Posts

Under Siege 4K Ultra HD

Image
While Schwarzenegger and Stallone took up two spots on the Mt. Rushmore of ‘80s action movies and Bruce Willis was paying off the third in installments, there were plenty of hopefuls competing for that fourth-place finish. While studs like Chuck Norris and Jean-Claude Van Damme worked on their applications, every once in a while a studio would give them a shot at the big time. Such is the case with Steven Seagal and Under Siege (1992), an unapologetic Die Hard knock-off that built upon the actor’s growing popularity. Casey Ryback (Seagal) is a decorated veteran riding out his naval career as a cook aboard the USS Missouri when the ship is hijacked by a gang of weapons merchants led by Strannix (Tommy Lee Jones), a bitter ex-CIA contractor with a longstanding grudge. Escaping the crew headcount, Ryback teams up with Miss July 1988 (Erika Eleniak) to thwart the terrorists plans from the inside with government officials debate their options – including killing everyone aboard – to pr...
Post a Comment
Read more

Splendid Outing

Image
A double-whammy critique of Korea’s patriarchal society and political repression, 1978’s Splendid Outing also fits comfortably in the “psychotic women” genre that includes paranoid mysteries like Rebecca and Repulsion . Director Kim Soo-yong adeptly keeps his audience guessing which half of his film is real and which is imagined as he drags his lead character from the boardroom to the bedroom of an abusive captor intent on keep her as a replacement for his runaway wife. Gong Do-hee (or President Gong to her business partners) is a respected widow who rose to the rank of chairwoman in her husband’s absence. But on a day trip to escape her busy schedule, she finds herself kidnapped and sold off to a fishmonger on an isolated island. After being raped, beaten and forced to care for the man’s crippled daughter, Do-hee starts to accept her fate. But a sympathetic doctor inspires her to makes one last attempt to return to her former life. Eventually, Splendid Outing does come clean a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Illustrious Corpses

Image
Part of a wave of post-Watergate conspiracy thrillers, Illustrious Corpses (1976) takes on the Italian justice system at a time when the political landscape was already in chaos. As rival parties jockeyed for position, the powerful judicial branch wielded power that could be bought and sold by crime families and politicians alike. Adapted from a fictional novel but grounded in the anxieties of the moment, director Francesco Rosi changes the names and faces but makes it clear his film is anything but a work of fiction. Inspector Amerigo Rogas (Lino Ventura) is assigned to the case of a murdered judge, scoping out the suspects who arrive at the funeral and asking pointed questions. But the assassinations continue and Rogas theory of a lone gunman taking revenge for a miscarriage of justice is soon discarded for a more insidious plot within the government itself. A plot that has no use for nosy policemen. The comparisons between U.S. films like The Parallax View and The Conversatio...
Post a Comment
Read more

Blood of Revenge

Image
Tackling the classic western theme of savagery versus civilization, Blood of Revenge (1965) transplants that frontier anxiety into a Japanese society straining under the weight of modernization. Where American Westerns pit lawmen against outlaws as railroads carve order into chaos, this early yakuza drama (or ninkyo) frames progress itself as the invading force, encroaching on a rigid underworld code that no longer fits the times. Civilization is coming and it’s arriving with bulldozers, business suits, and a thinly veiled contempt for tradition. Set in a port town caught between old loyalties and new money, the film follows a stoic second-in-command, Asajiro (Koji Tsuruta), trying to navigate a collapsing moral order where honor is still spoken aloud but rarely practiced. Embarrassed of his yakuza past, Asajiro finds himself torn between a romantic entanglement that promises a measure of happiness versus his responsibility to help legitimize the clan. And while his strong belief in t...
Post a Comment
Read more

On The Run

Image
A riff on the familiar American ‘80s crime movie where a helpless female must be protected from bad guys by a begrudging bodyguard (think Stallone’s Cobra ), this Hong Kong variation introduces a clever gender-swap and takes some seriously dark turns. Starring Yuen Biao and Patricia Ha as the mismatched couple dodging corrupt cops and underworld thugs, On the Run (1988) knows it’s treading on familiar territory. So director Alfred Cheung plots a route with just enough zigs and zags to make the trip interesting. After his DEA wife is murdered by a professional hit, Ming (Biao Yuen), a cop himself, vows to solve the case on his own time. But his activity stirs up a conspiracy within the department that puts his entire family at risk. His only hope is Pai (Patricia Ha), ironically enough the hired gun responsible for the death of his wife. Now both of them are on the hit list, forcing a truce while they try to get Ming’s daughter to safety. Delivering an unexpectedly emotional perfor...
Post a Comment
Read more

O.C. and Stiggs

Image
There are certain filmmakers who seem to be actively trying to piss off their audience: Godard, David Lynch and certainly Robert Altman. They know the unspoken “rules” of cinema, a visual language we’ve all quietly agreed upon, but simply refuse to abide by them. Take O.C. and Stiggs (1987), Altman’s gleeful attempt to sabotage the National Lampoon franchise, a film that tested so poorly it was shelved for three years and scrubbed of any overt connection to the magazine. Is it a bad movie? Most definitely, by multiplex standards. But it’s also a deliberately hostile middle finger to studio executives who thought they could keep one of Hollywood’s most iconoclastic directors on a leash. O.C. and Stiggs are a pair of high school pranksters whose attention is mostly focused on their neighbors, the Schwabs, an eccentric family embodying the worst aspects of conspicuous consumption and American entitlement. What begins as juvenile harassment of the community at large escalates into bl...
Post a Comment
Read more

Saga of the Phoenix

Image
Most of us have picked up enough Greek mythology from high school and Ray Harryhausen movies to guess our way through a pop quiz. The guy who chopped off Medusa’s head? Perseus. The hot babe in a clamshell? Aphrodite. The half-man half-fish holding a trident? Ummmm….Aquaman? We may not be perfect but trying to tackle Asian fantasy films is on a whole ‘nother level! Saga of the Phoenix , a Hong Kong-Japanese co-production based on a popular manga (and sequel to the previous Peacock King ), introduces so many characters and pseudo-religious mumbo jumbo in the first half hour it feels like a crash course in Eastern mysticism. But once that prerequisite is out of the way, the movie relaxes into a breezy fish-out-of-water comedy full of stop-motion creatures and hand-drawn special effects. Gloria Yip plays Ashura the Hell Virgin (sounds like a great Tinder name), promising to turn over a new leaf if she’s allowed seven days in the human world. Tagging along to keep her in line is ...
Post a Comment
Read more