Month: March 2018

Released: September 2017

Director: Simon Wells

Not Rated

Run Time: 84 Minutes

Genre: Fantasy/Adventure

Cast:
Ross O’Hennessy: Richard
Ben Loyd-Holmes: George
Silvio Simac: Thomas
Zara Phythian: Dimia
Andrea Visiliou: Phrowenia

Over the past year, I’ve been seeing more indie films than I had in the past several years.  I’ve come across some pretty good indie films, including Fist 2 Fist, Weapon Of Choice, Accident Man, and A Reckoning among others.  As a result, I’ve developed a real soft spot for the indie film.  There’s a certain charm to the low-budget film fair.  While most people would scoff at the idea of an indie film because of the way it looks, I have a different perspective.  There is something usually interesting and unique about the way an indie film is made.  I mean, yeah, some of the visual effects might not necessarily be great, but as long as the rest of the film holds up, that’s something that can be forgiven.  If I can tell that there is effort being made in a film, indie or otherwise, I tend to give it a chance.  I might not completely like it, but I would definitely give it marks for trying.  Sadly, even in the indie film scene, you’re going to have a lot of films that are genuinely awful.  Movies like Dark Feed and a large chunk of Roger Corman’s movies would fall under the “generally awful” category.  So….where does Knights of the Damned fall?

The film opens as a dragon lays siege to a kingdom in a faraway land.  A small group of knights, led by George, are on a quest to rid the kingdom of this beast.  Meanwhile, people are turning into these….zombies as a result of “dark magic.”  You’re going to be hearing that a lot.  Most encounters that these knights have are mostly blamed on some form of dark magic.  The idea of a zombie/action/fantasy film like this isn’t necessarily a bad idea.  However, the execution of the story here is unbelievably banal.  The film’s plot gets unnecessarily complicated with dragons and zombies and a mustache-twirling evil prince scheming to rule the land.  Honestly, the story might have been salvaged if it was in the hands of better film-makers.  Ultimately, the story is nothing we haven’t seen before and done better.

The acting in the film is….okay.  The guys that play the knights actually look like they belong in a film like this, and they tend to carry themselves pretty well.  The female warriors that show up later also do…okay.  A number of these folks including Silvio Simac and Zara Phythian have backgrounds in martial arts and are generally pretty physical.  That helps them in the long run as they do most of their own fighting.  Some of the other acting is flat-out awful.  The guy who plays Prince Favian goes WAY too overboard with his performance to be taken seriously.  In fact, it’s almost hilarious.  I’m not necessarily blaming the actors for how their performances turned out.  Not entirely.  The fault lies with the writers and the director.  The dialogue being spoken is some of the worst that I have ever heard.  Honestly, I thought that Star Wars: Attack of the Clones had some seriously clunky and poorly delivered lines.  Knights of the Damned seems to be trying to take that “honor” away from Clones….and succeeding.  Now, is it really fair to compare a low-budget film with that of a 200 million dollar film?  Probably not, but my point still stands.

While I understand that this is a low-budget film and the nature of that kind of film has restrictions on what they can do in terms of visuals, the visual effects and CGI in this movie are really, REALLY bad.  The dragon looks worse than the CGI dragon in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.  According to IMDB, the movie was made for approximately 6.3 million pounds which equates to about 9 million US dollars, give or take.  A lot more effort could have been made to make the dragon look somewhat realistic.  Instead, the beast looks like something out of an early PlayStation One video game, and that’s not a good thing.  The make-up effects, on the other hand, are not that bad.  It’s not Walking Dead-quality, but they are passable.  The action is also somewhat…..okay.  Unfortunately, it’s let-down by an over-use of slow-motion.  While it isn’t as bad as it is in some other films, there really is no reason to be using that much slow-motion in action sequences.  As I said in my review of Kickboxer: Retaliation, slow-motion is okay in certain situations, other-wise it’s used to hide bad choreography.  The guys and gals that do most of the fighting handle themselves pretty well, although I would tip my hat to the ladies as they are given the better fight sequences.  Some of the cinematography and camera-work is actually pretty decent, as there are some really beautiful shots of the surrounding landscapes.

The pacing of the film also drags it down.  For a film that runs 84 minutes, it feels like two hours.  As a film that is this short, there’s a lot of unnecessary exposition and it feels like it’s used to pad out the run time.  Look, I’m not necessarily proud for coming down hard on a movie like this.  Nobody intends to make a bad movie, it just sometimes turns out that way.  For a movie like Knights of the Damned, it’s a concept that could have worked had it been in the hands of more experienced and competent writers and directors.  I have nothing against these folks, personally, and as I said, I don’t like railing against movies like this, especially if they are of a low-budget indie nature.  But I have to call it as I see it, and Knights of the Damned is not a good movie, not by any stretch of the imagination.  The three male leads and the gals who play the female warriors do okay, but everyone else left a lot to be desired.  I would personally keep an eye on folks like Silvio Simac, though.  He was not bad here, and he’s definitely got the physicality and personality to do a decent action movie.  At the end of the day though, I can’t recommend this movie.  While it does have some good elements, the bad outweigh the good.

My Final Recommendation:  Honestly?  Skip it. 4/10

Released: January 2018

Director: Brett Donowho

Rated R

Run Time: 87 Minutes

Distributor: Lionsgate Studios

Genre: Action/Thriller

Cast:
Bruce Willis: Detective James Avery
Cole Hauser: Deklan
Shawn Ashmore: Brandon
Ashton Holmes: Roman
Melissa Bolona: Mia
Sean Brosnan: Vince
Mike Epps: Max
Sophia Bush: Detective Brook Baker

Human trafficking is one of those topics that’s very difficult to properly integrate into an action/thriller.  It runs the risk of turning what is a legitimate social issue into what could be considered a joke.  While there have been a number of films that have tackled the subject of human trafficking seriously, there are also a number of films that have simply used the topic as an excuse to blow things up.  Trying to find the balance between the two is a very short tight-rope to walk and very few film-makers have the ability to not only make us aware of the problem, but to also make the film entertaining as well.  If not done right, the film can across as pretty trashy.  Like-wise, when it comes to action thrillers, there is a fine line between having genuine white-knuckle tension and face-palming stupidity.  There is a balance that has to be maintained for a compelling thriller.  This year, we have a new action thriller involving human trafficking.  How does it stack up with the others?

The film opens as Detective Avery is tracking down a young girl that’s gone missing and forced into prostitution, after finding her body, Avery resigns himself to a desk job while trying to find missing people.  At the same time he’s trying to fight a corrupt justice system.  At the same time, young Roman is celebrating his engagement to his new fiance, Mia.  After an initial fight with Deklan, Roman’s oldest brother, Mia goes to a party where she gets kidnapped.  Discovering Mia’s been abducted, Roman, Deklan and a third brother, Brandon attempt to find her.  When it comes to kidnap thrillers, it’s really important to have that sense of tension, because there is a time limit to finding the missing person.  When properly done, the film can get you on the edge of your seat.  I like it when movies do that.  The story in Acts of Violence is pretty straight-forward and doesn’t really waste a lot of time with twists and turns and trying to pull the rug out from underneath the audience.  For a direct-to-video action thriller, this is surprisingly not an awful movie.  Does it fall into some really predictable moments?  Sure, but then again, kidnap thrillers are not that easy to pull off.

The acting in this film is surprisingly not bad.  Shawn Ashmore, Ashton Holmes, and Cole Hauser do a pretty good job at playing three brothers who are trying to hunt down the people that kidnapped Mia.  Mike Epps plays the trafficking ringleader and does a good job at being a scummy gangster.  That’s kind of surprising, given the actor’s comedic background.  The gal that plays Mia, Melissa Bolona, is fine, but it’s a role that could be played by pretty much anyone.  Bruce Willis…..oh, Bruce.  He gets top billing, but he’s only in the film for maybe a total of 10-15 minutes, and he’s clearly there just for the paycheck.  Bruce Willis has been one of my favorite actors of the past 30 years, but lately, he’s been kind of sleep-walking through his movies.  He still puts forth some effort, but he’s newer stuff is nothing like what was doing 20 years ago.

The action in this film is pretty hard-hitting.  It’s not overly gory, but it definitely earns its R rating.  To be fair, when you’re dealing with human trafficking, you really can’t properly do a film like that with a PG-13.  When it comes to action films like these, you would expect modern film-makers to utilize a lot of shaky-cam shots.  Personally, I hate that shit.  It gives me a head-ache and I can’t see what’s going on.  There’s a little bit of that here, but the action is mostly done without shaky-cam, and I absolutely appreciate that.  Being able to see the action goes a long way to keeping the audience engaged.  While Bruce Willis does get in on the action a little bit, it’s mostly Cole Hauser and his team that are getting into the action.  What I also like about this film, is that the actions that these brothers take have consequences.  When you take on a notorious gangster, you can expect some serious blow-back, and that happens in this movie.  It’s nice to see at least a little bit of realism in a thriller like this.

While the film only lasts 87 minutes, there are times when it feels longer than it should.  I think the problem is that the issue of human trafficking is not being taken as seriously as it should be.  It also comes back to the film’s predictable nature.  There are moments that just drag.  Unfortunately, a lot of those moments involve Bruce Willis.  While the film is definitely hard-hitting in the arena of violence, we are not really seeing the truly ugly side of human trafficking.  I’m not saying it should be exploitative, but we really need to understand what is at stake here.  To do that, you really need to dive into the ugliness of the topic, almost to the point of making people uncomfortable.  That would give the audience a better reason to root for the good guys.  But that didn’t happen here.  There were really no stakes beyond finding Roman’s fiance.  We see her tied up periodically, but nothing really happens to her beyond that.  I don’t know if it was time or budget constraints, but I feel that Acts of Violence could have been far more effective than it actually is.

Ultimately, Acts of Violence isn’t a terrible film.  It’s a perfectly serviceable little action film that hits pretty hard, but not hard enough.  I could think of worse ways to spend an hour and a half.  You’ve got some pretty decent acting along with decent action, but it’s not something you’ll remember in about a week or two.  There are better movies of this kind out there, but there are much worse as well.  So…it’s kind of middle-of-the-road.  It’s worth a rental at least.

My Final Recommendation: This probably could have been better with Liam Neeson.  7/10

I’ve been wanting to do this piece for a while now.  I want to discuss why some movies are considered to be “divisive” and why I think it is important why movies SHOULD be divisive.  One of the biggest reasons why I bring this topic up is mainly because of the audience reaction to Star Wars: The Last Jedi.  I remember seeing the film the night before it officially opened, and while I was personally blown away by what I had seen, I knew that people were not necessarily going to like it.  Boy, THAT was an understatement.  The film had split audiences right down the middle.  On one side, you had people like me who loved the movie, and on the other, you had people who flat out hated it.  Some people hated it so much that they created an online petition to remove the film from canon.  Obviously that didn’t work, but what it did do, for me at least, was show that people were still really passionate about Star Wars.  Whether you loved or hated the film, it revealed the kind of fan you are.  I don’t think the people who hated the film are wrong.  The movie ended up being very unexpected in how the story was told and what happened during that story.  I was genuinely surprised at the film on more than one occasion.  Rian Johnson, the director, took a lot of big risks with this movie and he knew that he wasn’t going to please everybody.  You never can.  So, he focused on telling the story that he wanted to tell and the results speak for themselves.  This isn’t the first time that Star Wars divided audiences.  The Prequel Trilogy was particularly notorious for being far too different and not as good as the original films.  Younger people really liked the Prequels, while the older audiences hated them.

Now, the reason I bring up Star Wars as a discussion piece, is because Star Wars easily sparks discussion, and this is why I like the fact that Episode VIII was so divisive.  It opened up a lot of topics about what people liked about the movie, what they didn’t and where the series goes from there.  To me, divisive movies should exist to spark discussion.  However, a movie that exists simply to be divisive doesn’t really warrant a whole lot of attention.  Why?  Movies like The Human Centipede exist simply for shock value, but there is nothing really substantial behind the facade.  There’s no real social commentary or any sort of message outside of saying, “Look how shocking we can be!”  While I do watch some of those movies, they generally don’t last in my memory for very long, because they are philosophically empty.  There’s nothing really to discuss outside of how disgusting or shocking a movie can be.  To me, that’s not engaging in intelligent discussion.  Movies like The Last Jedi or any one of Quentin Tarantino’s films are worth discussing, because there’s a lot more to those films than what you see on the screen.  Movies like Hellraiser and Martin Scorsese’s Silence are worth discussing, because the subject matter is so interesting and thought-provoking.  The Blade Runner films are another example of divisive movies, but they serve a purpose.  Blade Runner was about discovering what it means to be human and that’s something worth exploring.

One of the earliest examples and probably the most divisive movie ever made was the 1915 release of D.W. Griffith’s Civil War epic, The Birth of a Nation.  This movie pissed off a lot of people, for very good reasons.  While most people would agree that the first half of the film, was not overly controversial, except for the whole “black face” aspect of the film and the fact that it was based on the book of a former Klansman, it’s generally agreed that the second half of the film is what really angered a lot of people.  Why?  The movie portrayed the Ku Klux Klan as the good guys and the African-Americans as dumb, dangerous and inferior people, which is clearly not true.  The film’s historical inaccuracy has never been disputed, but the portrayal of African-Americans was brutal.  Yeah, it’s a racist movie, but as I declared in my review of the film, it was a technical marvel using techniques that were never used before.  Even over a century later, The Birth of a Nation still remains one of the most controversial and divisive movies ever made.  It’s something that continues to be discussed and debated.  It will still continue to be debated long after I’m dead.

Quentin Tarantino’s films are often a subject for debate for a number of reasons.  One: The level of violence in his films are often brutal, yet completely unrealistic and over the top.  He’s been taken to task over movies like Django Unchained for the use of the word, “nigger.”  Before anybody screams “That’s racist!” at me, let me explain:  Context.  The word itself has no power unless people give it power.  The way it is used is what makes it repugnant, and I hate that word with every fiber of my being.  Quentin Tarantino uses the word not out of racism but as a way of showing people how certain groups of people were treated before, during and immediately after the Civil War.  It was the reality of the time, and that’s what Tarantino wanted to show.  This is why I think divisive movies are important:  They open up avenues to discuss how we as a people relate to each other and the world around us.   In a lot of ways, and most people probably won’t admit it, movies are a way for us to open up to one another and have a thoughtful discussion about what we saw on the screen and how it relates to our lives.

Film-makers should not be afraid to make movies that make us uncomfortable or question what we saw.  To me, these are the films worth exploring and discussing and audience members shouldn’t be afraid to see them.  At the end of the day, movies can used as entertainment, tools, or a combination thereof.  It’s a wonderful medium that can be entertaining and thought-provoking at the same time.  Honestly, is that really so much to ask for?

Released: February 2018

Director: Dmitri Logothetis

Rated R

Run Time: 110 Minutes

Distributor: Well Go USA

Genre: Action

Cast:
Alain Moussi: Kurt Sloan
Christopher Lambert: Thomas Moore
Jean-Claude Van Damme: Master Durand
Mike Tyson: Briggs
Sara Malakul Lane: Liu
Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson: Mongkut
Sam Medina: Crawford

During the late 80’s and early 90’s, Jean-Claude Van Damme was at the height of his stardom.  When he showed up in Bloodsport, he took the world by storm.  While the film was not great, it ended up being one of the best American-made martial arts movies of all time.  I still watch it from time to time.  It’s that good.  Van Damme had a lot of memorable movies including Cyborg, Kickboxer, Universal Soldier, Hard Target, Nowhere To Run, and Double Impact.  Not only was Mr. Van Damme a fantastic fighter and martial artist, he had an incredible amount of screen presence and charisma that sold him as a legitimate action star.  However, I would not consider Kickboxer to be one of his greatest.  I think it was just too damn goofy to be taken seriously.  Don’t get me wrong, the fight with Tong Po at the end was spectacular, but the rest of the film was……not up to the usual standard that Van Damme was producing at the time.  The less said about the sequels to Kickboxer, the better.  A couple of years ago, we got ourselves a reboot of Kickboxer called Kickboxer: Vengeance.  This film starred up-and-coming action star Alain Moussi in the role of Kurt Sloan with Dave Bautista as Tong Po.  Jean-Claude Van Damme returned to play Durand, the man who trained Kurt and his brother.  That was a movie that had problems in terms of pacing and fight choreography.  It wasn’t awful, at least in my opinion, but a lot of people didn’t like it.  Now, we have a sequel, Kickboxer: Retaliation.  Does this film fix the mistakes made by the first movie?

The story for Retaliation picks up a year and a half after Kurt killed Tong Po.  After winning an MMA fight, Kurt is kidnapped by illegal fight promotor Thomas Moore to force him to fight the monstrous Mongkut.  Refusing to do so, Kurt is imprisoned and his wife is kidnapped in order to force Kurt to face Mongkut in a battle to the death.  It’s a pretty simple setup for a fight movie, so it can be somewhat forgiven for being so….plain.  Unfortunately, there a number of things that really don’t make sense.  Kurt gets kidnapped by fake FBI agents and flown to Bangkok.  How does that work?  You would expect somebody to raise a red flag for something like, especially with today’s airport security.  Whatever.  Kurt’s wife, Liu used to be a cop, but is now basically a damsel in distress.  Really?  You couldn’t give her more than that.  The story is plain, but it’s bogged down by some really questionable writing.  Not only that, Van Damme’s character is now blind.  Why didn’t we see what happened to him?  He just showed up out of the blue at exactly the same prison that Kurt is in?

For a film like Kickboxer: Retaliation, you really can’t expect Oscar-worthy performances, because you will not get them.  They’re okay enough to push the story along, but nobody here will be winning an award any time soon.  With all due respect to Alain Moussi, who is clearly a talented martial artist and athlete, he’s really not an actor, although he seems to be more comfortable in his role as Kurt Sloan this time around.  I’m not necessarily blaming Alain for that, but he’s been surrounded by larger personalities than he is.  For one, Jean-Claude Van Damme is back and actually gives a pretty good performance.  Christopher Lambert chews the scenery like it’s nobody’s business as the illegal fight promoter and he’s always fun to watch.  While it doesn’t really make sense for Mike Tyson to be in here, he’s also fun to watch, because despite his age, he can still move like the professional boxer he used to be.  He’s clearly having fun here.  The guy that plays Mongkut, is clearly an intimidating presence, as he is over 6’9″ and weighs well over 350 pounds.  That’s all muscle.  He’s not much of an actor, but he doesn’t need to be when he wants to be intimidating.

Since this is a Kickboxer film, you would expect some pretty solid fight scenes, right?  Not exactly.  While there are a lot of sequences that are pretty cool, the fight scenes are hamstrung by an overuse of slow-motion.  The amount of slow-motion used in this film, to me, is a lot like the use of shaky-cam in fight movies:  It’s used to hide some really bad choreography.  Alain Moussi had a hand in some of the fight choreography, which is why not all of it sucks.  He’s clearly got an idea of how fight scenes should play out.  Again, the problem is the use of slow-motion.  I don’t mind when slo-mo is used to highlight certain moves or stunts.  That doesn’t bother me at all.  What bothers me is when fight sequences that should take maybe a couple of minutes are padded to be longer because of slow-motion.  The film runs at 110 minutes when it should only run at 85.  Some of the fights are pretty cool.  The fight between Kurt and Mongkut is clearly the centerpiece of the film and honestly, it doesn’t disappoint.  It’s hard-hitting and pretty freakin’ epic.  It’s just too bad not enough effort was spent on making the other fights look as good.  Speaking of which, the cinematography is actually really nice.  We get some pretty good night shots of Las Vegas and some really beautiful shots of Thailand.  Not shabby, if I do say so myself.

Overall, I didn’t hate the film, it has some really good moments, good cinematography and Connor McLeod, I mean, Christopher Lambert.  However, it’s not exactly a movie I can flat-out recommend to just anyone.  There a number of glaring issues here that I feel that really bring the film down.  It’s a sequel that really came out of nowhere and with a third film on the way, I have to wonder how these films get bankrolled.  Don’t get me wrong, I want to see Alain Moussi succeed as an action star.  I really do.  I think he’s got a certain something that could separate him from the rest if he gets the right material.  It’s always fun to see Jean-Claude Van Damme in action movie and he can still kick ass with the rest of ’em.  However, the excessive use of slow-motion and questionable writing end up making this film a middle-of-the-road action flick.  I don’t regret seeing it and I’ll probably watch it again, but Kickboxer: Retaliation only screams “Rent me!”, not “Buy me!”  You know what they say, the third time’s the charm.  Here’s hoping the next movie is better.

My Final Recommendation: Meh….6/10