Chanthaly

 There aren't that many movies from Laos - 40, according to IMDB, maybe half of them released after Chanthaly. It's a very traditional, still staunchly communist country, with that regime's mistrust of anything fantastic. So Mattie Do's and spouse Christopher Larsen's achievement of making three horror movies over the last decade or so is impressive on multiple levels - not the least of which is that they all kick major ass.

 This was their first feature, after only a little experience in Laotian TV, and it shows. Made wholly in the couple's house at the same time they lived in it (the film took about a year to complete), it's a little bit rougher, a little bit less assured, but it's recognizably of a piece with Dear Sister and The Long Road, which was one of the best movies I saw last year.

 Chanthaly (Amphaiphun Phommapunya) lives with her father in a walled-off house in Vientiane; for all her adult life, she's been taking in the world outside in small snippets when the car gate opens, zealously guarded by her dad (Douangmany Soliphanh, who co-wrote). She has a heart disease, the same one her father insists killed her mother at childbirth. Which is strange, because she carries with her some vague memories of her mom, including a particularly upsetting one where she watched her die.

 And then she starts seeing her at night.

 

 The first two acts of the movie revolve around Chan's attempts to discover the truth about her mother, and to try to determine if she's actually seeing her mother's ghost, or if she's hallucinating due to the drugs she's taking to keep her condition in check.
 That plot's a very slow burn, interweaved with more mundane dramatic concerns - a possible suitor (Soulasath Souvanavong), a childhood friend (Soukchinda Duangkhamchan) who obviously carries a torch for her, and her clashes with her dad as she rebels against his rule. It's very well written but a little bit staid, a very traditional gothic yarn... until a twist contorts the movie's third act into a completely different beast.

 That it's a first movie comes across in the certain clumsiness to how some of the early scenes are structured - the pacing seems a bit off, but either it quickly gets better or I got into sync with its rhythms, because I stopped noticing after fifteen minutes. The sound design is a much bigger problem, with the thrum of machinery or night sounds way too high in the mix on most scenes.

 It's not really scary, at least not to these jaded eyes, but the horror elements are very well handled; no visual or practical effects to speak of, just clever framing, editing and blocking. The film just looks good in general, with careful compositions and good use of different color schemes; Not bad for someone whose formal training was being given a book on directing by her husband and watching other people do it while working as a makeup artist. The actors are great, too, particularly Phommapunya, whom Do met while on the makeup department of a TV show.

 Fun fact: The movie was effectively made open source as a stretch goal towards funding their next movie. You can watch it on youtube or download it from the Internet Archive; there was even a contest to remix all the footage (used and unused) to tell a different story.

 It's a really good movie, is what I'm saying. I have no idea if these films are so enthrallingly weird because of their maker's sensibilities, all the tiptoeing around political strictures, or the incorporation of local customs and superstitions. Likely to be some mix of all three, I guess. We're lucky they seem to have managed to gather an immense pool of talent around them; Can't wait to see what they come up with next.

The World We Knew

 British indie horror/crime hybrid The World We Knew is pretty impressively crafted - a consummately professional film that hides its low budget extremely well. It's so well made that it's easy to overlook that the script doesn't really do much with its cool premise ('a bunch of criminals hole up in an haunted hideout') other than let the criminals hang out and maybe see a ghost now and again. Maybe that's enough, when the movie is as engaging as this.

 The criminals are Barker (Struan Rodger), the old hand, experienced and theatrical; Gordon (Johan Myers), boisterous, unpredictable; Stoker (Kirk Lake, also has a writing credit along with director Matthew Jones), who's in it to go legit; And last but not least Poe (Alex Wells), the audience surrogate, a reluctant criminal who nonetheless shot a cop. They're laying low after a job gone wrong (left, as in Reservoir Dogs, an obvious inspiration, off-camera) that left a policeman and one of the criminals dead, and another one of theirs shot and bleeding to death upstairs.
 The location is an old abandoned house in the countryside, and they're left to the tender care of Carpenter (Finbar Lynch in a very Mark Strong role), another criminal who's higher up in the chain and is charged with figuring out what to do with the sorry lot. And when it starts looking like they were set up, that involves making them all stay the night to find out what really happened.

 There is good tension between the characters, and some intrigue - who set them up? Is Carpenter gearing up to kill them all as loose ends? Is Gordon going to snap and shoot up the place? Later things take a supernatural bent as the past starts intruding on the present. All of the plot points fizz out ineffectively, though; there is a twist at the end, but it barely registers. What remains is a quiet, atmospheric character drama, and while most of the characters are fairly stereotypical, they're no grandstanding motormouth gangsters. Everyone's given at least some depth and the dialog is written well enough to keep things interesting.
 That is, as long as you can understand it; the sound mix, which sometimes buries the actors' lines, plus the heavy British accents and sometimes mumbled dialog can sometimes make things hard to follow. The acting is pretty good, with most of the actors displaying the required gravitas, regret and/or menace, and the soundtrack (from French band The Limiñanas) is excellent, sounding like an indie psych-rock band doing a spaghetti western set - plus some cool synthy tracks thrown in for good measure.
 The filmmaking is also good, with a strong command of ambiance and well-considered handheld shots (DP: Laurens Scott, directed by Matthew Benjamin Jones and Luke Skinner). This is a movie that punches far above its weight in almost all respects.

 It fumbles a few times. Mostly in the plot department, but there's also a pivotal scene with Eddie confronting his sins that's a bit cringeworthy. And even when it's well written, there are some scenes that seem to be there just to pad out the run time: I'm all for a lovely retelling of the Orpheus myth, but to be honest if there's a thematic link other than the whole underworld business... I didn't catch it. Points for trying though.
 All these weaknesses don't do much to dilute its strengths, particularly when it's over at a lean eighty-two minutes. I hesitate to call it a horror movie; even with all of the principals named after famous horror authors and directors, it doesn't really even attempt to be scary. But whatever the genre, it's pretty damn good.

The Young Master

  Jackie Chan kicked off the '80s in grand style, writing, directing, starring and singing the end credits song on The Young Master for Golden Harvest. His ongoing ascent had been kicked up a notch with Yuen Woo-Ping's The Drunken Master, and it wouldn't really falter for at least a couple of decades. This one certainly didn't hurt his career, as it was a huge success in Hong Kong and other Asian countries; True success in the west would evade Chan for (arguably) another decade and a half and Rumble in the Bronx.

 It's got a really great, distinctive start. Chan plays Dragon, an orphan whose big brother Tiger (Pai Wei) is a pro at manning one of those Chinese dragon puppet things you see in parades, but the shortbus version - only two people. Their sifu (Tien Feng) runs a school that prides itself in being the best dragon puppeteers in the region, Tiger being his main star.

 As the yearly festival where they need to do the puppet show approaches, Tiger has an accident and injures his leg, so Dragon is tapped as the head puppeteer.
 One thing that may not be clear - the dragons don't really parade, they face each other in a sort of cross between puppet dance-off and an obstacle course. So the first action scene in the movie is the contest between Dragon's Golden Dragon against a rival school's Black Dragon. And it's great! Not just the acrobatics, but of course the Black Dragon plays dirty, so there's a little unconventional fighting as well.
 In the middle of the contest Dragon (this is getting confusing!) discovers his brother had been faking his injuries, and is actually puppeteering the rival Dragon! He's cut a deal with the rival school to get money for whoring. After some cool stunts and dirty fighting, the Black Dragon ends up victorious.

 Tiger's deceit is short-lived - The sifu soon finds out what he did and expels him. After some (mostly ineffective) drama and pretty terrible comedy the sifu regrets exiling Tiger and sends his brother after him. There's a slight problem, though - Tiger's fallen into a life of crime, and he's helped free the dangerous criminal Kam (Hwang In-Shik). Because his distinctive thing is to carry a white fan, an affectation Dragon shares... well, mistaken identities and all that. Dragon ends up being chased by the law and has to duel Kam to redeem his brother. The whole dragon puppeteering deal sadly never rears its wonderful papier-maché head again.

 This is a Jackie Chan movie through and through, though one set earlier in his career, so the fight choreography is not quite as imaginative, elaborate or as plain awesome as some of his later stuff (or as he had under other directors).  There's still a lot of cool stuff, mind, and Chan was already singularly funny with his physical comedy, at least during the fights. There's a lot of variety to the action, including a duel with wooden benches, some inspired sword dodging, and use of long skirts in battle. The final fight overstays its welcome badly at something like fifteen minutes, but I have to say its resolution makes it worthwhile.
 The comedy outside of the brawling is... well, it's a Chinese martial arts comedy. Broad as hell and mostly unfunny, but it actually does score a few great jokes; Not the least that at one point a character powers up from drinking the water from an opium pipe. As for the drama, the plot has a lot of potential, but not with these actors, the slapstick-y tone, and cross-eyed comedy characters.

 Stylistically it's a bit of a mix. The filmmaking is pretty straightforward, except there are a lot of dramatic zooms (at one point so exaggerated I wondered if it was being done for comedic effect) and a couple of speed ramps. There's some nice scenery, especially at the last fight, but nothing special. The film does benefit from Chan's clear approach to filming action. Fun fact: this movie does not have Chan's trademark use of outtakes - he would cameo at Cannonball Run later on the same year, and he'd like their use of outtakes at the end of that movie so much that he would steal it for use it on most of his own movies from there onwards.

 This is not a bad film -far from it- but I'd rank it relatively low in this extended period of Chan's career where almost everything he put out was a classic. Far below the Police Stories, any of the 'three brothers' movies, Rumble in the Bronx, or the mind-blowingly good Drunken Master 2, if you're aching for a period piece like this one.

Burnt Offerings

 The name Dan Curtis rang a bell, but it wasn't until I looked him up that I realized he's the creator of Dark Shadows. Burnt Offerings is one of the handful of horror movies he directed, and one of the few that wasn't made for TV. It... still kind of looks like a TV movie.

 Based on a novel by Robert Marasco, adapted by regular collaborator William F. Nolan (no relation), this is a very seventies horror movie that's got some cool ideas but unfortunately doesn't really justify itself until the very last couple of scenes. It does, however, have a truly unhinged performance by Oliver Reed, whose acting notes must have consisted of 'more apoplectic!' over and over again.

Not pictured: a whole lot of blubbering.

 Reed plays Ben Rolf, who moves to a palatial manor in the middle of nowhere for the summer with his family - his wife, Marian (Karen Black), his aunt (Bette Davis) and his young son David (Lee Montgomery. They rent the place from a couple of elderly loonies (Eileen Heckart and Burgess Meredith!) who seem like sweethearts but ask inappropriate questions and do that thing where they're kind of creepy even when they're all smiles. They set two conditions for the Rolfs: they need to take care of the house, and they need to take care of their mother, who'll keep to her room at the attic.

 The house is a little run down, but other than that their vacation is idyllic. Once there Marian takes to her new home maybe a little too much, though. And Ben gets possessed by something and tries to roughhouse his son to death (in a hilariously drawn-out scene). The house seems to be draining dear auntie of her lifeforce, too, and also tries to murder little David several times... you know what? Maybe I got the definition for idyllic wrong - what I meant to say is that their vacation fucking sucks. That place would never get rented out in these days of online reviews, even at $900 for a season.
 As the house terrorizes the Rolfs, it starts rejuvenating - getting new wallpapers, retiling the pool, etc. You know the residents notice because Marion explains that it's happening out loud once - but they take it weirdly into stride otherwise. At least until Ben sees the house shedding its old shingling like a snake sheds its skin (a cool scene), which results in him finally trying to run away and getting waylaid by the shrubbery (another cool, but cheesy scene). It all leads up to a very strong ending, of the sort that kind that almost puts the preceding hour and something under a better light.

 Nope - not here. I wouldn't describe it as miserable, but the experience of watching the movie wasn't that great either. The filmmaking is kind of uninspired, with very broad, sometimes soap-opera-like acting, dramatic zooms and a cheap-looking soft-focus effect to convey a dreamy atmosphere. Worse still, the pacing is completely off: a lot of the events aren't that interesting, and while there is some escalation, the atmosphere of dread it's clearly trying to build up doesn't ever really come to be. Changing wallpapers and other home renovations are not particularly scary.
 It's often unintentionally funny, especially Ben's recurrent 'horrific' hallucinations where he's haunted by the guy who drove the hearse at his mothers funeral. Oh no! the guy smiles at him! Jeez, Ben, maybe he was trying to be nice. You asshole. Reed is one of those actors where I can see why people liked him, and he was charismatic when he wanted to, but... well, not here. His panic attacks do make the movie much more entertaining, but maybe not in the way it was intended.

The Roundup

 The Roundup chronicles the further adventures of detective Ma Seok-do (Ma Dong-seok, but I'm going to start calling him by his chosen anglicized moniker of Don Lee) and his merry gang of police brutality enthusiasts, last seen in 2017's very enjoyable The Outlaws. We first get a look at him when he stops a nutjob who's holding a grocery store at knife-point. He gets annoyed at the would-be stabber and actually stabs him lightly in the ass a few times after brutally putting him down. Then, when the newspapers (correctly!) call out undue force, he and his buddies chuckle over the headlines!

 It's... I mean, I think it works within the tone of the movie, which is basically a more comedic, over-the-top Dirty Harry were Clint was a wise-cracking uncle who's not afraid to show some tough love. As with The Outlaws, it operates in a heightened world where torture works, regulations only hinder honest folk who want nothing but to do their job well, and Ma is basically an uncorruptible, infallible engine of justice. I'm ok with it because that's the buy-in to enjoy the film, and I can find it funny. But I'd understand it if others might not... so take this as a trigger warning, there is a lot of  shit in this film that should rightly horrify any right-thinking person.

 With all that out of the way: it's another fun outing for Don Lee and the gang. This time around they're sent out to Viet-Nam to extradite a Korean criminal; Detective Seok Do and his chief (Choi Gwi-hwa) are all set to take it as a holiday, but soon they discover that the real reason why their charge has turned himself in is to escape from a nasty psycho (Son Suk-ku) who's targeting Korean tourists abroad. Of course they decide to go out and investigate, even though it's completely out of their jurisdiction, and from there things get a little more complicated as their quarry angers the wrong millionaire and starts getting hunted down by mercenaries.

 I actually like the structure of the movie a lot - the movie starts with a brutal kidnapping, and the rest of the plot grows out of that organically; it's a good script, even if it often gets a little too ridiculous and kind of loses the plot by the final act.

 Don Lee remains the main attraction here, with a lot of cool dad energy (he even delivers a beatdown with his belt!) and comedic chops. It's a pretty funny film, and a lot of it is based on how inappropriate the shit they pull off is. They even sort of repeat the torture scene from the first movie and kind of turn it into a running gag. Bad Detectives: Port of Call Ho Chi Minh, except that the movie is completely, uncritically on their side.
 Most of the cast returns from The Outlaws; all of the cops and even some of the criminals are given supporting roles. The action is also great, a little upgraded from the first one - not just in that Don Lee now delivers some super-powered punches and knocks out someone with a slap, but the main antagonist gets a very respectable one-take knife/machete/cleaver brawl that starts out like the hallway fight in Oldboy but then spreads out into the surrounding house. Lots of cool stunts, people going through lots of furniture, some good vehicular action.

 All in all I think I liked the first one better, even if this is a better case - some of the stuff here just went a little too broad for my taste, especially how much they get away with over in 'Nam. It's also a clear case of a sequel that delivers more of the same, but louder, bigger, and sillier. That's fine, but let's set some higher goals for the third one.

Luz: The Flower of Evil

 An overtly arthouse folk horror film in which barely anything of consequence happens. Luz is a Colombian movie about a preacher (Conrado Osorio) who lives with his three adult daughters (Yuri Vargas, Sharon Guzman, and Andrea Esquivel) leading a small commune in the wilds. He runs it as a cult with guns, bluster, and eschatological rants.

 It's a great looking film - the color correction so integral to it that the company that did it (wemakecolor) gets two separate entries during the title credits; Kudos to them and art director Hugo Blandon. The saturated tones and exaggerated grain are somewhere between a film from the sixties and a fever dream. The premise is initially intriguing, as well: the script makes an attempt to lay out some themes and puzzles out for the viewers to put together.

 But the film has a terminal case of focusing on the visuals and opaque pronouncements, mostly from the father; endless, shallow mystical ramblings. It's counterpointed by a running narration from one of the girls that fails to shed any light on her internal life and mostly ended up reminding me of You Won't Be Alone... A comparison that could only hurt this movie.
 Things do eventually happen, but they mostly escalate to people histrionically screaming at each other, or result in near random actions that don't really lead anywhere. Early on one of the daughters finds a cassette player, and the preacher warns her that the devil likes wearing beautiful disguises; That setup ends up with an unintentionally very funny scene that tries to milk tension and imply satanism on a girl knitting in the woods to reedy, easy listening classical music. Which is a pretty funny portrayal of the fundamentalist mindset, I guess, but that's not really how it comes across. Especially when you factor in the (very cute) demonic goat and creepy whispers.

 It's very much a movie about the evils of patriarchal religion, though writer/director Juan Diego Escobar Alzate has the grace to muddy up the waters a little and add what at least could be interpreted as an actual  supernatural menace. It's hard to care about anyone involved, though - for all its breathy dialog the movie fails to sketch out any worthwhile characters, and the almost random nature of the events make it near impossible to give a shit about where things are ultimately headed.

Undead

 Here's another Australian zombie apocalypse movie directed by two brothers that gets by on cheap CGI effects, lots of gore, an outlandish concept and industrial amounts of enthusiasm. Made about a decade before the first Wyrmwood film, too.

 Undead was written and directed by Michael and Peter Spierig, who pooled their life savings to finance it (giving them the producer role as well, by default). It's a very bloody piss take on 50's sci-fi schlock with a plot that's got more than a passing resemblance to Plan 9 From Outer Space.

 Things kick off with René (Felicity Mason, doing a lot of her acting just with her striking grey eyes) trying to get out of the small Australian fishing town of Berkeley on the same day that meteorites start falling from the sky and turn people into ghouls. The undead invasion puts a hamper on her plans, so she's forced to take shelter in a derelict farm along with a young couple (Rob Jenkins and Lisa Cunningham) and two police officers (Dirk Hunter and Emma Randall). Said farm is actually something called "Marion's World of Weapons", and Marion (Mungo McKay) lurks inside, armed to the teeth.

 Fortunately for everyone, he's the good kind of well-armed survivalist nutjob: one who had a forewarning of the doomsday, and turned out to be right. He carries around a triple shotgun (reminded me of the sword from The Sword and the Sorcerer) and pulls silly/cool moves like throwing his guns in the air, shooting a zombie with a shotgun, then catching the guns again and shooting two more zombies. His usage of spurs got a chuckle.

 Because this is a zombie movie, you have to have internecine tension. In this case, the policeman turns out to be an incompetent dick, and no one trusts poor Marion despite the fact that he saves their bacon multiple times. And there's also the matter of this not being your garden variety day of the dead; there's a sort of acid rain, rays of light sucking people and crickets up into the sky, a newly-built wall around the whole of the town, mysterious robed figures...

 The plot ends up making some amount of sense (as long as you don't look at it too closely or start asking questions), but the script is... well, it's not very good. That it's mainly a purposefully kitsch comedy excuses a lot of the internal consistency and logic issues, but then you're left with gags that just aren't very funny, and the actors aren't up to redeeming either the comedy or the action. Poor McKay really struggles with selling Marion as an Ash-like badass, and the less said of some of the others' relentless mugging the better.

 It strikes me as a film that was designed with the visuals in mind, and had the rest hitched to them later. And there's some varied and striking imagery to be found here; It's heavily stylized, too, which helps it look good despite its homemade quality and desaturated palette. The gore is also fun, with maybe a little more in the way of physical blood and prosthesis than other films like this (though some of the CGI, being low budget and two decades old, is pretty bad).

 Despite its superficial similarities, it's unfair to compare it to the Wyrmwood movies - those were much more straightforward in their ambitions. Unfortunately, Undead kind of fails in its own terms, but it's an interesting, likeable, and entertaining sort of failure. It did serve its purpose as a calling card, letting the Spierigs go on to helm two of the more idiosyncratic sci fi films of the following decade. 

Dirty Ho (Lan Tou He)

 Now this is a movie title.
 According to martial arts movie critic Tony Rayns it was an attempt to cash in on Dirty Harry, but... come on. I'm sure some ex-Shaw Brothers employee is still bragging about coming up with it.

 The title sequence for this is a good one. It's a set of three abstract fights for both of the protagonists (alone and later together) against a stark white background and an extremely seventies tune, where the action prefigures the events of the movie. Cool in concept as well as execution.

 Yue Wong plays the titular Ho Jen, who's introduced partying with a bunch of courtesans at a flower boat. When he notices his favorites have gone missing, he gets the madam to go fetch them - the problem being that they're attending to a jewel merchant going by the name of Mr. Wang, who's played by none other than Gordon Liu.
 They immediately start competing with each other, giving the girls more and more lavish gifts of jewelry and money so they'll stay with one or the other. Things end with a police crackdown, and Mr. Wang bandies around a royal seal to get the police to ignore the fact that Ho is a jewel thief, but he also steals all of Ho's jewels.

 So begins a game of one upmanship between the two, one in which Ho is hopelessly outclassed. Mr. Wang's kung fu is so subtle - and Ho so dumb - that he doesn't even realize that Wang is fighting him, as he disguises attacks as accidents and happenstance. This climaxes with a ridiculous (and ridiculously awesome) fight where Mr. Wang dubs a courtesan his bodyguard, and uses her as a puppet to kick Ho's ass.

 In that same fight, Ho gets wounded with a poisoned blade. Wang explains that he will provide the antidote in doses, as long as Ho agrees to be his student. Ho sullenly agrees.
 This leads to a pretty cool visual storytelling device where the size of the medicine patch on Ho's forehead denotes the passage of time as the welt gets smaller.
 It's implied that that Wang likes Ho and takes him on as a project, to refine him and make him his servant, but Ho is such a clod that it's hard to see why he's worth the bother.

 In any case, this is where the actual plot of the movie kicks in. It turns out Mr. Wang is actually the eleventh son of the emperor, and has fled the Forbidden City to sample southern spirits and art. Seizing that opportunity, another one of the emperor's heirs has decided to do away with his brother. So he sends a number of assassins after Wang, baiting his traps with opportunities for wine tasting and to examine antiquities.

 The next couple of sequences are really fun, as both the hosts/assassins and suave Mr. Wang keep a veneer of civility and forced smiles over their vicious fighting. Once again, Ho is oblivious to what's actually going on - the humor can get pretty broad, almost pantomime, but the idea is funny as hell, and the choreography is so fun and inventive it won me over. The last ambush gets a little too close for comfort, claws come out and the illusion is shattered. Ho rushes to his master's aid, but is too late and Mr. Wang is seriously wounded.

 Incapable of facing the forces arrayed against them, Wang decides to train Ho properly, which leads to a couple of really awesome training sequences - and the parts I remembered the most clearly from the movie. To master his style, the Hidden Kick, Ho must keep his shoulders completely still; So Wang sets saucer candles on his shoulders, and whenever Ho fucks up scalding wax and burning wicks pour over him. Cruel, but very, very cool and creative.

 From there it's a straight run to the climax - There's a couple fights on the way - a kind of homophobic fight against a band called the seven agonies, and on the plus side, a great fight set in a beautiful soundstage recreation of an abandoned town that looks right out of Labyrinth where they fight a deranged Mongolian torero and a bunch of archers.
 The final fight is unfortunately the least interesting in the movie- a very drawn out melee that doesn't have any distinguishing features other than a hinged bo staff. It's still got some amazing stunts, though.

 Dirty Ho was directed by HK legend Lau Kar-leung, and distinguishes itself from previous Shaw Brothers films by being a fairly light-hearted comedy; Not a single revenge plot in sight.
 It's still a shaw brothers movie, and while the tone is more even, it's not going to win any converts - the usual issues with this sort of thing are out in the open: broad humor and even broader acting, ridiculous sound effects, fights that prioritize spectacle and athletics over any sort of realism, beard-stroking and moustache-twirling... all pluses in my book, but as always you have to be open to liking this sort of thing. If so, you're in luck: this is one of the best.

I Was a Simple Man

 "Maybe we don't deserve to... go so easily" someone says at the beginning of I Was a Simple Man, while discussing a botched suicide. Those words are spoken to the protagonist, Masao (Steve Iwamoto) and hang heavy over the rest of the movie.

 Set in Hawai'i, mostly in run down suburbs and back roads with the island's natural beauty in the background, the film calmly follows Masao in his daily routines and eases us slowly into his world. A widower grandfather of three with an uneasy, somewhat distant relationship with his sons, he lives alone with his regrets and grapples with the onset of an unspecified terminal disease.

 As his condition worsens first his daughter (Chanel Akiko Hirai), then a grandkid (Kanoa Goo) come to attend him and the film's point of view disassociates from Masao and starts tracking not just his family, but their memories, filling us in on the specifics of how this broken man failed his children, and later on, why. These memories don't just take the form of flashbacks; Early on the ghost of his wife Grace (Constance Wu) takes a permanent place by Masao's bedside.

 The cast, consisting mostly of unknown/TV actors (plus Constance Wu), is uniformly great, and so are the compositions (DP: Eunsoo Cho). There are a lot of elements I probably missed, as the film specifically addresses Japanese and Chinese Heritage in the island, and the island's induction into statehood (something also addressed by civilization receding on many of the flashbacks, and later as Masao's condition unravels and the jungle consumes his world).

Writer/director Christopher Makoto Yogi has crafted a beautiful, compassionate drama tinged at the edges with surrealist and supernatural, or more accurately spiritual, touches. It's a sedate, stately film with an almost Malikian appreciation of the natural world that builds to some very powerful scenes as the threads start melding into each other (in another Malik-like touch). The deliberate pacing and extremely melancholy tone may be a bit of a hurdle, but it's worth persevering. I liked this one a lot.

Air

 There's one thing I look for in shoes - wearing one has to be better than not wearing any at all. I do not give a flying fuck about Air Jordans, and just about the only thing I know about Nike (other than their inhumane treatment of workers) is that it provided scion Travis Knight with the funds and leisure time to make his crazy dream of making a stop-motion animation studio possible.
 I know next to nothing about sports, let alone basketball, and have a hefty distaste for corporations and advertising. It was financed by Amazon. Why the hell should I watch this movie?

 Well.. I like Ben Affleck's movies. The guy's an amazing director, even when he's leaning populist as with Argo. And as it turns out, Air is a really good populist movie. Much better than Argo. Very engaging even if you're not interested in the subject, immaculately shot and paced, and full of snappy, funny dialog that recalls Sorkin but isn't quite as showy and twisty (the script is by Alex Convery, who has no other credits to his name so far).

 After a short barrage of nostalgia bait - the movie is set in 1984, and by golly it's not going to let you forget it - we're introduced to Sonny (Matt Damon), a guy who scouts talent for Nike's struggling basketball shoe division and the only guy who seems to give a damn about basketball there. After watching Michael Jordan (Michael Jordan) throwing a ball at a metal ring multiple times on his VCR one night, Sonny realizes that he's got to risk everything on hiring him to represent their shoes, despite the fact that more successful companies are courting him.

 So... well, he risks everything, wheels and deals until he manages to get Nike's director (Ben Affleck) on his side, and with a small team (Jason Bateman, Chris Tucker and Matthew Maher) he beats the odds and yadda yadda.
 I mean, there's no suspense here, you know how this is going to end. On top of that, as good as Damon is in the role, it's one of those characters that never fucking makes mistakes - the guy is honest, passionate, unnaturally shrewd and infallible in his instincts; the only thing he gets wrong is kind of a humble brag. A primum mobile character; Everything that happens in the movie is driven by him except for that little mistake (which provides the CEO a chance to dramatically step up).

 It should be annoying, but unless you're set on hating the movie, it's so well done it works. The character interactions are sometimes a bit didactical, but always fun, the story moves effortlessly and  is full of great secondary characters: special mentions go to Chris Messina for an inspired string of insults, and as always Viola Davis steals the show as Michael Jordan's mom; It's a really powerful performance.

 If I had to strain for something to dislike, it's the fact that this really is a pure crowd-pleasing film, mostly shiny surfaces and easy sympathy plays, about a corporate success story.

 There is a timid stab at pointing out the inequality in play, walls full of pictures of white millionaires look predatorily at the athletes they will profit off on, and some mention of the particulars of Jordan's ground-breaking deal with Nike, which I'm guessing is common knowledge to someone who knows something of the subject. But it's too little, and too celebratory of everything Nike to actually make an impression.

 Oh, I do actually dislike something, and it's a pet peeve: the soundtrack, with only a couple of exceptions, only chooses the most obvious, overplayed songs from the era, and edits them so that you get an intro and then the most famous part.
 Then again, it fits the bubblegum nature of the film; Something like, I dunno, Blasphemous Rumours wouldn't have fit very well. But still, come on - lots of other stuff to choose from. The 'Mats put out Let It Be that year; Just saying.

Entity

 A British TV show called Darkest Mysteries joins a local author (Branko Tomovic) in Russia at a site where 34 people were found dead under mysterious circumstances in the middle of the woods.

 The crew for the show consists of the presenter (Charlotte Riley), a surly cameraman (Rupert Hill) and an enthusiastic one (Oliver Jackson).

 They also bring along a psychic (Dervla Kirwan). This is one of those movies where psychics aren't just the real deal, they're infallible. Ruth, who tends to make grand pronouncements in breathless mumbles that I could only understand about half the time, immediately sees dead people all over the place (which we're shown in pretty cheesy detail) and correctly identifies the site where the bodies were found, the place where the first victim was dug up, and leads the party through the woods to the nearby abandoned building where they were killed.

 There the medium sees more phantasmagoria, including the Russian army methodically shooting a bunch of people in the head. From there she zeroes in on one specific room in the facility, a room we recognize because it was shown in a prologue, where a creepy crazy naked dude did creepy crazy naked dude things and levitated and moved things with his mind. Then there's a couple of jump scares, everyone freaks out, and one of the cameramen disappears.

 There is very, very little to this movie. The plot is simple and its mysteries easy to piece together, the characters barely fleshed-out, and the few twists it bothers to throw at us predictable and uninteresting. It's a good-looking movie for its budget - the premise all but screams found footage movie, but for x reason writer/director Steve Stone opted to alternate traditional shots in with the first person cams, which is honestly welcome as the cinematography for the non-diegetic shots is decent and very atmospheric. 

 All the actors are pretty good and are very believable despite their thinly sketched roles. The location itself is probably the film's biggest asset: A huge institutional-style abandoned facility, with all sorts of darkened rooms and hallways for our urban explorers to trudge through with their flashlights.

 But none of this makes up for the fact that barely anything interesting happens throughout, definitely nothing you haven't seen elsewhere. That's not a huge problem while the tension is mounting, but when things come to a head it's disheartening that most of the film's scares consist of either jump scares or POV shots where the camera is waved all over the place except where the action's happening while people scream their hearts out. That's fine as a choice, but this sort of chaotic horror blue-balling needs to be done much better than this to be effective.

The Zero Boys

 The Zero Boys is another bit of fun nonsense from Greek director Nico Mastorakis. It's a little messier than his later effort, Nightmare at Noon, and the budget is a lot lower, but it's still an interesting mix of action and horror. This time around the scales lean towards the scares: the premise is that a bunch of paramilitary dweebs and their girlfriends have to face off against a couple of backwoods slashers.

 Things kick off in media res with a shootout at a small Mexican town. Just a bunch of doofuses in different getups going after each other; I like that at first it's a couple of  dudes in what could pass for shitty Mexican costumes, then a bunch of military cosplayers come in (one of which sticks a picture of Rambo to the wall and says "eat your heart out, Sly!") and finally we get to a dipshit in full nazi costume.
 Once the nazi fucker bites it, it's revealed that it's a paintball game, complete with spectators off to the side cheering for the champions.
 It's a cheesy, fun scene, brought down a little by the low budget (at one point a weird editing glitch makes it look like someone just stares  someone down from a bridge).

 The winners are The Zero Boys: noble leader and Stallone-disrespecting Steve (Daniel Hirsch), seriously unfunny 80's comedy sidekick Rip (Jared Moses), and Larry (Tom Shell), who's given no traits other than being good-looking. They're the rockstars of the wargame circuit - they even get a "you broke all the rules but we'll let it slide because you're so awesome" speech from the venue owner. They've just beat their paintball nemesis, so they win from him an admission of inferiority, a wad of money and... uh, his girlfriend Jamie (Kelli Maroney) for the weekend. Yeah, it's very much a movie of its time, but more on that later.

 Steve has the grace to at least look ashamed about taking Jamie as a prize, but luckily for him she's so pissed off at her (ex-, hopefully) boyfriend she goes along with Steve just to spite him. So off the Zero Boys go, along with their girlfriends (Nicole Rio, and Crystal Carson) to the woods for some R&R and heavy necking.

Into the murderbarn (a genuinely cool and atmospheric sequence)

 There's some hiccups - Jamie sees a woman running for her life and no one else believes her, and some other indications that the genre is slowly shifting to horror territory. But for a while their picnic goes well; Jamie and Steve bond, despite themselves, the others have a good time, and when they discover a seemingly abandoned cabin in the middle of the woods they settle in for a wild night. Which... yeah, yeah, be careful what you wish for, etc.

 Things escalate quickly: One of the couples see someone spying on them as they have PG sex, one of the killers shows himself, waves a knife and disappears, and a lot of skeletons are found around the premises. Soon one of their number is abducted, and they find themselves hunted by a pair of snuff-movie-making rednecks (one of them  played by Joe Estevez!).

 But The Zero Boys won't take it laying down. They're professional paintball warriors - and as such, they carry a case of illegally-modified semi-automatic weapons and a shitload of ammo, because naturally that's what they practice with out in the desert. America!
 Despite all the guns, I did like the fact that it never really turns into an action film - more of a tense series of encounters and ambushes, a gauntlet they need to get through. More Southern Comfort than Golan/Globus.

 The film was written in two weeks and shot in less than three, and it really, really shows. On the one hand it's really energetic and unpredictable as a result; On the other... well, it's kind of a mess. Luckily the pacing is hectic and the movie likeable enough that it's easy to forgive it when the bad guys seem to teleport all over the place or people keep making nonsensical decisions, and events often seem to happen just to provide some incident to the movie, with no follow-through. And don't underestimate that unpredictability, which cuts through the macho bluster of the premise kind of like Predator would one year later.

 Technically it's a well crafted B-movie, with unoriginal but very effective cinematography (lots of bright shafts of light going through foliage), a couple of cool stunts and one outstanding explosion. The only real characters are Jamie and Steve, and while the acting is about what you'd expect with the lines they're given, both end up being fairly likeable (the former much more than the latter, but then again Maroney had much more acting experience). In fact, Jamie turns out to be the most well-rounded character in the film, and the girls manage to fight back at least as effectively as the guys; Wittingly or not, the film ends up being pretty enlightened in that respect.

 It bears repeating that this is not really a good film. But it's good, bone-headed fun, takes some interesting turns, and it's constantly throwing stuff at you so that it never becomes boring.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

 I never really got into the Ninja Turtles stuff as a kid - Loved the videogame, watched a few cartoons, was aware of and liked them well enough but it wasn't really my thing. I only really watched the 00's Nickelodeon series when my son got into it, which was pretty fun.

 Mutant Mayhem, though, is on a whole other level. Co-directors Jeff Rowe and Kyler Spears borrow a little flair once again from the recent Spider-verse animated movies (after doing it earlier on The Mitchells vs The Machines) to adapt a script from writing team Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (Jeff Rowe tweaked things enough to also get a co-writer credit) that takes a lot of the elements from the decades-spanning comics/cartoons/series and puts its own gentle spin on them. It's fairly faithful to what I've seen of the originals, except that it sets up a fairly different status quo for any possible follow-ups.

 So here are the basics for this iteration of the story: A mysterious ooze gets thrown into the sewers, transforming a rat and four baby turtles into furries. Scalies? I think they're still called furries. Anyhow.

 The rat furry - Splinter (voiced by Jackie Chan, whose English has gotten a lot better) adopts the turtles and, to protect them from the menace of the humans (whom he insists, in a bizarre but funny running gag, will try to milk them) he trains them in the ninja arts with youtube tutorials, old workout videos and older martial arts movies (including Jackie Chan and Shaw Brothers stuff!)

 But as the wee mutant ninja turtles become teenagers, a life of lurking in the sewers with occasional incursions into to the city for supplies and watching Ferris Bueller from a distance isn't enough. And when they're discovered by a human teen would-be-journalist (Ayo Edebiri), they seize on the opportunity to try and become heroes so that people will look over the fact that they're mutants. This brings them into conflict with the shady organization behind the mysterious mutant-making ooze (led by a mad scientist voiced by Maya Rudolph) and, more importantly, another group of mutants let by Superfly (Ice Cube)

 The plot, to be honest, is not that great, and has its share of corny shit and clichés and obvious joke setups. But the film is so lively, the moment-to-moment writing so good and funny, and the characters - including pretty much all of the ostensible villains - are so likeable, that it barely matters. Even in the early going, where it's more of a teen comedy than anything else, it's a joy to watch, and very funny to boot. The turtles are voiced by relative newcomers - Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Nicolas Cantu and Brady Noon, and they all do a great job. Most of the heavyweights are on the villain's corner; Besides Ice Cube (who sneaks in a six 'n the mornin' reference) you've got John Cena, Rose Byrne, Seth Rogen, and a bunch of others. Giancarlo Esposito turns in what's almost a cameo.

 There are quite a few fights, well choreographed (Splinter gets a very Jackie-Chan fight) and very well paced - including an inventively staged scene that cuts between five separate brawls. The art style takes a page from the Spider-verse movies, but where other influencees have focused on its hectic mishmash of styles, Turtles settles on one of them and makes its own - a skewed, slightly asymmetrical style where straight lines are scarce, there are graffitti-esque scribbles all over the place, and a lot of the coloring is done out of lines. Sometimes it adds some scratchy animation for good measure, but it's a very coherent, considered look. It's often gorgeous, and always interesting.
 The creature designs are faithful to Eastman and Laird's creations, and in their conversion to the new style they often achieve something I value a lot - they make me laugh just by looking at them; I mean, that's half a battle won already, right? Whoever gave Leatherhead those goggles deserves a raise.

 The needle drops are all a lot of fun, very nineties-focused, which I guess betrays a little the secondary target audience for the film. But it's a pleasure to hear relative deep cuts like this after the incredibly lame selection from the Super Mario movie. Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor provide a great, synthy soundtrack.

 It's great, and I say it as someone who doesn't really have any nostalgia for non-videogame katana/bo/sai/nunchuk-wielding turtles. Honestly, on everything except on a technical level I'd say I liked this one a whole lot better than this year's Spider-verse sequel.

Alone

 I'd joke that you could call this one Incidents On and Off a Mountain Road, to honor the great Coscarelli, but there's no mountain here. Also it gets a little more Off action than you'd expect. Also also, the joke barely makes sense- it's just a reference. In any case, don't hold that against Alone, it's a good movie.

  Jessica (Jules Wilcox) is introduced playing storage Tetris in a small U-Haul tow trailer and leaving town in her car. After some driving on scenic Oregon backroads, she picks up a tail: some dude in a black Jeep (Marc Menchaca) who by way of introduction almost makes her get into a head-on collision with a truck. He then keeps messing with her in an obviously threatening way that he could just blow off as a misunderstanding whenever they run into each other. And they do keep running into each other: in the road, at the motel she stays in overnight, at a rest stop... You get to know the sound of the Jeep's engine, and the movie uses it as if it were the Jaws theme.

 This first half hour is the movie at its best: the filmmaking is tight as hell, the storytelling is economical, and the stalker oozes menace. There are a lot of interesting, technically well-made scenes - I particularly liked the showiest one, where the activities of a few bystanders at the rest stop are tracked while keeping Jessica firmly in the shot, out of focus. A great way to convey her mental state.

 Then the stalker turns into an abductor, and the movie switches tack a couple of times; It's divided into titled chapters, each one of them giving the action its own spin. It's cool in that it bucks expectations, a little - only a little it's always variations on a theme after all. But the latter chapters unfortunately lack the invention of the first one, and they're not nearly as lean, either. Even at a hundred minutes it feels like there's a little too much flab to some of these episodes.

 But Alone remains an expertly crafted thriller even when it's not at its best, and an excellently brutal action climax does make it go down easy.

 The acting is pretty great; Menchaca is enjoyably despicable and Willcox gives a lot of personality to a character that spends most of her time being terrorized. While we do get a little glimpse into the duo's internal life, I wouldn't say the dramatic aspects add a whole lot to the movie. But they do give it some flavour, and some of it is used in a very satisfying way in the finale.

 I'm less enthused with some of the contrivances the script uses and abuses to keep the action going. Most egregious is the stalker's magical homing murderbeacon: It's a bit dodgy how he always seems to find Jessica while they're both driving, but I was willing to give that a pass since he could just know the area really well (and he admits to as much.) But later, when they keep finding each other across acres and acres of woodland? Oh, come the fuck on. There isn't even a bullshitty scene of the stalker looking at cracked branches or something. He just keeps finding her, like some sort of deadly Pepe le Péw.
 And this is yet another movie where people don't lock their phones or i-pads. Is that a thing? In any case, I also call pre-emptive shenanigans on that.

 Other than that the script, by Mattias Olson, is full of clever details; When it's not being lazy (see above), it's pretty well constructed. And since it's set in Oregon, we also get plenty of natural beauty (cinematographer: Federico Verardi). 

 The film is helmed by John Hyams, a criminally underrated director who's probably best known for making actually great late sequels to the cheesy Universal Soldier series. That this guy is still confined to VoD, as this movie shows, is a disgrace.