Month: May 2018

Released: 2018

Director: Clayton J. Barber

Run Time: 45 Minutes

Not Rated

Genre: Short Film/Action

Cast:
Eric Jacobus: Walter Cooke
Roger Yuan: Gordon
David William No: Ace
Joe Bucaro III: Sal

In this day and age of super-long 2.5+ hour films, it’s really easy to overlook the short film.  Don’t get me wrong:  I love a good and long epic film, but sometimes you just need something short and to the point.  Short films range anywhere from 5 minutes to 45 minutes to an hour at most.  Depending on the kind of film you want to make, sometimes you really don’t need anything longer than that.  It allows for less filler and padding and allows the film-makers to focus on what they want to do.  Short films have been around as long as regular movies, and sometimes they can garner more attention.  Short films, aside from length, are like any other movie.  They can range in quality from bad to good, and I’ve seen my fair share of both, as I would imagine we all have.  When it comes short films and indie action flicks, there’s a name I would like you all to consider:  Eric Jacobus.  Why?  I’ll tell you in a bit.

Blindsided: The Game is a short film starring Eric Jacobus as Walter Cooke.  Walter is blind, and yet he manages to make his way to a nearby convenience store to shop.  One day, he comes into the shop to find that the store-owner is being accosted by a group of thugs demanding money.  After humiliating the thugs, Walter heads home.  It turns out that these thugs work for a local crime boss, Sal, who the store owner owes money to.  That’s the gist of the story, and for a 45 minute film, it works quite well.  You can tell that there are some obvious influences from films like Blind Fury and Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman.  It doesn’t mock these films, far from it.  In fact, it feels a bit like a love letter to these classic films, and I mean that in the best way possible.

I bring up Eric Jacobus in the intro because this guy is extraordinary.  He’s a very talented martial artist and stunt-man.  He founded the group The Stunt People back in 2001 with a number of other martial artists and stunt-men.  This guy has knack for surrounding himself with top-notch talent that can be seen on display on his YouTube channel and the various films that have been released.  Not only can this guy do his own stunts and fight choreography, which tends to be better than most theatrically released films, by the way, he’s got charisma to match.  He’s known for playing some really likable characters and Blindsided is no different, except this time, he plays a blind guy.  I tell you, if they ever decide to do another Daredevil film, they need to hire this guy for the role.  A lot of the folks that star in this film have a background in stunts and/or the martial arts, so there’s no shortage of talent.  The guy that plays Sal, Joe Bucaro, has been in the industry and doing his own stunts for over 30 years.  The other guy that really stands out in this film is Roger Yuan, who is very well-known in the industry as an actor and stunt man himself.  Roger has worked with folks like Jackie Chan, Chuck Norris and Jeff Speakman.

The action in the film is wild and it’s infused with a sense of humor, as Eric Jacobus tends to do in a lot of his movies.  The opening fight sequence with Walter and the thugs is pretty wild.  Using a blind man’s walking stick as a weapon is surprisingly entertaining to watch.  Now, where Blindsided begins to feel like Zatoichi and Blind Fury is when Walter whips out his sword.  This film features some of the best sword choreography I’ve seen in a long time, and that’s thanks to Luke LaFontaine, who did the choreography.  I love the action sequences in this film, because the film doesn’t rely on shaky-cam or extreme close-ups which have been known to ruin action movies.  Thankfully, the cinematography and camera-work here is second-to-none.  We can see everything that’s going on.  I don’t know about you, but being able to see fight scenes clearly is a good thing, and Blindsided knocks it out of the park.

As it stands, Blindsided is not only a sharply-written film, but it does provide some very memorable action sequences and some pretty decent performances as well.  Overall, I would have to say, I would recommend checking this film out.  So…..when’s the next Blindsided short film coming out?

My Final Recommendation:  Never underestimate blind people.  They could kick your ass. 9/10

Official Trailer:

*SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!  IN THIS POST, I WILL BE DISCUSSING THE ENDINGS OF MOVIES!  SOME OF THEM WILL BE VERY RECENT WHILE OTHERS MAY NOT BE!  IF YOU DON’T WANT ENDINGS TO BE SPOILED, SKIP THIS POST!”

A while back, I made a post discussing my favorite movie endings.  Some of them were happy endings, some were ambiguous, and others were fairly downbeat.  I bring this up because what most audiences will take away from movies is how they end.  That is why certain movies have to end certain ways.  There are a lot of elements to a movie that are important: Acting, direction, visual effects, and editing.  I would argue that one of the most ESSENTIAL parts to making a movie is writing.  Now, it’s not just about writing memorable characters or situations, but it also involves writing how a movie begins and most importantly, how a movie ends.  In fact, some might argue that the ending of a movie is the most important aspect of the film-going experience, and I find it difficult to disagree with that assessment.  What’s the last thing you’re going to remember from seeing a movie?  The end.  I bring up this topic because the last few movies that I saw haven’t really had a pleasant ending, so-to-speak.  For example, and this is a big one: The ending to Avengers: Infinity War.  Now that the film has been out for a couple of weeks, I think it’s time to address the ending to that film.  The bad guy wins.  Thanos succeeds in getting the Infinity Stones and slaughtering half of the universe.  That includes a large number of the Avengers.  When the end credits rolled, I noticed a bunch of people giving the screen the finger.  Obviously, they were frustrated and I certainly understand that.  For this particular story in the Avengers, this ending needed to happen this way.  Everything in the MCU had been building up to this point, and Infinity War had to bring things to a standstill, because the next film is going to deal with the aftermath.  How did I feel about how Infinity War ended?  I loved it.  I loved the fact that it wasn’t a fairy-tale happy ending like many comic book movies end up having.  To me, Infinity War ended the way it did, because that was the only way it could.  Now, will some of the events that transpired by retconned by the next movie?  Probably.  But I also do expect some of the deaths to have a permanent impact.

Infinity War has recently been compared to the likes of Empire Strikes Back in terms of its tone and ending, and I think that’s pretty fair, actually.  Empire didn’t exactly end on a positive note.  The good guys got their asses handed to them on a silver platter and they were trying to figure out what their next move is.  For me, the ending of a film doesn’t necessarily need to have a happy or downbeat ending to be effective.  It has to be satisfying and compelling, just like the rest of the film.  I just finished watching a movie called Paradox a few hours ago, and that film’s ending was very bleak.  But that was a film that had a story dealing with a particularly brutal issue facing our world: Trafficking, or in the case of Paradox, organ trafficking.  The actions of a particular character at the beginning of the film led to the events that ended the picture, and to be honest, it was an ending that drove home the point that actions can have serious consequences.  I appreciate the ending, because it was the kind of ending that the film had earned, and that’s a huge part of the problem with a number of films today:  They don’t earn their endings.  I’ve seen a lot of movies where a happy ending was tacked on when it wasn’t warranted.  Taken is a good example.  The ending of the film had Liam Neeson’s character saving the girl without her being harmed in almost any way.  For a film that deals with human trafficking, I would have expected the daughter to have been more traumatized physically and emotionally than what we were given.  Instead the film ends on a very pleasant note.  To me, that’s a cheap cop-out considering the subject matter.

On the flip-side, having a movie end on a downbeat note for the sake of being mean-spirited is equally frustrating.  I can’t begin to tell you how many times a movie where you feel and believe that the good guy should win and all of a sudden, the rug gets pulled out from under you and the good guys suddenly lose.  To me, that’s not satisfying.  That aggravates me, actually.  I can see that happening in horror movies, as one would expect, but for other movies, it feels like it comes out of nowhere.  Now, don’t get me wrong:  Ending a film properly is a tricky business.  The film has to earn a particular ending through certain awareness of the story and the writing,  and if you don’t get those two aspects right, you end up with something like The Matrix Revolutions where the ending doesn’t make a lick of sense.  It’s one thing to have a clever ending, but you can’t be seen trying to be clever, otherwise the jig is up and you end up pissing off the audience.

Make no mistake, I love a happy ending as much as the next guy.  But in order to keep a film compelling, sometimes you have to end it in a way that may not be to everyone’s expectations.  Sometimes, you have to hit the audience right in the gut.  But it has to be done in a way that allows the audience to have some kind of catharsis.  That’s what it comes down to in my opinion:  Give the audience what they need, not necessarily what they want.  They’ll thank you for it in the long run, or they’ll never watch another film of yours again.  That’s the risk you take when making a movie.  The proper ending to a movie has to be one that’s satisfying and compelling.  It shouldn’t always be a happy ending, though, because real life isn’t always happy.  Sometimes, you gotta keep it real.  So, what you guys think?  Do you agree with me, or do you think I’m totally off my rocker?  Feel free to comment below.

Released: August 2017(Hong Kong)

Director: Wilson Yip

Run Time: 100 Minutes

Not Rated

Distributor: Well Go USA

Genre: Action/Thriller

Cast:
Louis Koo: Lee Chung Chi
Yue Wu: Chui Kit
Ka Tung Lam: Cheng Hon Shou
Chris Collins: Sacha
Tony Jaa: Tak
Jacki Cai: Siu Man
Ken Lo: Ban
Hanna Chan: Lee Wing Chi

Back in 2005, a little film out of Hong Kong managed to catch my eye: Kill Zone starring Donnie Yen and Sammo Hung.  What I didn’t know was that the name Kill Zone was for the American release of the picture.  The original name for the movie was Sha Po Lang(SPL).  Regardless, the film was an absolutely mind-blowing crime thriller featuring some really strong performances by Yen and Hung, with an outstanding story.  It’s one of my favorite movies to come out of Hong Kong in the past 20 years.  Fast-forward about a decade and we have a follow-up to SPL.  SPL: A Time for Consequences would feature Wu Jing, Tony Jaa and Max Zhang in an equally compelling thriller, even though it’s a sequel in name only.  The American name for that was Kill Zone 2, creatively enough.  At the time the second film was released, there was talk about a possible third entry into the series.  Along comes a new little thriller called Paradox and people assumed that it was a new SPL film.  Is it really, though?  Let’s find out.

The film begins as Hong Kong cop Lee Chung Chi is having dinner with his daughter, Wing, when her boyfriend enters the picture.  After seeing her boyfriend arrested and forced into an abortion, Wing runs away to Thailand.  Several days later, she’s abducted by a gang specializing in organ trafficking.  Learning that his daughter disappeared in Thailand, Lee heads there to find her and some answers.  The overall plot appears to be pretty simple, however, the film does go into some really dark territory.  This is essentially a story about a man who pushed away the only family he had left, and something terrible may have happened to her.  The story isn’t bad and it really pulls no punches.  It gets pretty grim at times.  However, it doesn’t feel like an SPL/Kill Zone film.  It really doesn’t.  First of all, the plot device of organ trafficking was already dealt with in Kill Zone 2, so why bring that up again in a third film?  Honestly, Paradox feels more like Taken than it does SPL, which isn’t a coincidence, because Mr. Yip was clearly influenced by Liam Neeson’s film.  Again, the story isn’t awful, far from it, but to me, it doesn’t scream Kill Zone/SPL 3.

One of the things that has remained consistent throughout the SPL films and this one is the acting.  It’s been very top-notch all across the board.  Louis Koo plays Lee, who is searching for his daughter.  I’ve known about Louis Koo for a number of years and this is probably the best performance I’ve seen from him yet.  He goes from a father who is desperate to find his daughter to a vengeful man who is willing to do anything to get his daughter back.  You can see over the course of the film that the character is not only emotionally distraught, but he’s willing to do things a cop normally wouldn’t/shouldn’t do to get answers.  He teams up with Chui Kit, played by Yue Wu.  Yue Wu delivers an exceptional performance himself as a cop who wants to help Lee, but is at odds with some of his superiors, one of which is his father-in-law.  Chris Collins plays Sacha, the leader of the organ trafficking business in Thailand, and I have to say, even though the character is scummy, Chris is clearly having the time of his life playing the character.  Tony Jaa makes an appearance in the film, and while it’s nothing more than an extended cameo, he does get some pretty good scenes.  Jaa has improved a great deal as an actor once he started getting into movies made outside of Thailand.  Ka Tung Lam plays the less-than-honorable assistant to the city’s mayor.  Overall, the acting is pretty good across the board.  This is definitely Louis Koo’s show, though.

For those looking for a balls-to-wall action flick, you may not get it here.  It takes a good 20-30 minutes before the action starts.  That being said, the action is pretty hard-hitting.  The fights are handled by the legendary Sammo Hung, who obviously knows his way around an action sequence.  He’s been in the business for over 40 years, so he’s doing something right.  The punches and kicks land with a very satisfying thud.  Louis Koo, who is NOT a martial artist, actually handles the action pretty well.  His movements seem to be a little stiff, but overall, he’s still pretty convincing.  Wue Yu gets his moments to shine and he’s really good.  While Tony Jaa doesn’t have a lot of screen time, he does have a pretty good fight scene with Chris Collins.  The fights are mostly good and as I said before, hit hard.  There are a couple of issues that I had with the action in this film.  Some fight scenes had an over-use of wires and this was really evident with the fight between Tony Jaa and Chris Collins.  Also, some of the fight scenes have an issue with the camera being a little too close to the action.  The editing is also a little too much for me to handle.  Overall, though, the action is satisfying to watch.

The term Sha Po Lang refers to three stars in Chinese astrology which represent power, destruction, and lust.  When these stars line up, really bad things tend to happen.  These are themes that tend to run throughout the Kill Zone/SPL films, and there is definitely an element of that in Paradox.  So, I guess in a way it does qualify as an SPL film.  The tone of the film is just as bleak and grim as the previous films, so yeah, the more I think about it, the more it does seem to be an SPL film.    That being said, it’s not a bad movie at all.  Oh, no.  It’s a really good one and it’s worth seeking out.  I really like it when movies don’t pull their punches and have the balls to go the directions they go, despite the risks.  While Paradox has its issues, it’s definitely worth seeing.

My Final Recommendation: 8.5/10.  In other words:  Recommended.

Released: March 2018

Director: Mark Landre Gould

Rated R

Run Time: 99 Minutes

Distributor: Lionsgate Studios

Genre: Western/Drama

Cast:
Lance Henriksen: Taylon
Tom Berenger: Will
Danny Trejo: River Man
Billy Lush: Virgil
Meg Steedle: Heidi
Steve Railsback: Jaden

For the past 70 years, the idea of the American Western has taken on a kind of mythic quality.  For decades, kids as young as 4 would play “Cowboys and Indians” in their back yard or in a nearby park.  Even if you had never actually seen a Western, you had an idea of what was in one, i.e cowboys and Indians.  That idea had permeated the Western for god knows how long.  The thing is, and I bring this up almost every time I review a Western, is that the Western is so much more than just cowboys, Indians, gun fights in saloons, and John Wayne.  Those are all parts of a Western, but they don’t necessarily define it.  I’ve said this multiple times:  What makes a good Western is not just a good story, but having a realistic setting and strong characters to drive that story.  It doesn’t need to be action-packed.  Often, the best Westerns aren’t action-packed.  Some of them are really good dramas.  Also, in the past decade or so, we’ve seen the Western combined with science-fiction as well as comedy and horror.  The Western can be as versatile as any other genre and it doesn’t even have to take place during the 1800s.  Dirty Harry is a perfect example.  Star Wars is another.  Yes:  Star Wars is a Western set in another galaxy.  Over the past few years, we’ve seen a bit of a resurgence in the genre with films like Hostiles, Appaloosa, Seraphim Falls, and Bone Tomahawk.  Some people believe that the Western is dead.  It really isn’t.  It’s making a comeback.  Gone Are The Days is the latest film in  the genre.

The film opens on an ailing old outlaw, Taylon, as he seems to be spending his last days on his run-down ranch.  Realizing that he doesn’t have a lot of time left in the world, he wants to try and make things right with the daughter he gave up so many years ago, Heidi.  Discovering that she’s working in a brothel, Taylon wants nothing more than to get her out of that life, but to do so, he has to get past the local sheriff, Will, who also seems to be a part of Taylon’s past.  The story is simple, but it does take on a bit of a psychological edge, as Taylon talks to people that may or may not be a figment of his imagination.  This gives the film and character a unique angle:  Taylon is physically deteriorating and his mind isn’t far behind, so it makes sense that he could be hallucinating.  The character’s struggle to find his daughter is not only compelling, but it is fairly well-written.  Unfortunately, the film does suffer from some pacing issues, because it is a slow-burner of a Western.  If you’re looking for an action film, look elsewhere.  There are moments when the film does seem to drag on a bit, but that’s a fairly minor quibble.  I wouldn’t say that the film is as good as Hostiles, story-wise, but it is a much smaller and more intimate kind of Western, so it works on a smaller scale.  It’s a more personal kind of story.

Acting-wise, the film is mostly great.  Lance Henriksen is a living legend.  This guy has been in some of the biggest movies in the past 40 years.  He’s worked in almost every genre that the industry has to offer, whether it’s science fiction, horror, or action.  He’s an excellent character actor, and his performance in Gone Are The Days is phenomenal.  Whenever this guy’s name is on the box art or poster, I tend to pay attention, because I know that he puts everything into every role that he’s done, whether or not the movie itself is any good.  This is also not his first Western, either.  He’s been a few.  Tom Berenger is also fantastic, and he’s not a typical villain.  In fact, his character tends to be very likable in spite of his past and Berenger really gives the character a decent amount of humanity and respect.  The real villain of the film is Jaden, the guy played by Steve Railsback.  The moment you see this guy, you automatically hate him.  The character is a nasty viper of a man who runs a bar and the brothel where Heidi is forced to work.  The lovely Meg Steedle plays Heidi, Taylon’s estranged daughter, and she does a really good job with what she’s given.  She’s not really a damsel in distress, but she is someone who is in over her head.  Danny Trejo’s performance as the crazy River Man is fantastic, despite his lack of screen time.  That brings me to a couple of issues here:  One: Danny Trejo is given pretty significant billing despite only being in the film for about 5 minutes.  Steve Railsback goes a little too over-the-top with his character.  I’m not necessarily blaming Steve here, but the way the character was written, you might as well have slapped a mustache on him and have him twirl it.

The film saves the gun fight until towards the end of the film, and it’s not terrible.  It’s fairly short, to the point, and not overly complicated.  It is pretty violent, but it also comes to a conclusion that not is not only satisfying but also very emotional.  It’s one of the best ways to cap off a movie.  I won’t spoil it, but it was an ending that was earned.  Some of the cinematography was pretty good as everything was mostly shot on location, so you have some pretty decent scenery in there.  The costumes and set designs were right out of the late 19th century, so there’s a level of authenticity that is very much appreciated.  While Gone Are The Days suffers from a few glaring issues, it is by no means a bad film.  It’s still a pretty good Western, but it’s also a drama that has quite a bit of heart to it.  Lance Henriksen has proved yet again that he is one of the greatest actors that doesn’t get enough credit for his accomplishments.  The guy is pushing 80 and he’s got 11 more movies on the way.  He’s clearly a guy that really enjoys his job and he doesn’t seem to be slowing down.  He’ll keep doing this until he can’t.  I can’t wait to see more from him.  As far Westerns go, Gone Are The Days isn’t what I would consider one of the greatest, but it is a pretty decent little film in its own right.  It’s definitely worth renting at least.

My Final Recommendation:  You’re never too old for one last ride.  7.5/10