By  Will, on May 23, 2013, 12:01 am 
This post is part of Japan-O-Rama at Paul’s awesome site Paragraph Film Reviews! Head over there for a paragraph version of my review, or stay here for the wordier and probably less effective version!
 Sansho the Bailiff [山椒大夫 Sanshō Dayū] (1954)
AKA Legend of Bailiff Sansho, The Bailiff
Starring Kinuyo Tanaka, Kyoko Kagawa, Yoshiaki Hanayagi, Eitaro Shindo, Ichiro Sugai, Ken Mitsuda, Masahiko Tsugawa, Masao Shimizu, Chieko Naniwa, Kikue Mori, Akitake Kono, Ryosuke Kagawa
Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi
Expectations: High, but I don’t know anything about it.
Sansho the Bailiff trades heavily in very depressing subject matter, but its defining theme comes from a proverb spoken by our main character’s father in the first few minutes of the film. The father is the governor of a small province, but his kindness towards his subjects has led to him being transferred to a very out-of-the-way, undesirable location. His wife, Tamaki, and their two children (Zushio and Anju) are sent to live with his brother for a few years, but before they leave the father says a few words to Zushio.
“Without mercy, man is like a beast. Even if you are hard on yourself, be merciful to others. Men are created equal. Everyone is entitled to their happiness.”
Continue reading Sansho the Bailiff (1954) →
By  Stephen, on May 22, 2013, 5:20 am  Galaxy Express 999: Eternal Fantasy [銀河鉄道９９９ エターナルファンタジー Ginga Tetsudo 999: Eternal Fantasy] (1998)
Starring Masako Ikeda, Masako Nozawa, Kōichi Yamadera, Kaneta Kimotsuki, Keiko Toda, Yoshiko Sakakibara, Noriko Hidaka, Yuko Minaguchi
Directed by Kōnosuke Uda
When I said in last week’s review of Adieu Galaxy Express 999 that it was an impromptu trilogy I had no idea just how true that was. Eternal Fantasy was not quite what I expected. Despite my assumptions going in, it was not in fact meant to conclude anything. Eternal Fantasy fully intended to have a sequel, and even advertised for it after the credits. But low and behold, no sequel was ever made. So the film that actually concludes the Galaxy Express trilogy was the only film that wasn’t supposed to be a conclusion. And just to compound the irony, Eternal Fantasy‘s tagline is, “The future will never betray you.”
This is a shame since the film has a lot of potential. I would have happily signed on for another sequel if one actually existed. The changes were a mix of good and bad, but on the whole, things were going pretty well. Its only huge failing is its cut-off ending.
Continue reading Stephen reviews: Galaxy Express 999: Eternal Fantasy (1998) →
By Will, on May 21, 2013, 5:20 am  Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lou Ferrigno, Mike Katz, Franco Columbu, George Butler, Joe Weider, Bill Grant, Ken Waller, Reg Park, Ed Corney, Matty Ferrigno, Liev Schreiber, Sylvester Stallone, Bud Cort
Directed by Dave & Scott McVeigh
Expectations: Moderate.
I’m not in the habit of reviewing DVD extras, but this one seemed juicy enough considering I’ve covered all the other Arnold-related bodybuilding films. I’m hesitant to rate it, though, as it’s hard to really quantify its quality as a film. In any case, I really enjoyed watching it, and I think any big fan of Pumping Iron or Arnold would enjoy it too. So a definite thumbs up, but I’m going to forgo the stars this time.
There were over 100 hours of footage shot for Pumping Iron, so Raw Iron takes a different approach to the “Making of” documentary. Instead of simply gathering a bunch of people to talk to the camera and tell their stories, Raw Iron actually tells its story through deleted footage from the film. These scenes were kept in the vault until Raw Iron‘s release for Pumping Iron‘s 25th anniversary. This deleted footage is mostly great, too, from an unused sub-plot with Arnold trying to teach Harold and Maude‘s Bud Cort how to pump up in the gym, to the film’s bodybuilders posing on top of a Malibu mountain while listening to Arnold pontificate about “the pump.” It’s great fun to see all this unused footage.
Continue reading Raw Iron: The Making of Pumping Iron (2002) →
By Will, on May 20, 2013, 5:20 am  The Comeback (1980)
AKA Total Rebuild
Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Platz, Frank Zane, Dennis Tinerino, Boyer Coe, Mike Mentzer, Samir Bannout, Roger Walker, Roy Callendar, Ken Waller, Tony Emmott, Chris Dickerson, Casey Viator, Ed Corney, Roy Duval, Danny Padilla, Bill Pearl
Directed by Kit Laughlin
Expectations: Moderate.
The Comeback is a short film that caught a choice moment in the history of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Just a few weeks before filming for Conan the Barbarian began, on the precipice of true Hollywood stardom, Arnold decided that since he was already pumped up for that barbaric role, he’d challenge himself to prepare for a Mr. Olympia competition in only eight weeks. Most of the competitors train for at least a year to compete in this competition, but Arnold had six wins under his belt already (the sixth was the one featured in Pumping Iron), and he had the cocky, self-assured attitude to go with the accolades.
Continue reading The Comeback (1980) →
By Will, on May 19, 2013, 5:20 am  Starring Helen Slater, Faye Dunaway, Hart Bochner, Peter Cook, Brenda Vaccaro, Maureen Teefy, Marc McClure, Peter O’Toole, Mia Farrow, Simon Ward, David Healy
Directed by Jeannot Szwarc
Expectations: I’m so excited.
On the general scale:
On the B-movie scale:
The opening scene of Supergirl tries its best to liken itself to the opening scene of Superman, showing us a strange, alien world inhabited by humanoids much like ourselves. But where that original scene was interesting, the one in Supergirl falls a bit short. It does ostensibly perform the same task, though: setting up the canvas on which the rest of the film will be painted. For Superman, that canvas was grand and heroic, but for Supergirl, it’s campy, over-the-top and very much in the realm of B-Movies. One of my favorite phrases to repeat to myself while watching movies like Superman, Thor or The Avengers is, “This is cosmic done right!” Supergirl is most definitely “cosmic done wrong.” That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its share of fun, but even by ’80s or B-Movie standards this is pretty lackluster.
Kara Zor-El (AKA Supergirl, AKA Linda Lee) is Superman’s cousin. She lives in a white sparkling place called Argo City, which is basically a chunk of the planet Krypton that survived the destruction of the planet. They don’t really explain it, I don’t really understand it, but that’s what it is. Oh, and apparently it’s under our ocean? That REALLY didn’t make sense to me, because they show Supergirl going through space to get to Earth and then she pops out of a lake on the studio backlot. So I guess that was supposed to be the deep, dark ocean she was going through. It did have a watery look at times. The lake part still doesn’t compute, though, especially given the film’s ending. Maybe they were trying to clumsily remind us of the adage that all streams lead to the ocean? I honestly don’t know. Anyway… Peter O’Toole steals the city’s power source (the Omegahedron!) because he’s a wascaly, wascaly wabbit, but through a bad chain of events Supergirl ends up losing the Omegahedron when it rockets out the city’s paper walls. Uh oh. So Supergirl jumps in the city’s diving pod in order to retrieve the power source, and thus our adventure begins. But, of course, the Omegahedron immediately falls into the hands of our villain, the evil witch Selena (Faye Dunaway), who uses it to quickly gain power and fulfill her dreams of world domination.
Continue reading Supergirl (1984) →
By Will, on May 18, 2013, 5:20 am  Starring Samuel Fuller, Jim Jarmusch
Directed by Mika Kaurismäki
Expectations: Moderately high.
Tigrero: A Film That Was Never Made is a gift to Sam Fuller fans, and not of much interest to those that aren’t. It chronicles the 1993 journey of Sam Fuller and Jim Jarmusch to the jungles of Brazil to find the Karajá people who Sam Fuller met and filmed in the mid-1950s. He was sent there by Darryl F. Zanuck to scout for a film called Tigrero, which was to star John Wayne, but ultimately the picture was scrapped due to the insurance costs being too high. Fuller, frustrated with the bullshit involved with getting the picture off the ground with the studio, threw himself into his work on the screenplay for Run of the Arrow.
If I was more focused with these Sam Fuller reviews, maybe I’d have done this in order after House of Bamboo, which was when Fuller initially went to Brazil. Oh well, them’s the breaks! The work on the unfilmed movie Tigrero accounts for the lack of a Fuller film in 1956, but he made up for it big time with three releases in 1957! Some of the footage he filmed for Tigrero ultimately found its way into Shock Corridor as the dream sequences, but other than that it would seem that the experience was a waste of his time.
Continue reading Tigrero: A Film That Was Never Made (1994) →
By Will, on May 17, 2013, 5:20 am  Vengeance of a Snow Girl [冰天俠女] (1971)
AKA A Daughter’s Vengeance
Starring Li Ching, Yueh Hua, Ku Feng, Tien Feng, Lisa Chiao Chiao, Paul Chang Chung, Wong Chung-Shun, Lee Kwan, Nau Nau, Lo Wei, Hsu Yu
Directed by Lo Wei
Expectations: Pretty low, but hopeful.
As I slowly approach 1972 and the real rise of the unarmed martial arts film, many of the films in 1971 have been significant in their own right. Vengeance of a Snow Girl is the final Lo Wei film for the Shaw Brothers, and it was released just two days before Golden Harvest released the film that could easily be called the most important film of Lo Wei’s career, The Big Boss. Yup, the film that gave the filmgoing world Bruce Lee, still one of the most popular figures in martial arts history. He’s like the Jimi Hendrix of the martial arts film world. He only finished a few works before his untimely death, but they continue to resonate. But Vengeance of a Snow Girl doesn’t star Bruce Lee, and, as far as I can tell, it didn’t set the world on fire like The Big Boss did. I’m sure the release date was timed specifically to undercut the performance of Golden Harvest’s The Big Boss, but clearly that plan (if it was a plan) backfired. I don’t think anything could keep people from loving Bruce Lee.
Vengeance of a Snow Girl tells the tale of Shen Ping Hong (Li Ching), an orphan on the warpath to kill the four men who murdered her parents in cold blood, and were in part responsible for the crippling of her legs. Yeah, that’s right, Li Ching plays a girl who can’t walk, but is on a mission of vengeance. Her kung fu is strong enough to allow her to fly and float around, and it also allows her to stay standing while she trades blows with her enemies. But before you get too excited about the entertainment prospects that this premise sets up, all four of her targets are all gathered together already, so instead of a rollicking quest around the countryside looking for these devious bastards, everybody just does a lot of talking about the girl that’s going to kill them.
Continue reading Vengeance of a Snow Girl (1971) →
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