derek Flint (OUR MAN FLINT) and Dean Martin's Matt Helm (MURDERERS' ROW), albeit in an adventure amped-up and cracked-out with habanero-hot dialogue and gallons of gore. As a gonzo action-film director, Robert Rodriguez stands alone with only Yoshihiro Nishimura providing even distant competition.

One can but wonder where the series might go from MACHETE KILLS—oh, wait...that's right: Rodriguez begins the movie with a trailer for his next installment! So there's hope that soon Machete will kill again...In Space!

"Found footage" has long become a misbegotten gimmick, so abused and ill-considered as to virtually guarantee that it will vitiate and bleed dry any project that relies on the technique...

Particularly when, as here, its main purpose is to pad meager scripts with numbingly endless variations of "Is this thing on? Is it filming? Are you filming me? Can you see me? Am I on film? Are you sure it's on? How do you know it's on? Is it still on? What about now? Is it still filming? Okay, turn it off. Did you turn it off? Is it off? You're not filming now, are you?", followed by the camera breaking, going dark, and magically fixing itself for a few more minutes of "Is this thing working again? Is it on? Are you sure it's on? Okay, turn it off. Is it off?"

FRANKENSTEIN'S ARMY is sadly true to form, and nearly sunk by the cheap trickery.

A pity since, given tighter editing and writing, the movie could have become an over-the-top cult classic. As it is, brilliantly executed steampunk monsters, a wealth of fantasy gore details, and a loopy performance by Karel Roden's mad scientist enliven the premise of an utterly undisciplined WWII Soviet recon unit lured into a bunker brimming with cyborg Nazistein monsters, and make the film's final half- hour obsessive and funny enough to rescue it from being a complete debacle.

A stark, brilliant, uncompromising tale of imperial intrigue and self- fulfilling prophecies, with a star cast helmed by Yun-Fat Chow and Yifei Liu, TONG QUE TAI (THE ASSASSINS) is one of the better Mandarin films in recent years, and easily ranks with such lush historical epics as CHI BI (RED CLIFF) and MAN CHENG JIN DAI HAUNG JIN JIA (CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER).

A fictionalized account of the events leading to the fall of the Eastern Han Dynasty in 220 CE, as seen primarily from the point of view of Gong Ling Ju—one of many refugees abducted as children, then brutally trained for a decade solely to murder the powerful Duke of Wei, Chancellor Cao Cao. A military genius, adored king, scholar and poet, Cao Cao has been unswervingly loyal to the Han, even feckless current Emperor Xian. But an astrological prediction cast years before foretells that Cao's destiny is to end the Han era—and Xian's courtiers will stop at nothing to thwart "heaven's will". Might their sneak attacks and murder plots only push Chancellor Cao into the rebellion they want to prevent? Or might Cao's growing affection for and trust in his concubine, Ling Ju, prove the weakness that gives her an opportunity to kill her lover?

Solid performances, gorgeous cinematography, and a taut script weaving spectacle with reflection make TONG QUE TAI a skillfully wrought Asian history-based drama.

Might have been titled: WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE'S BLOODY REVENGE.

An occasionally lurid quirky-indie of a troubled, borderline cray Catholic girl's angsty coming-of-age in a stereotypical indie suburban hellscape, EXCISION is, by turns, undistinguished, uninspired, and uninteresting.

Borrowing heavily from a cornucopia of better movies by better directors (Solondz, Lynch, Aronofsky, Waters, even Araki), the film manages to be clichéd even at its most original, lurching to a conclusion that undermines any legitimacy in its premise.

Decent performances fail to compensate for the mediocre direction and (at best) marginally competent script. Aiming for DONNIE DARKO, this disturbed-suburban-teen quirky indie only manages to be DONNIE DARK, DANK & DISMAL-O.

Bleak and fairly effective low-budget survivalism in the post-apocalyptic hellscape. Set ten years after the no-need-to-explain end of world (one character notes: "it's been two years since we heard a bird chirp)and with, in the first half of the movie, a cinéma vérité feel, what remains of humanity seems to be running on fumes. Whereupon, events take a turn for the worse.

Produced by and featuring Dominic Monaghan, the script initially appears to tread the conventions of a zombie movie, until it becomes clear that the five main characters face opponents far worse than the undead.

Well considered use of color-bleached cinematography keep the protagonists trapped in a NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD milieu even as the enemy enjoys blue-eyed, blue-sky color.

Although hardly a future classic, SINISTER is nevertheless among the more satisfying and sure-footed horror fantasies in the past couple of years--the equivalent of a solidly hit two-base grounder--and a major professional improvement for writer/director Scott Derrickson.

Combining effects and motifs from Western and J-horror, Derrickson's script deftly turns the screws from natural mystery to supernatural as Ethan Hawke's true-crime author Ellison Oswalt delves into a cold case, only to uncover pattern killings which prove ultimately mythic. The "suburban nightmare" structure is strictly conventional, but contains enough twists to keep from collapsing on itself. There are a few too many red herrings, but not an egregious number.

The characters aren't terribly intelligent, but they're not incapable of doing sensible things...at least, within the set-up's context. One problem with the script is that the dysfunctional marriage portrayed couldn't have lasted long enough to produce even one child (whenever Oswalt goes to another small town, researching some notorious local crime, Juliet Rylance's wife Tracy: a) insists that the whole family move with him; b) but demands that he never discuss even the topic of his work; c) then reliably freaks out to learn that the old case had been big news among the chatty new neighbors). Clearly, if she didn't require so much nuclear togetherness, his career wouldn't be an issue; indeed, the characters' whole dynamic should have been better constructed. Still, Derrickson deserves credit for creating characters with enough weight to warrant even that level of critique.

A promising set-up with some sprightly, well-edited scripting by Mark L. Smith goes sadly awry in the movie's second half, degenerating into a series of contrived, loosely connected vignettes when each of the young protagonists must face separate horror scenarios. Hackneyed and lackluster, the result is depressingly reminiscent of HOUSE, TROLL, WAXWORK, and all such tepidly similar episodic monster flicks from back in the '80s. Director Joe Dante has since claimed that his intent was a return to "suburban horror" of 30 years ago; even if true, the movie would have been best left in its time capsule, wrapped in Hammertime harem pants.

DREDD is a stand-alone comic-strip adaptation with a sense of mission: to meticulously exact bloody justice for every last bonehead aesthetic crime perpetrated by the atrocious 1995 Stallone slapstick farrago. It does so admirably and in spades, becoming among the best action films of the early 1980s.

Titular lead Karl Urban has yet to prove whether he has any talent, charisma or personality—which is, in this case, the right choice. His Dredd is faceless and cold, less a bot than Symbol-as-Weapons-System. Olivia Thirlby and Lena Headey provide enough emotion to propel the plot, playing intelligent, calculating antagonists. The film and vertical gauntlet setting are the real stars.

Since it derives from a 1970s magazine called 2000 A.D., DREDD should be considered steam-punk: rather than reconcile a nearly 40-year out-dated futurism with the actual 21st Century, director Pete Travis and screenwriter Alex Garland create an alternate reality projected from '70s urban decay. The design and effects are appropriately, relentlessly retro—this could have been a state-of-the-art high-tech vision in the era of THE WARRIORS, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, and BLADE RUNNER. Released in 2012, it's still a series of visceral pleasures and thrillingly well- paced gore.

Pity that DREDD didn't find its audience in theatrical release; so no sequel is likely to come. I suspect, though, the movie's reputation will grow over time.

Semi TMI alert.

Time (we're constantly reminded): during the far superior Bourne movies- -numerous clips of which are provided. Meanwhile in another part of the Magic Kingdom of Evilonia, CIA mad scientists hope they'll cook up an army of Mutant X-Bournes by giving super-soldier serum to Flowers For Algernon wannabes. They mostly end up with 'roid-addicted, overly trusting and easily killed Mini-Bournes. But Jeremy Renner misplaces his meds and soon goes Rogue Pseudo-Bourne, pursued by Terminator-Bourne. Back at CIA Ops HQ, Edward Norton and Stacy Keach exchange terse accusations and launch drone attacks.

The result is the BOURNE NON-ENTITY: an imitation lacking only the script, story, direction, performances, editing, cinematography, stunt coordination, fight choreography, design, integrity or vision of the originals. One suspects the sequel will feature Spidey-Bourne & Hulk- Bourne vs Robo-Bourne.

PREMISE: Alice. Kills stuff. PLOT: Alice. Kills stuff.

Viewers hoping for a coherent narrative are advised to try Capcom's Resident Evil cartoons; viewers completely new to the series really have no choice but to let the images simply break over them like tsunamis. Despite 2 or 3 pages of exposition, series writer/director Paul W. S. Anderson clearly assumes that anyone rejoining him at this point is so familiar with both the movies and the various R.E./BIOHAZARD VGs that new characters (Ada Wong; Leon Kennedy) can be ported over from the games, and old characters (Rain; Carlos) resurrected without explanation (Jill Valentine, Albert Wesker and Luther West are back; Claire and Chris Redfield make cameos). Happily, I AM that geekish, so enjoyed the merry-go-round.

The CGI FX, which are virtually non-stop, are more varied, energetic, and original than in previous sequels. No more mutant dead dogs, thank goodness, although Anderson remains overly-fond of his tentacles- bursting-out-of-the-mouth shots.

The movie is less a script than a series of levels, as Alice, Project Alice, Leon, Ada and their ad hoc teams are dragged through artificial environments adapted from previous installments, from games (notably the new Manhattan and Moscow sets), from any spin-off that isn't bolted to the ground, even from absolutely unconnected franchises (e.g. DAWN OF THE DEAD). Each setting—all controlled by The Red Queen--has its own horde of character clones infected with different strains of the T-Virus and/or Plaga Parasite and its own boss monster adapted from one or another of the games.

If...and only if...that paragraph made the least bit of sense, then this movie's recommended.

Surviving Horror Flicks, Lesson #1164: when, while touring terra incognita, a yabo named Yuri talks you into doing something stupid, don't.

Surviving Horror Flicks, Lesson #3897: The one member of your group who's a snivelling wimp, but has a functioning brain? Do what he says, instead of what the jackass alpha-male wannabe says.

Surviving Horror Flicks, Lesson #205: any place that CAN have radioactive mutant cannibals, most assuredly does.

Everything is strictly by-the-numbers. And there's no titular diary, not even a token v-blog.

Puerile retread that director Len Wiseman uses as an excuse to...yet again...cast his wife as a gun-toting' killer in fetish leather. To justify her presence, the movie is larded with repetitive, often pointless chases. And in order to make time for these, the remake ditches every last bit of imagination, originality, satire and wit from the 1990 original.

The result is RECALL 4 DUMMIES. No Mars. No Kuato. No alien cities. No Benny. Not the least ghostly whisper of Philip K. Dick. Colin Farrel doesn't even have an Austrian accent.

Instead, this version has...elevators. That's it. Elevators, lots of them—big, small, fast, slow, going in all directions. Mostly so people can shoot at and chase each other while on elevators or in cars that double as elevators; the clashing mix of technologies has no internal logic & the world building is hopelessly slip-shod. The central conflict is: who will control the elevators? The helpless, unarmed, starving & rain-soaked workers on one end? Or the evil psycho billionaire tyrant with all the jobs and an army of countless gazillion Robo-Gestapo on the other?

Although, really, when one wields an infinite horde of Robo-Gestapo, the entire rest of the plot—what little there is of it—is unnecessary. Then again, "unnecessary" describes the entire remake and all its elements.