Month: September 2015

By Joe Bendel. It is a bad idea to constantly spoil tantrum prone children. Nevertheless, whenever Elisa breaks a doll, her mother simply replaces it, with another living being. Ana will be the next victim lured into their macabre doll’s house, but at least her stoner-dealer boyfriend is not taking her disappearance for granted in Juanra Fernández’s Para Elisa, which releases today on DVD and VOD from Dark Sky Films.

Poor entitled Ana needs 1,000 Euros for her graduation trip, so she takes the drastic step of looking for a job. Diamantina is supposedly looking for a nanny and her tony flat is right on the town square. (It turns out the walls sure are thick though.) Kids are fine with Ana, but she balks when she learns Elisa is a developmentally challenged woman roughly her own age. Too late, Diamantina has already slipped her a mickey.

When she comes to, her vocal chords and muscles are still paralyzed by whatever eucalyptus cocktail the old woman brewed up. Much to her horror, Ana is expected to become Elisa’s latest living doll. Diamantina grimly cautions Ana to cooperate, lest she provoke Ana’s violent temper.

Granted, some might find the portrayal of Elisa problematically exploitative, but you do not review as many horror films as we have by being overly sensitive. Elisa is a handful—deal with it. Arguably, it is sort of a necessary pre-condition for a massively creepy premise. In fact, Ana’s state of pawed immobility taps into some deeply held anxieties, ranging from the sleep paralysis documented in Rodney Ascher’s The Nightmare to the cast-bound Jimmy Stewart getting defenestrated in Rear Window.

Para Elisa does indeed incorporate Für Elise into its soundtrack, so give it credit for musical literacy. However, the final climax is a bit perfunctory, which is especially problematic considering it really is a shorty, barely hitting the seventy-five minute marker.

Nevertheless, Fernández’s execution is unflaggingly stylish. For some reason, Spanish horror films all seem to share a similarly eerie but distinctive look and vibe. It is hard to pin down, but you will recognize it every time. Maybe they are all burning ceremonial effigies of Franco off-screen. Regardless, Para Elisa maintains an unceasing atmosphere of dread, while the architecture and surrounding countryside of Cuenca in Castilla-La Mancha looks breathtaking. Recommended for fans of Spanish horror, Para Elisa is now available on DVD and VOD from Dark Sky Films.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on September 1st, 2015 at 2:44pm.

By Joe Bendel. Considering the Divine Constabulary gets to investigate all the cool supernatural crimes, while Department Six is stuck with the boring human cases, inter-agency rivalry is probably inevitable. However, it becomes quite pitched when the leader of the former is accused of murdering the commander of the latter. Everyone should probably know better, but they have to admit the evidence looks pretty bad. Some kind of scheme is afoot involving crimes from the past in Gordon Chan & Janet Chun’s Lawless Kingdom, their sequel to The Four, which releases today on DVD from Lionsgate.

Based on the 1970s wuxia novels, The Four are like Song Dynasty Avengers, whose powers are derived from chi. When it comes to that chi, their leader Zhuge Zhengwo and the wheelchair-bound Emotionless have levels that give them Professor X-worthy mental and telekinetic powers. Iron Hands is the muscle, Life Snatcher is their Flash, and it is just a bad idea to anger the lycanthropic Cold Blood. Yet, for some reason Zhuge does exactly that when he appears to fire a steampunkish firearm at the werewolf.

When Cold Blood recovers, he demands answers from his boss, who promises them in two days. Unfortunately, he is arrested for the murder of Department Six’s Sheriff King before the allotted deadline is up. To make matters even more awkward, another soon-to-be dead man claims to be one of the Gang of Twelve, who murdered Emotionless’s family and irreparably damaged her legs. Supposedly, Zhuge dispatched them all to their eternal judgment at the time, so what gives?

Watching Lawless Kingdom (a.k.a. The Four II), it seems strange that the disability community has not vocally embraced this series. Emotionless might have been the victim of a crime, but she is no passive object of sympathy. In fact, it is arguably empowering and certainly cool to watch her laying down martial arts beatdowns with the aid of Iron Hands’ prosthetics. She is particularly assertive in Kingdom, contributing some series highlights and compensating for its conspicuous status as a middle bridge film, between the relatively self-contained first installment and the conclusion that has already opened in China.

Regardless, if you like The Four (and we did), Kingdom gives you more, while exploring the characters in greater depth. Anthony Wong and Crystal Liu Lifei have some particular fine moments as Zhuge and Emotionless, whose surrogate father-daughter relationship will be strained by deceit as well as the truth.

Although Sheng Taishen’s Sheriff King is presumably dead for good, he is wonderfully sly and slippery in his limited screen time. Deng Chao and Collin Chou also solidly perform Iron Hands and Cold Blood’s action roles, but Ronald Cheng’s Life Snatcher is inexplicably stuck on the sidelines for much of the film. While the major villains stay behind the Wizard’s curtain, former newscaster Liu Yan makes a memorable femme fatale as Ru Yan, a rather insidious colleague of Ji Yaohua, Emotionless’s rival at Department Six.

Considering how much spectacle Chan and Chun put up on screen, it is rather impressive how directly they keep it all connected to the human element. They create some terrifically fantastical set pieces, including a Mordoresque prison specifically designed for those blessed with superhuman chi. For wuxia and superhero fans, it is all good stuff. Recommended especially for those intrigued by the Emotionless character, Lawless Kingdom releases today (9/1) on DVD from Lionsgate.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on September 1st, 2015 at 2:38pm.

By Joe Bendel. During the early days of Hollywood, Poverty Row studios like Republic, Monogram, and PRC relied on western oaters to pay the bills. These days, horror films are the low budget staple genre, so you could consider this a case of something old and something new. The fact that yonder werewolf western is also a British production makes it all the more eccentric, but we appreciate that. The bodies will pile up when a skinwalker hunts its prey in Jeremy Wooding’s Blood Moon (trailer here), which launches today on DVD and VOD from Uncork’d Entertainment.

Mud Flats was a stagecoach stopover already well on its way to being a ghost town, but the skinwalker hastened the process. Unfortunately, when the next stage pulls in for chow, they are taken hostage by the twitchy outlaw Norton Brothers (half-brothers technically). Amongst the passengers are Jake Norman, the new Marshal for the next town over, Sarah, his new wife with a checkered past, and Calhoun, the mysterious bad ass. There was also a priest, but the Nortons killed him almost immediately.

Even the profoundly unintuitive Nortons soon accept the idea something big and bad is prowling around outside, but they are still determined to have their fun inside. Meanwhile, the sheriff and Black Deer, his hard-drinking Native American frienemy and potential hook-up, follow the trail of the Nortons and the beast.

Like so many westerns before it, Blood Moon looks a little cheap, but it was filmed in Kent, so cut it some slack (after all, it is the first UK western since Carry On Cowboy). While the premise sounds like a dubious mash-up concept, it kind of works thanks to the strength of the characters. Frankly, Shaun Dooley is pretty darned awesome as the steely, super-together Calhoun. Yet, Anna Skellern is even more awesome as Marie, the franchise-minded, derringer-packing Miss Kitty. Wearing the black hat, American ringer Corey Johnson is charismatically loathsome and contemptuous as the more stable Norton. Eleanor Matsuura’s Black Deer also nicely provides the film’s required mysticism and defiance of authority.

Blood Moon is definitely a low budget wonder, but it deserves props for its energy and attitude. According to the laws of nature it should be a complete train wreck, but if you enjoy B-movies, this is the sort that will remind you why you developed such idiosyncratic tastes in the first place. Regardless, if you want to see a British werewolf western, Blood Moon is the only game in town, when it hits VOD platforms today (9/1), via Uncork’d Entertainment.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on September 1st, 2015 at 2:32pm.

By Joe Bendel. Get ready for a steady diet of metaphors telling us that lone wolves are most successful traveling in packs, or some such thing. They would be referring to Leng Feng. He is a loose cannon maverick type, but whenever he goes off the reservation, he is doing it for the team. Of course, he makes plenty of enemies that way, including a vengeful drug lord who can afford the best mercenaries money can buy. Their values compare poorly with those of the idealistic Feng, but they still manage to get the drop on his elite commando unit in Wu Jing’s Wolf Warrior, which releases today on DVD, Blu-ray, and digital platforms from Well Go USA.

Just when a Southeast Asian drug raid seems hopelessly lost, Feng takes a spectacular shot (three of them really) to save the day. In the process, he kills the impetuous brother of shadowy crime boss and aspiring global megalomaniac, Min Peng. He should be happy to be rid of such a pathetic tool, but Min Peng rather holds a grunge. Having eluded Chinese forces, the old criminal mastermind hires a team of western mercs, led by the highly skilled Tom Cat, to take out Leng. He also has some conventional world domination business for them to tend, but that is really just a tangent to a tangent.

Arguably, the plan to attack while Leng’s squad is engaged in war-games is sort of clever, since it necessarily means the Wolves will be strictly packing blanks. Unfortunately, that is about the only part of the film that works. Even though the Mainland born Wu rose to prominence in HK film like City Under Siege, Wolf Warrior was clearly conceived as feature length tribute to the PLA. To a man, the Wolves are invariably pure of heart, but also stiflingly dull. Its like the un-self-aware Chinese version of “America, Blank Yeah,” the anthem of Team America World Police, except irony is strictly forbidden.

As a director, Wu gives us a herky-jerky ride, but his martial arts skills remain undiminished. The film is kind of watchable when it shuts up and lets everyone get down to business. When he finally gets to his long anticipated face-off with Scott Adkins’ Tom Cat (a mercenary named after a celebrity couple), it is pretty satisfying. Yet, it is rather strange how much of the film’s action revolves around fire-fights and marksmanship, considering two of the world’s top big screen martial artists are present and accounted for.

At least they have stuff to do. For most of the film, Adkins’ Expendables 2 co-star Yu Nan is stuck wearing an earpiece and biting her lip as she gives tactical advice from the command center. On the other hand, Ni Dahong’s stone cold coolness as the villainous Min Peng is one of the film’s saving graces, even though his transformation from Pablo Escobar to Dr. Evil makes no sense. It also seems slightly odd that he would want to develop a super-virus that only kills Chinese people.

There are rumors floating about online that PLA personnel were required to see Wolf Warriors in theaters, which would explain its success. If so, Wu delivered everything his PLA patrons could have hoped for, often reducing the film to an old school Soviet May Day parade of shiny new military hardware and platitudinous dialogue. Disappointing for anyone who is not a member of the Young Pioneers, Wolf Warriors is strictly for Wu and Adkins completists when it releases today (9/1), from Well Go USA.

LFM GRADE: D

Posted on September 1st, 2015 at 2:26pm.