Category: Watch Movies!

By Joe Bendel. Lawrence Block’s Matthew Scudder knew there were eight million ways to die, but Vinnie Jones only gets six. At least he will make full use of each of them. He will not merely kill his nemesis, Sonny “Sundown” Garcia, he will target the drug lord’s reputation, money, loved ones, sentimental attachments, and his very liberty. However, narrative logic will be the first casualty of Nadeem Soumah’s 6 Ways to Die, which opened this Friday in New York.

“John Doe” has it in for Garcia. He has his reasons, but he is very Picard about it all, never setting foot from his old school Oldsmobuick. Somehow, he gets some of the Los Angeles underworld’s most talented to come to him. He needs their skills to torment Garcia and his valuable inside knowledge will make it worth their while. It would seem that they will succeed spectacularly, since it is all told in a bizarre flashback structure. Oh sure, there is a big reveal that changes everything, but it makes absolutely no sense.

Still, 6 Ways offers an opportunity to watch a veritable B–movie all-star team at work. For the starting line-up we have Jones, Bai Ling, Dominique Swain, Vivica A. Fox, and Tom Sizemore. Most of them have real roles to play, but Sizemore appears in a completely tangential prologue. It looks like Soumah had only one day of shooting with him, so he just improvised something on the fly. In reserve, 6 Ways also features Chris Jai Alex and Kinga Philipps, who maybe aren’t so familiar, but have volumes of imdb credits already.

There are times you have to ask just what does this movie think its doing, but not in a resentful way. You sort of have to give it credit for being a grubby striver. It is determined to impress us by riding its bike with no hands, no matter how many times it wipes out on the pavement.

With no action scenes whatsoever, Jones is completely wasted as the mystery man and his role in the big twist defies the evidence of our senses. However, Alex shows real B-movie star power as Frank Casper, the hitman. Bai Ling also adds some serious cool as high class con artist June Lee. Unfortunately, Michael Rene Walton is way too reserved and colorless for a ruthless heavy like Garcia. Fortunately, chewing the scenery is not a problem for Fox, who vamps it up something fierce as the corrupt cop, Veronica Smith.

Soumah has seen way too much Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez for his own good. The resulting product is overly clever and then some. That said, if you enjoy watching B-movie veterans doing B-movie things, 6 Ways will be a satisfying guilty pleasure when it streams on Netflix (which should be imminently). In the short term, it opened this Friday (7/31) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on August 1st, 2015 at 3:42pm.

By Joe Bendel. Whatever place you name, chances are the Vikings made it there. They were quite the navigators, but not the renegade band led by the young warrior Asbjörn. Their ship has foundered on the rocks along the Scottish shore. Fortunately, they can still fight like berserkers, because they will have to in Claudio Fäh’s Northmen: a Viking Saga, which opened this Friday in Los Angeles.

Asbjörn’s father was one of the final holdouts, who sacked and pillaged the old fashioned way, unlike the current crop of sell-out Vikings. After his death, Asbjörn has struggled to hold the last remnant together. Getting shipwrecked in Alba (a.k.a. Scotland) will not help his cause. The locals’ initial reception was quite hostile, but it provided them an opportunity to take a nobleman’s daughter hostage. Her ransom should be enough to buy their way into the Norse settlements towards the south. However, it turns out that was no average lady – it is Princess Inghean, the Scottish king’s daughter.

Naturally, the king mobilizes his entire forces, but his sleazy mercenary commanders will lead the hunt and they have an incentive to prevent her arranged marriage—permanently. To stay alive long enough to make it to the Danish territories, Asbjörn will forge unlikely alliances with Inghean and Brother Conall, a Christian monk who can handle a staff in a manner that would make Friar Tuck proud.

Whenever Asbjörn’s men are fighting, the film is on pretty solid ground. Fortunately, that is pretty much always the case. Occasionally they stop to lick their wounds, but there is absolutely no hanky-panky going on. The upright Asbjörn sees to that.

While the South African landscape doubles for Scotland throughout Northmen, cinematographer Lorenzo Senatore’s big sweeping vistas make it look like Tolkienesque New Zealand. Technically, there are no fantasy elements in the film (notwithstanding their increasingly incredible exploits), but it certainly looks like a land beyond contemporary reason.

This is not exactly the sort of film that will generate a lot of acceptance speeches on the part of its cast. Nevertheless, Ryan Kwanten does some of his best work outside of the True Blood series as Conall. He kicks butt rather nicely, while brooding over his dark past. The film just clicks together better when he is on-screen. In contrast, Tom Hopper’s Asbjörn is a rather bland hero, coming across like Chris Hemsworth’s even more wooden brother. Although hardly the next Angela Mao, Charlie Murphy handles her action scenes well enough and shows a bit of fire as Inghean. Fortunately, a classically trained cat like Darrell D’Silva understands how to chew the scenery as the crusty old veteran Viking plunderer, Gunnar.

When it sticks to hack-and-slash action, Northmen is a lot of fun. Indeed, it rarely gets more ambitious than that, but it is a wise film that recognizes its limitations and adjusts accordingly. Considerably more entertaining than the Norse-themed monster movie Ragnarok, Northmen: a Viking Saga is recommended for action fans as it opens in Los Angeles at the Arena Cinema.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on August 1st, 2015 at 3:42pm.

By Joe Bendel. Sure, the idea of delinquent youths becoming guinea pigs in mind control experiments is hardly unprecedented, but there is something decidedly unsettling about it when done with a German accent—if you know what I mean. Instead of juvenile hall, Sam is sentenced a well-funded private school and research facility. He probably had a hard time fitting in, considering he groggily awakens in a subway tunnel with a nasty case of amnesia during the opening moments of Özgür Yildirim’s Boy 7, which screened during the 2015 Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal.

His name is Sam, not that he knows that. However, he quickly figures out the cops want him for murder. Retracing his step from the clues in his pocket, Sam discovers a notebook stashed in a diner men’s room. It seems to be a journal he kept in the apparently likely event of his complete memory loss.

For some unfortunate bit of hacking, Sam was to serve a term at the institute, where the gray military uniforms really give off bad vibes. He will be the new Number 7, because the old Number 7 died from a stroke. It was unfortunate, but these sorts of things seem to happen there. His hard-partying roommate Louis (#6) knows something is wrong about the place, but he tries to live in denial. Lara (#8) is more openly rebellious, but the punky girl initially has no interest in Sam’s attempts to form an alliance, or anything else for that matter. Nevertheless, they grow closer as things get weirder around them. In fact, it is Lara that comes to the clean-slated Sam’s rescue.

Yildirim’s Boy 7 was adapted from the Dutch YA novel by Marco van Geffen and Philip Delmaar, as was the Dutch film version that released a mere six months earlier. German efficiency is certainly impressive, but in this case Yildirim marries it up with an ultra-slick Twyker-esque style. Although it is doomed to be compared to the Divergent and Maze Runner franchises, Boy 7 is much more closely akin Baran bo Odar’s Who Am I—No System is Safe, for reasons beyond language.

Lead actor David Kross is best known for his work in The Reader, but in this case, try not to hold it against him. He has clearly grown in his craft. While he is still a convincing nebbish outsider, he also conveys some grit and a bit of a dark side as Sam. As Lara, Emilia Schüle has a weird, hard to define screen presence, but it sort of works in context. Unfortunately, the villains are not nearly as distinctive as they ought to be.

Nevertheless, Yildirim keeps it all hurtling along at full throttle, while cinematographer Matthias Bolliger gives it an eerie nocturnal noir glow. It is a quality production that far surpasses the low expectations its young adult credentials would suggest. Recommended for paranoid youths, the German Boy 7 screened this week, as part of this year’s Fantasia.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on August 1st, 2015 at 3:41pm.

By Joe Bendel. Looking for a film that will give you sympathetic bruises and body aches? Sure, we all are, so here it is. Poor Choi Iko will go from one massive beatdown to another. Technically, that is his job as the top MMA contender, but he never signed up for this so-called “game.” Gameplay definitely leaves a mark in Choi Ho’s Big Match, which screened this week during the 2015 Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal.

Choi was briefly a promising soccer prospect, but after one notorious game and a pile of red cards, he found his true calling in the MMA ring. His older brother Young-ho is his coach, manager, and the closest thing to a voice of reason in his life. Therefore, when the shadowy Ace kidnaps Young-ho and frames the brothers for murder, Choi will reluctantly play his game.

For the wagering amusement of Ace’s select clientele, Choi will have to navigate the successive levels of the very real life game, starting with his escape from police custody. Things quickly escalate when he is forced to attack an underground mob casino single-handedly. Choi is undeniably a cement-head, but he is determined to take the fight to Ace, as soon as he saves his brother. He might also find an unlikely ally in Soo-kyung, his reluctant in-game minder.

If you thought the day would never come when K-pop superstar BoA would go to work on a pack of gangsters with a set of brass knuckles, then brace yourself for some good news. Granted, she never really taps into the inner recesses of her soul as Soo-kyung, “the woman of mystery,” but she is kind of awesome in her action scenes. Likewise, Lee Jung-jae plays Choi with all kinds of fierce guts. He almost looks to lean to be a top-ranked MMA fighter, but he turns out to be pretty credible dishing it out and taking it.

The pedestrianly titled Big Match might sound like a workaday recycling of elements from films like 13 Sins and Man of Tai Chi, but the sheer spectacle and intensity of the fight sequences are something else entirely. There are a few stunts that just border on the ludicrous, but they always result in conspicuous scarring, which sort of keeps it real. To put things in perspective, Choi is tased on multiple occasions, but each time he just takes a beat to center his chi and then gets back at ‘em.

This is the sort of film that converts the stiff and staid into fanboys. Usually, kidnapping plots are not a lot of fun, but in this case, all the mayhem and promised payback more than compensate. For action fans, Big Match is the real deal, raw egg-swilling goods. Highly recommended, it screened this week, as part of this year’s Fantasia.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on August 1st, 2015 at 3:40pm.

By Joe Bendel. You have never seen the streets and business plazas of Hong Kong so empty. Fortunately, thanks to cell phones, loitering does not look nearly as suspicious as it used to. Despite his awkwardness, Leonard To will indeed be able to closely shadow the man he believes might be responsible for his wife’s murder in Dax Phelan’s English language HK production, Jasmine, which screens as part of the 2015 Asian American International Film Festival in New York.

To is very definitely not over his wife’s death yet, but the Hong Kong police have apparently moved on. As a result of his debilitating grief, he lost his job and his waterfront apartment. However, just when he starts looking to restart his career, he observes a mysterious figure placing flowers on his wife’s grave. When he subsequently follows the strange man to the site of his wife’s murder, he assumes this must be the guilt-ridden killer.

Having plenty of time on his hands, To manages to find a way to snoop through his suspect’s luxury flat. He also starts tailing the unnamed man’s girlfriend, Anna, a model struggling to jumpstart her acting career. Only Grace, an understanding family friend, still finds time to see him, but even she is alarmed by his increasingly erratic behavior.

Jasmine is definitely what you would call a slow-burner. It is also a “big twist” kind of film, springing a third act revelation that will radically alter the audience’s perception of everything that preceded it. You can never re-watch Jasmine with the same mindset, but it would be interesting to revisit each scene in a different light.

Jason Tobin is pretty darned extraordinary as To, personifying twitchy, clammy pathos. He keeps us deeply unsettled, while closely guarding the film’s secrets. It is almost a one-man show, but Sarah Lian and Eugenia Yuan (daughter of the great Cheng Pei-pei and former U.S. Olympian) add considerable human depth and emotional heft to the film as Anna and Grace, respectively. Byron Mann has little to do except obliviously lead To through Hong Kong, but he has the perfect presence for the role, honed by a number of prior villainous big screen turns. Grace Huang (star of producer Jennifer Thym’s dynamite short film Bloodtraffick) also briefly appears as Jasmine To, but you might miss it if you blink at an inopportune moment.

Jasmine is a dark, tightly disciplined thriller, occupying the space where film noir and existential angst overlap. Phelan pulls off some impressive misdirection, while cinematographer Guy Livneh gives the proceedings an eerily cool sheen. Recommended for fans of psychological suspense, Jasmine screens this Thursday (7/30) at the Village East, as part of this year’s AAIFF.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on July 27th, 2015 at 6:39pm.