20141104: Action Review--Raze

Raze

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, 2013, rated R, 92 minutes, action, horror.
2. IMDB: 5.1/10.0 from 2,910 audience ratings.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 44% on the meter; 33% liked it from 813 audience ratings.
4. I saw this on The Movie Channel.
5. Directed by: Josh C. Waller.
6. Starring: Zoe Bell as Sabrina, Rachel Nichols as Jamie, Tracie Thoms as Teresa, Bruce Thomas as Kurtz, Rebecca Marshall as Phoebe, Adrienne Wilkinson as Nancy, Bailey Anne Borders as Cody, Sherilyn Fenn as Elizabeth, Doug Jones as Joseph.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Joseph and Elizabeth run a facility where kidnapped women are extorted into fighting each other to the death.  (Fight to the death or we kill your close relative.)  The winner of each of their elimination derbies supposedly gets to go back to society as a free person.  Almost everyone dies though.


2. Two women fight at a time.  The others get to watch.


3. So.  Elimination derbies either proceed to the end, or the imprisoned group finds some way to fight back.  Sabrina is clearly the protagonist in this horrid situation.  Will she and her few allies break free?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Women instead of men in forced death matches.
2. One of ten; black holes for acting, sound, screenplay.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 1/10 VHS quality coupled with occasional massive pixelation.


2. Sound: 1/10 Horrible background music, and vocal sound quality was so so.


3. Acting: 0/10 There was acting?  There was some mediocre martial arts choreography, but nothing akin to acting.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 Flimsy story about an absurd horrific situation.

20141006: Thriller Review--Age of Tomorrow

Age of Tomorrow

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, 2014, NR, 90 minutes, action, thriller, scifi.
2. IMDB: 1.9/10.0 from 1,134 audience ratings.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No consensus yet,' 17% liked it from 19 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 2.2/5.0 from 37,531 audience ratings.
5. Directed by: James Kondelik
6. Starring: Kelly Hu as Dr. Gordon, Anthony Marks as Captain James Wheeler, Robert Picardo as General Magowan, Lane Townsend as Chris Meher, Morgan West as Rick Sullivan, Mitchell Carpenter as Colonel Mac.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Many small meteors hit Earth.  One of the movie's threads is following the firemen who try to contain fires in Los Angeles.


2. Dr. Gordon is tracking a asteroid a quarter the size of the Moon that is heading fast to strike the Earth.  General Magowan coordinates the attempts to deflect/destroy the asteroid and the evacuation effort.  The General brings in Captain Wheeler, a man consumed by past problems; Colonel Mac is opposed to Wheeler being involved.


3. So we have immediate problems, long term much bigger problems, countdown to complete disaster, and some embedded personal issues.  So we've got...Armageddon (1998) again?


4. That does not sound too bad except for the following glitches: Asylum produced the film, the screenplay is weak, the people playing the heroes are clearly not actors, the unknown spacecraft introduced to provide transportation looks like a joke, and Bruce Willis is not in the film.  The space suits look ridiculous, the dialog sucks, and the Earth technology varies from steampunk to advanced beyond Star Trek.


5. Soon the five member expeditionary force discovers that the rock is a base for an invasion by an advanced alien race.  Their mighty ship is destroyed by two or three bolts from a couple of invader drones.  The film does not get better after this.  The likelihood of all actions just continues to flow down the slippery slope.


6. After the five are teleported to the alien habitat, they behave in a particularly stupid manner. It was no surprise to see their unfortunate fates.


7. Will any of these incompetent characters survive?  Will the totally irritating offspring of the fire fighter live another day? Will Earth continue?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Avoid this bad, multiply derivative effort by Asylum Films.
2. One of ten.  Three black holes for screenplay, SFX, and acting.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 2/10  The alien drones look more primitive than those in Eyeborgs (2009), but act much more powerful. The lighting and filtration sucked, and we had a good dose of shaky cam toward the end.


2. Sound: 2/10 Fairly tacky adventure music, perhaps taken from public domain sources.  The alien noises early on sounded suspiciously like Forbidden Planet (1956).


3. Acting: 2/10 Kelly Hu and Robert Picardo are obviously actors, but they are given so little to work with.  All the other actors were not so good.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 Jumping back and forth between a fake rock and people in 1950s space suites to fire fighters in modern LA was jarring at best.  Hideous dialog.  Zero sense of humor.  The last 15 minutes were the worst of all.


5. SFX: 0/10 Absurdly bad.  The design of the alien invading race was poorly executed and made little sense.  The battle between the fireman and the drone was unbelievably bad, especially after what the drones showed they could do before.  The space team used a weapon to drill 50 feet into rock in 3 seconds.  When used on a naked alien, it could not penetrate the skin.  Seriously?  High-powered rifle fire on full auto cannot touch an alien, but a fire axe can? No, thanks.

20140314: Horror Review--Attila

Attila

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, 2013, NR, 85 minutes.
2. IMDB: 2.2/10.0 from 184 audience ratings.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No Reviews Yet...' and 0% liked it from 14 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 2.5/5.0 from 7,328 audience ratings.
5. Directed by: Emmanuael Ithier.  Screenplay by Anthony C Ferrante and Emmanuael Ithier.
6. Starring: Cheick Kongo as Nomad, Chris Conrad as Vito, Mikayla S. Campbell as Katie McVie, M. Steven Felty as General Thadeus, Roxanna Bina as Nicks, Emmanuael Ithier as Yorn.


2. Setup and Plot
1. According to IMDb, this picture was shot in Los Angeles, CA, USA.  According to the beginning of the film, the main action occurs in Eastern Europe.  Considering the number of Eastern European and Middle Eastern actors in the film, I was surprised that it was not filmed in Eastern Europe for the cost savings.


2. The Huns, by many accounts, were even shorter than the Romans, were light of weight, and perfectly suited to life on horseback.  In the opening sequence, the Huns were shown with zero horses, traveling and acting only as infantry.  They were depicted in the film as heavily muscled, tall in stature, and reliant on brute strength to win one-on-one battles.  This is in strong opposition to their usual description as light but agile, with exceptional skill in archery and fighting from horseback with swords.


3. The back story of re-assembling the Staff of Moses is just bovine scatology.


4. Given the matters above, the terrible dialog, the stupid acting, and the PC cliches, I was ready to give up on this one at 27 minutes in.  I watched the remaining 58 minutes just to see whether I missed something.


5. So, in this ridiculous setup, part of the Staff has been found in Eastern Europe.  Blood fallen on the case of the Staff re-animates Attila the Hun (well, maybe), who is seven feet tall and stronger than Thor.  This is more nonsense.


6. Will Vito recover the staff segment before Attila really fouls things up? 


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Where was the oversight on this film?
2. One star of five.  Black holes for acting, screenplay, and sound.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 6/10 Odd filtering was employed that was strong on blue, green, grey, while weak in red, yellow, orange.  Also, among the cast there were way too many faux blondes, and way too much time spent on the art of gum chewing with one's mouth open.  The random distribution of saliva is so attractive and sanitary; I'm surprised it was not spotlighted in slow motion.


2. Sound: 0/10 The actors were miked well enough.  Unfortunately, they spoke.  The incidental sound and music were almost always jarring or inappropriate.


3. Acting: 0/10 All the actors were terrible at acting in this film.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 Absurd, a complete failure.  I really could have done without the vile hallucinations of the 'effective' commander Vito.  Why would General Thadeus trust the Professor?  I would have liked an explanation of that.  The military fights the supernatural without knowing any rules of engagement?  This seems unlikely.  Even better, there seems to be little understanding of chain of command.  During one segment, the number of survivors in Vito's command seems to go up and down like a yo-yo from one scene to the next.  The movie gets stupider and less believable with each passing minute.  The real motivations seem not to be clear until quite late.


5. SFX: 2/10 Pretty poor. Some 1980s SFX were as good.

20131221: Action Review--Alien Uprising

Alien Uprising

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. British live action feature length film, 2012, NR, 101 minutes, action, SciFi.
2. IMDB: 3.0/10.0 from 1,485 audience ratings.  Estimated budget, 2.5 million pounds. Aspect, 2.35
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet...', 11% liked it from 64 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 2.3/5.0 from 5,915 audience ratings.
5. Written and directed by: Dominic Burns.
6. Starring: Bianca Bree as Carrie, Sean Brosnan as Michael, Simon Phillips as Robin, Maya Grant as Dana, JC van Damme as George, Sean Pertwee as Tramp, Jazz Lintott as Vincent.


2. Setup and Plot
1. The main characters are Carrie and Michael (just met, but getting along well), Robin and Dana, who have just become engaged, and Vincent, who has just broken up with his girlfriend.


2. After a bender at a local club, the five of them get together the next morning.  The electric is out, their telephones are off, both cell and land line, the AM and FM radio stations are down.  The military has claimed and drained all local petrol, almost all shops are closed.  There are alien somethings all around.


3. Two military men with a bazooka take down an alien.  An old crazy with a gun challenges the same military, who proceed to kill him.  He fires as well, as he goes down, and kills Robin.  Michael talks the military into giving them a lift (they are corporals, he had been a lieutenant).  They contact George, who has some good intel from his old days at area 51.  They find that there are alien imposters among them.  They identify Carrie as one of them.  Things get testy after that.  Even worse, the real people turn on each other.


4. Will anyone from the beginning survive?  How about the human race?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: This was one of the poorest indie films I've seen from the UK.
2. One star of five.  Black holes for acting, screenplay, SFX


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 4/10  There was way too much shaky camera work.


2. Sound: 8/10 OK, though sound levels get out of bounds now and then.


3. Acting: 1/10 Jeez, terrible.  JC van Damme was by far the best, but he did not have all that many lines. 


4. Screenplay: 2/10 Showed early promise, then went down hill.  Badly.


5. SFX: 0/10 Bad, terrible, looks poor as in 1970s poor.

20131202: Horror Review--131313

13/13/13

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, 2013, NR, 86 minutes, horror.  Spoken word is mostly in English.  Aspect is 1.78
2. IMDB: 3.8/10.0 from 554 audience ratings.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' and 0% liked it from 34 audience ratings. Impressive.
4. Netflix: x/5.0 from 3,193 audience ratings.
5. Directed by: James Cullen Bressack. Production House: Asylum Pictures.
6. Starring: Trae Ireland as Jack, Jody Barton as Quentin, Bill Voorhees as Trevor, Erin Coker as Candace, Tiffany Martinez as Kendra, Calico Cooper as Marcy.


2. Setup and Plot
1. The Mayan calendar did not have leap days, so we've been miscalculating.  Anyway, the 13th month of the 13th year after the beginning of the third millennium is upon us (exact date, who knows?) It is to laugh.


2. Quentin, Jack, Joe, and Trevor are out in the wild, doing some drinking.  I'm not sure what else is going on for them to be out there.  I did not see hunting gear, fishing gear, anything to eat, or hiking shoes.  Jack, a former policeman, thinks one of the others has been fooling with his watch since the time is wrong.  We get to see the military time 13:13:13 (1pm plus a bit) in the year 13 (short for 2013, I suppose) in Jack's watch.


3. As they drive, the SUV's clock starts showing 13:13.  Jack checks on his daughter Kendra.  (Dad is African American, Mom is Anglo, their 'natural' daughter is Latina; go figure, it's set in LA).  Kendra is non-responsive; Marcy is tearing all the skin off her left forearm.  The hospital where they take Marcy is a madhouse of bad manners and incompetence.  Kendra kills Trevor, which was unexpected.  Joe and Quentin kill two people in Kendra's neighborhood by running them over.  After failing to kill Jack, Marcy jumps out the third floor window to her death.  Quentin stabs Joe, and both of them think it's funny as they play with the blood.


4. At the hospital, the walls are covered with blood.  Jack finds Candace, who is also not infected.  Candace and Jack were both born on February 29th; Candace figures that is why both of them were not affected.  Jack decides to go back to check on Kendra.  Candace objects, but Jack goes through with it.  She does convince him to make a plan.  I did not see his accomplishing that.  They decide to fight their way out to get to where Kendra is, and perhaps any other non-crazy people.  This works for a while, but neither of them got there in a car to get to Kendra.  They make it to the car park with keys, but have to match some keys with a car.  They encounter large, still healthy bullies intent on killing them.  They emerge OK, and head for Jack's home.


5. Quentin and Joe have armed themselves with Jack's guns and ammo.  They get in each other's road, of course, but decide to kill off the other crazies first.  They survive for a bit, but Joe starts to bleed out.  Jack and Candace join them, but the house is under siege.


6. The emergency radio says the outbreak has affected all 50 states.


7. Will anyone get out alive?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Recalculate the dates: the Mayan apocalypse is on!
2. One star of five.  Black holes for screenplay, SFX, and acting.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 7/10 Daylight scenes should be sharp and good to look at. The film starts in washed out, low contrast mode.  I felt like I was watching VHS output from a tape player with dirty heads. Color contrast was low as well.


2. Sound: 5/10 Too much maniacal laughter.  Some of the incidental music is poor.


3. Acting: 0/10 Some of the worst I have ever seen.  Enough fake laughing to last twenty years.


4. Screenplay: 2/10 Stupid dialog plus terminally stupid dialog.  Very little in the way of natural motivation.


5. SFX: 2/10 Poor. 

20131107: Movie Review--Total Retribution

Total Retribution (Earthkiller)

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action video release, 2011, rated R, 83 minutes, horror, scifi, thriller; spoken word is English.
2. IMDB: 2.2/10.0 from 224 user ratings.  Estimated budget, 1.5 million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' and no responses from audiences.
4. Netflix: 2.3/5.0 from 45,596 audience ratings.
5. Directed by: Andrew Bellware.
6. Starring: Robin Kurtz as Helen, Walter Barnes as Trig, Jeff Beuerlein as Milton, Greg Oliver Bodine as Schroeder, Lucy Rainer as Raze.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Terran Special Forces versus Allied Airborne on a space station, whatever that might mean.  Humans are being turned into zombies, sort of.  These zombies are not weaker; instead, they are quicker, stronger, smarter, and less and less vulnerable to weapons as they get older.  The zombie transformation is accomplished by programmed nanobots, not viruses or bacteria or radioactive substances.  There are androids as well as humans and zombies.


2. The protagonist, Helen, is an android who wakes up after a memory wipe.  Half an hour in, I've got context, more or less.


3. Throw in a solar cannon that creates wormholes through time.  Right, why not?  There's a mission to protect the cannon from the wrong people.  Just what the 'real' mission is, is a bit wobbly.


4. Throw in references to scripture.  What scripture?  Written by whom?


5. Just what do these people eat or drink?  Where to they get their energy?  (No solar panels on the space station, no nuclear generator.  Hm.) When did gravity generators get invented?  The people walk around on the space station as if it were a building on Earth.


6. Will the final mission be accomplished, so that scripture will be fulfilled?  That seems to be the question.


3. Conclusions
1. Whoever put up the 1.5 million USD got cheated.  Costumes, SFX, anti-actors, dialog, and sets are all terrible.
2. One line summary: Fools slaughter each other on a space station.
3. One stars of five; three blackholes for acting, screenplay, and SFX.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 7/10 Mostly good, but loaded with bad framing choices.


2. Sound: 5/10 Poor.


3. Acting: 0/10 Non-existent.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 Boring, absurd, almost context free.


5. SFX: 0/10 Beyond bad.  Done by people who have no acquaintance with physics, or just hate it.  The CGI is ridiculous for the most part. Blood effects are entirely laughable.

20131030: Horror Review--Hollow

Hollow

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. British live action feature length film, 2011, NR, 94 minutes, horror,
2. IMDB: 5.8/10.0 from 3,374 audience ratings. Aspect is 16:9, or ~1.78
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 21% on the meter; 63% want to see it from 160 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 2.7/5.0 from 67,095 audience ratings.
5. Directed by: Michael Axelguaard; screenplay by Matthew Holt.
6. Starring: Emily Plumtree as Emma Tyler, Sam Stockman as James, Jessica Ellerby as Lynne Driscoll, Matt Stokoe as Scott Brian.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Four friends travel to Suffolk, England to see the house that Emma's grandfather lived in.  At the center of this is a large, old tree that has a large hollow section, where evil supposedly resides; this tree scared Emma when she was a girl.


2. End summary.


3. At 1:55 into the film, we learn that all the protagonists die, and that we are going to have to suffer through footage from the handheld camera found at the scene.  At this point, I only watch this picture so as to complete this review.  As a consumer, I would reject the movie and move on to another, better one.  However, if you like found film, this one is worth some consideration.


4. The policeman from East Anglia does some of his own camera work in describing the tableau after all the principals have been hung by the neck until dead.  He shows a lot of this huge old tree, including the opening of a huge hollow (film title).  The tree is devoid of foliage at this point.


5. We skip back in time, and start at the beginning of the found footage.


6. Emma, James, and Scott travel by car to a train station, where they pickup Lynn.


7. While continuing to their destination, they kill a fox.  They stop, and Emma sees the massive old tree and remembers her fear.  Her mother had a particularly creepy story about it, which is told later.  The tree is in leaf, and looks rather vigorous.


8. The cottage had been in Emma's family for generations.  While going through papers they find news clippings in her grandfather's belongings dating from 1650 to three days before he died.  The common thread is suicide of couples by hanging from the tree.


9. They talk to a local clergyman, who will not tell them anything.  A local fisherman recounts two versions of the first suicide.  Scott finds a book where an entire chapter is devoted to the tree and the suicides, notably 9 in a period of 18 months around 1983.


10. The four have other issues.  James and Emma have known each other the longest, but were not right for each other.  James cannot quite accept that.  Lynn definitely draws Scott's attention.  Lynn has a child, Kyle, by James, but James and Lynn are not married.  What could go wrong there?


11. Doing recreational drugs seems like a mistake, in any case, but given all the suicide build up, this is a perfectly stupid move.  After they work themselves up, they go out in public yelling and screaming.  Brilliant.  Then they go driving while under the influence.  Doubly brilliant.


12. Emma decides to go back to the cottage herself after Scott gets the car stuck off road.  She needs her inhaler, but probably cannot get to it.  She heads to the tree for some reason.  James catches up with her inhaler, and gets her pointed back to the others.


13. Scott challenges the tree in the dark.  How dramatic.  Scott and Lynn start making out in the blackness; James catches this.  Emma defuses it, somewhat.


14. The next day was to be the last day in the area: turn in the keys and leave.  Things are broken here among the couples. The local clergy insists that avoiding the tree is the right thing to do, so the history of hangings won't be resolved.  Going home, forgetting this place, seems like the clear decision.


15. They don't do that.  The last 20 minutes felt like 200; heavy breathing and screaming in blackness.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Two couples fail to resolve their issues; no supernatural elements.
2. One star of five; three blackholes for cinematography, acting, and screenplay.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 0/10 Found footage. This is better than most; fairly long segments of the first half of the film are in color.  The second half is a different story.


2. Sound: 4/10  As with many dreadful 'found film' projects, sound was recorded. The repetitive sound of the wind screen wipers, for instance, is of exactly zero interest to most viewers especially with the camera focused on uninteresting objects during travel in a car.  Listening to James breathing as he walks around confused or scared did not heighten tension.  Video footage of a fly on the inside of the car's wind screen was the topper: James' finger impacting the screen and the fly moving about in agitation.  Wonderful use of the viewer's time.  Some of the yelling overloaded the video camera's ability to record.  The breathing in near darkness gets really annoying after a while.


3. Acting: 2/10 Get a bigger budget and hire better actors next time.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 At least 50 percent of the film is spent on couples fighting verbally.  Perhaps 15 percent is recorded in blackness with barely useful sound.  Another 10 percent is focused on auto ceilings, fidgety knees, or the ground.  Who cares about any of these three categories?  What does this have to do with horror? with thrillers? with mystery?

20130924: Horror Review--Mutants

Mutants

1. Fundamentals
1. American live action feature length film, released in 2008, rated R, 83 minutes, horror, SciFi.
2. IMDB: 2.3/10.0 from 415 users.  Estimated budget: four million USD
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet' and 4% from 176 audience ratings.
4. Directed by: Amir Valinia.  Screenplay by: Jody Jones.
5. Starring: Michael Ironside as Colonel Gauge, Steven Bauer as Marcus Santiago, Louis Hertham as Griff Theriot, Tony Sensamici as Commander Sykes, Sharon Landry as Erin Theriot, Jessica Heap as Hannah, Armando Leduc as Sergei Petrov, Richard Zeringue as Braylon, Derrick Denicola as Ryan Theriot.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Manufacturer Braylon, who owns the Just Rite Sugar Company, hires biochemist Sergei to design a food additive to increase consumer return rate.  Instead, the additive changes human test subjects into overactive and voracious mutants.


2. 'Nothing is going to derail our plans.'  That is a clear indication that stated plans will fail, and there will be lots of collateral damage.


3. During the first half of this film, the human test subjects are only kidnapped and maltreated, and a few are murdered, namely the ones who escape.  Experimentation is still going on.


4. During the second half of the film, the breakthrough in the sugar additive is made, and the monsters start being created.  What started as purely chemical research somehow has a viral element.


5. Griff, Erin, and Sykes find Ryan and attempt to escape with him. Then the violence really starts.  The cavalry arrives to exterminate anything living to contain the outbreak before it spreads to the general uninfected population.


3. Conclusions
1. Terrible reviews from IMDB and RT.  See scores below.
2. One sentence summary: Sugar additive meant to cause addiction causes violent monsters instead.
3. Final Rating: 1/10, three blackholes for cinematography, acting, and screenplay.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 0/10 I've seen 70k budget films with two levels of camera work better than this.  Dark, fuzzy, grainy, low contrast.  The daytime footage is almost as bad.  Much of it looks like bad telephone capture.  Lousy CGI for blowing up the lab.


2. Sound: 4/10 OK some of the time, hollow and poor too much of the time.  Irritating incidental music.


3. Acting: 2/10 Michael Ironside and Steven Bauer were competent, but most of the others delivered performances like those in a bad high school play.  Erin is supposed to be Griff's daughter, but she looks like his older sister.  Brilliant casting.


4. Screenplay: 1/10 Almost all the film is a flashback that does not include the only two competent actors: not good.  The jokes are non-witty and flat.  How this many murders committed in open daylight would not be noticed is hard to figure.  The interaction between Erin and her father was unconvincing.  Ryan getting kidnapped and held for days without being noticed is absurd.  Motivation?  Try another film.  Business logic?  Forget that too.

20130910: Horror Review--Lady Vengeance

Name: Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005)
IMDb: link to Sympathy for Lady Vengeance page

Genres: Horror.   Country of origin: Korea (Spoken language is Korean, with English subtitles.)

Cast: Yeong-ae Lee as Geum-ja Lee, Min-sik Choi as Mr. Baek.

Directed by: Chan Wook Park.  Written by: Seo-Gyeong Jeong, Chan Wook Park.

image courtesy of TMDb

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
Geum-ja was framed for killing a child, then served 13.5 years for the crime. Flashbacks tell how she created loyalty within her prison mates.

After she gets out, she takes a job with a baker, and takes triple advantage of his generosity.  One wonders why the baker put up with this.

She decides that she is a position, finally, to settle some scores.

Delineation of conflicts:
She has a custom gun built to deal harshly with her nemesis.

She dreams that her daughter is with her.  This is, as far as I can tell in this horrid mess, contrary to fact.  The battle in her mind rages on.

She collects real evidence, and gains real allies, against the murdering bastard who framed her.

Resolution:
Lady Vengeance lines up everything for her revenge.  Does she take it?  Does she get any lasting benefit from it?

One line summary: Badly done fractured fairy tale of tremendous ugliness.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 6/10  There is a tendency for most of the screen to be out of focus.  This does fit in with the protagonist's obsessions.  However, it is distracting and ugly for most of the screen to be meaningless.  There were also camera jerks and bad zooming, but only occasionally.

Sound: 8/10 The subtitles do the job, but the voices seemed to be miked OK. 

Incidental music: 2/10 I like harpsichord music.  The presence of horrific and disgusting passages filled with harpsichord music increases my dislike of the film.  Generally speaking, I like Vivaldi's compositions.  There are several Vivaldi pieces used in this film, which seems discordant (sound versus visual content) at best. I am most strongly reminded of A Clockwork Orange (1972).  Since I like Beethoven's music in general, I had the same sort of reaction.  The beauty and the clarity of the music being pressed into association with psychotic violent behavior was just disgusting.

Acting: 2/10 Much of narration is told from within a particular daydream or hallucination.  The high density of flashbacks contributes to the difficulty telling whether the performance is acting or just a crazy twit being herself as opposed to acting.

Screenplay: 4/10 Flashbacks, daydreams, and hallucinations are film devices that I do not care for.  They usually do not work, and they are very irritating here.  Voice-over narration is another sign of script failure.

Final Rating: 4/10  It's competent visually. It's well-miked for sound.  Otherwise it's unforgivable.  Three black holes for screenplay, acting, and incidental music.  It's difficult to believe that this film had the same director as Old Boy (2003).

Hide/Show Spoilers

1. As the film progresses (well, the clock goes forward; there is not progress), Geum-ja has an ally drug her nemesis.  They bind and gag him, then transport him to a place that they control where no one can hear them.
2. Other victims of the real killer are found, ones killed while Geum-ja was in prison.  The parents are offered to watch the last moments of their children's lives, as filmed by the killer. This seems needless infliction of additional suffering.
3. How did Geum-ja arrange this without the cops arresting her and carting her off to jail again?  This seems to be skipped over.
4. In any case, in the film, the parents decide to punish and do in the child killer themselves.
5. Then they do it.
6. Later they meet at the bakery and have cake.  Lovely.

20130908: Action Review--Tokyo Gore Police

Name: Tokyo Gore Police (2008)
IMDb: link to Tokyo Gore Police page

Genres: Action, Horror SFF.    Country of origin: Japan

Cast: Eihi Shiina as Ruka, Itsuji Itao as Keyman, Yukihide Benny as Tokyo Police Chief, Jiji Bû as Barabara-Man, Ikuko Sawada as Independent Bar Owner, Cay Izumi as Dog Girl, Keisuke Horibe as Ruka's Father, Shun Sugata as Tokyo Police Commissioner, Tak Sakaguchi as Koji Tanaka.

Directed by: Yoshihiro Nishimura. Written by: Yoshihiro Nishimura, Maki Mizui, Kengo Kaji

Ruka

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
An 'engineer' is a mutant/sick person who can convert wounds to weapons. The police in near future Japan are privatized, and wear armor that has some superficial resemblance to samurai armor of the past.

Ruka is an 'engineer hunter' in the police; that is, a skilled killer who can find an engineer's weak spot faster than the engineer can kill her. Ruka's self-cutting is revealed in flashbacks and just before her first fight with an engineer.  Her birthday party (plus congratulations for 50 engineer kills) was pure camp.

Those are the 'good old days' at the beginning of the film.

Delineation of conflicts:
The engineers and the police are clearly at war. The engineers raid police headquarters and kill several cops. The battle frenzy heightens.

Ruka's allegiance to the police cause is converted to zeal for revenge after the police kill her one true friend in the world, and she learns from a strong engineer (Key Man) the true fate of her father.

Resolution:
Ruka beheads the four cops who killed her friend, and the fight is on.

The ultimate fight is between Ruka and her second father, the head of the police, the man who ordered her father killed.  Unfortunately, this was also one of the most ridiculous and badly filmed stage fights I've ever seen.

One line summary: Ruka is out to avenge her father's death at the hands of crooked cops; so is her adversary, Key Man.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 2/10 Often dark with insufficient contrast and soft focus.  Framing mistakes, jumpy camera work.  Panning with blur.  Blood on the lens, too many times.  The blood here is Texas Longhorn orange; that is, not very red.  Yellow and orange filters applied for no apparent reason.

Sound: 2/10 Weak. The incidental music is often amateurish in composition, poor in quality, and hollow sounding.  At times it seems the actors are not miked properly.  There was a significant number of lines spoken in Japanese that had no related English subtitles.  This did not help following the plot.

Acting: 1/10 There are too many actors with total lack of affect: stone faced and silent without much body English.  The protagonist is the prime example.  Also, her fight movements are often out of synch by one to five seconds, as if reacting to off-camera cues after failing to execute.

Screenplay: 1/10 Gallons of blood sprayed, followed by zero landing on actors' clothes.  This repeated a dozen times or so. Acquaintance with the laws of physics and logic is out the window.  Given that, we're down to special effects and character motivation.  The SFX were really bad, so motivation would have to drive the plot. Motivation is fairly well lost as well. One segment goes to another with little or no explanation.  The plot is more of an archipelago than a road from here to there.

Special Effects: 1/10 Cheesy blood spatter. Enough blood to float small boats.  Badly done fake chopped off body parts.  Blood pipes made obvious when a limb or neck or finger is sliced off.

This is supposed to be Tokyo Shock, or live action blood-spatter anime.

As a gore-fest and gross-out fest, this was high on quantity, but low on quality.  Bloodletting, blood spray, body violations, public groping, eating insects, multiple commercials for self-cutting tools; the game 'remote control exterminate', breasts sliced in half, then stitched together with thick cords; using a freshly cut off head as a soccer ball; a golden shower, a penis cannon, pointless murder after pointless murder while the cops are on the rampage, acid spraying breasts, a flying-fist gun.  Too much, and too much of it hokey.

Final Rating: 1/10 Three black holes for cinematography, special effects, and acting.

20130821: Horror review--In Search of Lovecraft

Name: In Search of Lovecraft (2008)
IMDb: link to page In Search of Lovecraft

Genres: Horror     Country of Origin: USA

Cast: Renee Sweet (Rebecca Marsh, TV reporter), Tytus Bergstrom (Mike, the cameraman, who has seen too much), Denise Amrikhas (Amber Martin, the high school intern), Saqib Mousoof as Dr. D'Sousa, Rachael Robbins as the white witch, Keja.

Written, edited, and directed by: David J. Hohl

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
Reporter Rebecca Marsh starts with Halloween interviews, and for some reason asks crowd members questions about H. P. Lovecraft.

One new contact leads to another.  Mike, her cameraman, and Amber, her intern, follow her as the story unfolds.

The delineation of conflicts: 
As is often the case in Lovecraft films, the main confrontation is the searcher versus general lack of information. The searchers here start with reality based reporter tools.

The pursuit is all rather ordinary until a Professor Sutton, who was to be interviewed, is found dead instead from a magic attack.  They get a set of directions on Sutton's voice mail, and locate a mysterious movie from 1933.

The reporting team keeps following leads, but someone/something keeps doing in their contacts.  Along the way, they pick up more Lovecraft lore, and more leads to more murky information.  For instance, an aborted attempt for one of the gods to find purchase in the real world is detailed, and an assertion that another 75 years must pass before the next gate opens.  That would be in 2008.

Dark passages and foul dreams come before the climactic encounters. As with many Lovecraft films, the protagonists only get a full information set (under the floorboards in an abandoned flat) about an hour before civilisation-ending disaster is about to strike.

Resolution: In the abstract, all Lovecraft films end the same way.  In the particular, one needs to watch the film carefully.

One line summary: Lovecraft mythos pursued by reporters.

For a much better Lovecraft film, see: The Dunwich Horror with Dean Stockwell.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 2/10 The film is in 1.33 to 1.00 aspect ratio.  I suppose that is meant to make it more 'true' to Lovecraftian lore, but it looks like shit.

Some of it is well lit, in focus, and decently framed.  Other pieces are dark, very low in contrast, and in grey and grey (not good enough to be called black and white).  Some sections are rife with jumpy camera work and careless zooming.  Of course, some of it is washed out by too much light.  Some of the 'old' footage is much, much worse than the rest of the film.  Of course, the crappiness of archival footage is beloved by some fans.

Sound: 4/10 Many of the actors were not well miked, and the sound suffers for it.  It sounds hollow more often than not.  If not for the subtitles, I would have been lost in some passages.

Acting: 2/10 Sad.  Saqib Mousoof and Rachael Robbins were probably the best, and have much better accomplishments after this film.  Denise Amrikhas was beyond bad, as were the leads, Renee Sweet and Tytus Bergstrom.

Screenplay: 1/10  Associating Halloween with Lovecraft?  Hm.  The case for the pantheon in Lovecraft's writings being 'real' was 0% convincing.  Unfortunately, most of the film goes with that premise.  Motivation?  Apparently that was not considered necessary.  The fans of this type of film are pre-sold on the mythology.

Special Effects: 1/10 Between unconvincing and laughable.

Final Rating: One of ten.  Three black holes for cinematography, screenplay, SFX.

20130807: Horror Film Review--The Thirst

Name: The Thirst (2007)
IMDb: link to The Thirst page

Genres: Horror   Country of origin: USA

Cast: Matt Keeslar (Dune, Rose Red) as Maxx, Clare Kramer (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) as Lisa, Jeremy Sisto (Law and Order) as Darius, Serena Scott Thomas (The World Is Not Enough) as Mariel, Adam Baldwin (Firefly, Full Metal Jacket) as Lenny.

Directed by: Jeremy Kasten.  Written by: Ben Lustig (story), Liz Maccie (screenplay).

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux: 
Drug addicted couple (Maxx and Lisa) are going in opposite directions.  He's clean and in a 12-step group.  She's still using.  Lisa starts puking blood and collapses while doing a strip tease.  The drug addiction was on top of her advancing terminal cancer, which she can no longer hide from Maxx.  

Lisa commits suicide, or so it would seem.  When his friends invite Maxx to a goth club some days after the funeral, he sees Lisa at the club.  He returns later and finds her and a nest of hungry vampires.  Lisa soon converts Maxx.

Delineation of conflicts:
The notion of trading one obsession (drugs) for another (blood sucking) is explored to some extent.  Lisa and Maxx try to control their blood lust.  This does not go well.

Their attempt to adapt to vampire life was replaced by an effort to stop the family (the nest of vampires) at any cost.  The other vampires are not pleased with that part.

Resolution: Do the protagonists embrace vampire values and settle into vampire lifestyle, or do they align themselves to human values?  They do make a choice.

One line summary: Substituting vampirism for drug abuse.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 4/10 Insufficient lighting, soft focus, grainy final presentation.  There's a bit of jerkiness from the low light and cameras that cannot handle it.

Sound: 10/10 The film had several background tracks that were witty and fitting.

Screenplay: 3/10 Poor.  The fifteen minutes of story was stretched too far to get an 88 minute runtime.  The exposition of motivations was terrible.

Acting: 3/10 So many actors, so many bad performances!  Jeremy Sisto (the reason I quit watching Law and Order) disappointed even more than usual, and the coming and going of his various accents was irritating.  Clare Kramer (a major reason I stopped watching Buffy) was marginally better than I thought she would be.  After Firefly, Adam Baldwin has been a favourite, and he did not disappoint me here. The rest of the actors were forgettable at best.

Special Effects: 0/10 Abysmal.  The blood sprays and the bursting into flames are laughable. Blood sprays are all too common, and quite over the top in poor execution.  The fact that they are done in such a ridiculous way eliminates any serious tone to the film that might have been intended. Seeing the tube that feeds the red fluid on Keeslar's back 60 minutes into the film was an amazing gaffe.

Final Rating:  2/10  Awesomely bad: three black holes for acting, screenplay, SFX.