Month: January 2022

Released: January 2021

Director: John Liu
Re-Directed By: Kurtis M. Spieler

Run Time: 93 Minutes

Not Rated

Distributor: Vinegar Syndrome

Genre: Action

Cast:
John Liu: John Liu/Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson: John Liu(voice)
Michael Berryman: The Plutonium Killer(voice)
Linnea Quigley: Randi Rydell(voice)
Leon Isaac Kennedy: Det. Jimmy Williams(voice)
Cynthia Rothrock: Det. Janet Flores(voice)
Vince Murdocco: Jack ‘The Cameraman'(voice)
Matt Mitler: Freddie Cufflinks(voice)
Ginger Lyn: Nita Liu(voice)

“Art is never finished, only abandoned.”  These words are often attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, perhaps due to the fact he was notorious for leaving paintings and inventions unfinished.  Now, why would I bring up one of the founders of the High Renaissance in a movie about a cheesy 80s ninja action movie?  Paintings and writings aren’t the only things that have been abandoned.  Why would something be abandoned?  Lack of resources, motivation, or some other reason.  That can only be answered by the artist in question.  In the film industry, I can’t even BEGIN to describe how many movies that have been forgotten or lost over the past century.  I would imagine that the number is in the hundreds if not thousands.  There are movies that we’ll never see because the film and negatives have either been destroyed by fires, or lost in some vault somewhere.  There are a number of movies, usually the cult kind that have been re-discovered by companies such as Shout! Factory, Kino Lorber, MVD Rewind, Vestron Video, or Vinegar Syndrome.  These companies specialize in the restoration and remastering of long-forgotten cult classics.  That brings me to today’s review: New York Ninja.

New York Ninja tells the story of John Liu as he takes on the criminals of New York after his wife is murdered for witnessing an abduction.  As far as we know, that seems to be the overall plot.  Unfortunately, there’s no real way to be sure, because when the film canister for this film was discovered, there was nothing else to go with it.  No script, nothing.  Filming was never completely finished, and whatever post-production there may have been with this movie has long since vanished.  The film’s plot-line is a pretty goofy set-up with John Liu playing a white-clad ninja in the heart of New York City in 1983.  Honestly, the story surrounding New York Ninja is far more interesting than the film itself.  What we have here is a very unique situation.  Due to production issues, be it disagreements with the then-director John Liu, the film was ultimately abandoned and shelved.  Liu himself ended up dropping off the radar entirely after this.  So, for 35 years, the film sat in a canister collecting dust, until Vinegar Syndrome acquired it in 2018-2019.  Because there was no real post-production on the film, it all had to be done from scratch.  So, not only did Vinegar clean-up the footage, they had Mr. Spieler edit the film without the benefit of a script.  In addition, there was no sound design whatsoever.  What Mr. Spieler ended up with was essentially a silent movie.  So, any sound design had to be done from scratch.  As far as dialogue goes, it was a guessing game.  Because there was no script to go off of, Spieler and his team had to read lips the best they could and improvise the rest.  I can’t imagine how daunting a task that must have been.

The foundation for ANY movie is a script.  Without it, you’re flying blind.  I’ve seen movies where they were re-writing the script on the fly and you could absolutely tell.  From what I’ve seen in New York Ninja, John Liu was constantly going off-script which led to a whole lot of problems with continuity.  When it comes to the sound design, a lot had to be done.  Vinegar Syndrome and Mr. Spieler had to record all new dialogue for the film, trying to go off what they could see while making other stuff up on the fly.  So, they brought in voice actors to do ALL the dialogue.  Famed kickboxer and b-movie action star Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson did the voice for John Liu, while trailblazing female action star Cynthia Rothrock did the voice for Det. Janet Flores in a small role.  Michael Berryman(The Hills Have Eyes, 1976) would voice the film’s villain, The Plutonium Killer.  Going in without a script, the voice actors really had to go for it, often deliberately over-playing their roles.  There really was no other option.  Honestly, I really dug the fact that Wilson was the voice of the hero in this film.  He was fantastic.  But everything was clearly 80’s b-movie-style performances, so you really couldn’t take it seriously.  As far as the on-screen acting goes, it’s completely over-the-top.  There’s no real-world scenario in which this movie wouldn’t be made fun of.  Yet, the folks at Vinegar Syndrome did the best they could with what they had, going even so far as to hire music group, Voyag3r to do the soundtrack for the entire movie.  Considering that the music they produce is for movies that don’t exist, this was a solid choice.  They did a real good job here.

Judging from the final product, I’m not entirely certain that this was the version of New York Ninja that John Liu and his team were intending.  But when you don’t have the script to provide a blue-print for what’s going on, you have to make it up as you go along.  As a result, there’s a lot of continuity errors in here, some intentional, some not.  One of the most intentional continuity errors is with the ninja rolling around on roller-skates.  Yes, a ninja on roller-skates.  He does a flip over a car and he’s landed on his feet that don’t have the skates, but in the next cut, they’re back.  That was done on purpose, because Mr. Spieler knew exactly what kind of movie this was.  So, I have to give full credit to Kurtis M. Spieler for having the guts to take on the task of editing this movie into something that was somewhat coherent.  As far as the action goes, the fight choreography was done by John Liu, who played the main character.  Liu was known in the east-Asian action movie world as one of the best kickers in the industry.  He clearly has talent here, but the way the fights were staged were incredibly ridiculous.  The action was not good, no matter how the film was going to be edited.  You can’t cover-up sloppy choreography with clever editing.  Yet, the bad fight sequences are part of this film’s charm, because it’s so incredibly wacky.

I think New York Ninja is on its way to becoming a legitimate cult classic.  The only reason why it isn’t right now, is because it doesn’t have much of an audience.  It debuted at Beyond Fest last October, but it was only released earlier this week on the 25th.  It’s definitely going to find an audience, especially those that love the cheesy b-movies of the 80s.  I know, I’m one of them.  The 80s was the decade of the ninja movie and to be honest, John Liu is no Sho Kosugi.  Not even close.  That said, the flavor of this film is incredibly unique.  It’s well-paced, considering the lack of a script, which didn’t actually show up until they were putting the final touches on the film.  This is the kind of a movie where you bring over your pals, buy some beer and order a pizza.  This was made for a Riff-Trax-style commentary.  I’ll be honest:  The fact that this movie even exists is nothing short of a miracle.  In an industry where everything’s going digital, finding fully filmed movies on film reels is extraordinary.  New York Ninja takes the idea of the obscure film to a whole new level.  They didn’t even have a list of actors that were originally attached to the movie, so nobody knows who those actors really are outside of John Liu.  You have to know what kind of movie you’re getting into if you want to watch, nay, EXPERIENCE New York Ninja.  Oh, I definitely think this movie’s going to find an audience pretty quickly.  As of this writing, the movie has a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 20 reviews so far.  Not bad.  Is it a good movie?  No, and I think the good folks at Vinegar Syndrome AND the voice actors know that, but they jumped in with both feet and it’s a film unlike any other.  This was the first movie that I ever pre-ordered on home video and I’m glad I did.  It’s a unique little treasure and a grade-A slice of 1980s b-movie cheese.

Released: March 1989

Director: John Stewart(not THAT one)

Not Rated

Run Time: 97 Minutes

Distributor: MVD Rewind/Vinegar Syndrome

Genre: Action

Cast:
Gregory Scott Cummins: Osborn
William Hubbard Knight: McKinnon
Barri Murphy: Carmen
William Smith: Conover
Cameron Mitchell: Frankie Navarro
Ross Hagen: Drago
Hoke Howell: Hitch

There are movies in this world that are of such grandeur and design that they elevate the art form to an entirely different level.  To Kill A Mockingbird, The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, Alien, the many different adaptations of William Shakespeare, Seven Samurai.  These movies have launched careers and told stories that have been retold throughout the years.  They are some of the most iconic films that one would be wise enough to have in their collection.  It would help establish you as a veritable consumer of the arts and elevate your status as a film connoisseur.  These films would allow you to look down upon the little people and turn your nose up at their silly little adventure and family films.  Then you have movies like Action U.S.A. which is absolutely NONE of those things.  Ah, who the hell am I kidding?  I LOVE movies like Action U.S.A.  There are few things more satisfying than watching a movie that knows exactly what it is and what it wants to deliver.  Action U.S.A. is one of those action movies that definitely delivers on what it promises.

Action U.S.A. opens with a 20-minute chase sequence that involves a guy falling out of a helicopter into a lake, a high speed car chase through downtown Waco, Texas, and big explosions.  Oh, wait, were you expecting a story summary?  How about this: A drug dealer’s girlfriend is being protected by a pair of FBI agents after her boyfriend is gunned down by a low-rent Freddy Mercury.  She’s in protective custody because the mob seems to think that SHE knows the whereabouts of some diamonds.  That’s it.  Nothing more.  Let’s be honest, shall we?  In a movie with a title like Action U.S.A., would you really expect some kind of life-changing narrative?  If you’re expecting that, you’ve come to the wrong movie.  No, the “story” is just threadbare enough to tie all the action sequences together.  In fact, I would say that Action U.S.A. is less of a movie and more of a stunt reel.  Just look at the trailer.  This was a movie that was directed by a professional stuntman.  It’s essentially a look into the toolbox of stuntmen during the 80s.

For acting purposes, we have Gregory Scott Cummins as Osborn, an FBI agent and low-rent version of detective Martin Riggs from Lethal Weapon.  William Hubbard Knight plays the low-rent version of Detective Roger Murtaugh.  Barri Murphy plays Carmen, the plucky young woman that they’re protecting.  You’re going to see the term “low-rent” being tossed around with this movie, because a lot of that is true.  Action U.S.A. is a low-budget movie that was made for almost half-a-million dollars.  While you can definitely see the fact that it is a low-budget film at times, you really can’t ignore the fact that the action sequences are incredibly spectacular.  Every single kind of stunt that you’ve seen during the 80s is in here.  High falls, people being set on fire, car crashes and jumps, high-speed chases.  It’s all in here.  The best thing about it is that it was all done for real.  No miniatures, no CGI, no green screen; just a bunch of stuntmen doing what they do best:  Throwing themselves off of buildings and blowing themselves up for our entertainment.  Stuntmen really don’t get the recognition that they deserve, as they serve an incredibly important function.  Unless you happen to be Tom Cruise, then you would have to have a stunt double to do the more dangerous aspects of action sequences.

As far as the acting goes, it’s not terrible.  The actors do the best they can with what they’ve got.  The problem is that the majority of the cast is made of stuntmen.  The issue is that they aren’t really actors per se, even though they are “performing.”  Acting is not what they do.  They put themselves in harm’s way so that the main actors don’t have to.  That said, it does help the immersion when you know that one of the actors is performing a dangerous stunt, because said performer is a stuntman.  I’ve seen a lot of action movies where you can absolutely tell that it’s a stuntman and he/she looks NOTHING like the actor they’re doubling.  Cummins does a lot of his own stunts in the film, so that’s pretty cool, but he’s not exactly leading man material, I can tell you that.  Knight does a better job.  This was Barri Murphy’s first role and it was almost by accident.  The original actress left after 3 days without telling anybody, so they had to find somebody, and Barri did a pretty respectful job.  As far as the characters go, Carmen is strangely the most competent of the characters.  I do like Ross Hagen as Drago and his interactions with his cohorts is a hoot.

One of my favorite stunts in the film is when a character named Lucky gets punched out of a 15-story window.  You don’t really see these free-falling stunts a lot anymore.  It’s a very high-risk move with an airbag at the bottom.  Most falling sequences these days involve either CGI or what is called a descender, in which a stunt-person is hooked up and basically dropped.  Towards the bottom the descender slows the person’s descent.  The problem with those, is that they are fairly obvious when they’re being used.  The free-fall is far more spectacular as there are no wires attached.  It’s funny, though.  Usually in an action movie, the action and stunts tend to ramp up during the last twenty or so minutes, but with Action U.S.A., it hits the ground running.  The first twenty minutes of the film are bonkers.  But it only gets crazier from there.  It’s pretty much balls-to-the-wall right from the get-go.  It’s never boring.

With everything that I just said, is Action U.S.A. a good movie?  No.  It’s a b-movie from the late 80s.  But it is one of the better ones.  The writing in the movie is pretty bad.  A lot of the dialogue was made up on the spot, because the script kept changing.  The dialogue and acting is so campy that I feel like I should be roasting marshmallows over an open fire.  Strangely enough, the camp and cheese factor add to what I already consider to be an incredibly enjoyable action flick.  There’s a ridiculous bar fight that happens, just because.  It’s ridiculous, because you don’t see any hits landing.  It’s one of those movies that is so over-the-top that I love it.  Then again, I’m a sucker for these kinds of movies.  I love 80s action movies, even the bad ones.  There is something to be said for seeing stunts that actually happen, and not on a blue/green screen.  Again, this was the 80s, so everything was done for real.  The fact that Waco, Texas let the film-makers do what they want is incredible.  Apparently, they loved having the crew there and doing stuff like this.  I don’t think they would’ve allowed anything like this to be made in their city after immediately after 1993, though.

There’s no doubt that Action U.S.A. is one of the cheesiest action movies ever made, but there’s really talent behind what you see.  The stunt-work is second-to-none and the action is fast-paced and exciting.  As corny and campy as the narrative gets from time to time, there’s never a dull moment here.  Every single stunt and action sequence is shot incredibly well with the director not taking the camera off the action, which makes it even more spectacular.  Screw all that hyper-editing and shaky-cam bullshit, THIS is how you film action.  So, who would I recommend this movie to?  Would be to the effete cinema snobs that ONLY watch high-caliber films?  Nope.  This ain’t for them.  This is for the pop-corn munching fans who just want a good time.  On that level, I give my full recommendation.  It’s bad, but it’s awesome.

Released: October 2021

Director: Julia Ducournau

Run Time: 108 Minutes

Rated R

Distributor: Neon

Genre: Horror/Thriller?..I don’t know?

Cast:
Vincent Lindon: Vincent
Agathe Rousselle: Alexia
Garance Marillier: Justine

I like to pride myself on my ability to determine which genre certain films fall into.  Some are pretty obvious to the untrained eye like Evil Dead, Star Wars, or Star Trek.  If it’s horror, it can be pretty obvious.  If it’s science fiction, it’s not always as obvious, but you can tell when something falls into that category.  Very rarely do I come across movies that not only defy expectations, but they defy description.  If you were to show me a movie like Oldboy, I could tell you that it’s a dark thriller bordering on horror, which isn’t far from the truth.  Then you have a movie like The Impossible, which is a disaster movie on the surface, but is actually a very human drama at its core.  Then you have a movie like Titane.  For the first time in my life, I don’t know how to classify a movie like this.  Was that on purpose?  I don’t have a clue.  Well, let’s have a gander at Titane.

The story of Titane follows Alexia, a young woman who was in a car accident when she was a child.  That accident ended up with her having a titanium plate installed in her head.  As an adult, she works for a local car show as a stripper with a fetish for cars.  After a night at work, she’s approached by an obsessive fan, who she ends up killing.  She goes back inside to shower when she hears a noise coming from the show’s main floor.  The car that she’s been…”dancing” on seems to have come to life so she has sex with it.  Later, she finds out that she’s pregnant from the car, so she commits several murders, when one witness manages to escape, so she goes on the run.  She discovers that a child had gone missing ten years prior, so she assumes his identity.  Look, I’ll be the first to admit that when it comes to movies, I have to tendency to go for the really weird shit.  There’s a certain level of creativity that comes from these kinds of movies that you really don’t see in the mainstream side of things.  I’ve seen crazy shit from Japan, Korea, Ukraine, and Russia.  When it comes to crazy, there’s nobody like the French, and I don’t mean that as an insult.  Their sensibilities are a bit different from ours, but they’ve put out some really outstanding stuff.  But, they’ve also put out some really disturbing stuff like Martyrs and Inside.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned, is that you never out-French the French.  Their horror, action and arthouse movies are in a league of their own.  The story in Titane is so off-the-wall bonkers that it really defies description.  Is it a good story? I…think so.  I’ve never seen anything like this before, so it’s hard for me to put it into words.  It’s definitely a sexually-charged film no matter how you look at it, but is it a horror movie?  Or is it some kind of erotic thriller?  I think the answer is yes.

Let’s get the cinematography out of the way, first.  This is a stunning movie.  The shots are wide and incredibly beautiful.  The colors really stand out and everything is easy to see.  The effects and gore are really outstanding, even if the gore isn’t the traditional kind.  This is kind of a body-horror movie, so you see Alexia’s transformation have a deteriorating effect on her body the longer the movie goes on.  The acting in this film is outstanding.  Vincent Lindon plays Vincent, the captain of a nearby fire brigade whose son went missing and Alexia is impersonating.  This guy is definitely damaged as he’s constantly injecting himself with steroids to regain the kind of strength that he used to have when he was younger, but it’s causing problems.  Agathe Rousselle is the real star of this show, however.  Her character isn’t particularly likable, as she’s a murderous psycho that has very little regard for human lives, even those of her parents.  Usually, when a movie has a main character that is as unlikable as Alexia, that movie did something wrong with the writing, but HERE?  The character’s inability to connect with other human beings is at times tragic, but strangely amusing at the same time.  She does some pretty terrible things, but by the end of the movie, I think she finds some kind of redemption.  Again, this movie is damn strange that my interpretation could be completely off the mark.  It doesn’t give you straight answers and deliberately leaves the audience hanging in certain places.  That approach could and has turned a lot of people off of this movie.  Going back to Agathe, this is her first movie, and she absolutely knocks it out of the park.  The things that the director has her do is bonkers, but she gives a 100 percent, and that is incredibly admirable.  I honestly can’t wait to see where Agathe’s career takes her.

There are some negatives in this movie, however.  While the acting is top-notch, there’s not a single likable character in the movie.  I don’t know if that’s on purpose or not, but I’ve found myself not feeling particularly sympathetic to any of the characters in this movie.  That is definitely the fault of the writing.  Also, the fact that this movie defies description makes it very hard for me to recommend it on any particular level.  There are some pretty disturbing sequences in here that are definitely going to unsettle a lot of people.  Some of the ideas put forward are so damn strange that it’s hard to take them seriously.  Maybe the fact that this is a kind of an arthouse flick makes it unapproachable.  I can see a lot of people taking a look at the film’s poster and saying, “Nope.  Not for me.”  That’s probably going to be the case for a lot of people.  Everything about this movie, including the ending is batshit crazy.  So, do I recommend this movie?  I honestly don’t know.  It’s definitely one-of-a-kind.  I’ve never seen anything like Titane before.  Because of that, I find it really hard to give a solid recommendation of any sort.  You need to be the really curious kind of audience to appreciate what this movie’s going for.  Do I hate the movie?  Oh, hell no.  Yeah, the movie’s extremely bizarre, but that’s kind of why I appreciate it.  Do I like it?  I’ll have to watch it a few more times before I can give a definitive answer on that, but as a piece of art, this is remarkable and I have to give credit to director Julia Ducournau for having the guts to make something so outrageously strange.  What I will say, is that this movie’s going to stay with me for quite a while.  There’s quite a bit to unpack.  Far more than I’ve put into this review.  Is it for everybody?  No.  Absolutely not.  It will gain an audience, much in the same way that Martyrs did.  French film-makers, man.  So unpredictable.

Released: January 2022

Directors: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett

Rated R

Run Time: 114 Minutes

Distributor: Paramount Pictures

Genre: Horror

Cast:
Neve Campbell: Sydney Prescott
Courteney Cox: Gale Weathers
David Arquette: Dewey Riley
Melissa Barrera: Sam Carpenter
Marley Shelton: Deputy Judy Hicks
Jenna Ortega: Tara Carpenter
Jack Quaid: Richie Kirsch
Mikey Madison: Amber Freeman

I’m an enormous fan of horror movies.  I always have been.  Slasher movies in particular are among my favorite kinds of horror movies.  This may came across as somewhat morbid and maybe even a little psychotic, but one of the reasons why I love slasher movies are the kills.  It’s the main reason why anybody goes to these movie.  People are interested in seeing nubile young people getting eviscerated in gruesomely creative ways.  Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday The 13th, Halloween, House of Wax(2005).  These movies are a pretty good representation of a genre that won’t die, nor should it.  To be fair, some of these franchises have gone on for too long and end up being what you might call self-parodies.  They stopped being serious and end up being total jokes after a certain number of movies.  There was a point during the 90s when slasher movies were…well…going out of style.  Then, in 1996, legendary horror film-maker Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson deliver a slasher movie like no other, yet almost exactly like what we’ve seen before.  But that was the point.  The original Scream from 1996 was a surprise hit amongst movie-goers.  It was a film that made fun of horror movie tropes, yet it reinforced them at the same time, because it’s what people expected.  It was a cleverly written satire of a sub-genre that was beginning to wear out its welcome.  Sadly, Scream is a franchise that has long since gone stale.  This new iteration, simply titled Scream, does nothing to change that fact.

25 years after the events of the original Scream, the town of Woodsboro is once again under siege from a masked killer known as Ghost Face.  Targeting two young women, Sam and Tara, the killers may or may not have a direct connection to the events from the original film.  While new kids are under attack from this mysterious killer, old faces begin to show up to help put an end to the insanity.  Sydney Prescott, Gale Weathers, and former Deputy Dewey Riley are the original survivors from the first film.  I’m not going to go out of my way and say that the original 1996 film was the most brilliant movie ever made, but it wasn’t a stupid movie, either.  It was very clever in setting up what was going on by focusing on horror movies.  By focusing on particular “rules” and “ideas,” Wes Craven breathed new life into the slasher film by poking fun at it.  The story and character were sharply written, and the set-pieces were spectacular.  By focusing on those tropes, the movie, by extension, ended up being an incredibly intense horror movie.  What does the new Scream have to offer in that regard?  Not a thing.  In fact, this movie plays it so close to the way that Wes Craven did it, that the 2022 film has no identity of its own.  Say what you will about Halloween Kills as a slasher-sequel, but at least THAT movie took risks in upping the level of brutality to shocking levels.  Halloween Kills will be talked about for a while.  Scream 2022 won’t be.  At least, not narratively.

I’ll just say it:  The best actors in this movie are Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, and David Arquette.  When these three are on the screen, that’s when the movie really comes alive.  The chemistry that these three actors have with each other has always been there since the original movie.  Seeing these characters on screen again was wonderful.  Everybody else, outside of Jenna Ortega and Melissa Barrera, are all cannon fodder and not very convincing.  Barrera’s character has a pretty interesting backstory that does have an impact on the film’s events, and as a result, so does her sister.  Part of what made the original film so interesting, was that the characters were interesting.  Even the more annoying and cliche-ridden ones were interesting.  Even so, the movie plays it too safe when it comes to stereotypical horror movie characters.  Outside of the five main characters in this film, I was not invested in any others.  They’re incredibly forgettable.

Let’s talk about the satire aspect of Scream.  In the original film, characters responded to a horrible situation by comparing it to then-modern horror movies like Halloween.  The original film was a pop-culture sponge of sorts.  There was a lot of references to different horror movies and they certain characters were supposed to act.  The 1996 film was clever in disguising a traditional slasher-movie by hiding right in the open.  As I said before, by poking fun and exposing certain tropes that have been a part of the genre for decades, the film managed to not only be funny, but it also managed to be incredibly intense, even as it was winking at the audience from time to time.  But the original film succeeded by not overdoing it.  The final act went batshit crazy, but by that point, the audience was hooked and invested in what was going on, so Wes Craven got away with it.  This new movie hits you so many times being meta that it stops being entertaining.  There were a lot of moments when I was rolling my eyes so hard that I swear I could see the back of my skull.  There was so much semi-fourth wall breaking that I almost checked out entirely.  There were a couple of moments where I nearly walked out of the theater.  That’s how bad it got.

Seeing as Scream is a slasher movie, you would expect a body count.  We certainly get one, and the kills can be pretty gnarly.  It delivers on the violence, but after seeing Halloween Kills and the original Scream, this movie incredibly tame by comparison.  It just doesn’t have the same impact.  The pacing of the film is all over the place.  It spends too much time reminding you that the events of the past 4 movies actually happened in this film’s world.  It was completely unnecessary and it takes you out of the movie.  It sucks that I’m coming down so hard on this movie, because I liked the main actors and characters.the kills were decent, but the movie spends way too much time in Wes Craven’s shadow and does NOTHING to escape it.  I can see die-hard Scream fans getting a little bit of a kick out of it, but for me, the original film is where it is at, and does it better in every single way.  Scream 2022 will be forgotten before summer.  Yeah, it’s not a good movie, and an even worse way to end a franchise that should’ve ended 15 years ago.