Movieline Online

New York City and Rome share a common 20 th  century evolution.  They both transformed themselves from crime-ridden urinals to functional tourist attractions.  And while both cities are a whole lot better economically and sociologically today, the 1970’s offered up a far richer cinematic canvas.  NYC got stunners like  The French Connection  and  Serpico , while the Italians unleashed a wave of  poliziotteschi  – crime and action films that turned the streets of Rome into a live-action game of Nintendo’s  Duck Hunt . Convoy Busters  (1978) stars Maurizio Merli (more on him later) as Inspector Olmi, a  Dirty Harry -style cop who insists that crime must be answered with immediate and deadly punishment, usually via the barrel end of his revolver.  But after his methods prove too much for the administration to handle, Olmi is shipped away to a quiet seaside town where his gun can stay holstered.  ...

Even spaghetti western completists will admit that the genre can get ridiculously repetitive.  But the Italian film industry was nothing if not adaptable.  So when the kung fu craze began to hit hard overseas, they came up with the next best thing.   Shanghai Joe  (1973) is an East meets West action combo that finds a Chinese martial arts master wandering the Texas border righting social injustices and defending himself against a vengeful ranch owner. Directed with clumsy enthusiasm by Mario Caiano, by all rights this film should be a mess.  But instead, it winds up delivering everything it promises on the poster…and then some!  Earning his nickname on a stagecoach ride from  St.  Francisco (the Italians aren’t particular about details) to the Texas frontier, Shanghai Joe (Chen Lee) attempts to earn as honest living as a cowboy.  But after embarrassing a racist ranch owner, Joe finds himself hunted by a quartet of hir...

Michael Mann almost singlehandedly defined the ‘80s.  His brooding take on the cops and robbers genre bounced from the big screen ( Thief ) to the small screen ( Miami Vice ) and back again ( Manhunter ).  His approach elevated these simple stories to Shakespearean heights, riding a wave of neon-soaked noir visuals and trendy synth beats.  It earned him a slew of box-office successes, opening up the playbook to include biographies and epic period pieces.  But, for all his technical skills, Mann works best at street level.  And 2015’s  Blackhat  finds the director leaning hard into what put him on top in the first place: clever criminals, flawed heroes, and lots and lots of riding around in cars. Conditionally released from prison to help the feds (and the Chinese government) track down a hacker manipulating the markets and sabotaging nuclear power facilities, Nick Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth) is initially in the game for purely s...

Within the martial arts genre, women have  never  been thought of as second rate.  Michelle Yeoh’s recent Oscar win might be an outlier (hopefully not the last) here in the States, but in Hong Kong she was part of a wave of female stars who kicked butt even  harder  than the boys. The  In the Line of Duty  series, which began with two films starring Yeoh then swapped her out for Cynthia Khan, are amped-up examples of the golden age of Hong Kong filmmaking…and proof that it doesn’t take a Y chromosome to take down the bad guys!   Yes, Madam!  (1985) was Michelle Yeoh’s first starring role and it’s one hell of an introduction.  After thwarting an armored truck robbery in grand style, Inspector Ng (Yeoh) is paired up with Scottish investigator Carrie Morris (Cynthia Rothrock) to recover a missing microfilm that’s accidently passed through the hands of a group of dimwitted thieves.  The tone of this one bounces schiz...

Now that playing videogames is an actually career choice, the premise behind  The Last Starfighter  doesn't seem to be quite the fantasy it once was.  But director Nick Castle's take on the Arthurian legend is still drenched in Spielbergian Americana balanced with breakthrough computer effects that might not seem quite as revolutionary today.  But for those of us who shared Alex Rogan's dream of being plucked from obscurity to become an intergalactic hero, the film remains an imaginative bit of pre-teen wish fulfillment that has aged as well as anything from the era when Slurpees and Stargate were the height of pre-teen pop culture. Stuck plunging toilets at his mom's trailer park, Alex's (Lance Guest) dream of escaping to college with his girlfriend Maggie (Catherine Mary Stewart) is crushed when his student loan is denied.  But after breaking the record on the local Starfighter machine, an alien talent scout (Robert Preston) whisks him off to Ry...

Sam Peckinpah will probably never earn the accolades of peers like John Ford or Howard Hawks, pioneers in the western genre who left a cinematic trail of wagon ruts every other filmmaker has been forced to follow.  His attempts at fitting into the conventional idea of Hollywood filmmaking ( Major Dundee ,  The Cincinnati Kid)  resulted in controversy, dismissal and eventual blacklisting.  He’d win back redemption and  then some  with 1969’s  The Wild Bunch , kickstarting an equally argumentative second career, but the project that got him back into the industry’s good graces was an hour-long TV gig for  ABC Stage 67  entitled  Noon Wine .   Based on a short novel by Katherine Anne Porter, the story follows a layabout dairy farmer, Royal Thompson (Jason Robards) and his long-suffering wife Ellie (Olivia de Havilland) whose marriage gets thrown an unexpected lifeline in the form of Olaf Helton, a mysterious drifter whos...

Even hardcore martial arts fans will admit that not  every  film is worth watching.  With the sheer amount of product pushed out from Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest at the height of the kung-fu craze, quite a few lesser efforts slipped through the cracks, many serving as a training ground for new talent on the way up.  So even if the final product – like 1976’s  Hand of Death  - is aggressively average, there’s bound to be some novelty when it comes to the talent involved.  Names like John Woo, Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung are sure to attract interest.  But put them all in the same film and you’ve got yourself some must-see viewing!   Yet another showcase for the mythical shaolin brotherhood, here a monk, Yun Fei, is sent to exact vengeance on a ruthless warlord, Shih Shao-Feng, who’s made a long list of enemies throughout the province.   Yun Fei assembles a team of talented fighters to defeat Shao-Feng and ...

Jackie Chan’s failed attempts to break into the U.S. market – which included  The Big Brawl, Cannonball Run and  The Protector  – turned out to be a blessing for us all.  He returned to Hong Kong with a chip on his shoulder, pushing the envelope with each new film: inventive action scenes, bigger stunts and increasingly dangerous feats of physical skill.  And it all peaked with 1992’s  Supercop , the third entry in Chan’s  Police Story franchise, a full-throttle series of shoot-outs, sight gags and stunts that one-up each other for an inspired 96 minutes. Sent undercover to take-down a drug czar, supercop Kai-Kui (Chan) teams up with a hardnosed Chinese military official (Michelle Yeoh) to infiltrate the organization and stop the contraband at its source.  But when their cover is finally blown, our duo must rely on their martial arts skills to save Kai-Kui’s fiancé and take down an army of bad guys on – and  above  – the s...

Every year the history of cinema gets a little longer.  And every year it gets harder to convince the next generation that what came before them was worthwhile.  So, kudos to VCI Entertainment for packaging up all 13 installments of the serial adventure flick  The Green Hornet  (1940), a socially-conscious minded superhero story adapted from the hit radio show of the same name.   Much of the success of the translation to the screen can be laid at the feet of its creators, who insisted on carrying over much of the programs signature elements, including the voice of Al Hodge who dubs in for the masked avenger whenever he kicks into action.  Structured as a weekly cliffhanger, the Hornet finds himself in a tight spot at the end of each episode, only to make a miraculous escape in the next reel.   The set-up involves a young newspaper editor, Britt Reid (played by Gordon Jones), who uses his secret identity to right the wrongs his newspaper ...

Jackie Chan’s success in America was long overdue.  While hardcore fans still dismiss films like  Rush Hour and  Shanghai Noon  as watered-down versions of his earlier work, Chan finally had the financial clout to do things  his  way.  And his first outside-the-box Hong Kong production was  Gorgeous  (1999), of all things a fairy-tale romantic comedy with Chan falling for a girl (Shu Qi) over twenty years his junior.  It’s an awkward fit, with several martial arts sequences shoehorned into the storyline…one of which is a boxing battle for the ages between Jackie and late stunt coordinator Brad Allan.   Lured to Hong Kong by a romantic message in a bottle, Bu (Shu Qi) arrives to find her dream man is, instead, a gay make-up artist who tutors her in the finer points of love.  She uses her charms to woo C. N. Chan (Jackie Chan), a romantically-challenged millionaire whose business dealings make him a target for...

Exploitation films, by their nature, are designed go too far.  Whether the intention is to shock, titillate or disgust, the goal is to go at least one step further than the audience will expect.  1982’s  Calamity of Snakes  takes on the challenge and  succeeds , at least in terms of unsimulated animal violence shown on screen.  Essentially a “snake snuff film,” this Hong Kong via Taiwanese production proceeds to chop, slice, dice, stomp, chew and burn its way through hundreds of reptiles to, ironically, tell the story of snakes wreaking vengeance against an unscrupulous real estate developer. After mercilessly killing a nest of snakes with an excavator for slowing down construction of new condominiums, those responsible see the luxury high-rise invaded by an army of slithering death.  Recruiting a kung-fu snake charmer and guilt-ridden architect, humanity fights a losing battle as the serpents surround party guests at the swanky ope...