Silver Emulsion Film Reviews

Cube (1997)

Starring Maurice Dean Wint, David Hewlett, Nicole de Boer, Nicky Guadagni, Andrew Miller, Julian Richings, Wayne Robson

Directed by Vincenzo Natali

Expectations: Low. I don’t remember liking this.

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

Like a lot of movies I saw in the late ’90s, I’m finding that revisiting them now is a much better experience than watching them then. Back then, my expectations for Cube were through the roof; it seemed like it was everything I could want rolled into one movie. Things like cool science fiction sets, crazy traps and realistic gore FX. But I simply wasn’t ready to appreciate this movie for what it was, as I was ear-deep in my film snob phase and only the best in cinema would suffice.

Nowadays my expectations for movies have changed quite a bit, and I’m more than happy to just roll with the punches as long as the movie is of quality enough to entertain. Cube does entertain, and it does so pretty well, but it’s just shy of being everything that it could be thanks to some questionable, over-the-top acting and some equally questionable writing. But that’s OK, this is a début feature so things like that are bound to come up. And besides, look at that fucking cube set! It’s awesome!

Blind Spot Series 2013

Ryan McNeil of The Matinee started this Blind Spot series a while back, and I’m finally going to take the plunge myself in 2013. The idea is simple: you compile a list of 12 movies you’ve never seen and consider to be “cinematic blind spots”, and then over the course of the year you actually watch them — one a month — instead of shuffling them down your queue and continuing to avoid them.

Below I present my list for 2013, listed alphabetically. If I allowed myself to choose what to watch at random, I might be tempted not to choose, thus unceremoniously abandoning the project.

As if I needed another series! Anyway, it should be fun.

Ace in the Hole
Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Badlands
Black Narcissus
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Freaks
Giant
The King of Comedy
Repulsion
Shadow of a Doubt
Swing Time

Mini-Review: Woody Allen: A Documentary (2011)

Starring Woody Allen, Letty Aronson, Marshall Brickman, Josh Brolin, Dick Cavett, Mariel Hemingway, Diane Keaton, Louise Lasser

Directed by Robert B. Weide

Expectations: High. I’m a big Woody Allen fan.

Woody Allen has been one of my favorite filmmakers since the early days of my film obsession. My first Allen film was Annie Hall, and the first time I saw it I hated it. I was a punk teenager that went into the movie with a chip on his shoulder. I found it wholly unfunny, but in the following months I also found that I couldn’t stop thinking about it. This eventually led me to re-watch the film a couple of months later, and an admiration of Allen’s style and wit has been growing ever since. He’s definitely not a filmmaker for everyone, but for anyone who’s a little neurotic and has contemplated the nature of life and death a few times, it really doesn’t get any better than the thought-provoking comedy of Woody Allen.

Allen is the perfect amalgamation of his two greatest influences: the Marx Brothers and Ingmar Bergman. I was never able to get into Bergman when I was younger, but I have a feeling my adult penchant for deep thought and analysis will reveal many intricacies in his work that were completely lost on me in my youth. Anyway, this documentary is a superb piece of work detailing the path Allen took to becoming a director, as well as examining the perennial themes in his work. I never noticed how many of his films are about choosing between fantasy and reality, but the film does a great job of making that fact readily apparent. Yes, I’d rather have come to it myself via a long, drawn-out review series, but once in a while it’s nice to get something quick and easy.

My main question with the film is whether those not harboring a love of Allen’s work will find anything of worth here. Surely anyone interested in filmmaking will enjoy seeing and hearing Allen talk about his process, and having his 40-year career laid out in front of you in three hours is a quick and easy way to become familiar with his catalog. But then there’s all the masturbatory “Woody is a genius” interviews that get tiresome, even for someone like me that holds Allen in very high regard. My girlfriend — who’s not a fan — watched most of it with me and said, “I still don’t get it” when it was all over. So I guess that’s my answer.

It’s too loving and biased to be a critical examination of Allen’s filmography, and it never concerns itself with delving too deep into Allen’s psyche. I don’t feel like I know him any better (which is fine), and the film didn’t make me love him any more. What it did do was remind me of all those precious Woody Allen movies I haven’t seen in years, and just how much fun I’m going to have when I eventually review my way through his filmography.

The Iron Buddha (1970)

The Iron Buddha [鐵羅漢] (1970)

Starring Ling Yun, Fang Ying, Wong Chung-Shun, Chen Hung Lieh, Yau Ching, Yue Wai, Fan Mei-Sheng, Fang Mian, Goo Man-Chung, Yen Chun, Lee Sau Kei, Go Ming, Shum Lo

Directed by Yen Chun

Expectations: High. Sammo Hung choreography is generally fastastic.

It’s always fun when I discover a more “modern” martial arts film amidst the old school wuxia. It wouldn’t be fair to call this anything but a wuxia film, but its sensibilities are definitely progressive rather than regressive, and that’s always a good thing when it comes to this review series. The Iron Buddha isn’t a great film, or even a genre great, but it is remarkably fun, high-class entertainment that will satisfy those looking for a great diversion from your normal, not-flying-around-and-jumping-fifty-feet-into-trees life.

The Iron Buddha starts off uniquely as the rapist Xiao Tianzun (Wong Chung-Shun) is caught red-handed, but let free by a merciful martial arts master who is familiar with the reputation of the rapist’s teacher. He does not leave the rapist unscathed, though, carving a deep cross on his chest to mark him as an evildoer. Three years later, Xiao tracks down the man who gave him the scar, rapes his daughter while he watches and then kills him! Without missing a beat, he then murders the man’s entire school of students, save one rather resourceful guy who happened to be away from the group. This student becomes our main character, Luo Han (Ling Yun), and he’s out for some serious revenge! Now that’s a classic kung fu setup if I’ve ever heard one!

Mini-Review: AVPR: Alien vs. Predator – Requiem (2007)

AVPR: Alien vs. Predator – Requiem (2007)
AKA Aliens vs. Predator 2, AVP2: Requiem

Starring Steven Pasquale, Reiko Aylesworth, John Ortiz, Johnny Lewis, Ariel Gade, Kristen Hager, Sam Trammell, Robert Joy, David Paetkau, Tom Woodruff Jr., Ian Whyte, Chelah Horsdal

Directed by Colin & Greg Strause (AKA The Brothers Strause)

Expectations: Moderate. I should know better, but that first one was fun.

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

So y’know those ancient ruins and hieroglyphs and Predator mythology that made AVP so highly entertaining to me? Imagine a movie where they took all that stuff out, and replaced it with a bunch of small-town, human drama. Shit like “the pizza guy that’s too shy to ask the pretty girl out,” or “the distraught mother looking for her lost son and husband.” Oh, and imagine all of those sub-plots not really mattering to anything. And how about if we have the Predator play CSI by lurking around the forest for most of the movie, pouring blue goo on things to destroy evidence of the Alien (and Predalien) presence on Earth? This, my friends, is a recipe for disaster.

1023_14_screenshot — No bullshit, this is an actual screenshot from a scene in the film.

While I found it interesting to have the Predator play the role of the cleaner (and I got some amusement out of imagining Pulp Fiction‘s Harvey Keitel character, The Wolf, inside the suit), if he’s really trying to cover his tracks then why does he indiscriminately kill any human that comes upon him, stringing them up without their skin for other humans to find. He’s not on a hunt; he’s a cleaner, so why is he leaving messes? The logical side of my brain was blaring alarms constantly throughout AVPR, and while I know that this isn’t the type of movie to stand up to logical criticism, they should at least have the decency to make the stupid shit fun. But not a single moment of AVPR gave me any fun. And I say that without hyperbole — not a single moment.

There were definitely opportunities for fun, but every one of these was swallowed into the belly of the whale known as “Horrible Editing and Abysmal Lighting.” I expect a mainstream trash movie like this to be edited to hell, but AVPR is beyond awful. Coupled with what is probably the darkest and most indecipherable cinematography I’ve ever seen, we’ve got a real “winner” on our hands. If I was able to make out what was going on around the editing, the lighting — or really, the lack of lighting — made it so that I was literally unable to see anything on-screen during large sections of the film.

And honestly, I don’t even know what else to say about this piece of shit. It’s a horrible movie, with literally no redeeming qualities. The setup of the Predalien hybrid at the end of AVP was a super fun tease, but the direction this film took it in was absolutely the worst option. Watch the first one over again and spare yourself the pain of AVPR.

Stephen reviews: Fist of the North Star (1995)

Starring Gary Daniels, Malcolm McDowell, Costas Mandylor, Downtown Julie Brown, Dante Basco, Nalona Herron, Melvin Van Peebles, Clint Howard, Chris Penn, Andre Rosey Brown, Isako Washio, Paulo Tocha

Directed by Tony Randel

Now what on Earth am I doing reviewing a live-action American film, you might ask. Well, if your memory reaches back a few weeks, you might remember my review of the anime Fist of the North Star, and this is the live-action adaptation of the series, though not specifically of that 1986 film. It claims to be the first Hollywood adaptation of an anime, and in the absence of any contrary evidence, I’m not going to argue.

The use of the word “Hollywood” implies an impressive big-budget production, but that really isn’t the case. Kill Bill this ain’t. You’re also probably questioning if a live-action American film could possibly capture the spirit of an anime, especially one as absurd as Fist of the North Star. Obviously you can’t expect to see a 20-foot-tall giant turn his skin into steel and trample an entire army. And since shit like that is the main draw of the anime title, you have to go into this version with some vastly different expectations.

Ancient Evil 2: Guardian of the Underworld (2005)

Ancient Evil 2: Guardian of the Underworld (2005)
AKA Anubis: Guardian of the Underworld, Anubis: Rising

Starring Victoria Campbell, Adam Lipskey, Don Sandeen, Noel Francomano, Christopher Kann, Alex Whall

Directed by D.W. Kann

Expectations: Super low… looks so bad.

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

I don’t know where to begin, or even what to write about this movie. It’s not that I’m so checked out on it that I can’t bear to think about it; it was actually OK. It’s also not that nothing worth writing about happened, because there were definitely B-Movie moments galore. I just can’t drum up the motivation necessary to pull these thoughts together into a cohesive review. The film wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I expected, nor was it especially good. Instead it fell squarely into that dreaded middle region of indifference, and when the movie in question is so obscure that no one you know will have even heard of it (or care to hear of it), it’s hard to make even myself care enough to write this damn thing. But I will soldier on and do my best.

Despite that big “Ancient Evil 2” on the headline, this is not actually a sequel to the David DeCoteau film I reviewed last week. Had it been, I’d be far more interested in it! Anyway, it is one of those lovely “sequels in name only” and the level of quality here has sunk from low-budget to the no-budget realm of shot-on-video, amateur horror. Surprisingly, this is never an issue as the filmmaking is actually of a high-enough quality that you’re focusing more on the actors and the story than how it always feels like you’re watching someone’s painful home videos.