Movieline Online

France’s critical reassessment of Hollywood genre pictures gave credibility to filmmakers whose work had been dismissed as lightweight entertainment back in the U.S. And no genre got more love than  film noir , a label added after-the-fact to post-war pulp thrillers that focused on the darker side of the American dream.  Director Alain Corneau puts these concepts in a cultural blender, reinterpreting the moody, morally ambiguous books and movies that inspired him to produce a trio of films that are both uniquely  noir  and uniquely French at the same time. Police Python 375  (1976) takes its cue from  Dirty Harry  but was actually adapted from a 1946 novel used as the basis for  The Big Clock  and the Kevin Costner-Gene Hackman thriller  No Way Out .  Yves Montand stars as aging supercop Marc Ferrot who must investigate  himself  after his lover is murdered by a superior officer.  Covering up evidence a...

The British “kitchen sink” films of the ‘50s and ‘60s set a new highwater mark for social realism amongst the working class.  Focused on characters typically deemed  unworthy  of cinematic attention, struggling to survive in a society that looked down upon their very existence, these were movies that tackled subjects escapist fare would not.  Fast forward a few decades to Clifford Choi’s  Hong Kong, Hong Kong  (1983), which embraces the same sympathy for the tired, poor, huddled masses entering the bustling city in hope for a better life…but finding instead an entirely different set of troubles. Si Sun (Cherie Chung) is an illegal immigrant forced to use her body to pay for her room and board.  But a chance meeting with a kind-hearted boxer, Yuen Sang (Alex Mann), adds a dash of hope to her drab existence.  A matchmaker pairs her with a widower, promising an ID card if she can give birth to a son, but Si Sun’s relationship with...

American culture has always had a hard time reconciling eroticism and art.  Maybe it’s our Puritan heritage.  Maybe it’s our deep-seated fear of naked ankles.  Or maybe it’s because we crave violence in every form but the sight of Rachel’s nipples   on a  Friends  re-run   is a national emergency.  Either way, the rest of the world seems to handle it just fine.  In fact, a few hundred years ago the ruling classes in Asia and Europe were renowned for the hedonistic behavior.  Case in point,  An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty  (1984), one of the final films produced at Shaw Brothers studio, which follows the softcore adventures of a female poet who refuses to conform to social norms expected of her gender. Independently wealthy thanks to her reputation as an artist and her former role as a concubine, Yuan-Gi (Patricia Ha) dabbles in business, religion and casual sex hoping to find satisfaction beyond ...

Some horror movies are made out of straw, so precariously constructed that the slightest narrative breeze will unravel the whole film.  But Jeff Leiberman’s  Blue Sunshine  (1977) is made out of bricks, baby!  Even with all its flaws, there’s just something about the ominous inevitability of each scene that glues it together, leading to a generational apocalypse there’s no chance of preventing.  Turn on, tune in, and drop  dead ! After one of his friends goes on a murderous rampage, Jerry Zipkin (Zalman King) accidently sets himself up as the fall guy. Now on the run from the cops, Zippy’s only chance to clear his name is to solve the mystery behind “Blue Sunshine,” a strain of LSD sold at Stanford ten years prior which seems to be having deadly effects on its users including headaches, alopecia and psychotic episodes.   With some minor tweaking,  Blue Sunshine  could pass as a major studio thriller.  But it woul...

While current female action films like  Furiousa  and  The Marvels  are facing a premeditated sexist backlash, 1996’s  The Long Kiss Goodnight  remains a mysteriously beloved bit of disposable ‘90s trash.  Starring Geena Davis as an amnesiac superspy whose reemergence onto the political chess board makes her and her family a target for her previous employers - the U.S. government – this Shane Black written, Renny Harlin directed thriller is a chauvinistic wet dream full of slow-motion gunplay, perfectly choreographed explosions and plenty of dick jokes. After living 8 years as a small-town housefrau hottie, Samantha (Geena Davis) finds out she’s actually  Charlie , a highly trained assassin who disappeared into her own cover story.  But with the help of a low-rent private detective (Samuel L. Jackson), she recovers her identity – and her special set of skills -  just in time to foil a terrorist plot, bring home the ba...

What begins as a lighthearted battle of the sexes turns into a spectacular martial arts display in Lau Kar-leung’s  The Lady is the Boss  (1983).  The legendary Hong Kong stuntman/director fills his film with a cast of all-stars and fun callbacks to previous hits while riffing on the  modern woman  attitudes imported from the U.S.  Mei Ling (Kara Hui), American-born and raised, arrives in Hong Kong to take over her father’s struggling martial arts school. But her gender doesn’t cause nearly as much controversy as her business tactics, which includes recruiting new students from discos, brothels and gay bars.  While the older students buy in to her trendy techniques, the old master (played by Lau Kar-leung himself) considers it a betrayal of his conversative teachings.  So when a local triad threatens revenge, he’s torn between saving face and saving his beloved school. Miraculously  The Lady is the Boss  manages to never o...

Although the  Bond  films made supervillains a household name, the idea of a megalomaniacal, mentally-unstable, criminal mastermind had been a literary staple for quite a while.  From Sherlock Holmes’ arch nemesis Professor Moriarty to the yellow peril of Fu Manchu, the concept of a bad guy out to conquer not just his own zip code but the  whole world  seemed to be a product of the pending international threat and paranoia that led to WW1. France had Fantomas which inspired a series of books and films while Germany had Dr. Mabuse, a master of disguise and mesmerism whose web of spies infiltrated every corner of the criminal underground.  The first film version in 1922 was brought to the screen by none other than director Fritz Lang who was convinced to reboot the franchise in 1960’s  The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse , which finds the doctor – or perhaps someone inspired by his nihilistic tendencies – back on the world stage in a big way. So wi...

Cashing in on both the slasher craze  and  heavy metal mania, 1986’s  Trick or Treat  is much better than its capitalistic origins might suggest.  Directed with a sympathetic ear for high-school outcasts everywhere, Charles Martin Smith’s film works itself into a frenzy of big hair, guitar licks and Tipper Gore-era rebellion but keeps things grounded by focusing on characters rather than its over-the-top killer. Tired of being ridiculed by all the jocks and cheerleaders in school, metalhead Eddie “Ragman” Weinbauer gets his wish for revenge thanks to a test-pressing of rock star hero Sammi Curr’s posthumous record.  When played backwards, incantations bring the devil-worshipping shredder back into the  real  world to settle the score with Eddie’s bullies…and anyone else that gets in his way! Shepherded into production by the same writing team responsible for  Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge , the two films share a lot of...

To paraphrase director Piers Haggard,  Venom  is a film that’s not schlocky enough for the blood n’ guts horror crowd and perhaps too classy for its own good.  It is, in fact, a rather straightforward thriller that uses a snake-on-the-loose plot device to spice things up a bit.  But the title (and marketing campaign in ’82) sold the film as a successor to “nature run amok” flicks like  The Birds  and  Alligator . The cast includes a who’s who of international stars (Klaus Kinski, Oliver Reed, Susan George) and puts their larger than life personalities to good use, trapping them inside a British townhouse after a failed kidnapping plot with an army of cops outside and one deadly Black Mamba inside.  There are one or two solid scares, but the majority of the plot focuses on the police siege, led by no-nonsense captain Nicol Williamson (Merlin in Excalibur ), and his attempts to outwit Kinski’s well-dressed terrorist.   Venom ...

You don’t need to be an expert in martial arts to spot someone who’s at the top of their game.  And in the case of the Venom Mob that includes  six  “someones” - Lu Feng, Chiang Sheng, Phillip Kwok, Sun Chien, Lo Man and Wai Pak -  first brought together in director Chang Cheh’s  Five Deadly Venoms  (1978),  who work together like a lethal version of the Harlem Globetrotters, passing off opponents with carefully choreographed kung-fu skills that are unlike anything else in the Hong Kong action catalog. Cheh reunites them all for 1979’s  The Daredevils  (aka  Shaolin Daredevils ) in which a group of friends plan a long con to get revenge against a corrupt government official who murdered their friend.  Earning money as a tumbling act, the gang works their way into the bad guy’s good graces by posing as arms dealers while secretly setting the stage for his assassination. With long sequences focused on the group’s s...

Hollywood’s painful transition into the ‘70s was marked by several recurring themes both onscreen and off. Counterculture politics and the rise of the film school generation resulted in films that rattled some cages and took intentionally obtuse detours into offbeat territory.  Case in point, 1970’s  Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx , which champions the underdog with a Cinderella gender reversal set in the working-class streets of Dublin.  Quackser (Gene Wilder) himself is a self-employed dung collector, sweeping up horse manure left behind by delivery carts and reselling his “merchandise” back to local gardeners.  But with the mechanization of Dublin on the horizon, Quackser’s dreamy disposition might soon put him out of work permanently.  Enter Zazel (Margot Kidder), a bored and wealthy American studying at Trinity College, who finds Quackser’s candid demeanor and lack of ambition charming.  The two strike up a tenuous ...

The last 20 years or so have been very kind to the reputation of Lucio Fulci.  Once dismissed as an artless, exploitive, misogynistic gorehound, his catalog has been embraced by boutique video labels, proving at least  one  thing:  he's certainly not artless.  And  Don't Torture a Duckling  (1972) is a rare bird indeed, both within Fulci's oeuvre and the  giallo  genre as a whole.  A killer is at large in a rural Italian village, stalking only young boys and leaving their lifeless - but unmolested - bodies for the authorities and press and discover. The suspects pile up quickly:  Patrizia (Barbara Bouchet), an urban outsider and sexual tease....Maciara (Florinda Balkan), a wandering witch doctor...and Guiseppe, the village idiot always teased by the local kids.  Andrea (Tomas Milian) is a reporter who, in true  giallo  fashion, suspects the cops are missing vital clues and begins to search for...

By the time you reach a certain age you remember where you were when important world events happened: the fall of the Berlin Wall, the attack on 9/11, Samuel L. Jackson being torn apart by genetically-enhanced Mako sharks.  It might not have changed the world, but in the annals of pop-culture “jump scare” history,  that scene  in director Renny Harlin’s ridiculously entertaining killer shark movie,  Deep Blue Sea  (1999) has lingered longer than the film itself.  But as a pre-fab popcorn flick, it holds up well against the self-important blockbusters that Hollywood embraced after the turn of the millenium. In pursuit of a cure for Alzheimer’s, a team of scientists increase the brain size in a trio of maneaters to the point where the sharks can strategize against their captors.  And when a hurricane traps them all in a lab sixty feet underwater, the humans are going to need every bit of brain power they can to survive. Made up of equ...

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. But boutique label Visual Vengeance doesn’t even bother to make a distinction.  Their curated collection of SOV and homemade genre cinema makes no apologies for bad taste or low budgets, but it’s a guaranteed good time.  And the two latest additions to their growing library keep the  anything-goes  aesthetic alive with a DIY martial arts epic and schlocky prehistoric sex spoof. 1984’s  Furious  is an early showcase for the Rhee Brothers (Simon and Phillip) who would go on to star in the  Best of the Best  franchise. As choreographers  and  performers the duo put on quite a show, but it’s nothing compared to the bizarre plot unfolding around them.  On a quest to avenge the death of his sister, Simon (Simon Rhee) is lured into a series of deadly confrontations by his former instructor Master Chan (Phillip Rhee) to collect pieces of a mystic amulet.  Each boss battle p...

Endings are tough.  Just ask Stephen King; even after 65 novels he’s yet to come with one that works.  So pity the poor low-budget filmmaker who has to stick the landing on their very first try.   Daddy  (2023) is a dark comedy from writing-directing duo Neal Kelley and Jono Sherman set in a near future in which parenthood must be licensed for both men and women. Steering away from sci-fi and towards more grounded satire, the film charts an amusingly grim course through male politics and paranoia.  Arriving at their isolated retreat, the four prospective fathers are surprised to find their government appointed monitor is a no-show.  As the conspiracy theories start to fester, the arrival of Ally – an attractive woman stranded overnight – sends the gang headfirst down rabbit holes of delusional psychosis.  Is this all part of the test?  Who can be trusted?  And, most importantly, what would a  real ...

In the crowded field of crime thrillers,   The Cat   (Die Katze) stands out for its cerebral, slow-burn approach. While films like   Heat   and   Dog Day Afternoon   defined the era with explosive set pieces and intense character dynamics, Dominik Graf’s   The Cat   opts for restraint—sometimes a cinematic turn-on, but just as often empty foreplay. The premise is undeniably intriguing. Probek (Götz George), a supposed criminal mastermind, commands an entire bank heist from afar with the calm efficiency of a chess grandmaster. He’s smooth, manipulative, and frustratingly untouchable by the police—a character cut from the same cloth as Michael Mann’s coldly calculating criminals. But Probek is a breed apart from his American counterparts. His emotional cruelty is a carry-over from a different era, echoing the stubborn ‘70s aesthetic when criminals truly lacked compassion and the cops chasing them were blue-collar slobs.  In that sense,...

While prison flicks are usually credited as the most  masculine  movie genre, the hitman subgenre certainly gives them a run for their money. Living a typically monastic existence with a personality leaning towards the autistic spectrum, these hired guns (they’re almost overwhelmingly guys) are the anonymous ideal of the modern male archetype, their particular set of skills disguised behind an everyman façade. Authors like Lawrence Block and Donald Westlake cemented such anti-heroes into the American iconography but their appeal transcends international borders.  Just take a look at the one-two punch of  A Certain Killer  and  A Killer’s Key , both produced in Japan in 1967, both as calculatingly cool as ever almost 60 years later. In  A Certain Killer  we’re introduced to Shiozawa (Raizo Ichikawa), an unassuming bar owner who moonlights as a professional killer. But his uncomplicated life is thrown into disarray by two accomplices who convin...

Japanese culture has a rich history of witches, wizards and warriors to draw upon, so it wouldn’t seem necessary to pilfer from Hollywood to create a vibrant fantasy world of their own.  But pilfer they do in 1983’s  Legend of the Eight Samurai , tossing in elements of  Star Wars ,  Raiders of the Lost Ark  and a dash of  Clash of the Titans  to craft an oddly endearing bit of made-up mythological adventure. Hunted by an incestuous clan of supernatural bad guys, Princess Shizu (Hiroko Yakushimaru) picks up seven protectors (including Sonny Chiba) to defend herself and reclaim her stolen kingdom.  Along the way they battle giant flying insects and snakes – and  each other  - in a nearly suicidal attempt to fulfill the ancient prophecy.  The wild card is Shinbei (Hiroyuki Sanada), an opportunistic drifter who must choose between his evil lineage or his true love for the Princess. Directed by legendary yakuza specialist ...

As the capstone of Kinji Fukasaku’s  yakuza  phase,  Hokuriku Proxy War  bears the burden of higher expectations now than at the time of release in 1977, where it was just another torn-from-the-headlines gangster story.  The fact that the director allegedly walked away from the genre after a hit on the man who served as the  inspiration for the main character gives it even  more  cinematic resonance. But the film itself doesn’t veer far from the familiar themes of ambition, loyalty and the futility of violence, this time set against a show-white background of desolate beaches and cramped rural streets. Impatient with his rise through the ranks, Noboru (Hiroki Matsukata) tries to take a violent shortcut to the top.  But his impulsive tendencies get him sent to prison and at the mercy of the larger criminal conglomerates who want Hokuriku for their own. Upon release, Noboru throws down the gauntlet once again, this time with a pl...

For all the claims of homophobia and outright fear mongering laid against  Cruising  (1980), its problems don't lie (entirely) within its admittedly dim view of one particular gay lifestyle.  The flaws in director William Friedkin's film are much less scandalous than that; think script, editing, pacing, etc.  And for all its attempts to shock the audience with hard-R scenes of lubed-up party boys seducing a wide-eyed Al Pacino, the biggest shock, ultimately, is that it lacks the courage of its convictions.   In an attempt to catch the "homo killer," beat cop Steve Burns (Al Pacino) is sent undercover into New York City's underground gay club scene, a hedonistic world of casual sex and kinky fashion.  Initially out of his element, Steve hunts down a few likely suspects while trying to maintain his "straight" relationship to Nancy (Karen Allen) on the side.  But the perils of the job begin to take their toll, pushing Steve to take cha...

With a title like  The Lady Assassin  one would expect Shaw Brothers to put their female stars front and center, but director Tony Lou’s film is a balanced affair that splits its time between rebels and royalty of equal genders.  The studio’s ‘80s output was reliably flashy and this one is no exception. Logic and history take a backseat as  the undercranked action is cut together with no frames spared, colorful combatants leaping, tumbling and soaring through each sequence.  Subtlety be damned, this is Shaw Brothers working the lunch rush, turning tables and cashing checks. Suspecting he’ll passed over as the next emperor in the line of succession, Fourth Brother forges the official decree to put himself on the throne.  But his broken promises to a gang of Han revolutionaries make him a marked man even behind palace walls.  Rushing to exile or assassinate his enemies before the truth can emerge, the new emperor surrounds himsel...

Any way you look at it,  The Cell  (2000) in an odd conglomeration of talent.  The feature directing debut of attempted auteur Tarsem Singh paired with rising stars Jennifer Lopez and Vince Vaughn in a  Seven -inspired sci-fi procedural with showstopping costumes designed by Eiko Ishioka ( Bram Stoker’s Dracula ) and an unsettling score from Howard Shore that echoes his work on the grand-daddy of all modern serial killer films,  The Silence of the Lambs .  All that talent makes for an oddly compelling film…but one that’s never quite as unique as it thinks it is. A social worker turned mind-whisperer, Catherine (Lopez) finds herself electronically inserted into the mind of a schizophrenic (Vincent D’Onofrio) in order to extract the information on his latest victim trapped in a cell that will fill with water in 24 hours.  Peter (Vaughn) is the hand-wringing detective whose only hope is that Catherine can survive the hostile dreamworld his ...