Will’s Reviews

Scanners (1981)

Starring Jennifer O’Neill, Stephen Lack, Patrick McGoohan, Lawrence Dane, Michael Ironside, Robert A. Silverman, Lee Broker, Mavor Moore, Adam Ludwig

Directed by David Cronenberg

Expectations: Very high. I’ve seen the head explosion like fifty times, but have never seen the movie.

Oh man, this is gonna be a tough one. One one hand, I loved Scanners. It has a strange vibe with incredible visuals and some really intense moments (not to mention the gore). On the other hand, it belongs to that era of film that I almost always find slow, plodding and hard to watch. So yeah, I kinda loved Scanners while also kinda hating it. In the end, the two emotions blended into a definite liking of the film overall, but I can’t dismiss the fact that the film was kind of hard to sit through. Part of that is me, I had a super long day and I was exhausted when I started it. I knew going in it was a sticky situation, and if the film didn’t completely hold my attention I’d be quickly counting sheep. I fought—and I fought hard—but Scanners just didn’t do it for me like I expected it to. Fucking high expectations, ruining a perfectly good telepathy movie for me.

Scanners is about scanners, genetically special people who can read minds and, in certain cases, control them. Without going too in-depth, there’s one “good” scanner, Cameron, sent to hunt down Revok, played by a young Michael Ironside who’s looking very Jack Nicholson-esque. Revok is an evil scanner who blew up a dude’s head in his introduction scene a few minutes into the movie. While you might think that signals a film filled with insane, gory special effects, that’s not the case. That head explosion is the lion’s share of the gore, but there are a few other choice moments. So anyway, the drive of the movie is Cameron trying to hunt down and kill Revok, but that makes it sound action-packed (or somewhat similar to Blade Runner) and it’s not really.

The Wandering Swordsman (1970)

The Wandering Swordsman [遊俠兒] (1970)

Starring David Chiang, Lily Li Li-Li, Cheng Lui, Cheung Pooi-Saan, Wang Kuang-Yu, Wu Ma, Chan Sing, Lau Gong, Hung Lau, Bolo Yeung-Tze, Tung Li, Nam Wai-Lit, Tung Choi-Bo

Directed by Chang Cheh

Expectations: Very high. After Have Sword, Will Travel this one should be pretty good.

After the wonderful and brilliant Have Sword, Will Travel, Chang Cheh made this film, but instead of using the fearsome duo of budding stars Ti Ling and David Chiang, he decided to make this one Chiang’s first starring role. Who knows what Ti Lung was off doing (his only films from 1970 are the ones that came after this and featured both Ti and Chiang), but regardless The Wandering Swordsman is an average, and fairly clichéd genre effort from the master Chang Cheh. I’d definitely rather see a somewhat lackluster effort from Chang than one from another director though, so The Wandering Swordsman does manage to entertain for the most part.

The film opens with David Chiang cleverly spying on two bandits. He plays with them from the grass, making them question if they’re alone. He’s so good that they don’t know he’s there, which he clearly gets off on. When the moment is right, Chiang strikes and takes the gold the men stole, in order to, y’know, give it to the poor. We got ourselves a regular Robin ‘ood! The first half continues along in this playful manner, but then it ditches the Robin Hood storyline for a more traditional wuxia “bandits vs. security company transporting treasure” story. It’s just that here David Chiang as Wandering Swordsman (Yes, that’s his name in the movie) gets caught up in the middle by being absolutely fucking stupid.

Doggy Poo (2003)

Doggy Poo [강아지 똥] (2003)

Starring Fiona Stuart, Josh Smith, Anna Desmarais, Kate Yoon, Tony Ruse

Directed by Kwon Oh-sung

Expectations: High. Watch the trailer first and you’ll know what I mean. Well, if you share my sense of humor.

Stephen brought this one to my attention. Its trailer was on one of the anime DVDs he was reviewing and thankfully he sent me a YouTube link post-haste. Before the video even ended, I had it added to my Netflix queue and quickly escorted directly to the top of the list. There are some films you just can’t wait on. Before I continue, I’d just like to say my apologies now to the creators of this film. I truly respect the work that went into this, and I think you have crafted a good film, but I simply cannot write a review of a movie that has a piece of dog shit for its main character and not make fun of it.

Doggy Poo is a movie about just that. The film opens with a simulated helicopter shot flying through mountains and valleys before finally coming to rest in a small, rural village. A Jack Russell terrier scampers into frame, squats his little butt down and drops our main character onto the dirt road, complete with oh-so-cute little shit hands. A bird flies down and pecks at it, hoping for a tasty morsel. Instead she quickly realizes that Doggy Poo is a doggy poo and flies away in disgust. If only Ms. Bird had noticed that Doggy Poo’s eyes were little seeds!

Killjoy 2: Deliverance from Evil (2002)

Starring Charles Austin, Wayland Geremy Boyd, Bobby Marsden, Aaron Brown, Logan Alexander, Debbie Rochon, Nicole Pulliam, Choice Skinner, Olimpia Fernandez

Directed by Tammi Sutton

Expectations: Moderate. I loved the first one, but I have a bad feeling about this one.

On the general scale:

On the B-Movie scale:

I loved the original Killjoy, and even though I had heard some horrid things about this sequel, I held out hope. With an intro featuring a badass foot chase through an office building with low-rent funk blasting out of the soundtrack and white cops calling black perps motherfuckers, I thought I was about to find another modern blaxploitation horror gem. It was all a ruse, though, and quickly my excitement waned as the actual movie set in. Killjoy 2 concerns a group of young criminals being transported in a van to another facility… somewhere. At night, their van breaks down in the middle of nowhere and without any cell service, they venture out in search of a house with a phone they can use. That’s about half the movie so I should probably stop there.

The original Killjoy was low-budget at around the $150,000 mark, but it made the best with what it had and crafted an interesting, fun film. Killjoy 2 was made for the smaller sum of $30,000, and while it tries to make that work, the quality of the writing and the situations are just so poor that it’s nearly impossible to be entertained by this film. It only runs seventy-two minutes but it is an absolute slog to get through… well, that’s not entirely true. The first half, while bad, is infinitely more enjoyable than the last half when Killjoy is around. I know that sounds odd, but Killjoy was so scaled back and different in this that he only made me sad. Perhaps his on-screen strength is directly proportionate to the quality of the reason why someone is summoning him. In the first film there was a lifetime of pain and bullying, but in this film it’s only a desperate attempt to heal their friend’s gunshot wound. What were they thinking? Killjoy isn’t named Healjoy, he’s a fucking killer clown! The bastards in Killjoy 3 better have a damn good reason to call up Killjoy from the depths!

Chronicle (2012)

Starring Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell, Michael B. Jordan, Michael Kelly, Ashley Hinshaw, Bo Petersen, Anna Wood, Rudi Malcolm, Luke Tyler

Directed by Josh Trank

Expectations: Moderately high. I really liked the FX in the TV spot.

Chronicle is a found-footage movie that forgets one key element of the found-footage genre: the consumer-grade video camera. Instead of shooting the film on low-end equipment to give the film’s tale credibility and reality, the filmmakers instead chose to shoot the entire thing on the ARRI Alexa (which runs about $90,000 for a starter kit), basically the current reigning digital camera champion. It’s been used to shoot a shitload of high-profile films such as Drive, Hugo, Melancholia, The Avengers, and many, many more. (And yes, I only picked movies that I had reviewed so that I could link them… What can I say? The shot in Chronicle of the Apple iPad hurtling towards the screen with the Apple logo always in full view inspired my shameless side. I would advise Apple’s marketing team to insist that in the sequel it is a MacBook that is hurtled so that the Apple logo can be illuminated when it’s flying towards the screen.) While the Alexa itself is revolutionary and truly able to capture some amazing digital images, Chronicle is a found-footage movie. The stunning visuals should come from the specifics of the action, not the quality of the cinematography.

In part, the film does deliver great special effects that make you believe three high school kids just got crazy superpowers. The best of these moments is the one that sold me when I saw it in the trailer. It features the lead kid riding in the back seat of a car. An asshole guy in a truck follows closely behind, honking his horn. The kid waves his arm to the side and the truck careens off the road, through the guard rail and into the river below. Holy shit! It really looks great, but a few pretty FX aren’t gonna do the job here. If this was a four-minute short film, I’d be singing a different tune, but this is actually one of the more boring eighty-minute films I’ve seen in a while. And I’m the guy that sat through six horribly lackluster Josh Kirby, Time Warrior films earlier this year.

Have Sword, Will Travel (1969)

Have Sword Will Travel [保鏢] (1969)
AKA The Bodyguard

Starring Ti Lung, Li Ching, David Chiang, Cheng Miu, Wang Kuang-Yu, Wong Ching Ho, Ku Feng, Cliff Lok Kam Tung, Lau Gong, Hung Lau, Chan Sing, Wong Chung, Cheng Lui, Cheng Kang-Yeh

Directed by Chang Cheh

Expectations: Very high? The first martial arts film by Chang Cheh with Ti Lung and David Chang? This should be spectacular.

Oh man, this one might be a long one. I think I took more notes for this one than I ever have for any previous review. Have Sword, Will Travel is the first martial arts film to feature the duo of Ti Lung and David Chiang, and boy what a film to kick off their wuxia careers. Chang Cheh’s previous martial arts film was The Invincible Fist, and while this film doesn’t quite reach those heights, it comes damn close.

Written by noted martial arts scribe Ni Kuang (who had previously written The One-Armed Swordsman and The Invincible Fist for Chang Cheh), Have Sword, Will Travel is yet another example of the man’s stunning writing ability. No one looks to this genre for quality writing (in fact, most people regularly lambaste it for its shitty writing), but they clearly haven’t experienced a great Ni Kuang script.

Let the Bullets Fly (2010)

Let the Bullets Fly [讓子彈飛吧] (2010)

Starring Jiang Wen, Chow Yun-Fat, Ge You, Shao Bing, Liao Fan, Du Yi-Heng, Li Jing, Zhang Mo, Wei Xiao, Carina Lau, Zhou Yun, Yao Lu, Jiang Wu

Directed by Jiang Wen

Expectations: Moderate. I’ve heard good and bad things.

Let the Bullets Fly is a very interesting multi-genre movie, but if you go in with expectations that Chow Yun-Fat will resurrect his past with John Woo by letting some heroic bullets fly, you might as well not watch it. It’s nothing like that at all. At its heart it’s a comedy, one which may or may not make it through the translation depending on your sense of humor, but it’s a comedy built on the framework of a town western with sprinkles of action mixed in very frugally. It’s also a drama, with some excellent back-and-forth dialogue scenes between the great actors. But none of these elements make the film great individually, it’s how they all work together to create a cohesive narrative that takes the film and makes it fly like the titular bullets.

A group of bandits led by Pocky Zhang (Jiang Wen, and also our director) hijacks a horse-drawn train transporting the new governor of Goose Town. He hopes to find a bounty of silver inside the cabin, but instead he only finds the snivelling governor and his wife. They tell Zhang that the money he seeks can be found in Goose Town, so the bandits, with the governor and his wife in tow, travel there and Zhang poses as the new governor. This raises the ire of local mob boss Huang (Chow Yun-Fat), and before we know it we’re locked into an intense, and hilarious, battle of wills between the two.