Chanbara Beauty

Inspired by a video game, y'say? Hard to tell.

There's only one way to ruin a movie about a bikini-clad cowgirl slicing up zombies in a post-apocalyptic world as she hunts down her Japanese-schoolgirl rival, and that's with exposition. Slow, plodding exposition in and around every fight scene. Which themselves are filmed in the jerky digicam style that works well for riots, gang beatings and zombies, but which screams "We couldn't get a choreographer!" when applied to martial arts.

The action is dull, the attempts to further the plot are worse, the zombies oscillate between skilled/intelligent and slow-moving/dull-witted without any discernible pattern, the bikini is too large and the sword is too small. There's just not much to like here, even the tacked-on manga-style ending.

* * * R A T I N G * * *

OneChanbara (NYAFF, IMDB)

Wince : [****_]
Flinch : [**___]
Retch : [**___]
Gape : [***__]

Beerequisite : [*****]
Pornability : [**___]
Obscurity : [**___]
Explicability : [***__]

Donnie Darko

Ever have one of those days where a jet engine destroys your room and a man in a bunny suit starts advising criminal activity? Young Donnie has them all the time.

OK, cult classic, coming of age film, the high-school trauma of misfits, blah blah blah. The film is successful in portraying its sociopathic protagonist in a sympathetic light. There's an end-of-the-world thread with no payoff, and a rather vague and hand-wavy time travel (or rather, hole in the fabric of space and time) wrap-up at the end.

All in all, enjoyable to watch once, but probably not more than that, and certainly a little disappointing after all of the hype (or whatever the cult film equivalent is) these past few years.

* * * R A T I N G * * *

Donnie Darko (IMDB)

Wince : [***__]
Flinch : [*____]
Retch : [*____]
Gape : [***__]

Beerequisite : [****_]
Pornability : [_____]
Obscurity : [*____]
Explicability : [**___]

Standout bits: Cool bunny costume.

Death Trance

It only takes a few minutes to realize that Death Trance is brought to you by the same people that did Versus: the metal soundtrack-driven stylized violence gives away the game immediately.

There is some sort of a story about an unbeatable samurai (who seems to lose an awful lot for being unbeatable) stealing a coffin containing the Goddess of Destruction, and an inept priest trying to track him down. Throw in a phallic apocalypse sword, the two-fisted (assuming both of them hold revolvers) son of Steven Seagal, vampiric spider-humans, and a child sidekick slightly less annoying than the kid from Six-String Samurai, and you have ... this movie. And did I mention the two (count 'em!) combat-as-sex scenes?

Decent mindless, over the top fun, with what has to be the best demonstration of gun-fu to hit the screen (and not from Seagal either).

The ending, for some reason, is reminiscent of Meatball Machine.

* * * R A T I N G * * *

Death Trance (IMDB), aka The Movie Put Me To Sleep Three Times

Wince : [****_]
Flinch : [***__]
Retch : [**___]
Gape : [***__]

Beerequisite : [***__]
Pornability : [*____]
Obscurity : [***__]
Explicability : [**___]

Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell

Aspiring Vice-President Tex Kennedy and his robot pals seek to free the new president, Benjamin Remington, from his fallout shelter and establish him in New America's seat of power: a powerful transmission tower in the heart of The Threshold of Hell. Said threshold has, fittingly, been located in Florida.

There's all kinds of good stuff in this movie: robots, immortals, cannibals, used car dealers, sea serpents, cigars. The acting, especially the delivery of the dialog, is spot-on and really makes the movie. The budget is low, and the story itself feels a bit cobbled together, but the overall production quality is high enough that you don't notice.

The movie is very, very similar to Six String Samurai: the future King of America battling his way across a sandy wasteland, encountering all sorts of natural and supernatural obstacles. It also brings to mind Snatch with its sheer number of larger-than-life characters, all introduced with a splash page and a brief voiceover, whose ranks swell so quickly that you know half of them are going to be killed by the end.

Very entertaining, well worth a second (or more) viewing, though a bit unsatisfying. Maybe it's the unwavering nonchalance of the characters, the unphased narrators, or the constant deus ex machina saves; by the end, you don't particularly care whether New America's founders succeed or not.

* * * R A T I N G * * *

The Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell

Wince : [**___]
Flinch : [***__]
Retch : [**___]
Gape : [**___]

Beerequisite : [***__]
Pornability : [*____]
Obscurity : [***__]
Explicability : [***__]

Most brilliant tag-team proposal: Kennedy and Castro!