B Plus Movies

Today being All Hallows Eve, it was really tempting to review The Power Rangers Movie or Pokemon: MewTwo Strikes Back. It would satisfy my perverse sense of irony and contrast. But no, on this day of the year, horror is king and shall be given it’s proper due. And still satisfy my perverse sense of irony and contrast.I’d like to discuss Ginger Snaps.

Ginger Snaps is, without a doubt, the best coming of age/goth girl/werewolf movie in existence. Admittedly, I think it’s the only one, but even the theatres were glutted with films like this one, Ginger Snaps would stand out. The werewolf movie has always been kind of the rude, awkward brother of the vampire film. Whereas vampires can be evil, murderous and still look cool, werewolves look like werewolves. The sub-genre is about the fear of what one is becoming, the beast within and sudden changes that cause you to lash out at the world.

Much like puberty.

Ginger Snaps starts with a pair of sisters, Bridgette and Ginger, who are strange and fixated on death. They meet up with something furry and violent in the night that bites Ginger. From here, standard werewolf movie things start happening, but in very non-standard ways. The focus of the movie is about the relationship of the sisters as much as it is about Ginger going all Lon Chaney. Lycanthropy is used as a metaphor for the separation and angst that can happen within family when interests and perspectives begin to change. While this is still a horror movie and there is still blood and violence, the picture evokes pathos more often than startled jumps in your seat. There are moments between Bridgette and the furrier side of Ginger that are, frankly, touching.

If the film has any points against it, they come at the end. The film’s conclusion felt like it lacked something, perhaps something that was to be found in the sequels. It spawned two, and while I can’t speak for their quality, I can point them out as a testament to how much this movie is liked. Part of that may be because it doesn’t feel familiar, even though it’s following a well trod cinematic pattern thorough the suburbia we all know and shop in. The performances by Katharine Isabelle (Ginger) and Emily Perkins (Bridgette) feel very genuine. We get to see a couple of kids we instantly recognize but barely know, trying to understand them as they try to grasp their situation

Ginger Snaps is a solid B+. It’s strange and wonderful, surprising and tender with heart rending scenes woven with moments of hearts actually being rent. And most importantly, it’s unexpected, pushing the bounds of what we usually associate with this kind of flick.

If you’re playing movies in the background as you dole out Snickers to the neighborhood goblins, I recommend including this one in the queue. Just make sure that when they get to the scene where Ginger is half transformed and half naked, you’ve got the door at least half closed.

Bruce Lee is a name that conjures images both fantastic and historical, an icon in the worlds of both martial arts and movie making. He had a forceful personality, incredible physical ability and a passion for the craft of movie making. His untimely death denied the world of what would have been outstanding moments in film, to be sure. His impact upon cinema and popular culture can’t be denied.

One of the things that Bruce left behind was a script written by him and James Coburn, later to be acquired and retooled by David Caradine. The resulting work was a 1978 movie entitled Circle of Iron.

Circle of Iron (also released as The Silent Flute) is a fable, a tale of a martial artist who seeks The Book of All Knowledge. He is told he is too undisciplined for the journey, but proceeds to take it anyway. Journeying through a dreamlike landscape, the seeker confronts a number of guardians along the path who test him and a blind flute player who guides him. His quest turns out be much more and very different than he expects.

David Carradine played four roles in this movie, three of the aforementioned guardians and the flute player. The lead was played by Jeff Cooper, who went on to play a number of bit parts n 80’s television. The parts were originally to be played by Bruce Lee and James Coburn, respectively.

If you watch this movie looking for an action film, you’ll get disappointed.  This isn’t to say there isn’t a goodly amount of butt kicking, it’s just that it tends to run at a slower pace than one might expect. The fights are less about blood and punches and more about the young seeker learning about himself and what it is he’s seeking.

I caught this on cable when I was a kid. It was on in the middle of the night and I was riveted. Watching it as an adult, I was not utterly disappointed with my love of the film and was glad to see that it’s been making rounds on cable again.

Dare I say anything negative about a story inspired by the work of Bruce Lee? Well, in fairness, I have to. The movie tries to evoke an ethereal quality but it comes off in some scenes as just goofy and wears on the suspension of disbelief. The pace of the film is sometimes agonizing by modern standards and while a very deep story is being told, Jeff Cooper’s acting sometimes doesn’t keep up. The fact that Circle of Iron is more myth than grit makes the less convincing stretches more bearable, but a viewer today might find the movie a bit hokey.

In the ratings, this one falls solidly in the B category. It’s also a film I’d love to see remade with today’s technology and standards. I can’t judge if Carradine did justice to Lee’s vision, but Circle of Iron is definitely worth watching for fans of either man’s work or of martial arts films in general.

I don’t mean to keep ending the week on a Most Dangerous Game derivative, but there are so many to choose from. Violence is one of the easiest forms of conflict to use in a movie script and the “let’s see who’s standing at the end” type stories give a plausible contrivance to get characters harming one another.  Putting them in a closed setting also lowers the budget.

Say for instance you took a bunch of criminals, snitches and thugs, put them in a newly built but unused prison and then introduced ten million dollars. Advise them that they have six hours, are locked in and no more than three of them can remain standing if any of them one to live to collect the prize. If you could do all this and film it, then you’d have Mean Guns.

I started catching this movie in bits and pieces on cable. What made me finally sit down and watch the whole of it was the manic performance of Christopher Lambert who plays a wonderfully drug addled and happy go lucky hit man and the only character who volunteers to play in the game. He makes the movie.

Ice-T is also in the picture as Moon, the organizer and provider of the literal buckets of weaponry (guns and baseball bats) to be used in this exercise/game. His performance is very stripped down and a little too stereotyped, but still enjoyable.

The rest of the cast is made up of a host of other B movie veterans, enough that one might see at least a half dozen faces and ask “where do I know that guy from?”

Mean Guns has a number of subplots to accent the carnage; each of the players in the game has at some point betrayed the criminal syndicate that has put this affair together. There’s an accountant who wants to turn state’s evidence, a hit man who is tired of the criminal life and a hooker who is there by complete accident. The movie plays on archetypes to establish character and while you might not consider any of these folks family by the time the movie ends, there’s still enough there to let you care about them before they die.

The violence in the movie is stylized and takes a lot of elements from Asian cinema including the patented John Woo, point-blank standoff. The film is shot well enough and the dialogue is okay. It’s not a masterpiece of art direction or anything, but very watchable on the small screen.

As action movies go, this one isn’t bad: lots of gunplay with enough plot to string it together and keep it interesting. If I ever catch this in a $5 bin, I’m getting it for the collection.

But is Mean Guns a B+ movie? No, not quite. But it is a solid B.

Animation is for kids in America. This is accepted as common wisdom. In the 1980’s, however, there was a brief period where film makers tried out the “cartoons for adults”. The movie Heavy Metal came out of this period and went on to be a cult classic. Hollywood tried a few more films and apparently decided they’d stick to flesh and blood actors. Fortunately, before they were done, they gave us Rock n’ Rule.

Rock N’ Rule tells the tale of a group of mutant animals living in a dark future trying to make a living playing rock and roll. We meet Omar, the hotheaded guitarist; Angel, who plays keyboard and is a songwriter in her own right, and lastly Dizzy and Stretch, the comic relief rhythm section duo.The band gets courted by an aging super-rocker named Mok (unrepentantly fashioned on Mick Jagger) who wants to raise a demon to punish a world that has let him slip into obscurity. For that he needs Angel, her voice matching a sort of sonic key to finish his summoning ritual. She gets kidnapped and the rest of the band has to find her, save her and along the way keep the dream of rock and roll stardom alive.

If this film were released today, it would have a slew of merchandising. There would be a soundtrack album, Guitar Hero: Rock N’ Rule, plush toys and music videos. Alas, it came out in 1983 with weak backing by it’s studio and was a commercial flop. Contracts and business decisions kept it in relative obscurity, occasionally appearing on Cinemax at 3am, but recently it became available on DVD.

By 21st century standards, the animation is passable but the pace of the film is entirely too slow. There also seems to be some question if this was to be a kids film (which it looks like) or for adults (which is more how it’s scripted). They give us cute buffoonish characters one second then follow it with themes of drug use and devil worship the next.

Despite it’s target audience schizophrenia, there is a very, very good reason to watch this movie: the music. The singing was done by Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Debbie Harry and Cheap Trick. Rock N’ Rule was made with the idea that the music would work with the pictures rather than just be a backdrop and the climactic sequence, which takes place at massive stadium concert (of course) still sends chills down my spine with the way the sounds sync with the imagery.

In 1983, I’d have given this movie a B+, but now I can only give it a C. Still, I am proud to say when Unearthed Films released this on two disc special edition, I was on the pre-order list. Rock n’ Rule is a little dated, but definately worth the time to watch and even more to listen.

I don’t mean to keep leading off the week with a vampire movie, but there are so many to choose from. Vampires are an easy McGuffin to do in a low budget film. Find your actor. Put some fangs on him, instant villain. Or hero. Or tortured soul who wants to be a hero but must still hunt the night. Or whatever.

It’s always good to see when someone made an effort to put a twist on the vampire movie genre, though. And that leads into today’s review, Razor Blade Smile.

I picked up this film based entirely on the cover. Ample cleavage, huge gun, tantalizing tagline; the potential seemed enormous. Then I pressed play.

I can’t say Razor Blade Smile disappointed. I was expecting a film about a vampire who made her money and kept her self in blood by being a hitwoman. The movie delivers this, straight up. (She even grades the taste of her victim’s blood.)

What I wasn’t expecting was the subplot about the Illuminati, the love story, the subplot concerning the heroine and a goth club, or the dozen other little touches that this movie adds to distinguish itself from the other dozen vampire films that inhabit the direct to video rack at your favorite movie store on any given day.

The film is not without it’s flaws. The acting in places feels a little overdone. The film’s pace drags a little bit in the middle.  The lighting in the movie kind of sucks, but that’s mostly due to the film’s low budget. (Incidentally, the film won an award I’d never heard of, the British “For the Film Making the Most of Resources Within a Limited Budget” award.)

But if nothing else, this movie is worth watching for the costumes. The PVC bodysuits and leather corsets are supporting actors in this pic and were worth the price of rental alone. The dialogue is also top notch, having some of my favorite lines ever delivered in a vampire film. (No I’m not telling you any. Go watch it. And pay attention to the heroine’s opinion of Bram Stoker.)

I don’t have any issue recommending this movie to vampire film fans, horror movie mans or even just people who like fetish wear. If you check this one out, make sure to watch until after the credits. It’s worth it.

Razor Blade Smile has won four B movie awards, but here I’m giving it a C. They did a good job, but it feels like with just a few tweaks it could have been better. That said, it’s definitely deserving of the following it has and it’s recent re-release on DVD. It’s got a permanent place in my collection, no doubt.

DC Comics and Warner Brothers recently noted the success of The Dark Knight and how it’s grim, gritty feel added to the experience. The decided to make more of their comic book movies in a grim, gritty fashion, much to the worry and ridicule of comic fans the world around. Even if they make the Green Lantern into a hobo or give Superman alcoholism, they’ve got nothing on what Japanese film makers have done with adaptations of manga.

Do I have an example? You bet your sweet bippy I do: Battle Royale, the director’s cut.

Battle Royale is an iteration on the theme presented in Richard Connell’s The Most Dangerous Game: A group of people are on an island against their will, forced to fight one another until only one of them is left. The winner gets their freedom. They have three days to accomplish this task or their captors will kill all of them.

In and of itself, this isn’t a terribly new or shocking plot device. What sets this apart is not what’s happening, but who it’s happening to: A class of school kids.

Their captors are a government that feels the youth have grown too disrespectful and lazy. The scenario into which they are placed is part of an annual program. The victor becomes a minor celebrity, as we seen in the opening tone-setting scene in which one of the winners emerges from the darkness, blood spattered and grinning.

She looks to be about 9.

When I watched this, I was impressed by the action, the acting and passion in the characters. Each main character has a story and as it unfolds, you actually care when the kids die. The violence never completely dulls or allows you to get used to it. It wasn’t until half way through the film that the horror of what I was watching really hit me.

The characters run the spectrum from the reluctant to the psychotic. There’s a love story, a revenge story, intrigue and of course action. If you can take the fact that the center of the plot involves children shooting each other, there’s not a lot to dislike here.

There are scenes in which the fourth wall get’s broken occasionally, the character’s expressing their emotions directly to the camera. I felt this was a little out of place, but it didn’t detract from the overall realism of the movie.

Quentin Tarantino saw this film and wanted to cast two of it’s stars in Kill Bill (one of which he got, Chiaki Kuriyama, aka Gogo Yubari). There was talk of an American remake, but after a number of tragic school shootings, the likelyhood seems low. That might not be a bad thing.

Battle Royale is a solid, solid B+ movie. It’s not something I’d recommend to anyone blindly and I can’t imagine what this film would have been like if I’d wandered into it without warning. It’s a shocking, gut wrenching piece of cinema.

And the thing is, it really should be.

Berry Gordy was a Motown music producer. He also produced a couple of films in the 70’s and 80’s including Lady Sings the Blues. In 1985 he put out a film that almost made me miss my brother’s wedding. That film was The Last Dragon.

The Last Dragon is an homage to the classic Kung Fu flick, specifically Bruce Lee movies, without belittling them or ripping them off.   It manages this while incorporating Motown and New Wave sounds, Vanity (one of Prince’s proteges) and break dancing. It also manages to do this by being a film that stands on its own.

The main character of The Last Dragon is Leroy Green (played by Taimak, who has taught martial arts to Madonna). Called Bruce Leroy by the neighborhood kids, our hero is a young seeker and martial arts student who at the beginning of the film is told by his teacher that he has learned all that he can teach him. Leroy goes in search of the master he thinks will complete his training and in the process ends up saving a TV dance show host, Laura (Vanity’s character) from a mobster and getting challenged by Sho’Nuff, the “Shogun of Harlem” (played by the now deceased character actor, Julius Carry).

The film screams 80’s style, made at a time when MTV still played music videos and you had to go to an arcade to play a video game. This backdrop serves to actually add sincerity to Leroy’s anachronistic Chinese style, making him seem more deep and genuine than the superficial world around him. The character comes off as naive but pure, a true questing knight in a corrupt world.

The action in the movie is solid, though slow paced by the standards of a world that has seen The Matrix.  The final battle scene still leaves me pumping my fist and warm in my chest. There’s a real sense of triumph in the fight sequences and even when they introduce a supernatural element, the Glow (the mark of a true master), it does not detract from the feel of the film.

It feels almost redundant to proclaim The Last Dragon a B+ movie as it has already reached a level of cult status. Busta Rhymes, in the video for  “Dangerous”, makes reference to it as have other rappers including Nas, Lupe Fiasco and WC. It’s been worked into The Sarah Silverman Show and South Park.

If you have any inclination to enjoy Kung Fu movies, then watch this picture. I give The Last Dragon a B+ only because I don’t go higher.

There are very few tricks that any recent vampire flick hasn’t ripped off from another film about the beautiful and damned. When film makers try for something original, it usually either produces truly worthy cinema or it collapes into a dark red Caro syrupy mess. This also counts when you try to shuffle together ideas from other movies, hoping that the resulting mosaic will come across as a new and distinct idea unto itself.

Example, and today’s review: The Thirst.

I picked this movie up for something like $2 at a movie store’s going-out-of-business sale. The Thirst intrigued me because it was comparing itself to B+ Movie Near Dark . It played on my loyalty to Joss Whedon by casting three Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel actors: Adam Baldwin, Clare Kramer plus Tom Lenk. Plus, for crying out loud, it was $2.

As the opening credits rolled, I was a little skeptical I’d find any entertainment in this movie. But within the first seven minutes of the movie, we get to see two nude scenes, a profanity filled Narcotics Anonymous meeting, a hooker get killed with a lamp, and are reminded that the body contains about 15 gallons of blood, all of which is stored at high pressure. These details were enough to convince me to give the rest of the movie a chance.

By the end, I at least didn’t feel overcharged. Borrowing bits from both vampire flicks and drug movies, it kept showing me moments that just interesting enough that I’d hope they were going somewhere. Unfortunately, they alternated this with scenes full of people I didn’t care about that were paced so my finger would be hovering over the fast forward button just before they’d interest me again.

The plot revolves around two ex-junkies who end up tangled with a family of blood-sucking fiends. About half-way through the movie, the pair decide they want out and try to deal with the need for blood like a drug addiction. In the end, they have to decide if they are going to go along with the murderous crew (who feeds by taking out whole nightclubs of people at a time) or try to save themselves and maybe just a few others.

The film has the seeds of an interesting story which get choked in a pot of bad acting and inexplicable plot holes. The whole film feels rushed, such that the actors are mostly stereotypes rather than fleshed out characters. The head bad guy, a vampire named Darius and played by Law and Order actor Jeremy Sisto, switches between a bad Eastern European accent and a bad Southern accent for no apparent reason. The hero of the film comes across first as whiny, then as a jerk and only in the last third of the film seems to have much of any depth or any quality which makes you want to relate to him. The heroine of the picture is an enjoyable character and is portrayed well, but we get so little of her that we never really make a connection. We’re dealing with vampires that are supposed be hundreds of years old who get pretty soundly messed up by people who’ve been vampires for two days.

Admittedly, I wasn’t expecting Shakespeare or even The Lost Boys out of this movie and with that in mind it was watchable. The Thirst comes across as a project in which someone was trying to make a good picture, but not always the same person in every scene. I don’t regret watching it, but it’s not high on my “must recommend” or “watch again lists”.

The Thirst gets a D from me. Though if I were giving extra points for boob shots, it’d probably get at least a C.

When I walk into a film, I want to know as little about it as possible. Usually, I only need the film’s title and genre, the name of the lead actors and the name of the director. I’ve been in doubt about many projects until I hear a good producer is attached. Sometimes a writer alone is enough to put me off.

Take, for instance, Luc Besson. I want to like his work.  Leon: The Professional was amazing, even if creepy in its pedophilic moments. I feel The Fifth Element was flawed but at least pretty. The Transporter and its sequel were entertaining, but only at the popcorn and soda, Saturday matinee, don’t-think-about-it-things-are-blowing-up level. But then there are the movies Kiss of the Dragon and Unleashed, which seem to have all the right ingredients for an omelet filled with kick ass (good concept, good cast) but curdle because of too much herb de Besson.

Such is the flaw to his otherwise notable screenplay Wasabi.

Wasabi starts with a French supercop, played by Jean Reno, finding out that he’s got an 19 year old daughter, the product of a 20 year old affair with a Japanese spy. Reno’s character goes to Japan (while on suspension, like most movie cops are) to seek out the daughter, played with frenetic excellence by Ryoko Hirosue. Once there, things get blown up and people get pummeled as the father tries to figure out how to relate to his daughter while at the same time how to save her from a deadly plot to which she is key.

This movie has some great moments. There are slapstick fight scenes that would make Jackie Chan proud, particularly one in which Reno is beating the crap out of people who are tailing his daughter as they shop for clothes, delivering the smackdown without his daughter seeing a thing. It’s got some fleeting moments of warmth and tenderness, like when Reno is correcting Ryoko’s French. It also has a taste of drama as they both deal with the loss of the woman whose death brought them together.

The movie is hard to pin down to one genre because it has elements of so many. And that’s where it comes up just short of greatness.

This movie makes the mistake of trying to be all things to all people. It wants to be an action comedy, except when it wants to be gritty action drama. It will try to get you to be scared of the villains while simultaneously trying to get you to laugh at how they’re being implausibly stomped by one man with a pair of golf clubs. The movie starts to look tense and thrillerish, but then turns all buddy film on you without warning. It seems to want to be many so many different stories that it fails to do any of them justice. This movie had cult classic written all over it and should have been phenomenal. Instead, it turned out fun but forgettable.

Except maybe for the scene with the transvestite bank robbers. That will stay with you.

Wasabi ranks a strong C, which is sad because with a bit more focus, this really could have been a B+ Movie.

Post-apocalyptic settings offer a lot to low budget movie makers: You don’t have to use a lot of extras (everyone’s dead). You can keep the costume budget in check (everyone has gone retro). You can introduce any number of Deus Ex Machina and McGuffins with just a few lines of technobabble (because it’s the future). The trick is making things bleak enough to provide for adventure but hopeful enough to allow for a hero to emerge.

By these standards, lets look into the world of Circuitry Man.

The setting for Circuitry Man, and it’s sequel Plughead Rewired: Circuitry Man II, is a near future dysotopia where the world’s surface is unlivable and the air unbreathable, causing what’s left of humanity takes refuge underground. People distract themselves with kinky sex, dressing in zoot suits and a poorly explained, euphoria enducing electronic interface which is implemented by plugging a computer chip into a socket implanted into one’s head.

The last is for some reason illegal.

In the first movie, we’re introduced to Lori, a bodyguard/badass who comes into possession of a large number of the illegal chips and needs to get from LA to New York in order to profit. She enlists the help of Danner, a “bio-synthetic” who has experience using the maze of tunnels that run under the whole damn United States as well as the delusion of a long lost love who in reality is nothing more than an artifical memory. They meet the colorful, leech eating Jersey boy named… well, Leech (who provides one of the best scenes in the movie explaining why he wants to hitch a rid),  get chased byby a pair of comedic, inept agents of what’s left of the government and also by the main villain of the piece, Plughead.

Plughead is a psychotic psychotherapist who is addicted to pain, adding more hardware to his cranium and being exceptionally creepy. He’s played by Vernon Wells, who rocked the mohawk and assless chaps in Road Warrior.

While I won’t tell you who survives the LA to NY trek, I will point out that Plughead, Leech and Danner are the only characters that make it into the second film.

Circutry Man II: Plughead Rewired picks up some time shortly after Circuitry Man leaves off with Plughead now being public enemy number 1. A new heroine is introduced to chase him down and she pulls Danner out of a loony bin to help her. Traci Lords plays a scientist being used by Plughead to do something bad and which threatens us all, etc. etc.

Both films commit the sin of dithering on whether or not they’re going to take themselves seriously, though Cicuitry Man suffers from this worse than its sequel (the government agents are practically introduced with Yakkaty Sax). But in the moments they do take themselves seriously, some intense acting happens. Danner comes across as genuinely sympathetic and Plughead comes across and genuinely threatening. The quality of acting is polluted by the mediocre performance of the second movie’s heroine which may be forgivable considering she gives us the only nude scene in either flick.

Circuitry Man and its sequel are fun movies, not even trying to get higher than a 6 on the reality scale. Both are testaments to the early nineties mindset that computers were the answer to everything and that soon our skin complexions would all look like the back of a PC. The core theme of both movies is hope in the face of crushing adversity and despite the moments in which you can almost hear the script writers snickering at you for watching, there’s a consistent and marginally plausible universe here for the characters to play in.

I liked these movies enough to go buy the two-for-one DVD release of them after having seen them both only once before. Going down the report card I give Circuitry Man and Circuitry Man II a C and B, respectively. Though in truth, I’m not holding my breath for Cicuitry Man III.